Jason Arday

[goldenrodshortbread]

Not looked into the PhD plagiarism yet, but it is frankly galling that an ostensible sociologist of education can wing a doctorate from a post-92 University, have a typo in his thesis title, and get a Chair at Cambridge.

Spoiler: A bit of a whinge

At 37, I’ve got an Oxbridge doctorate, another PG qualification, ten years of postdoctoral experience at multiple RG Univerisities, three books, two kids, several peer-reviewed journal articles which contain original work, nine PhD completions - and I am eons away from getting a Professorship. Arday and I are in similar fields. I know Nathan Cofnas.

The tokenism rewarding the likes of brain-tumour-marathon-running-epileptic-illiterate-superhero-of-the-hour is an insult firstly to Black academics, and secondly to women, who continually outstrip the achievements of chumps like this but so rarely receive the recognition and platform.

 

[ArtistFormerlyKnownAs]

Cambridge’s diversity poster boy faces questions over ‘miracle’ 600-mile run - AOL

The Cambridge professor at the centre of a plagiarism row is facing questions over claims he has made about his athletic prowess and charity fundraising.

www.aol.com

Another article here. I’d believe the 30 marathons in 35 days, but the claims inflated after that. Looks like he raised low five figures- a worthy achievement, but in the decade following, it got inflated to £5 million.

Maybe he intended to run some more amazing ultras after this effort. But there’s no evidence it happened. Couple of interesting links here:

The 300 (300 miles in 3 Days)

Help Jason Arday raise money to support Shelter

www.justgiving.com

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/400in5days (interesting title, as the page refers to 300 in 3 days. Change of plan?).

Both closed.

So the 300 in 3 didn’t happen. Nor did the purported 600 miles from Edinburgh to London, with or without the 180-odd mile scenic route you’d take to make that 400-ish mile journey into a 600 mile one. That would be a feat of ultrarunning that would definitely have made waves in the ultra community. It didn’t.

I always know we’ve got a live one on our hands whenever there’s a “but I achieved this impossible thing on a BROKEN LEG and while I HAD SEIZURES and everyone CLAPPED AND CHEERED. Did they, aye?

From the first JustGiving link:

"The final challenge, will involve running the equivalent of 300 miles in 3 days on a treadmill, this roughly will involve running for 16-18 hours on a treadmill."

And

"As well as this, I going to need all the support possible too get me through running 100 miles a day on a treadmill for 3 days."

 

[drmortimer]

If he didn’t already exist, I’m not sure even Jeffrey Archer could make this wick up.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

Chickens coming home to roost?

 

[Tabitha D]

Yep, I’m sure there will be some damage limitation going on behind closed doors …

 

[SunsetSmile]

I found the actual online conversation this was referencing (about 6.30m in) & to be fair it sounded like JA did say semi or possibly some professional football after being in academy system & that he tried to join professional snooker tour but failed so I think the correction Bath put out was fair & appropriate.

What struck me though was that even being Dxd with autism/Global development delay he clearly had many gifts and a supportive family although it's portrayed by the interviewer as a challenging early life. He seemed to have friends and to have the self belief to be able to find opportunities for himself as well as having a mother who advocated fiercely for him.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

He seems to be admitting, or at least not contesting, that he plagiarised in his thesis. But blames it on inadequate supervision. And admits he did not, as an individual, raise £5 million for charity. He was part of a syndicate.

Jason Arday: I am not a liar, says star academic accused of plagiarism

archived 31 Jul 2026 21:37:56 UTC

archive.ph

 

[Tabitha D]

This latest article doesn’t really help the universities at all does it (Liverpool John Moores and Cambridge in particular).
What a rooster up.

 

[Tabitha D]

I was in academia myself for a while. (Postgrad & lectureships, Glasgow, UCL and then Oxford). This beggars belief from an actual professor.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

I must tell my autistic son that he doesn’t need to bother being accurate or avoid plagiarism in his degree because that kind of thing is totally acceptable if you’ve got ASD

 

[FourSeasonSoupObsessive]

It’s all very “mistakes were made, but not by me”, isn’t it?

There’s this sense that somehow having academic standards is “gatekeeping” that makes me really uneasy. And his defence of that reads like “well, you can’t expect black people/people from deprived backgrounds/autistic people to adhere to these impossible standards, you racist/snob/ableist”.

It doesn’t sit right with me. Yes, I would expect black people/people from deprived backgrounds/autistic people to be capable of doing great things in higher education and academia because I’m not a racist/snob/ableist. Isn‘t that just the bigotry of low expectations that he’s feeding there?

The solution to academia feeling inaccessible to some groups of people isn’t just deciding that standards aren’t needed.

 

[PineappleQueen19]

This is an alarming aspect. The journalist is a professional doing their job - and with good reason it turns out

 

[SunsetSmile]

He seems to be admitting, or at least not contesting, that he plagiarised in his thesis. But blames it on inadequate supervision. And admits he did not, as an individual, raise £5 million for charity. He was part of a syndicate.

Jason Arday: I am not a liar, says star academic accused of plagiarism

archived 31 Jul 2026 21:37:56 UTC

archive.ph

TY for article.
There's a lot of information & detail and imo raises a number of issues.

What were the terms of reference of Liverpool John Moores' investigation?

The line about being within academic standards at the time makes my neck tingle.
Also autism causing mimicry. Mimicry is not a defence for plagiarism in academia.

His Director of Studies supervisor at LJM also had a post 92 institution academic quals profile.

Being able to afford a proofreader now so his work has improved. Yikes.
Maybe proofreaders should be centrally funded for disabled academics (dyslexic, blind etc) on a reaonable adjustment qualifying basis so that everyone can be confident they are just proof readers & not content creators/proxy academics.

What a mess and the constant reference to suicidality in the broader conversations feels like emotional blackmail.

A journalist looking into the situation reported to the police. It was NFA'd but this could be viewed as attempts to interfere with valid investigation.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

I don’t think we‘ve had this article before: https://www.dailymail.com/news/arti...giarism-sporting-charitable-achievements.html

(Daily Mail link in case the link comes up as verified device)

 

[SunsetSmile]

I don’t think we‘ve had this article before: https://www.dailymail.com/news/arti...giarism-sporting-charitable-achievements.html

(Daily Mail link in case the link comes up as verified device)

Crying with laughter at the bit where he spoke to US association of cremation directors & the speech was titled *can't start a fire without a spark*

Bonfire of the vain inanities

 

[FrumpyCat]

TY for article.
There's a lot of information & detail and imo raises a number of issues.

What were the terms of reference of Liverpool John Moores' investigation?

The line about being within academic standards at the time makes my neck tingle.
Also autism causing mimicry. Mimicry is not a defence for plagiarism in academia.

His Director of Studies supervisor at LJM also had a post 92 institution academic quals profile.

Being able to afford a proofreader now so his work has improved. Yikes.
Maybe proofreaders should be centrally funded for disabled academics (dyslexic, blind etc) on a reaonable adjustment qualifying basis so that everyone can be confident they are just proof readers & not content creators/proxy academics.

What a mess and the constant reference to suicidality in the broader conversations feels like emotional blackmail.

A journalist looking into the situation reported to the police. It was NFA'd but this could be viewed as attempts to interfere with valid investigation.

JA should have been able to claim a disabled student allowance (DSA) which he could have used to pay for proof reading and speech to text software. I find it unlikely he didn't know about it. I don't know why no one has asked him about it.

He is very obviously a fantasist but I can understand some of the errors, ie poultry instead of paultry. (I have colleagues and friends with dyslexia, a couple even have PhDs) If you are using text to speech software both the words sound the same so the software will guess. Even with grammar, as long as it is grammatically correct the software doesn't care if it is stupid and someone with dyslexia will not recognise the error, which is why he should have ot someone to check. And JA completed his PhD in 2018 when technology was far less advanced.

But JS has told a lot of lies. He has a high achieving brother, who appears not to be a fantasist, I am wondering if part of his motivation was to out do his brother.

 

[ChampagneBox]

It’s always people who are actually capable of great things and making a real difference that duck things up for themselves
I went to college with someone who was arrogant but undoubtedly would have done well in the law exam but still felt the need to circumvent the rules and almost got disqualified
the mind boggles

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

I came across this paper he was commissioned to write.

https://thinkhigher.ac.uk/projects/ar/thinkhighers_black_experience_report_-_arday_2022.pdf_final_draft.pdf

It starts off by saying that black kids have the lowest pass rate of English and maths of any ethnic group - 59%. Those stats are from 2018 and the paper was published in 2022. In 2025, the average pass rates across all groups is 58.95% according to TES. So that figure doesn’t seem statistically significant. He goes on to talk about other factors (economic background and ethnicity - I agree 100% that BAME is an unhelpful term and that conflating kids from a black Caribbean and black African backgrounds doesn‘t help draw any meaningful conclusions). So some broad brush stuff and then he interviews 11 black kids from Coventry and Warwickshire. Does he pick up on these themes about socioeconomic background or geographic origins of families? Nope. Or any of the broad points he makes about George Floyd? Nope. Do we even know if he asked all the kids the same questions or how they were interviewed? Also no. No methodology is included.

I‘m not a sociologist or a statistician but the whole thing seems a bit weak to me.

 

[FourSeasonSoupObsessive]

There are two things that jump out at me from the Wail article.

Nothing says “something to hide” like hiring Carter Ruck, and nothing says “culture war grift” like the Good Law Project weighing in on your side

innocent people don’t need Carter Ruck and honest people run a mile from Jo Maugham.

Am I wrong??

 

[PineappleQueen19]

There is so much rot


“British universities are funded on assessed output. Careers are built on volume, and institutional income depends on it. Under that pressure the incentive to publish more than you can properly do is universal, which is why plagiarism is the largest single category of allegation in the sector's own data. Meanwhile a senior academic with grants, rankings value and a public protile is an asset on the books. Arday was a named collaborator on more than $10m of UKRI and NIHR funding. Investigating an asset is a write-down, and no external body exists to force it, so the rational institutional move is not to look. That is why the variable predicting who survives a misconduct finding is seniority and market value, and why Arday is being defended.
Class, funding competition and output targets. Unglamorous, and it explains Arday, O'Reilly, Latchman and Manchester with one mechanism.”