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...

I wonder if his book will still be published in the UK at the end of August?

It's available for pre-order at £14.79

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1398542741/

Moreover… look carefully below for reporting on the debunking of his improbable sporting achievements, extraordinary charity work, claims to have been in a coma for two months, assertions of having a brain tumour removed just before defending his PhD, and all the rest of it.

I don't know if I'm missing something obvious, but where were JA's family during the last few weeks? From the BBC reporting his death:

Arday's family said in a statement that they were "in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son".
They added: "The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone."

If your amazing son or brother was being accused of lying over these things, and about his developmental delays, wouldn't you want to defend him? Wouldn't you want to come out in the strongest terms and say 'he's telling the truth'?

Do we read anything into their silence? Did they just not want to get drawn into it one way or the other? I can see they might not want to comment on academic matters, but his personal history is an area they know better than anyone else. I just find their silence really odd.

Self styled 'Academic Barbie' and Manchester PhD hopeful Ashley Collar is posting 'Jason Arday died due to White Supremacism'.

We are going to learn nothing from it aren't we.

Children start at different levels because educational attainment is approximately 40% heritable and then parenting accounts for much of the rest.

I think it is important to ask why educationalists behave as though this were not the case. Their position is certainly consistent with Hilary Cremin's view that prior attainment does not predict future attainment (in the recording below and posted earlier in the thread); that numeracy and literacy are overrated (Farah Ahmed asst. research prof also Cambridge faculty of education, and previously linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir); and ultimately with Arday's appointment and Cambridge's egregious concealment of the problem last year.

Even if everyone in the faculty of education at Cambridge has lost their mind, someone still made a calculated decision to appoint them. In the context of decolonising curricula, mathematics for social justice etc it cannot be unreasonable to question whether we as a nation are doing this to ourselves or getting outside help.

I think that part of what's missing in the mix is that this isn't just about plagiarism of an essay. A PhD is the highest academic award in the university system. A PhD thesis is not an essay, where someone might compare and contrast current and past knowledge about a subject, drawing a conclusion. It is new, original material that expands the discourse on a topic. It is authoritative and robust. That's why PhD candidates have to defend their thesis via a viva - they are making new claims about an area of study so need to justify them.

If people can use other people's work and simply reorder the words, or completely lift sections of other people's work, it devalues the work of everyone else. There is no 'I passed my PhD with a first'. You have either passed or failed.

It wasn't just as great - I asked ChatGPT how many articles were written about each scandal - for Jason Arday it was 249 and for the Salt Path it was 45. So it wasn't just as great. the Salt Path did not dominate headlines for days. The Daily Mail alone has written 38 articles about him.

He, as an authority on ND said that autistic students don’t understand or see why this can be viewed as wrong so allowances have to be made. Isn’t this the issue here?

1. I'm autistic and I understand full well that plagarism is wrong.
2. Universities are required to make reasonable adjustments for students and staff. Giving a plagarist a free pass is not a reasonable adjustment, it's very much unreasonable.

Once again, Simon Baron-Cohen harms the autistic people he's built his career on. People at work are going to look at my work and think it is stolen.

The Salt Path scandal is ultimately a story about a story which was claimed to be true but was actually a romanticisation of a pretty seedy situation.

The Jason Arday issue is so much wider. They aren't comparable.

RIP JA but have the Cambridge Students started a BLM Protest yet? Are they going to support the claims of racism…. or will some continue on with their claims for dodgy tuition and low grades, that will be into.

I was given an additional third supervisor for the last year of my creative writing PhD because I moved from 80/20 creative/critical to 50/50 and the new supervisor became really important to that element (also one of my original supervisors was going to be retiring by the time I did my viva).

But why would Arday be supervising (or examining) critical race sociology PhDs when his was in sociology of education?

This was pasted on another thread and might have been here earlier. Richard Dawkins has written about the faculty of Education that hired him (Arday) and the creationism now being taught under the guise of anti Imperialist Islamic studies

https://nitter.net/RichardDawkins/status/2088514414425043341#m

The paper says that “countering colonial hegemony in science education for Muslims” could include “identifying gaps in fossil records to make the case that the evidence of humans descending from apes is inconclusive.”

But on the other hand, I would say that:

"Fantasist conmen in important national institutions who use libel law to intimidate journalists shouldn't be investigated and exposed because it is likely to cause them significant personal difficulties, and they may respond in extreme ways"

is not a sustainable principle.

What exactly is "contributing"? Perhaps pointing out things that could not possibly be true?

I asked Google AI - it said that more than 400 articles had been published in the scandal phase of The Salt Path furore - plus there was the serialised expose in the Observer (I think) and then there was the two part Sky documentary on it… I’d say that, given this, it is absolutely fair to say that the level of coverage was pretty even. And as others say, the impact of the Cambridge appointment scandal, in that it cuts to the heart of academia and the implementation of DEI, has wider social implications than a supposed biography being found to be utter fiction, even given the cynical and cruel way it mislead cancer suffers.

What do you mean, it ‘misled cancer sufferers’? It had nothing to do with cancer. It misled people who had corticobasal degeneration (CBD), which is the illness that Moth (the husband of Raynor Winn, the author) apparently has.

What book?

I have supervised/examined quite a few PhD’s that are not directly in the subject/topic my own PhD was on. I think that’s fairly normal as you accrue expertise in different areas as you progress, particularly if your work is interdisciplinary.

@roxyro Yes I head thd Good law bloke on Stephen Nolan. He was upset but blamed the press. At no time would he accept the lies were the real issue and his appointment. It’s just farcical that his claims were not checked out. Of course he said the press was racist too. My difficulty is that favouring a black person without due diligence might have been not considering a very good alternative minority person. The appointment seems about box ticking and not accepted recruitment law. It’s been twisted to meet an agenda and it’s wrong. A human being was in the middle of this and Cambridge should have been far more diligent regarding the appointment.

Surely lying on your CV (in terms of qualifications and jobs) is fraud. And Cambridge's recruitment process has been found to be inadequate?

I said on another thread and I’ll say it again, roles such as this (and indeed any job) should be awarded on merit alone. If that were the case in this instance then Jason Arday would still be alive.

And yes, I’m not denying there are systemic societal issues that need to be addressed, but it really is that simple.

@MrPickles73 Yes it is and most disciplinary procedures would see it as gross misconduct too.

Okay apologies CBD. Misspoke (not read book, no interest in film, but read reports.).

Should DEI exist in the workplace? I genuinely don’t know if it leads to situations like this one. What do others think?

That’s interesting - my PhD pitch was 75 creative: 25 critical. Recently told that creative should be as long as it needs to be and the critical needs to be 40k, so now 66/33. No offer of another supervisor. And only 9 months (now 7) to achieve the extended critical component. 🤯

This article makes a convincing argument that it should: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/13/jason-arday-diversity-how-and-why-we-should-defend