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Jason Arday, Cambridge University’s Professor of Sociology of Education, resigned in August after the institution announced it would investigate his appointment and work – following intense media scrutiny around allegations that parts of his 2015 PhD thesis had been plagiarised.
After stepping down, hundreds of articles were published on Arday – scrutinising many aspects of his life beyond academia, including his charity fundraising and his childhood mutism – across the established press in the UK and internationally. The 41-year-old was found dead at his home days later on 14 August.
One of the key articles which raised questions about the credibility of Arday’s work beyond his PhD – ‘Jason Arday: Times Analysis Finds “Impossible” Data in His Work’ by Emma Yeomans – was published by The Times on 5 August.
Cambridge University announced its investigation into Arday later that day. In a separate report on Arday’s subsequent resignation on that same day, The Times wrote that the institution’s investigation “came after The Times submitted fresh evidence to the university suggesting that large parts of his research were fabricated and­ contained ‘impossible’ evidence”. ­
The characterisation of Arday as a possible serial plagiarist was repeated by reporting in the Guardian and Washington Post. After his death, The Atlantic claimed that a “preponderance of evidence” showed that he was a “serial fabulist and unrepentant plagiarist” who had “conned” British academia.
The central claim in The Times article was built largely around a paper published by Arday in 2018 that had already been formally investigated by its publisher, MDPI. The Times reported that Arday had been “forced to retract and republish” it.
But a MDPI spokesperson told Byline Times that its investigation did not establish plagiarism or data fabrication in the paper or result in a retraction, finding that the article’s scientific conclusions were unaffected. It did identify problems with citations and the handling of interview data, which required corrections. These correctable errors did not invalidate the study.
The Times did not report this.
It explored the findings of its own “audit of five years of study” conducted by Arday. In addition to the 2018 paper, four other related studies by Arday were reported as possible evidence of fabrication and plagiarism.
It did not mention that one of these, a 2020 paper by Arday, had already undergone a similar formal investigation by another scientific publisher, Taylor & Francis, again resulting in a correction of errors with no finding of plagiarism or data fabrication.
In his career, Jason Arday authored 33 peer-reviewed papers and was one of the most cited scholars in his field.
While media organisations choosing one ‘angle’ over another to pursue in a story is not in any way uncommon – indeed, it is often the norm – the case of The Times is an important one to examine, considering the extent to which the narrative around Jason Arday being a serial plagiarist took hold in the media firestorm that followed, culminating in his death.
What is striking about The Times article is that it did not seriously examine the reasonable – or at least possible – alternative that problems in the papers it audited had resulted from the same kinds of error as the 2018 paper that had been investigated and cleared of plagiarism.
The academics The Times spoke to said that “the cumulative impact is pretty damning, even if some individual examples might have more innocent explanations in terms of sloppy work or coincidence”; that “the studies seemed to show signs of fabrication… which is far worse than plagiarism”; and “I can’t think of any alternative explanations of this… but maybe I just don’t have a good enough imagination”.
In contrast, Professor Colin Talbot, a Research Associate at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and…