No, it isn't an extraordinary claim. But it's still a claim made by an extraordinary liar. So I still want evidence before I will believe it.
That reveals far more about Arday than it does about the Guardian.
The consensus upthread appears to be that Cambridge would not be permitted to publish—or perhaps even document—said evidence. Where should we expect to find it?
The consensus is more like they wouldn't even be allowed to ask for such evidence. Arday could have voluntarily presented it, but given that nobody said "yes, I have read the note from his doctor that he has condition X," I'm seriously inclined to think that they just believed him.
I subscribe to the maxim that ordinary claims require ordinary evidence, but I'm fairly skeptical of whether Arday is a reliable narrator even when telling his own story.
I would think that was clear. Most of his claims were on extraordinary but possible but in one persons 30ish years of existence, maybe not impossible but highly improbable. His record is not one of honesty, so any claim he makes about himself should be taken with a grain of salt. With the specific case of autism, autism sure but so extreme that he was uncommunicative and then broke out of it to get a PhD? He might have been turned into a newt.
To be fair, nobody is truly a reliable narrator of their own story. Some of us are less unreliable than others though.
If he brought it up in his interviews then it could be in the notes taken during his interviews, for example he may have introduced it as a positive for the role he was applying for so noting that wouldn't be considered discriminatory, but at that stage there would be no way for Cambridge to verify that claim, and he has no obligation to provide 3rd party confirmation of that diagnosis. (That is also the case after the interviews and he got the job.)
You only retain the minimum amount of data absolutely necessary and you limit who has access to it, often the only people who would have complete access to all his information would be the HR department.
He wasn't simply claiming delayed childhood development, nor did he initially claim "selective mutism". He claimed to be nonverbal until 11.
And yet, that's exactly what Arday did. Your own life experience as you describe is at odds with Arday's story, and yet that doesn't raise any red flags for you?
Once again, you're playing Motte & Bailey.
No, but it can be and Arday claimed he was cognitively impaired to the point of being able to communicate.
Wherever the claimant found it. We should expect the claimant to know where to find it.
If it's important if he was autistic, then we need evidence. If it's not important, then we don't need evidence, and we can just ignore the whole issue. You and Afzal seem to think it's important. Are you telling me it's not?
Quite so. It burnished his credentials. Which is also why he had an incentive to lie about being autistic if he wasn't. And why we cannot take his word for it, given his proven lies that have already been exposed.
Because Nahir Afzal, Knight of the British Empire, charged with investigating the circumstances of his death, highlighted the claim as important to his investigation, in his preliminary statement, before his investigation has even properly started.