And what a dumb bit of nothing to open it over, and hyper-fixate on. There is so much horror going on, but everyone is so intensely focused on this nonsense.
What an absolute nothing of a hill to die on.
Jason Arday #3
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What an absolute nothing of a hill to die on.
It’s something that people feel they can influence. It’s close to home. We can do nothing about trump, afghanistan or Ukraine. This makes people feel they may have agency
I get that, it's definitely why it's easier to engage with as well. It's why it's more fun to discuss Harry and Meghan's misdoings rather than ole Randy Andy. It's just very frustrating to give the bigots such a cudgel by backing this jack a.
Summer needs to be over already!
This is exactly what I was going to comment on. Everyone I know, including me, who has done a PhD, even those people who got it over and done with as quickly as possible,* were absolutely consumed by and obsessed with their thesis topic. It's impossible to do a half-decent job without becoming somewhat obsessive.
*which, by the way, is nothing like 2.5 years. My husband I think completed his more quickly than anyone else I know, and that was still over three years full-time, and he wasn't commuting across the UK daily, working night shifts, and looking after newborn babies and needy parents.
Even now, 20 years later and having long ago abandoned academia, I'm still hypersensitive to anything vaguely related to my thesis, and still mentally file away new books, articles, discoveries, etc. that would be relevant. My husband is still something like the 5th most informed person in the world when it comes to the life and works of his PhD subject.
Arday's bizarre ghostwritten 'memoir' (bizarre not least because why get a ghostwriter to do such a BAD job?) makes it explicit that the PhD is just an ego trip. Nothing that @Valiofthedolls has posted (and I've read all the extracts here) indicates any interest at all in his purported subject. I mean we know why that is - it's because he didn't write it, he didn't do any research, he just patched together a mess of other people's work and slapped his name on it - but it is genuinely insane that it's just in plain view.
i've read memoirs, biographies and autobiographies of academics, and while they might include their life stories and personal histories, those are always interwoven with the actual subject that they fell in love with (or happened to end up focusing on). The putative subject of his PhD is invisible, because he really knew absolutely nothing about it.
What is really mind-boggling is, given that, how he got the PhD at all. It should have been picked up at the viva, and it obviously was to an extent - the two versions of the viva (from the draft and the published version) indicate that it was not an easy ride. But how and why was it awarded at all?
It is not unknown for people to fail their vivas. I knew someone who did (he ended up clearing his stuff out in the middle of the night and was never heard from again, at least not by me). It is common to pass with corrections - usually minor corrections (this is what I had), but sometimes more substantial revisions are needed.
There is no question that Arday should have failed at that point. I know all of the focus is on Cambridge, understandably, but for my money, Liverpool John Moore's have a lot of questions to answer. Possibly even more than Cambridge. They awarded him the PhD, and then they said that the plagiarism allegations were false.
The whole thing STINKS.
He's dead, there is no longer a complainant. The dead have no rights (They is why people wait until someone has died to write or publicly discuss wrong doings: no fear of being sued for defamation).
I completely agree, and let us not forget it was LJMU that recently had this particular scandal exposed.
Not a great year for them, is it?
Something made me think about this again. The way he focused on the PhD seemed overwhelmingly status oriented. It's like a desire to have a porsche or a huntsman suit.
For anyone contemplating more advanced study/qualification status is probably some part of the motivation but does it not start with broader considerations?
- am I interested in/passionate about this subject?
- am I good at it & in fact am I better than my peers?
- what can I do with the qualification in the future?
Will does not and must not matter more than skill. That type of lifeview is just as unhelpful as a belief that the playing field is truly level. Will only compensates for low skill when others are forced to accept to pretend it does.
Upcycling sport into education then a segue into sociology. I just never got the sense that he was deeply interested in the subject areas & their application.
Seeing a lot of people unsubscribing from their online newspaper subscriptions (or talking about it - curious how many actually pay)
Will be fascinating and probably depressing to see how this shapes the future of editorial journalism. Write too harshly and get boycotted. Write too passively and get no clicks. Are we cooked?!
Will be fascinating and probably depressing to see how this shapes the future of editorial journalism. Write too harshly and get boycotted. Write too passively and get no clicks. Are we cooked?!
these people really are pathetic. My son’s generation seem a bit more robust so I’m hoping this is a blip.
For anyone who wants to read Dr Arday’s PhD, it’s available online. I must admit I haven’t read the whole thing because it’s really bleeping boring but I can’t imagine he was enthused either given how bloody dull the subject matter was. ‘I spoke to 4 trainee teachers about peer mentoring and managed to spin it out to 400 pages’.
As Aaron Bastani from Novara said (and I agree with him about as often as there’s an eclipse) Arday’s core skill was using loads of words and saying nothing at all. And for that he should be commended. Everything else? Meh.
Knock yourselves out https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/i...l PhD Thesis Vesrion Final Draft Oct 2015.pdf
It’s a funny one. In a way, all grift is a matter of public interest. He denied other (we assume) credible, qualified candidates a life-changing job opportunity - including reportedly two women of colour. He committed heinous academic fraud. He conned members of the public into thinking he was someone else. He made bank off sensationalist lies through his book deal (and even posthumously the funeral fundraiser grift now stands at £218k!). He has destroyed his family’s life by taking his own. But - he had no social media. He made no real statements of any substance, and thus did very little harm in real terms. He didn’t go after brand deals or flog stuff or particularly claim to represent anything other than Jason Arday.
Meanwhile, we have ‘Dr’ Jessica Taylor, another serial fraudulent fabulist making money from vulnerable women and girls, acting far outside of her qualifications and issuing actively harmful advice which reaches hundreds of thousands of people. I would so much rather have seen her get taken down this summer. Not ‘hounded to death’ or any of that nonsense - just an interruption of her grift and exposure of her fraud. Over on the DJT threads we think this day will surely come. Or we will collectively combust into a national wildfire!
TLDR: Arday bad; worse still out there…
Meanwhile, we have ‘Dr’ Jessica Taylor, another serial fraudulent fabulist making money from vulnerable women and girls, acting far outside of her qualifications and issuing actively harmful advice which reaches hundreds of thousands of people. I would so much rather have seen her get taken down this summer. Not ‘hounded to death’ or any of that nonsense - just an interruption of her grift and exposure of her fraud. Over on the DJT threads we think this day will surely come. Or we will collectively combust into a national wildfire!
TLDR: Arday bad; worse still out there…
I find the lack of social media interesting. I think he knew that there were a lot of people out there who could disprove his origin stories quite easily, so he kept himself away from open discussion forums.
In his writing, he comes across as really quite thick and incurious about the world around him. Not good attributes for an academic. Who do we think was pulling his strings? His mother? Sandro? Debs?
In his writing, he comes across as really quite thick and incurious about the world around him. Not good attributes for an academic. Who do we think was pulling his strings? His mother? Sandro? Debs?
I am so fed up. As many previous posters have said, we seem to be shying away from critical thinking, and difficult conversations. This is how we learn, develop and grow. You do no one any favours by pandering to them - it will all implode eventually.
I am genuinely worried for how this world will be in 10, 20 years time - it feels like 1984 is round the corner.
I am genuinely worried for how this world will be in 10, 20 years time - it feels like 1984 is round the corner.
As a teacher of over twenty years, and with Post Grad experience (not PhD), this focus seemed more suitable to a PGDip or a Masters at a push. I would love to know where he trained to be a teacher or where he actually taught (PE?) because that seems to be brushed under the carpet too.
I'm still absolutely baffled by that autobiography. I was thinking about it in the context of interviewing someone for a role, and how I might ask about a time someone encountered X, and they respond something like, 'We had a difficult project. My manager said we'd never deliver it, but my colleague believed in me. I was determined not to give up. Eventually we delivered it successfully and everyone was delighted.' It has the shape of a nice story but you're left with no useful information about what they actually did. And that's his whole book.
He starts at Point A, reaches Obstacle B, Obstacle C, then Triumphant Point D.
It looks like a narrative and has the signals telling the reader how to feel. Bully doubted me. Friend/stranger believed in me. Villain told me I'd amount to nothing. Nobody had ever seen someone like me try something like this before. They laughed at me. I nearly gave up. Nobody thought a person like me could do it. But I persevered. And now look at me. Aren't I amazing?
WHAT THE duck HAPPENED AT POINTS B AND C? That's the interesting part, which he omits every. Single. Time.
'Giff had me moved to a mainstream school. She 'campaigned''. Did she? How? With whom? What did she do? What worked? What didn't? Why was that the right thing to do? Why was it better than the alternative?
'Debs taught me to read and write.'
Did she? And how did she do that? What techniques did she use? How did she know about them? Why, specifically, did she succeed where Giff and at least three schools, presumably staffed with teachers, had failed? What was it like, after a lifetime of being unable to read to suddenly have a world of incredible literature and information available to you?
You got a PhD? How? Why? What did it entail, what did you research and how, what parts of the subject did you find challenging, what did you get wrong, how did you course correct, what exactly did you learn, what surprised you?
But every story is just... nobody believed in me, Giff battled for me to go to a mainstream school so that's what happened, aren't we amazing? Debs taught me to read somehow, but more importantly she's thin and beautiful and other men are jealous of me, aren't I interesting? I did a PhD on a Thinkpad branded laptop. Nobody thought I could do it but I knew I was like the character Rocky played by Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky films and I thought about Rocky and succeeded! Like Rocky!
All the supposedly verbatim dialogue and beige detail acts as a stand in for this juvenile superficiality, but there's not a second of agency or self reflection.
Everyone is childishly divided into the goodies, the baddies and the hero and his triumph over evil. We know literally nothing about him by the end of the book except for the externally imposed dramatic events through which he demonstrates he is special.
Perhaps that's why people create these wild stories? If you have no internal sense of yourself or why you're doing anything, then I suppose a dramatic external narrative is one way to anchor yourself to... something. Create the idea of a person and construct the narrative around that. But you can't reverse engineer a life.
It looks like a narrative and has the signals telling the reader how to feel. Bully doubted me. Friend/stranger believed in me. Villain told me I'd amount to nothing. Nobody had ever seen someone like me try something like this before. They laughed at me. I nearly gave up. Nobody thought a person like me could do it. But I persevered. And now look at me. Aren't I amazing?
WHAT THE duck HAPPENED AT POINTS B AND C? That's the interesting part, which he omits every. Single. Time.
'Giff had me moved to a mainstream school. She 'campaigned''. Did she? How? With whom? What did she do? What worked? What didn't? Why was that the right thing to do? Why was it better than the alternative?
'Debs taught me to read and write.'
Did she? And how did she do that? What techniques did she use? How did she know about them? Why, specifically, did she succeed where Giff and at least three schools, presumably staffed with teachers, had failed? What was it like, after a lifetime of being unable to read to suddenly have a world of incredible literature and information available to you?
You got a PhD? How? Why? What did it entail, what did you research and how, what parts of the subject did you find challenging, what did you get wrong, how did you course correct, what exactly did you learn, what surprised you?
But every story is just... nobody believed in me, Giff battled for me to go to a mainstream school so that's what happened, aren't we amazing? Debs taught me to read somehow, but more importantly she's thin and beautiful and other men are jealous of me, aren't I interesting? I did a PhD on a Thinkpad branded laptop. Nobody thought I could do it but I knew I was like the character Rocky played by Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky films and I thought about Rocky and succeeded! Like Rocky!
All the supposedly verbatim dialogue and beige detail acts as a stand in for this juvenile superficiality, but there's not a second of agency or self reflection.
Everyone is childishly divided into the goodies, the baddies and the hero and his triumph over evil. We know literally nothing about him by the end of the book except for the externally imposed dramatic events through which he demonstrates he is special.
Perhaps that's why people create these wild stories? If you have no internal sense of yourself or why you're doing anything, then I suppose a dramatic external narrative is one way to anchor yourself to... something. Create the idea of a person and construct the narrative around that. But you can't reverse engineer a life.
Has Hilary Cremin spoken up yet?
Assuming he was a member of the USS pension scheme, it's a defined benefit scheme and does have a child pension attached to it, so should pay his children a pension until they're 18, or up to 23 if they stay in full-time education.
Started reading then got to the dedication and felt like i’d slipped into ‘the book’. Is it normal to have a dedication at the start of a thesis? It detracts from the academic content somewhat.
Thank you for taking the time to reply to me. That's really interesting. I suppose, with the lab leak, I can understand why the truth was suppressed for geopolitical reasons. I mean I can understand why the US and other Anglosphere governments would not want to enter a diplomatic war with China because they are so economically and militarily powerful. Especially during the pandemic when everyone was ordering stuff online from China. Don't poke the bear, I guess was the thinking. (Plus, personal political embarrassments like Fauci being on the board of one of the funders of the Wuhan lab that leaked the virus.) I would liken that to the US government quietly deciding to keep secret the number of former senior Nazis who were appointed to senior positions in the Adenauer Government (and also in the US and USSR nuclear research programmes). The public would not have been happy, but equally it would have been geopolitically expedient. I get that. Sometimes the truth does need to be sacrificed for greater public safety / protection.
What I get a lot less, is things like the UK official doctors union signing up to the idea that people can change sex. I honestly don't see how such a lie can be beneficial to anyone. It's not true on a biological level (and doctors of all people know this). Subscribing to the lie doesn't protect the public. It's not geopolitically expedient. It's not good for the vulnerable people whose health gets wrecked with cross-sex hormones. So why do it?
In the US I can understand why it happened, because the pharma companies to an extent decide what doctors prescribe and a lifelong trans patient is a pharma company's wet dream. But the NHS means that the UK doesn't have those same perverse financial incentives. So why tell such a big lie about scientific fact? Honestly? What's the point?
I disagree with this. the Russell Group unis produce our most senior decision makers in politics, civil service, health service, infrastructure, military, defence, media, education, graduates entering the workforce. What they think becomes how the country runs. What they think becomes Britain's economic and covil present and future. And our reputation on the world stage, and our ability to attract inward investment on which our economy depends.
How the Russell Group unis behave in terms of which academics they employ and which ideas they champion, is a matter of national importance. it's definitely not nonsense, imho, it's definitely not nothing.