Merged Arday life and death

[Emily's Cat]

Some of us are capable of being objective and seeing the bigger picture and reality exactly for what it is.

You can dig up dirt on virtually anybody.

I do not share your view that ethics should be ignored if it looks bad. I am not so willing to sacrifice ethics.

And this isn't "oh, when they were fourteen they shoplifted booze from the corner store and got hammered then went joyriding in their parent's car" rambunctious teen rule bending and counter culture role experimentation. This is actual fraud and actual disregard for capability and merit.

Disregard for capability and merit is why we had the civil rights - why would you want to go backwards?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Read the post I was responding to (Trausti) about his claim ppl like Arday are 'substandard' in academic quality.

Here's a perspective for you to consider.

Pehaps when Trausti says "people like Arday", they mean "people who would not meet the prior standards of quality, character, and integrity that is expected of a person with a doctorate who attains a professorship at one of the most prestigious universities in the world". Our, to be more blunt - people who only got there because the standards were lowered to make it possible.

Now, here's where you need just a teensy bit of grace. It's also possible that the color of Arday's skin is completely irrelevant to Trausti. Perhaps Trausti cares about race quite a but less than you do. It's possible that at least part of Trausti's objection to this situation is that there's no way to prevent this from increasing scrutiny on EVERYONE ELSE who got degrees under that culture, and ESPECIALLY for people of the same race/sex/ethnic background/religion/whatever other category happened to be involved.

Unless you're white. In which case every ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ body always assumes that white people are evil who only succeed because they cheat and steal and take advantage of people. White people are just accepted as the bad guy no matter the situation... with females of any race etc. as a not so far behind second. I mean, let's all be real - that has been the undercurrent for the last couple of decades, and it's been amplified even more in the last five years. It's not even subtle, it's pretty blatant.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If Arday had been white and he had used the police and a lawyers to warn off those who were asking about his work, I do not think the story would have got anywhere near the attention it has.

Of course it wouldn't. Everyone has been taught to expect white people to be evil.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Jason Arday wasn't into fake-it-till-you-make-it. He didn't have a vision of a future where he was, somehow, transformed into a competent scholar. He was going to go on forever waffling garbage and getting paid for it.

It's possible Arday wasn't an intentional fraud. But the only other plausible explanation I came up with was that they were clinically delusional and actually believed what they were saying. At least, that's what TV has taught me, so you know, maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The proof of misrepresentation in your job application is for the employer to investigate, not random jealous colleagues.

You're kidding, aren't you?

Maybe you're not. Maybe you just haven't thought through the ramifications of this view. So I'll give it a go... Would you take the same position if, for example, the "random colleague" were a black person who believes they were passed over for a position or promotion because the employer is engaging in discrimination?

Would you still assert that the employer is the only entity that should investigate it, and that other colleagues should not be allowed to tell others if the employer fails to do so. The ramification of your view is the silencing of legitimate whistleblowers.

Now, perhaps you think this is a more important value then defending whistleblowers. If so, that's fine I guess. It's just not my view.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The relevance is that some of us have a keen interest in discovering who we are and how we got here by looking at the past.

I'm glad you have a keen interest in it? Why do you appear to believe that anyone would think less of you for it, or that any insult has been given because of it?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Please stop with the trite tu quoque and non sequitur logical fallacies. It's extremely boring. Elizabeth Holmes and OJ Simpson have sweet FA to do with this issue. No connection whatsoever.

This is neither. Your logic is fundamentally and completely flawed. Throughout your arguments, you assert that because Arday was cleared by that school for that specific thesis, Arday therefore could not have engaged in plagiarism.

Let's rearrange that to more formalish logic order:

You're asserting that
If {That school ruled it not plagiarism} then {Arday has not engaged in plagiarism}

But that also means that {If Arday did engage in plagiarism} then {that school would have found them guilty}

But that's obviously not true. And O.J Simpson is the direct counterproof to one of the implicit assumptions you're using. There is near unanimous agreement (can't help a few nuts) that OJ Simpson WAS guilty, the court did NOT find they guilty. That right there makes your argument logically unsound. It's not a good argument, and it's not convincing.

That's just the biggest implicit assumption. You're also assuming that if Arday did not engage in plagiarism in that one specific instance, then Arday has not engaged in plagiarism in any other work, or at any other time. And that's obviously false. I'm assuming it's obvious enough that I don't need to bore you all with the analogies I just can't seem to keep myself from making.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Other than the intense right wing interest in the issue, I am not sure they are quite the same. In the Nowak case, people were incensed (rightly IMV) by the cop saying, "I don't think you have, mate" in response to Nowak saying, "I've been stabbed".

This brought out the Tommy Robinson 'two-tier justice' brigade, some believe heavily backed by US far right figures.

This Arday issue is about the responsibilities of the UK press and their culture of being able to destroy a person, in Arday's case, by an astonishing >240 articles in mainstream press and reputable rags such as THE SPECTATOR - in a very short period of time - in which ALLEGED 'fraud' became somehow real, with Arday painted as a latter day Walter Mitty character. We then discover the key person behind the campaign is a Thiel-backed 'race realist' and avowed eugenicist - Nathan Cofnas - sponsored by wealthy sinister far right groups with an agenda.

It's interesting how the other similar cases of a professional or academic being harassed by social media mobs and hounded out of their jobs and threatened with rape and death constantly, often backed by traditional media don't seem to have been noticed by you.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It's important to note that Nixon is a public servant and public figure. Arday in most northern European countries would have been entitled to be treated as a private individual entitled to privacy concerning his private life, with allegations about his professional activities dealt with as 'pending' until such time they were confirmed.

Is it actually true that a private citizen can enlist the police to lay a blanket "no contact" order on every single other person out there?

Can you provide links of some sort to support this?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Institutions like Cambridge University have rigorous set recruitment, interview and appraisal policies. They are designed to prevent nepotism - people hiring relatives, friends or doing 'a favour for a neighbour's son or daughter'. or even current staff - and to comply with Employment Law protocols, so I am confident Arday's selection process was fair. This process would involve sifting through applications to weed out those that do not meet the required minimum qualifications or proven experience. Arday had a bona fide PhD and experience as a bona fide professor. He wasn't just given the job; he had to compete with three others who had also made the final interview stage. This interview was almost certainly a series of them, including by a panel. There is absolutely no way anyone said 'Oh we need a black dude'. However, being Sociologists, of course they would have been more conscious than average of the need to avoid prejudice or put up unnecessary barriers that aren't relevant.

If their recruitment, interview, and appraisal policies were so ironclad and approve suspicion... why was Cambridge itself discussing ways to address the fact that they had more white male students than many other schools?

 

[Emily's Cat]

This would mandate widespread public advertising of the vacancy. A pre-designed 'person specification', outsourced recruitment agencies, such as and including Linkedin, university noticeboards, etc. This is standard. In the UK there is no such thing as a 'DEI hire'.

"There's no evidence to support the claim that was made, but it doesn't matter because it's not possible for it to happen anyway. Trust me bro."

Why are you assuming this to be the case?

Vixen, are you a harvard sociologist and this is just really close to home? If that's the case, let me know and I'll try to be more gentle in how I express my arguments.

 

[Emily's Cat]

A politician in the UK is expected to be an upright citizen and is ipso facto required to provide his or her name and address to any constituent who requests it. All Members of Parliament are accountable for their behaviour. For example, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, was found to have embellished her CV in claiming she had been an Economist at the Bank of Scotland, when in reality, she had worked in Customer Services. Yes, the press did a mini-pile on, and she had to correct her fib. Likewise, there were questions about the then Cabinet Minister, Angela Rayner, about allegedly not having paid the correct tax on a house sale. This was all within the bounds of as to be expected for persons elected democratically by the public.

I mean, there is a difference between these cases though. In both of those the person was outed by the press, an initial round of people directly impacted or involved in that sector are outraged and call for action from the school.

But in the cases you presented, as well as most of the others that have been put forth, the school or employer took action and investigated on their own, without defending the person accused. And in both cases, when evidence of wrongdoing emerged, the accused paid the appropriate price: they lost their creedentials or jobs, they were fined or imprisoned. They all faced justice for their transgressions.

In this case, the school initially defended Arday and stood by while Arday far overstepped the common understanding of harassment and set the police on two separate respectful inquiries about their work. And while we all acknowledge suicide as a tragic thing, I think there's also a general view that suicide is sometimes the coward's way out of the justice they earned.

Arday AFAIAA may have come across as 'larger than life' but I can't see he has committed criminal fraud (until such time he was charged with it, which he never was). It's all a horrible witch hunt by individuals with sinister far right motives leading on journalists only too eager for a 'good story' and others, columnists with a track record, of a more ulterior motive, using it as right wing dog whistle garbage.

Until that mobster is officially charged with a crime, nobody can reasonably infer that they have committed crimes regardless of how much evidence and information is made public for verification is a novel approach. I don't know if there's a term for it, but I'm pretty sure it's not logically sound.

Following that up with "therefore right wing bad" is just kind of boring at this point.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The USA and the UK differ quite markedly on what the press and paparazzi can publish about 'public figures' such as celebrities like Taylor Swift. Here in Finland, it is against privacy laws to even provide the name of a defendant in a criminal trial even after he or she is convicted, save under the - extremely limited - grounds of 'public interest'. The UK does have strict press standards, which is why the pile on on Arday was disguised as 'deep concern about educational standards at Cambridge' and a shed load of columnists who can spout character assassination disguised as 'wry humour' or 'honest opinion' claiming to be only saying what the public thinks.

I think you're assuming that UK standards are as rigorous as you believe Finland's to be. And I can understand why you'd assume that - it's super common for us to assume that whatever is the base expectation in one's own country must also be the base expectation in other countries - especially countries that you feel an affinity with in some way.

I suspect that UK standards are less stringent than you've assumed, or that they've become looser since you last paid much attention to UK reporting. I'll agree that there seems to be at least a little bit better restrictions on paparazzi, but I think there have been a lot of breaches of those privacy laws over the last decade in the UK, at least the way you seem to think of privacy laws.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I mentioned before that I was open-minded about him running those marathons.

I also dug up some of those blog posts in the thread and posted about them here which I consider to be much better evidence than the articles in the paper. She seems to have found more than I had, particularly with pictures.

I’m more dubious about the hairline fracture from marathon 20 onwards. I can’t say what that would be like because I have never had an injury like that, but most independent sources that I have seen are skeptical to say the least and claim he would be in a lot of pain.

I agree - I thought we were all more or less in agreement that it seems plausible that Arday ran 30 consecutive days of marathon-length distance. They were a PE teacher, after all, one would expect they'd be in great shape and probably participate in a sport on their own time.

It's the implied lie that gets scrutiny - that Arday competed in 30 marathons in 30 consequtive days (or 35? whatever, I don't think that matters) with the last of them being on a fractured leg.

You what I could give a pass to? If Arday had claimed that they essentially ran 30 marathons in a row, and by the end of it they had a hairline fracture. That would be entirely plausible, and even seems likely. If that's what Arday actually said in their interviews or book... then I'll give that a pass. But otherwise, nobody cares about the count. It's not the number being run that people take issue with. It's the unspoken implication of competition and the embellishment for sympathy of their injury. If someone gained some degree of media acclaim for doing 5 competitive marathons in a row and the last two of them on a hairline fracture, and then was found to have been dishonest, people would be angry.

Maybe not as many people... but the reason it's fewer people is because 5 is a much more plausible number of marathons. I think most of us would assume that more than half of the PE teachers in the country would be able to do 5 marathons in a row, and while running on a hairline fracture hurts a whole lot... it's still possible to do for a while, especially if someone is very driven and can tolerate the pain. Maybe someone in prime condition would be able to compensate for and tolerate the pain for two races, it seems like it would hurt, but it doesn't seem absurd on its face. So a lot more people would think that the lie was one that was reasonably likely to not raise eyebrows - it's reasonably likely that it's very plausible and not out of the range of reasonable, so it wouldn't really be shocking, just interesting.

So when we find out someone lied about that plausible and reasonably likely thing, we can understand that happening. When the lie is something that seems extraordinarily unlikely to an extent that any reasonable person would be skeptical... well, that's either shamefully embarrassing and a blow to Cambridge's reputation for judgement or Cambridge was to some extent complicit in the events that unfolded which is a blow to Cambdridge's reputation.

 

[Emily's Cat]

"Ran a marathon" and "jogged for 27 miles" have a slightly different ring to them. But it's true, much of what he said seems to have had a basis in fact and then have been subjected to layers of embroidering. I'm much more interested in the medical claims, from the alleged autism to the alleged locked-in syndrome.

Agreed. The marathon claim is slightly annoying, simply because some people are really bought into it and won't even recognize that it's likely embellished. But some of the other claims are so much more unlikely to have all happened to the same person in that way that it's farcical to imagine anyone nodding their heads and saying "Oh, wow, that's just amazing man" like a stoned hippie talking about vortexes in Sedona.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I used to go jogging around Regent's Park with a seasoned runner, who said she got shin splints all the time.

Shin splints aren't stress fractures. Shin splints aren't fractures of any sort at all - it's inflammation of the connective tissue around the shins. You wouldn't think it from my current physique, but I've had both from running. I mean, I'm a sucky runner but still, I used to do it pretty regularly perforce.

 

[smartcooky]

The following is factual:

Jason Arday - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Stop lying!! His original claim was that he raised all the money HIMSELF. THIS WAS ALWAYS HIS CLAIM!!

Address THAT CLAIM, not the revised one he walked back to when the scrutiny started and the pressure came on.


ETA: You failed to address his false claim about working for an international charity in Brazil... No, of course you didn't because there is no way to fudge this to fit the narrative you are trying to spin.

 

[Emily's Cat]

The Maoist lunacy of the Jason Arday cult

Journalists are being forced to engage in struggle sessions for the sin of criticising Arday. It’s obscene.

www.spiked-online.com

I misread that title and spent a moment trying to figure out what indigenous new zealanders have to do with this, before I clicked through and figured it out.

 

[Emily's Cat]

It's the pedestal and the spotlight, conferred by a supposedly trustworthy and conscientious institution, on a patently unqualified and undeserving individual, that people care about. The details of his fabulism are just that - details.

Well said.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I learnt that lesson (sorry to keep providing analogies) when at a football match, we once had a new player, who replaced a player who had been very popular with the fans. So we were all singing a 'witty' song in the fashion of football fans about how useless this new guy was, when I noticed a stricken look cross his face. He left the club next day. I was dumbstruck with remorse as I knew I had been part of his departure as our eyes fleetingly locked and I saw his expression. Even now I go hot with regret that I could have been so unwittingly cruel, when at the time it seemed like 'just a bit' of crowd-following fun.

Why do you think being a bit of a bully to a fellow team member is comparable to multiple acts of academic fraud being overlooked or not even investigated as due diligence for a presitious and respected position that lends acclaim and authority to a person who holds it?

Or more to the point, why do you think that academic fraud is no worse than having once been a dick in school?