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Merged Arday life and death

dirtywick said:
why do i believe you guys aren't really concerned this dei professor got the job over a more qualified dei professor?

idk it's a mystery
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Not really any mystery. This guy was provably an academic fraud and a predictable disaster waiting to happen. Which it did. I'm sure not every student of any particular race or ethnic group is a pathological liar and academic fraud (no RL culture works like that,) hence the question why couldn't they find a less problematic one.

As for what you choose to believe... as they say, belief is the domain of theology :P
 
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Emily's Cat said:
With room for nuance, the general difference between a hard science and a soft science is that in a hard science you can be concretely, unquestionably, unequivocally wrong. There's no interpretation or different perspective that can be allowed in the question of whether or not that airframe will withstand the specified force - it either will or it won't.
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Design a bridge according to strict engineering principles, and it will stand. Design it according to what you feel is best, and you risk it collapsing.
Design an aircraft according to correct aeronautical engineering standards, it will fly. Design it according to what you think looks nice and its likely to crash and burn.
 
smartcooky said:
Design a bridge according to strict engineering principles, and it will stand. Design it according to what you feel is best, and you risk it collapsing.
Design an aircraft according to correct aeronautical engineering standards, it will fly. Design it according to what you think looks nice and its likely to crash and burn.
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Yes, but in history and archeology you are not designing bridges and planes, you are uncovering facts about the world. You can use the Rosetta Stone to decode an ancient language, not according to your feelings (JFK!), but according to what is most coherent.
 
smartcooky said:
Design a bridge according to strict engineering principles, and it will stand. Design it according to what you feel is best, and you risk it collapsing.
Design an aircraft according to correct aeronautical engineering standards, it will fly. Design it according to what you think looks nice and its likely to crash and burn.
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Literal example of the latter: look up the Dr Christmas (his literal name; and as for Dr he was an MD) who thought and actually argued before congress that a plane's wings SHOULD flap in flight. And he was making a normal propeller-driven aircraft in 1918 in WW1, not one of those earlier contraptions which actually tried to work like birds. On the maiden flight, his airplane (called the Christmas Bullet; the jokes just write themselves) had its wings tear right off the fuselage, killing the only test pilot willing to fly the contraption and destroying the engine on loan from the military, under strict stipulations to be only used on the ground. Then he somehow managed to get a second engine, make a second version, find a second test pilot, and... the exact same happened.

He advertised the plane as being the first to achieve 197mph in the test flight. Which, I suppose, it technically did in free fall :P
 
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HansMustermann said:
Not really any mystery. This guy was provably an academic fraud and a predictable disaster waiting to happen. Which it did. I'm sure not every student of any particular race or ethnic group is a pathological liar and academic fraud (no RL culture works like that,) hence the question why couldn't they find a less problematic one.

As for what you choose to believe... as they say, belief is the domain of theology :P
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well they could have and they didn't, and there are people who are and should be genuinely concerned that, and then there's people that aren't. if it was a boring stem guy that lied and cheated and made up stories, a lot of people wouldn't give a ◊◊◊◊ about it, and people will pretend they're not doing that when they are. and it's not a mystery when that's going on.
 
dirtywick said:
why do i believe you guys aren't really concerned this dei professor got the job over a more qualified dei professor?

idk it's a mystery
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Its the principle that is at stake. You put sub-standard people in teaching positions, you will turn out sub-standard students as the next generation in that field. If you don't think that is a problem going forward, then I can't help you. As Samuel Johnston said... "I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding."

Universities should be demanding excellence as the standard for appointment to a professorship. The more prestigious the university, the higher the standard should be, and Cambridge is one of the most prestigious!
 
HansMustermann said:
Literal example of the latter: look up the Dr Christmas (his literal name; and as for Dr he was an MD) who thought and actually argued before congress that a plane's wings SHOULD flap in flight. And he was making a normal propeller-driven aircraft in 1918 in WW1, not one of those earlier contraptions which actually tried to work like birds. On the maiden flight, his airplane (called the Christmas Bullet; the jokes just write themselves) had its wings tear right off the fuselage, killing the only test pilot willing to fly the contraption and destroying the engine on loan from the military, under strict stipulations to be only used on the ground. Then he somehow managed to get a second engine, make a second version, find a second test pilot, and... the exact same happened.

He advertised the plane as being the first to achieve 197mph in the test flight. Which, I suppose, it technically did in free fall :P
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""Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so."
- Robert A. Heinlein (from "Time Enough for Love")
 
smartcooky said:
If you are going claim that Arday was not a DEI hire then you are either being dishonest or you are living in a fantasyland, completely out of touch with the reality of the ultra-progressive mindset that prevails at most modern universities.
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The short list was him and two black women, in that lineup he was not the "DEI" hire.
 
angrysoba said:
Apparently he was in a group that included "two women of colour", which I don't think is the same. The NYT reporting on it suggested that he was the only black candidate, so they were presumably of a different ethnic background.

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Thanks for the correction.

Personally I do think it was his (claimed) life outside of academia that swung it for him. And I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that, often you are making marginal decisions when recruiting so you need to look beyond the academic qualifications, you are looking for what someone can bring to the role and given what we know he could spin a good yarn. If he'd only claimed half the things he later claimed during the recruitment process I can see why Cambridge employed him.

The only issue I think that has any legs in this tragic story is whether Cambridge applied an appropriate level of due diligence or not, and what is the appropriate level of due diligence for such a role.
 
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smartcooky said:
""Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so."
- Robert A. Heinlein (from "Time Enough for Love")
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smartcooky said:
Its the principle that is at stake. You put sub-standard people in teaching positions, you will turn out sub-standard students as the next generation in that field. If you don't think that is a problem going forward, then I can't help you. As Samuel Johnston said... "I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding."

Universities should be demanding excellence as the standard for appointment to a professorship. The more prestigious the university, the higher the standard should be, and Cambridge is one of the most prestigious!
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lol! I think this is what they mean when they say “soft subjects” mean spouting bollocks and farting out a couple of hackneyed quotes to make yourself sound profound.
 
Darat said:
Thanks for the correction.

Personally I do think it was his (claimed) life outside of academia that swung it for him. And I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with that, often you are making marginal decisions when recruiting so you need to look beyond the academic qualifications, you are looking for what someone can bring to the roll and given what we know he could spin a good yarn. If he'd only claimed half the things he later claimed during the recruitment process I can see why Cambridge employed him.

The only issue I think that has any legs in this tragic story is whether Cambridge applied an appropriate level of due diligence or not, and what is the appropriate level of due diligence for such a role.
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Yeah, and I think that’s really what did him in as much as it may have been what got him the job.
 
theprestige said:
I was just thinking, another page of this nonsense and I'm going into 'yea and' mode.

So here we are.

The media hounded Arday to his death, you say?

Okay, sure. Good for them. He had it coming. My only regret is that they didn't catch any of the other goblins of Oxbridge in the blast radius.
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I do think Ardey would still be alive to day, if the story of an academic lying about his past and plagiarism, had got a few news stories that lasted a day and no internet pile on.
 
angrysoba said:
Irrelevant!

I was responding to the claim that plagiarism accusations were restricted to words and not ideas. The charge is that he also stole interview responses. That is passing off other people’s fieldwork as his own. He apparently also claimed to have initially transcribed his interviews and run an Nvivo analysis on them, then removed the claim later. Very dodgy! In addition, there is no evidence of putting his work to an ethics board, which his institution apparently demanded. Very naughty!
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Arday was cleared.
 
Nessie said:
I do think Ardey would still be alive to day, if the story of an academic lying about his past and plagiarism, had got a few news stories that lasted a day and no internet pile on.
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As I was saying before, by itself it probably would have gotten even less. But when you combine it with all his incredible claims, it suddenly becomes much more interesting than "yet another academic plagiarised." The latter doesn't sell newspapers (including the online paywalled versions.) I mean, it might be interesting for THE readers, but that's about the extent of it.

And I actually think the wokesters rushing to scream "RACISM!" on his behalf actually fanned the flames.
 
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