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Just one of many tragedies bound to one of the biggest problems in modern society – obsession to victims. Framing yourself or others as a victim gives you complete immunity and frees you from any responsibility for the consequences of your actions. This obsession has a potential to end the world we know.
I find it ironic that much of the reason why Arday received such accolades is that he painted himself as a victim who had managed, through grit and determination, to overcome adversity and achieve greatness. But then as soon as he experienced actual adversity - albeit self-inflicted, from being called out on his plagiarism and lies and harassment of those who tried to expose this - he decided to kill himself instead.
Which, I suppose, is the final chapter to his false victim narrative. A posthumous legacy that he was bullied to death, absolved of his misdeeds.
Completely agree
A tragedy all around. Most obviously for Jason Arday, who, regardless of which interpretations of everything else one takes, saw this end as the only way out of a high profile media situation.
When one's whole career and self-image has been based in academia and then the academic career ends, it can easily give a feeling of failure and worthlessness, even in the most normal circumstances.
I couldn't find statistics about postdocs or tenure-track professors, but this meta-study on PhD students and medical residents gives a suicide attempt rate of 0.8%.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002239562...
Academia is brutal, but let’s not conflate legitimate struggles in an academic career with being caught allegedly just making up a whole bunch of stuff
From the same article:
> The overall prevalence of SA [suicide attempts] in our aggregate sample was .8%. These figures approached the prevalence of SA in Americans aged 18–39 (1.0%) and in the general population of adults over 18 (.6%).
Academia isn’t the criminal justice system though, if you have, for example, cheated on your doctorate you can hold your hands up and admit it and do another doctorate.
Poor guy, no life deserves this ending. He got caught up deeper and deeper in his proclamations, painted himself into a corner, and wasn't able to reset.
Does anyone know of a case where someone went through a reset and came out strong after such a "downfall"?
One in the White House ? Coming out stronger, that is. No reset.
A more serious example
Woah. Never heard of him but that's a hell of a ride through life. Adding I Am Not a Gangster to my reading list.
You don't have to look back very far. Tessier-Lavigne turned his forced resignation after being behind some of the largest research fraud in biotech history into one of the biggest raises (over $1 billion) in biotech history, pretty much immediately after he had been caught.
The whole thing is a tragedy. Nobody wants to see a situation end like this.
There are other likely victims here too though including those who were passed over for roles or promotions based on the alleged false claims, exaggerations and plagiarism. Those are harder to identify and quantify but still a very real thing that has deep impact on people’s lives.
For whatever he did, he never needed to be the product of an international pile-on. Even having known and read about this feels like being a party to a tragedy.
He did claim harassment with the police against the journalist who was initally investigating him: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rd9y99grzo Now consider that this was in UK.
Had Cambridge applied the appropriate sanctions against Arday, the story would never have blown up like it did. Unfortunate
This is a tragedy.
He did not need to take his own life. There was definitely a path for his life to continue. His family still loved him. Sure, he wouldn't have the cushy professorship and the prestige and the book deal and speaking engagements. But there have been people who have fallen from grace harder and faster, for much worse reasons, and they have come back.
It is very sad that Arday took his life for what was at most a temporary setback. R.I.P.
> It is very sad that Arday took his life for what was at most a temporary setback.
I hope you and others realize that he was being relentlessly harassed. I highly doubt the academic job was the only thing causing him distress. His claims were questionable at best but not worthy of the vitriol he received.
He was subject to intense public and media scrutiny due to the uncovering of his wrongdoing and his recalcitrant non-apology.
He wasn't some rando, he was one of Cambridge University's "star" professors. His appointment was heralded in the media as hugely important. He guest-edited the BBC's flagship Today programme. He became a cultural advisor for ITV. He was a media celebrity... on the basis of what is likely an invented life story.
There is a genuine public interest in further investigation. For the past 3 years he and his college actively suppressed inquiries about his plagiarism using reputation management lawyers and false claims of harassment to the police.
He should have read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You%27ve_Been_Publicly_Sham... and what happened to Jonah Lehrer. Lehrer is still shamed for plagiarism and his career has not recovered... but he is still alive.
I’ve found a disturbing pattern of “I’m being harassed” (without explanation of what exactly that means) as a sort of blanket statement to discount any kind of questions or scrutiny.
The idea of someone having to explain what harassment is occurring is of course unpleasant, but that’s also what makes it an effective method of trying to distract from the topic.
If he was being harassed that’s wrong, but it doesn’t make him immune from questions about other things.
That is his words, but no evidence. He should have resigned since, and accepted his frailties. That way he could have found strength to rebuild.
Everyone deserves compassion. I feel sorry for him. But the fact remains, that he deliberately used lies and deception to gain a high social position in a very politically derisive context. It couldn’t have come as a surprise, that every single racist out there would jump at the opportunity to pull him down should there ever be doubt about his academic work. Plus the people, who really care about academic integrity. Plus a whole lot of folks who simply do not like people blatantly lying for massive personal gains. The vitriol was entirely predictable. The internet is not known for being forgiving. He very deliberately and knowingly took a huge and, given the absurdity of some of his claims, unfounded risk the materialization of which he could not handle. I do feel sorry for him to have started on this path. What state of mind would push a person to take such risk? He must have been a tortured man long before it all exploded into the open.
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The whole tale reminded me of the case of George Santos (Or, Scamtos, as he's known since then). Regardless of the facts, the way this ended up is tragic.
FWIW Dr. Grande's videos were instrumental in helping me understand and escape narcissistic abuse. At least from what I've seen (it's been a few years since I watched regularly), he's a straight shooter.
Pretty sure we've seen Elon there.
cool guess! idk about jason arday, but that dude in the first link is strange and off putting. too much stink face, and the way he frames the subject with the blurry photos and loony screenshots feels like bullying.
I have been following this in English news. It is terribly sad.
The University of Cambridge is largely to blame for letting this troubled person dig himself in so deep.
His astounding claims were astonishing and easily falsifiable. Journalists had no such trouble.
They raised him up then when he got too hot cast him down.
He was a fantasist, he deserves some blame, but it was Cambridge with the power, and irresponsible hubris
RIP
Many of the comments here in this thread are absolutely vile. Very few people are undeserving of compassion.
I think some of the people in this thread should look themselves in the mirror and ask why feel different in this case than similar cases like Dan Ariely, Amy Cuddy, or Marc Tessier Levigne.
Dan despicable Ariely is a good example because he also milked personal tragedies.
Ariely et al that you mention weren't questioned or exposed any less though. There was Elizabeth Holmes too.
The point is, if you cannot bear getting exposed as a false god, as a con, then don't try to become one. Well don't, even you can bear the exposure.