Jason Arday, Cambridge Plagiarist, thread two

[Angeruish]

We are nearing our 1000-post limit on the original thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5561878-jason-arday-cambridge-plagiarist?reply=153910946

I have now removed the question mark after "plagiarist".

I can't believe the sequel will be as good as the original, but you never know...

My thoughts entirely.

trying to minimise legitimate concerns
What exactly are your or anyone else's concerns?

Do you think nobody else has ever lied about their life or possibly spoofed to get a job?
Do you think no other academics have plagiarised work nor had to retract it?
Do you think institutions don't get hoodwinked nor sometimes fail to do due diligence?
Do you think Cambridge is an unassailable bastion of clear-mindedness and rigour?

It also minimises the range of improbable happenings claimed by Arday to be part of his experience and the lack of evidence for any of them.
I literally said 'JA's hyperbole/fabulations/clearly troubled relationship with the truth'.

If you're British, well you're speaking from a country that has been prey to the purveyors of some of the greatest and most scandalous and far-reaching mis-truths in recent times such as those who ran the Brexit campaign and Boris Johnson so maybe it's difficult to grasp. I don't know, maybe you just love being part of a baying pack.

Interesting article, thank you.

This particularly resonated:
Nor would the damage stop there. It would spread to Britain’s already battered universities, which are already struggling with job cuts, shaky finances and growing public distrust.

My distrust of academia began during my own PhD, when I found (as I mentioned earlier) that a lauded scholar whose field overlapped with mine had produced some incredibly shoddy work.

Once you start looking, you find a lot of really poor work in an assortment of fields. Some of it is politically influential, and it really shouldn't be.

@OneArtfulUmberSquid
What exactly are your or anyone else's concerns?
Mine are extensive:
The impact on other black academics
The impact on parents of autistic or developmentally delayed children who saw his myth as a story of hope
The impact on the public's faith in academia
What the whole episode says about the level of scrutiny of high-level university appointments, and what it implies about those lower down the tree
The possibility that this will degrade the value of PhDs
The harm to Cambridge's reputation

I know that plenty of academics are idle, dishonest, sloppy or prone to plagiarism (I sometimes read Retraction Watch in my spare time). What this tale shows is how they get away with it - because of groupthink, because of shockingly poor processes.

People who tell lies should be for the high jump, all the way from Jason Arday to Boris Johnson. But they're not - they get away with it, they sit on money they've earned as a consequence of their dishonesty (Raynor Wynn? Remember her?)

Academic enquiry should be disinterested, thorough, balanced, honest and scrupulous. Currently, rather a lot of it isn't.

What this whole sorry tells us that British universities need a kick up their collective arse. So, yeah, it's quite important.

He smiles, he speaks softly, he's all about kindness and love and understanding and authenticity. Until someone says 'hang on a mo, could you just explain ...'. And then he reaches for Carter-Ruck.

All those ordinary people in his past, the schoolmates, the teachers, the fellow students and colleagues at the many institutions he has studied and worked at, neighbours, all the runners and fundraisers he raised millions with, the football and snooker players, the coaches, the friends who were there supporting him through the car accident and 3 month coma, the cancer, the deafness, the brain tumour(s), the stroke. His siblings, his parents, his wife. Bar one or two - all silent.

If he was speaking the truth about any of these extraordinary events in his early life then surely, surely someone would put their hand up and say yes, I can vouch for that.

Spag edit.

I hope it does. I think most people would be shocked at how archaic the hr processes are for academics. It often feels like you're working in a regency era gentlemen's club where everything gets sorted out over a cigar at the cards table.

Apologies for quoting my own post but it must be very clear now, unless there is some sort of miracle revelation, that the game is up. His mother has to be in on the fraud as well as the saintly teacher who mentored him for extra 3,5,7 hours a day! Mentors name was ‘Santori santori’ or something like that I can’t exactly recall his name and can’t be bothered to find it. My view is that this guy is a massive fraud and lots of people in on it. Unless he has them all buried under a patio!

It would be interesting for any legal eagles out there to give a feeling as to how many hours a letter as substantial as the Carter Ruck one would have taken to put together (it is posted above, but has not been included in its entirety, and may not even be genuine).

Obviously there is client consultation and other research work to be done beyond the redaction.

Does anyone know of any other letters sent by CR on behalf of Arday, incidentally?

I can’t believe CR minimum rates are less than 500 an hour. Anyone know?

And if this took 100 hours (pure layperson guess) then that is 50 grand straight off, presumably paid by Cambridge, not by Arday himself.

Hopefully that aspect will be clarified by the internal investigation, and will also tell us the figure. So we can await that fun.

The Free Speech Union are interested in the SLAAP letters too. Was it JA? Cambridge? Or the GLP? Im slightly hoping it’s the latter who paid…

Just listening to someone on YouTube saying don’t recruit from Cambridge or the other woke unis.

Am just catching up on this thread a bit!

Firstly to have been involved with 35 theses at Arday's age is a pretty extraordinary feat.

I am 47 and have supervised around 15 PhDs. But he claims to have been supervising 15 at once.

Now you do get colleagues who supervise a lot. Sometimes they are a tokenistic presence on a supervisory team. Sometimes they take on lots of PGRs as a means of avoiding teaching. But 15 is a lot - my old place gibbed if you had more than 10, and my current institution limits you below that.

Examining 35 theses is pretty unbelievable by the age of, what, 40. I might get asked to do a couple a year. I'm no celebrity academic, but 35 at his age is...
Well, almost incredible.

Being fair - lecturer is a grade/ recognised job title in academia - a bit like resident doctors don't actually "reside" at work and consultant surgeons don't necessarily "consult"!

I am not a legal eagle, but that letter doesn't look like it took too long to do, even with a lawyer padding out the billable hours. A lot of it was quoting back to the journalist whatever he had written, and then they had obviously consulted with their client himself to get some of the hard facts (ahem) like the number of PhDs he'd supervised or examined. They didn't actually reference any sources.

I have to say, I am also very sceptical of the claim that this will impact other Black academics.

Academia definitely does not promote Black academics at the same rates as white ones. That is definitely a thing.

But every Black academic I know has been appointed because they do good work. Like the white ones. I haven't heard even a sniff of anyone questioning Black colleagues' suitability in light of this.

Because, why would they? Arday is nothing to do with them.

A bit of a stab in the dark (I'm very out of touch) but I'd say a letter like that would be a few thousand pounds. Nothing like a hundred hours work. But charging rates of several hundred pounds an hour would be usual for a specialist high-calibre London firm. I would expect heavy partner involvement in such a high profile case.

The Arday debacle will bring out the country’s racists, but I agree with you @JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff - with any luck black academics shouldn’t be affected. Universities aren’t far-right strongholds.

I think people mind more about the autism faking.

They mind most he wasn’t caught for any fakery & instantly called the police or played the victim when suspicions rose.

I hope it won't affect black academics. But beyond the academy, it may well influence public perceptions.

The big risk is the danger that one bad apple has discredited DEI. That needs to be dealt with.

On a practical note, disability faking is a beast to fix - are they going to have to demand medical records now for vetting?

I suspect outside academia people are much enjoying having a go at toffee-nosed universities they couldn’t get into being full of daft brain boxes.

A very traditional British pastime, especially during the silly season. Not enough to derail DEI.

Deborah Prentice has just been savaged by an ET judge who found against her and Cambridge for a really nasty bullying case.

Telegraph says:

Prof Wyn Evans, a professor of astrophysics within Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, brought the case and claimed he had been victimised after raising concerns about bullying and misogyny at the university.

Prof Prentice was implicated personally in the tribunal for “mishandling” the professor’s complaints, and has been accused of a failure of leadership.

One of the things the university did was send letters to academics they didn’t like saying ‘hope your next job is nice’ (or similar) and ‘thanks for your time anyway’ when staff were on long term
contracts.

When one boss complained about the problem, the accused, who’d been sending the letters, claimed bullying. Cambridge supported the accused.

Accused and Cantab shot down by judge and now Prentice, who was grassed up in court for not doing any work to find out what happened, is getting an HR audit.

Agree. Especially in sociology where he specializes in critical race theory and autoethnogprahy. That isn't quick database analysis quantitative PhDs that can be like a conveyer belt. I don't think it's possible unless Cambridge allow you to be a token third supervisor. We are capped at 4 I think.

In response to @MissyGirlie
How can it not be? Arday was given a FULL Professorship at 37? And no one batted an eyelid -obviously those that tick the woke boxes, whether black or not, are being favoured. This might not matter in other walks of life but in academia where intelligence and intellect count it’s a travesty. Parents are paying £9K a year for some dullard to pontificate at their kids!! Then you get unqualified kids getting given Phds. The long term effect of this over years (and for this guy to get an extremely prestigious role in an extremely ,no the most prestigious university in the land, it’s been going on for years and no one dare speak up) must be a dumbing down of society and people in high places (like Chancellorships and Professorships and senior roles in public service roles) not up to the job. Perhaps it explains why nothing in Britain works these days. Everything’s run by nice inclusive people who are thick.
And remember these people at Cambridge are devising education plans - when they are not rigorously vetted themselves why would they care if the teachers they turn out are? As long as they tick the boxes nothing else matters - and there is Arday given his well paid, prestigious job regardless. While the most intelligent miss out.

You're right, bloody well right... as somebody once said about education.

A contextual admission to a chair at Cambridge. For this clown?

They must be out of their minds.

Too much silence, for far too long. We need to speak up.

How about getting a ball rolling to oust some top people at Cambridge? Starting with Hillary Kremlin and Debbie Apprentice.

It would be no more than they deserve, given that it looks as if they have deprived plenty of other people of what they deserve.

All sacrificed on the altar of DEI.

As they’re all hewn from the same rock I can’t see anything happening to senior staff unless it is costing the uni financially - and it is across the whole university spectrum in UK- maybe Gov could reduce the taxpayers money that partially funds all degrees. Or they could cut funding to degrees where the student loans are not paid back as future earnings do not meet the payback threshold.

Would ABurnham take this on. The new education minister is into not learning spellings etc and work being about content not quality, she sounds cut from the same cloth.

But the financial cost to Cambridge will be enormous.

Corporate donors are driven by prestige.

Many personal donors are alumnae/i who are not of an age to appreciate this sort of nonsense.

Could have been the ones who lived in the cottages.