I thought I was through writing about Jason Arday, but I didn’t anticipate that he would become some kind of hero, or at least that many people would emphasize how he was hounded to death—always pushing the “racism” angle and blaming Cambridge and the press but neglecting the fabulism and preferential hiring that got Arday so much attention. Now the prestigious journal Nature has published an editorial (see below) that completely neglects two of the main reasons why Arday got so much attention, and pinning the blame for his death on nearly everyone. Luana brought the article to my attention by sending this tweet (note the “Community Note” below it).
As I said, I think there are two reasons why the Arday case got so much attention. The first is the breathtaking extent of his fabulism, involving extensive (and now verified) instances of plagiarism in his Ph.D. thesis, claims of appearances on t.v. shows that he was not on, claims of marathons that he actually did not run, claims of extreme autism that have not been substantiated, threats he said he got that also couldn’t be verified, multiple instances of cancer (also not verified), and many other stories he told that were not credible. Not to mention that he padded his c.v., larding it with positions he never held. Beyond the plagiarm, the Times of London reported that Arday stole another researcher’s work (as well as quotes that the researcher obtained in interviews), publishing it as Arday’s own. If true, this is wholesale academic fraud.
Second, Arday was the youngest black full professor at the University of Cambridge (his speciality was the sociology of education), and one of the few at the University. He apparently had an engaging personality and was lionized by his department, with Hilary Cremin (head of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education and the person who oversaw Arday’s appointment) praising him to the skies in the statement below as “the best in the world at some of the research [he did].”
In 2023 the @BBCNews ran a video story on Jason Arday joining @Cambridge_Uni. This is how his new boss described hiring him. Did they even look at any of his work? https://t.co/mbcJSIDzLE pic.twitter.com/gRkotAFqN4
— Dionysus (@DionLeFou) July 26, 2026
This lionization was wholly unwarranted. Nature doesn’t mention that this is another reason why Arday’s tragic life and death got so much attention: the case was so egregious that it finally became okay to discuss whether ethnicity and disability should override merit in academic appointments. The fact that many people and media sources fault Cambridge University—even blaming (as does Nature) for Arday’s apparent suicide—shows clearly that Arday’s appointment was questionable at best. (As I’ve said, nobody is responsible for Arday’s death save Arday himself.) It is because of the clear-cut nature of this case that the media jumped on it, though, as I said, one cannot reject the notion that some racism (against Arday) was involved.
Instead, Nature takes up several issues about Arday’s life, ultimately blaming his death on “systemic racism” in academia and in the media.
The first issue is Arday’s plagiarism, which Nature fobs off as having been dismissed by Arday’s Ph.D. university. As Nature says below:
Liverpool John Moores University, the UK institution that awarded the PhD, investigated the allegations [of plagiarism] and concluded that the PhD stands.
But the allegations were correct and John Moores University simply dropped the ball on the whole affair, perhaps to protect what reputation it has. Nature doesn’t mention the academic fraud uncovered by the Times of London.
Nature also blames Cambridge—not for appointing an unqualified professor, but for publicly announcing their investigation of Arday, which, says Nature, violates the confidential nature of the UK disciplinary process. But all Cambridge announced, as far as I know, is that they were investigating the charges—and nothing more (I don’t even think they said which issues they were investigating). Since the media was on Cambridge’s case about Arday, I don’t think that announcing an investigation without giving details is out of line: American universities do it all the time, saying things like “We are not commenting pending an investigation of these accusations.”
It is true that Arday apparently killed himself after Cambridge’s announcement, but it’s not clear that the announcement played the decisive role in the apparent suicide. Yes, it’s very sad that Arday killed himself when, if he’d been fired from Cambridge, he still could have gone on to have a productive life. He also had kids who now have no dad. But the frenzy to blame every person and institution for Arday’s death save Arday himself just shows that virtue signaling is still with us despite the other side: the more open debate of equity versus merit.
Finally, Nature rushes to blame systemic racism on Arday’s death, and by “systemic” they mean that racism is embedded in the rules and structure of the University itself. That is surely wrong, though of course one cannot rule out that racism was somehow involved in the media and social-media attention that Arday got.
But systemic racism? Many would say the opposite: that anti-racism is pervasive in academia, to the extent that someone like Arday could even be hired. Anti-racism is embodied in DEI policies in play at many schools. As I said, now it’s possible to discuss this tension without being demonized as a racist, and in that sense Arday’s life and death could constitute a watershed moment in our discussions of race.
You can read Nature‘s editorial below, which answers the question “Who is to blame for the death of Jason Arday?” by answering, “Academia, the University of Cambridge, systemic racism, and the media.” In other words, everyone but Arday himself.
I’ll just quote part of the article in case you don’t want to read the whole thing, but the link is above and it’s free, so you can read it all. I’ve already given my own comments above, except to say that Nature has really outdone itself this time with both virtue signaling and pointing the fingers at the wrong people.
. . . Arday died after relentless media coverage of his professional and personal life. It is an enormous tragedy for his family, friends, students and colleagues. It is also a catastrophe for the research community. The death of an autistic Black scholar who inspired a generation is shocking. The persistent media attention, the racism that pervaded much of that coverage and the plagiarism allegations against Arday, and the University of Cambridge’s handling of his case all raise difficult questions. These are concerns not only for the institutions involved, but for everyone in higher education and the media.
In this Editorial, we focus on two issues in what is a complex and evolving situation. One is how academic institutions should treat investigations into research misconduct amid unrelenting media attention. Investigations need to be carried out according to transparent processes with appropriate confidentiality for those involved, including whistle-blowers, whose testimony is often central to the outcome. These processes exist to ensure that all concerned are treated fairly and protected from harm, but were they followed? The other, related issue is how the media should ensure fairness when reporting on research misconduct and how it can do so without causing harm.
Arday’s fate is distressing, and especially so for Black scholars and those from other communities that are under-represented in academic research, many members of which report feeling vulnerable and unsupported at this time. There is systemic racism in academia. It is an unwelcoming place for many who enter it through hardship and struggle, as Arday’s story illustrates. It is not acceptable that these barriers persist. On top of this, scholars from Black and other under-represented communities fear that the intensity of attention Arday faced could one day be focused on them. The question many are asking is: ‘Could I be next?’
. . . Matt Walsh, head of journalism at Cardiff University, UK, did an initial analysis of UK media reporting of Arday between 25 July this year — when the latest wave of coverage of the plagiarism allegations started — and 20 August. He counted 242 substantive articles published in the print editions of UK national newspapers and concluded that there is strong evidence of racism. “Framing associated with race is present throughout the sample, and some articles explicitly accuse Cambridge of only appointing Arday as a professor because of the colour of his skin,” Walsh wrote in an article for The Conversation news website that describes his analysis.
. , ,Media organizations are not the only ones whose role in events must now be scrutinized. The University of Cambridge must also explain the decisions it made — in particular its announcement on 5 August, amid sustained media coverage, that it would investigate matters. On the same day, Arday resigned.
According to the code of practice from Acas, the independent UK body responsible for workplace arbitration, including at universities, an employee under investigation is entitled to confidentiality. An investigation is not a disciplinary process, but rather a fact-finding effort to explore whether there is a case to answer. But Cambridge’s decision to announce the investigation amid a media feeding frenzy offered no possibility of confidentiality — and risked adding to the impression that Arday had done something wrong before due processes had been completed.
. . .In his resignation letter, Arday wrote: “The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love.” He added: “For my own wellbeing, for my family, and for those who have stood by me throughout this difficult period, I have concluded that the only way to bring this chapter to an end is to step away.” He also promised to return “stronger, wiser and with the same determination that has always defined my journey”.
Arday did not return, so it is incumbent on all of us in the media and academia to reflect on our roles and responsibilities. Both research and media organizations have an obligation to communicate information fairly and accurately — and to avoid causing harm to the people they employ or report on. We can and must learn from this tragedy.
I think Nature is learning the wrong lessons.
Here is a pointless piece on Arday.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-real-meaning-of-the-jason-arday-scandal
I found it archived here: https://archive.ph/18kHQ
Here is an even more extraordinary piece. Not exactly pointless, rather the opposite: the author has a point about linking Arday’s suicide to Nazi death camps. No kidding.
https://www.laprogressive.com/racism/machinery-of-racialized-disposability
Written by Henry Giroux! “The attack on Arday strips history of its complexity…” what does that even mean?
This seems to be a topic outside Nature‘s wheelhouse. But still Arday does have a lesson for others: If you can dream it, you can have done it.
hehheh. Nice one Dr. B.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
Just to add to Jerry’s take on this astonishingly bad editorial:
No acknowledgment that the claims were clearly true.
No, since he did no worthwhile research, it’s not.
If he did “inspire a generation”, isn’t it even more of a problem that none of it was genuine?
No, actually there is not, not these days (unless one means the rampant pro-black favouritism). Nature quoting itself on this doesn’t show that there is.
Note the “he began to report” language. Even The Guardian didn’t believe him.
This was before the affair blew up. Of course they were not going to be the first to publically criticise Arday!
So Nature is saying that questioning DEI, suggesting that someone is a diversity hire, is itself racist.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly the attitude that led to the Arday affair in the first place.
“There is systemic racism in academia.”
This has become an article of faith, much like muttering the Nicene Creed in a Catholic church. Asking about evidence for the systemic racism is a bit like asking a hard-core Catholic for evidence of Satan…the mere asking proves that the thing you are asking about has been working through you.
Of course, this is not an exact analogy because unlike Satan, which is fiction, systematic racism did exist. It is just laughable to suggest that blacks are systematically disadvantaged now in elite academic institutions.
His defenders ~never mention his documented falsification of data. I think this is related to Bryan’s observation @6 that there is no empirical aspect to any of his work (or other critical social justice “research”). As Kemi Doll said in that NEJM editorial, no one in that milieu cares whether anything about Arday is true. They care only about whether something is useful for their advocacy, and his defenders at Nature and Cambridge seem very close to admitting this.
Even in death he continues to be useful for the Making of Points.
Even in good ol’ Germany you can see this dishonest tactic at work. I am quoting from a statement issued by the diversity office at a German university:
“At this point, it is irrelevant whether and in what form Dr. Jason Arday engaged in academic misconduct. On the one hand, his story illustrates in the most dramatic way how the academic landscape is still shaped and sustained by exclusionary norms such as whiteness.
On the other hand, his story shows the immense impact that structural discrimination has on those affected, even in the university context. It severely impairs one’s work and, beyond that, one’s private life as well. It can cost lives.”
https://www.tu-darmstadt.de/universitaet/diversity/antidiskriminierungsstelle/ads_news_details_575680.de.jsp
When I read these kinds of things I look at the writers as being racist themselves. They believe that black and other certain other chosen groups should not be held to the same rigorous standards as other groups, and I assume the reason for this is that they think that those groups are not capable of achieving the same high level of scholarship or honesty so the standards must be lower. I note that Nature also has published an article yesterday that claims that there is a genetic component to the Big Five personality traits. Maybe they think that Arday was predisposed to being a liar because of his race so therefore we shouldn’t comment on it?
The editors’ behavior is paternalistic, to say the least. And yes, it also borders on racism.
Arday’s scholarly contribution in “Whiteness and Education” (2018) is as perfect an illustration of the DEIshchina as there is. The Nature editorial suggests that its period of ascendancy damaged the Anglosphere’s research institutions even more seriously than the Lysenkovshcina injured those of the USSR. Therefore, we can now look forward to an entire generation of such continuing damage. No surprise! The episode of Lysenkoism affected Genetics, Agronomy, and Biology in the USSR (and a few of its colonies). The recent Western counterpart corrupted many more disciplines, in more countries, and undermined the very idea of FACTUALITY.
You’ll find this Russian vocabulary interesting :
korenizatsiya
raznoobraziya
faktichekoye ravenstvo
(Hint : try “actual” instead of “de facto” when searching for literature).
Ok, yes Jon and Bryan (below), Lysenkoism is incredibly close to the hard edge of DEI we see herein.
But here’s the thing which makes DEI, systemic racism idiocy more egregious now:
In the USSR information was basically controlled from above. All of it. They had no “error correcting mechanism.” Which is why they failed as a project.
In theory we did in that time (1st Ammd) but NOW, in our current era anybody (even idiots like me) can call something out on social media, let alone my actual column, and it’ll get attention. Yet the Arday outrage was quietened for a year and even now, as the host alerts us (Thx PCC-E) people will still stick with… modern lysenkoism.
D.A.
NYC🗽
In a way, David, the Soviet, top-down, police state system was better equipped than ours to reverse course. When the Party finally determined to abandon Lysenko & Co. (in the 60s, after Khrushchev), they really did. But they were still stuck with a generation of careerists in academic Biology who had mouthed Lysenkoism to get their positions, and afterward just kept mum. I think this why the USSR, with many, many degree-holders in academic Biology, played essentially zero part in the DNA research revolution elsewhere in the 60s-80s. [Best regards.]
Cool, I’d never run across the “shchina” suffix before, learn something new every day. Thanks.
This excerpt from a science book comes to mind – bold added where it might connect to the topic of this post :
“As for the fourth point, scientists are always impressed when new and stunning predictions prove correct. On the other hand, when a model is found lacking, a common reaction is to say the experiment was wrong. If that doesn’t prove to be the case, people still often don’t abandon the model but instead attempt to save it through modifications. Although physicists are indeed tenacious in their attempts to rescue theories they admire, the tendency to modify a theory fades to the degree that the alterations become artificial or cumbersome, and therefore “inelegant.”
If the modifications needed to accommodate new observations become too baroque, it signals the need for a new model.”
From:
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
The Grand Design
Ch. 3 : What is Reality?
p.53
2010
Bantam
… at some level, it’s not that Critical Social Justice activists’ model of Life, The Universe, and Everything (Intersectional Identity integrated with Power) is not even wrong – it’s that the model is in fact a totalizing worldview (Weltanschauung) and is unfalsifiable – it cannot even be discerned from falsehood.
Thus, when problems materialize, the model must be “rescued”, to use Mlodinow and Hawkings’ language.
It is a genuine fundamental flaw in Human Nature. Critical Social Justice literature is fundamentally incompetent in the correction or even abandonment of its theories. Consider the Grievance Studies Affair, or Cynical Theories (2020) by Pluckrose & Lindsay.
“Systems” did not kill Arday. And, let us hope that Nature is wrong, and that Arday did not inspire a generation.
Which other British sociologist has been bestowed an editorial in Nature, and a rally a Trafalgar Square?
Let’s get a petition to install a statue of him in place of every Cecil Rhodes statue in Oxbridge : Arday must Rise!
There should be a Rhodes-type scholarship, ‘The Arday’ ring fenced for colourful candidates with great hairstyles and IQs of less than 100 to attend Russell group universities. And a meme coin.
Ramesh 49% Indian, 49% Chinese, 2% oppressed Denisovan
heheheh. To quote Monty Python, “You’re such a naughty boy” Ramesh.
Also hilarious. Keep commenting mate.
D.A.
NYC 🗽
It has long been clear that on race and many other issues in the “progressive” constellation, few of the advocates are persuadable by reason—and they have no desire to coexist with those who are except as a means to gain and retain institutional control. Once controlled, I see little reason to expect self-reform.
If I am correct, this raises difficult questions about an appropriate way forward. For as long as these once-august institutions dole out their inherited credibility and prestige, there will be ample supplicants willing to avert their eyes.
If the continual recurrence of occasion to comment anew on the Arday affair is exasperating for those who, like our host, have tracked it honestly and temperately, they should spare some sympathy for the subset of more radical and less honest progressive commentators who were savvy enough to recognise it as a losing wicket from the outset and whose strategic silence becomes ever more embarassingly conspicuous as the affair metastasizes.
This is not the first time you’ve pointed out Nature’s sad descent. Seems to be going the same way as Scientific American…
Yes. We believe in evolution here at WEIT, its kinda part of … the name and the host’s life work.
We have to be able to map the evolution of institutions onto the map of our understanding of species.
A BBC or a Nature or a Scientific America die off and new institutions take their place.
And we’re still here, and La Vita e bella: life is beautiful.
D.A.
NYC🗽
Just in the last week I read about John Urschel. Now there’s a black scholar to inspire a generation. What a story!
I had to look up John Urschel. My mouth dropped when I read he left the NFL to teach math at – of all places! – MIT. For one person to be gifted with both elite athletic and mathematical abilities is a deeply inequitable distribution of talents.
Counterpoint from Jesse Singal in his substack today (and sorry for overcommenting).
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/nature-you-need-to-figure-out-what
Thx for the link Mike. I’d kill to write like Jesse. I read half and will get back to it after a Martini tonight.
cheers,
D.A.
NYC 🗽
In my email was a post from Reality’s Last Stand (Colin Wright)was more fallout at Cambridge about Jason Arday. A PhD thesis he approved sealed until 2031 right after his death. The next post in my email from Persuasion was titled “I taught a short story. So my college fired me for it.” An instructor at South Florida State College taught a story some in administration didn’t like. They felt it was obscene and not appropriate for students. Her immediate supervisor supported her. The instructor, Vinita Prabhakar grew up in Dubai in the 80’s and remembers how at the start of the year someone would come along from the government and cross out Israel in their atlas and glue together parts of history books they didn’t like. She with the help of FIRE filed a First Amendment lawsuit in federal court. Well we are heading for the ’30’s for sure. Both posts are free to read.
My tweet on this:
OK this is just balls to the wall insane.
From Prof. Coyne @Evolutionistrue – l’affaire de Jason Arday wherein (formerly respected) “Nature” comes out in favor of… “Professor” Arday
…
……..’cause “SYSTEMIC RACISM.”
Presumably a bunch of editors at Nature sat around a room and said: “Yep. This wild, crazy and stupid position …. checks out.”
Would love to have been in that room.
“And the office will echo with laughter.” – Led Zeppelin (quote approx).
D.🗽
Guess what prominent scientist nearly a year ago publicly cut all ties to the Nature publishing group due to its adoption of woke ideology.
https://hxstem.substack.com/p/why-i-no-longer-engage-with-nature
https://www.thefp.com/p/why-i-cut-ties-with-sciences-top-publisher
Simple, really. “Nature” needs only a little journal-affirming care , which is to change its name to “Nurture”. Apologies for over-comment, but I couldn’t resist.
She is not the only one to cut ties. I know of at least half a dozen scientists in my field who are no longer willing to review for the Nature journals. I don’t know how many have bothered to send letters explaining their decision, nor do I know if the editors care. But they should care, because anyone who has ever served on an editorial board of a journal knows the difficulty of finding qualified reviewers. There are not enough scientists to review all the articles coming in, and reviewing is a job with few, if any, rewards. In the 3 years prior to my retirement, I received an average of 42 requests per month to review papers in respectable journals. (That number does not include requests by peers super publishing journals.) Obviously, I had to choose only a select few to review each month. The point is that I am not a world-famous guy with a huge lab. I just do my work in a few select fields. And I still receive all those requests.
If enough people follow the example of Dr. Krylov, maybe someone with decision making power at Nature will take note.
So Nature is giving up its spot as the premiere scientific journal.
We all knew it was going in that direction, because of the issues that Dr. Krylov mentioned in the link above. It’s a real shame, and a better example of the catastrophic effect of the social justice culture on science could hardly be found.
I just went to the Nature website to see who the editors are now. The editor in chief is Magdalena Skipper, and in her short bio, we are told that she is the “editorial champion of DEI at Springer Nature”.
What more need we be told? The editors of that journals wield tremendous power, as they serve as the gateway for publishing: only a small percent of papers received are sent out for review. Meaning the decision to send a paper out for review by scientific peers is made by a small group of editors. The decision to send out for review can depend on how “hot” the research is: the editors want articles that are exciting for the general scientific community. But it seems that, by their own admission, their social justice culture also plays a part in their professional decisions. When that happens, the social justice credibility may rise, but their professional credibility will fall. Social justice trends have short half-lives. Scientific professional cred, or loss of same, has a very long half-life, and sacrificing that for social cred hipness is a mistake, one from which the journal will take a long time to recover. As we say: today’s hip is tomorrow’s hype.
The woke brazen disregard to facts and reality has no bottom, as this editorial demonstrates. What a bunch of clowns. Yet another reason to not engage with this outlet.
The myth-making surrounding Jason Arday continues to grow, while the negative facts are either ignored or even actively suppressed. If Arday were a devout Christian from the early days of Christianity, he would by now be regarded as a martyr, and the process of beatification—and eventually canonization—would likely be underway. The similarities between ideological activism and religion are striking..
Kathy Birbalsingh has just uploaded a video on this debacle ‘White Guilt Politics Created Arday’. ‘England’s strictest school principal’ was born in NZ.
Ramesh 49% Unrepentant Indian, 49% Unintelligible Chinese, 2% Incorrigible Denisovan
Interesting to see the Grauniad’s coverage, the older stuff making allegations is still there, but there is more recent stuff that’s more positive towards him.
The UCU, i.e. the academic union, sent two emails to all members talking about his death but making no mention of the allegations against him.
‘claims of marathons that he actually did not run’.
In 2010, Arday did in fact complete 30 marathons in 35 days, as was covered by local media at the time.
https://tinyurl.com/jvxdz2dv
He may well have exaggerated the extent of an injury he suffered. While highlighting his many faults, I think it’s worth noting he did have admirable qualities.
Not saying the article cited is untrue, but though it mentions other marathons in passing, it does not specify any marathons other than the final one, nor give any information as to where or when these other marathons occurred, nor give the source of the “30 marathons in 35 days” assertion, nor the sums raised for charity. Someone has probably checked into these claims and it would be good to set the record straight, but this article does not seem to do it.