I’ve mostly refrained from commenting on the Arday case until his death yesterday. It’s right “in my wheelhouse” in terms of the topic of good or bad academic science and/or knowledge, so despite the targeting of the institutions falling foul of “DEI Wokeness” by most sane commentators, with which I’m entirely sympathetic, I’m also sympathetic to the idea that good academia, good intellect, good knowledge is #MoreThanScience and I instinctively defend his and their rights to say so - hopefully intelligently, in good faith, obviously. That really is an existential “public interest” topic.
His death, presumed suicide by most with no knowledge of the actual circumstances at this point, is a human tragedy for him and his loved ones, even if there’s a whiff of performative martyrdom in the final tragic scene - spending Plath’s penny(?). This is a complex case on so many levels and timescales. He certainly got himself into, found himself in a situation he couldn’t cope with for a long complex web of reasons, his, theirs and ours. One set of failures was in caring enough about that, in the media as well as his employers.
One set of reasoning I don’t buy is the race-card, the white-supremacist finger pointing by the likes of Tommy Curry who I have a lot of time for. Sure there were some opportunist commentators who piled-on with such bigoted views, including maybe even the original whistle-blower journalist. Other than the feeble woke morality of DEI itself, there is very little about race in this sorry saga.
Some of the more seasoned and informed journalist commentators, Andrew Neil and Kenan Malik (say) have been exemplars of fairness and balance in assessing what we’ve seen so far. Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s words struck me and my agenda:
“The disproportionate and bullying commentary and coverage of Jason Arday’s mistakes has been obviously dangerous for days. Yes it was a legitimate story, and in various ways a troubling one. But the relentless coverage, the vitriol and bile. The clip of a man talking about us needing more love in the world endlessly mocked. Compare it to the way others who embellished and invented life stories or floated seemingly naive ideas are forgiven. Obviously employers have duties of care. But spare us the pity of those who weaponised his story for social media clicks without a thought.”
The mockery for daring to talk about love.
Sure, he did it very naively - like a lost child, his default state - in the context of the original question, and his choice of Jimi Hendrix lyric didn’t really add any clarity. (I’m all for the poetry of the bards beyond science, as my blogging timeline will attest, but … this wasn’t the one.) As well as the question of what exactly is #MoreThanScience I’ve always been quick to point out #WhatsSoFunnyBout … (Peace, Love and Understanding) is part of the answer. In the words of Nick Lowe
"And as I walk on, through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So, where are the strong and who are the trusted ?
And where is the harmony, sweet harmony ?‘Cause each time I feel it slippin’ away,
Just makes me wanna cry.
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love & understanding ?
Oh, what’s so funny ’bout peace, love & understanding ?
Where are the strong and who are the trusted?
The fact there clearly is more than science is no justification for pseudo-science, but the popularity of critical thinking has left us with scientifically repeatable objective evidence as the only yardstick for Quality in our knowledge.
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Note: (?) Plath’s Penny is a paraphrase of an Erica Wagner quote attributed to Germaine Greer “Suicide was a coin that Sylvia Plath was always waiting to spend.” (Observer 5 June 2004)
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Post Notes:
This ... slightly OTT in places, but the overall thrust of this linked piece, …
… I’m with ~100%
People “blaming” the media are not really blaming the journalism - despite the constant competition for eyeballs everywhere, there’s still plenty of good journalism around - it’s the public expectation for media (all media, entertainment, social, news, the lot) that has crashed the quality of our attention to the world and to each other.
(Obviously that crash has been driven by those that exploit / monetise those eyeballs, ratings and clicks - yes even august academic institutions. #Dysmemics )
“It’s Been an Arday’s Night”
Absolutely reinforced by Carole Cadwallader’s response to these Times pieces. It’s not the journalism, it’s the media model for clicks. “It’s not journalism it’s clickbait.” Everybody is being exploited - journalists included - by the Dysmemic media model - find the most simplistic / outrageous take and go with that. It used to just be the headline writers - whom journalists often apologised for or distanced themselves from - but that aspect has been automated in all media at the speed of light!
Every communication is a sell - even when the product is journalism or academia - with the hook in the first slug and at a speed and quantity humanity cannot handle.
And another piece from Sarah Ditum - a thoughtful keeper for me since I first saw her speak in Bristol in 2015, (and a fellow Divine Comedy fan I discovered more recently). She’s one of the few who’s actually read and reviewed Arday’s book and she packs a lot of the facts of the matter into one piece - and yes, his story would be “funny”, even farcical, had it not ended in literal tragedy. The people blaming journalists, even a racist one, for this story are so missing the lessons for humanity.
And another one, looking at Universities in general from Paul Barnett on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/after-jason-arday-what-universities-paul-barnett-nzlue/
And another from Maarten Boudry on X/Twitter:
Lots of discussion around the idea that “plagiarism” was the main offence here, despite the fact he was cleared of that. He wasn’t literally passing of the work of others as his own, but there were “serious errors”. Couple of examples:
I’ve said:
Jeez.
(1) Plagiarism is a spectrum of things about re-using / crediting ideas, from serious to trivial, knowingly, carelessly, playfully or ignorantly, in more or less formal contexts, etc. (It doesn't change the quality of the ideas actually expressed, they stand or fall on their own merits. Credit is about the status of the people doing the expressing.)
(2) That's still only one of a raft of issues in this whole sorry saga.
Others have reinforced that the main error wasn’t technically “plagiarism”: (Thanks to Sam - doing his own PhD - re-tweeting @LoinDuTribu)
You are allowed to think the errors were serious. You are allowed to think the investigation was too forgiving. You can even spend the rest of your natural life squinting furiously at footnotes if that brings you spiritual fulfilment.
What you cannot do is take an allegation that was investigated and rejected, strap a rocket to it, and announce that Arday was responsible for “objectively one of the most extraordinary cases of academic fraud ever.”
But a sure sign this story has real and deep public interest, the journalism goes on, this time a long piece in the Spectator by Steve Edgington on the BBC’s role in the whole sorry affair.
“I consumed (nearly) all of the BBC’s coverage of Jason Arday, dating back six years. What I found was extraordinary: years of uncritical interviews, repeated nonsense claims, and, once Arday was caught out, a broadcaster that chose to ignore the story, then double down on its favourite black academic. I’ve documented it all for The Spectator.”
https://spectator.com/article/will-the-bbc-apologise-for-its-role-in-the-jason-arday-story/
And another comprehensive review from Jesse Singal in The Dispatch:
The Cascade of Dysfunction That Helped Doom Jason Arday - in a better world, the late scholar wouldn’t have been elevated to—and fallen from—such dizzying heights.
Suicide is multicausal and we should strongly resist the urge to blame it on any one factor, whether Cambridge or “the media.”
As I’ve said several times, the rush to blame has been the problem since, rather than the need to properly understand and resolve.
Another good one from Nigel Biggar, written a couple of days before Arday died.
Ands this one from Katy Barnett, also a couple of days before his death.
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