Merged Arday life and death

[theprestige]

This is all just a thinly veiled excuse for racism and white supremacy.

... Is what I'd be saying if I had a degree from Cambridge right now.

 

[smartcooky]

Equally it doesn't cancel the fact that Cofnas is a racist who's made it his life's work to get as many non-cis-het white males out of academia as he can.

Equally, it doesn't cancel the fact that Arday was a fraud, a liar and cheat.

When the message is the truth, the messenger is irrelevant.

The main source of the claims against Arday are a big reason why they were ignored for so long.

What utter poppycock.

Cofnas didn't raise the issue of Arday's plagiarism until July 2026. Before that, in 2023, now retired Dr. David Harris raised concerns about apparent unattributed text and errors in Arday's published papers. Arday's response was to threaten Dr. Davis that he would make a harassment complaint to the Police.

Then in September 2025 Jack Grove, a journalist for "Times Higher Education" assembled a dossier of evidence regarding alleged plagiarism in Arday’s PhD thesis. He contacted Arday for a right-of-reply response, but Arday retaliated by hiring Carter-Ruck, a libel law firm, to try to block publication. And then he filed a harassment complaint against Grove with the Metropolitan Police. Now there's the actions of a person with nothng to hide, don't you think?
At the same time, there was a parallel investigation by another journalist, a reporter from "The Guardian" (Lanre Bakare) who was looking into discrepancies regarding Arday's life and charitable claims.

 

[smartcooky]

LOL. Calm down. Nobody's trying to rehabilitate Cofnas' reputation.

Attacking Cofnas is not the play, here. It just makes it look like you're part of the problem.

Indeed.

Cofnas calls himself a "Race Realist". I think he has it wrong - its the other way around... he's a "Real Racist", but all of that is irrelevant - he's not the issue here, Jason Arday is the issue (although the loony left would very much like to make Cofnas the issue, using him as a squirrel to distract attention away from the fraud, cheat and liar).

 

[Elaedith]

I saw the same article being lambasted on Twitter. I couldn't get more than a couple of paragraphs into it. It was absolute twaddle.

Apparently, John Howard thinks having a dig at Steven Pinker and Jeffry Flier (without addressing anything they are saying) is a higher priority at the moment than confronting any threat to scholarship, according to his own logic.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Then investigate him. If you find something dodgy, publish it.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that, for the most part, he can't even be investigated.

 

[Ziggurat]

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that, for the most part, he can't even be investigated.

If you want to make a point about politics, make it in the politics forum. In the context of this thread and what "investigate" means here, your claim is false and nonsensical.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

If you want to make a point about politics, make it in the politics forum. In the context of this thread and what "investigate" means here, your claim is false and nonsensical.

@smartcooky generalized beyond Arday and the University of Cambridge to say

These elite institutions have spent 100s of years becoming elite and prestigious, only to throw it all away for the sake of woke ideology in less than a couple of decades.​

@a_unique_person cited a specific example of that:

I've even heard there's this really dumb white guy who got an economics science degree from an Ivy League University once. How did that happen?​

@smartcooky seemed to doubt that hearsay example, asking

Did he lie about his upbringing?​

Did he make exaggerated, outrageous and false claims about his feats of athleticism?​

Did make bogus claims about raising millions of £/$ for charity?​

Did he falsely claim that he did work in foreign countries for charity organizations?​

Did he plagiarize the thesis of another degree candidate?​

Did he copy large swathes of others' work and claim it to be his own?​

​

No? ​

​

Then where's the problem?​

For the specific example @a_unique_person had in mind, the answers to four or five of those "Did he" questions is an unqualified "Yes." Because @smartcooky appears to be unfamiliar with the person being discussed, @a_unique_person offered more detail about that specific example:

He lies all the time including about his athletic achievements. He should never have got in to the course list let alone graduate. He's not the only one. Numerous rich kids get a pass and everyone knows it.​

He's got idiots on his team who are supposed to be University lecturers who are as dumb as him at economics.​

@smartcooky, seemingly unaware that such things happen even at Ivy League universities within the United States, wrote:

Then investigate him. If you find something dodgy, publish it.​

As I pointed out, investigation of one specific "really dumb white guy who got an economics science degree from an Ivy University", who was almost certainly the specific example being discussed above, has been forbidden by the US Supreme Court. The court's ruling does not forbid investigation of other "idiots on his team who are supposed to be University lecturers who are as dumb as him at economics," but the chilling effect of that ruling upon investigations of his team has been pretty obvious.

The relevance to this thread should also be obvious. What the United States is going through right now is a spectacular example of what can happen when unqualified liars and frauds (even convicted frauds!) get a pass due to their family's wealth and political connections. Arday's family was middle class, and Arday (to my knowledge) was never convicted of fraud, but he too appears to have been an unqualified liar and fraud who got promoted for dubious reasons.

 

[Ziggurat]

As I pointed out, investigation of one specific "really dumb white guy who got an economics science degree from an Ivy University", who was almost certainly the specific example being discussed above, has been forbidden by the US Supreme Court.

You are lying. "Investigate" within the context of this thread does not mean a formal criminal investigation by a law enforcement agency. You know this, because you're not a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiot. So don't pretend to be, and don't take us to be.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

You are lying. "Investigate" within the context of this thread does not mean a formal criminal investigation by a law enforcement agency. You know this, because you're not a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiot. So don't pretend to be, and don't take us to be.

Yesterday, in response to someone who suspects "the police will not investigate" Arday, but only because Arday died before he could be investigated, @smartcooky wrote "I agree."

It seems to me that regretting the police's failure to launch an investigation before Arday died suggests there could have been, and probably should have been, "a formal criminal investigation by a law enforcement agency."

But that's just me. Because I'm not a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiot.

 

[Ziggurat]

But that's just me. Because I'm not a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiot.

This is the post you responded to:

Then investigate him. If you find something dodgy, publish it.

smartcooky directed this post at AUP. AUP is not law enforcement. He does not have law enforcement authority. Publishing the results of his investigation is not a law enforcement action. In context, it is obvious that smartcooky is not talking about law enforcement at all in that post. Whether he talked about law enforcement or not in some other post is beside the point to that post. And you know this, because you aren't a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiot. But you seem to take others for ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiots.

The kind of investigation that smartcooky is obviously talking about has never been prohibited by the Supreme Court in regards to anyone. And it has been done quite extensively about the person AUP and you are referring to. So stop pretending otherwise.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

This is the post you responded to:

smartcooky directed this post at AUP. AUP is not law enforcement. He does not have law enforcement authority. Publishing the results of his investigation is not a law enforcement action. In context, it is obvious that smartcooky is not talking about law enforcement at all in that post . Whether he talked about law enforcement or not in some other post is beside the point to that post. And you know this, because you aren't a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiot. But you seem to take others for ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiots.

Anticipating that you would try to ignore the context, I quoted the entire context.

Because I am not a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiot, I am not at all surprised that you are insisting we look only at the ten words @smartcooky wrote at the very end of that context.

 

[Ziggurat]

Anticipating that you would try to ignore the context, I quoted the entire context.

Because I am not a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ idiot, I am not at all surprised that you are insisting we look only at the ten words @smartcooky wrote at the very end of that context.

Those ten words were the entire post you responded to. I did not take them out of context. And again, that was directed at AUP. AUP is not law enforcement. So if smartcooky is telling AUP to investigate this person, he's obviously not talking about law enforcement. You're the one ignoring context, not me.

 

[Ziggurat]

Yesterday, in response to someone who suspects "the police will not investigate" Arday, but only because Arday died before he could be investigated, @smartcooky wrote "I agree."

I trusted you were telling the truth about that. I should not have. You're lying about this too.

When I follow your link, it's a post by smartcooky quoting Planigale. And it's true that Planigale said " the police will not investigate". But immediately after that, Planigale said, "but Cambridge should audit his research records, and interview his co-authors." The section I hilighted is also the section that smartcooky hilighted when quoting Planigale (it is not hilighted in the original Planigale post). That indicates rather obviously that the hilighted section is the part that smartcooky is calling out as what he agrees with. But you hid that context.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I trusted you were telling the truth about that. I should not have. You're lying about this too.

If you look only at the words I wrote in the specific post to which you replied, ignoring all context, you will find I was completely truthful, not lying at all.

But now, a mere half an hour after you very explicitly argued that one of my previous posts should have taken no context into account beyond the last ten words of the exchange to which I was replying, you have suddenly decided that a larger context might be important after all:

When I follow your link, it's a post by smartcooky quoting Planigale. And it's true that Planigale said " the police will not investigate". But immediately after that, Planigale said, "but Cambridge should audit his research records, and interview his co-authors." The section I hilighted is also the section that smartcooky hilighted when quoting Planigale (it is not hilighted in the original Planigale post). That indicates rather obviously that the hilighted section is the part that smartcooky is calling out as what he agrees with. But you hid that context.

I didn't hide that context. I provided the link that made it easy for you to find that context.

I didn't highlight that context, because I was pointing out that (1) some contributors to this thread believe Arday should have been investigated by the police, (2) contrary to your claim that, in the context of this thread, "investigate" has never meant "a formal criminal investigation by a law enforcement agency", and furthermore (3) @smartcooky had to be aware "investigate" has been used in that way, because (4) he himself responded to a post using the word in that way, (5) immediately preceding the words he highlighted, and (6) therefore serving as context for the words he highlighted.

When we're discussing a liar and fraudster, I believe context matters regardless of the fraudster's skin color.

But that's just me.

 

[Ziggurat]

If you look only at the words I wrote in the specific post to which you replied, ignoring all context, you will find I was completely truthful, not lying at all.

You were absolutely lying. Nothing smartcooky wrote indicated he was ever talking about law enforcement. You invented that by falsely claiming that his statement "I agree" was connected to a comment about law enforcement when it absolutely wasn't.

 

[theprestige]

At this point I'm open to the possibility that W.D. Clinger really doesn't understand the distinction, and really does think that (a) everyone is talking about a law enforcement investigation of Donald Trump, and (b) that the Supreme Court really did prohibit the kind of journalistic investigation that Arday was subjected to, in Trump's case.

After all, I'm sure Clinger has a degree of some kind, and just now I've got a pretty low opinion of quality control at the institutions that issue such degrees. Having seen the quality of Arday's reasoning, acting similarly confused just makes me wonder if Clinger is in the same predicament.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

At this point I'm open to the possibility that W.D. Clinger really doesn't understand the distinction, and really does think that (a) everyone is talking about a law enforcement investigation of Donald Trump, and (b) that the Supreme Court really did prohibit the kind of journalistic investigation that Arday was subjected to, in Trump's case.

Trump is one of the few who don't understand that distinction. A lot of people have indeed been talking about (a), partly because (a) actually happened, whereas Trump is one of the few who believes (b), and is still trying to get courts to agree with him.

After all, I'm sure Clinger has a degree of some kind, and just now I've got a pretty low opinion of quality control at the institutions that issue such degrees. Having seen the quality of Arday's reasoning, acting similarly confused just makes me wonder if Clinger is in the same predicament.

We should all be skeptical of any institutes and universities that may have issued degrees to people such as myself, you, or @Ziggurat.

We should be skeptical even of universities that issued a degree to Arday, and of all who were overly impressed by Arday's degree(s).

 

[Ziggurat]

Trump is one of the few who don't understand that distinction.

Not relevant to this thread.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Not relevant to this thread.

Except as context.

 

[Ziggurat]

Except as context.

For what? Your irrelevant tangent that you premised on the lie that smartcooky was talking about law enforcement?