Announcement: I’ve started producing long-form video versions of my articles. Substack is still the best way to get my thoughts, since they land here weeks before the videos. But if you’d like the videos too, here’s the most recent one, about Jason Arday.
Two days ago, Nature published an editorial about Jason Arday.
Nature is one of the most prestigious scientific publications on earth. If journals had an Ivy League, Nature is Harvard.
The title: “The death of Jason Arday must prompt deep reflection.”
When I saw it, part of me was hopeful.
Because there is so much to reflect on.
Maybe they’d reflect on how a man who:
Lied about visiting professorships at three universities
Lied about a book that was never published
Lied about millions in charity money that doesn’t appear in any record
Claimed to run 600 miles in 6 days
Claimed to not be able to speak until 11
Claimed to not read or write until 18
Rose to one of the most prestigious positions in academia without anyone checking.
Maybe they’d reflect on how suspicions were raised to Cambridge in May 2023 and they declined to look.
Maybe they’d reflect on what it means that his own peers had doubts and said nothing.
Maybe they’d reflect on why public confidence in higher education has fallen from 57% to 38% in eleven years.
Maybe they’d reflect on whether a system that rewards hardship stories might attract people who invent them.
No.
Here’s what we got instead.
Nature announced it would focus on two issues.
One: how academic institutions should handle misconduct investigations when the media is watching.
Two: how the media should report on misconduct without causing harm.
Just those two.
Not whether the allegations that Jason lied were true.
Not why nobody checked.
No - they focused on media conduct, and administrative procedure.
Instead of focusing on Jason’s actions, and the incentive structure that enabled it, they focused on everyone’s reactions.
The only Cambridge failure they actually specify is that Cambridge announced its investigation too publicly.
Not that Cambridge declined to investigate for three years.
Nature’s question is: “Why did it feel the need to announce its investigation publicly - and did this decision reduce Arday’s chances of getting a fair hearing?”
So the only institutional failure Nature identifies is a confidentiality breach.
Nature writes:
“There is systemic racism in academia. It is an unwelcoming place for many who enter it through hardship and struggle, as Arday’s story illustrates.”
Jason’s story of hardship and struggle is the thing that was fabricated.
The 600 miles.
The charity millions.
The professorships.
The book.
The claim about being on Seven Up.
All of it collapsed under the most basic checking.
Even now, when we know he fabricated his story of hardship, they make the story about his hardship.
Nature calls him “an autistic Black scholar who inspired a generation.”
There is no public documentation of that diagnosis. Nobody has produced it.
The only source for it is Jason.
And Jason lied about his professorships, his book, his charity totals, and his running.
Nature asserts it as fact, in an editorial about an evidentiary dispute, in the most prestigious science journal in the world.
They talk about him inspiring a generation, without mentioning that he lied to a generation.
And in an entire editorial about Jason Arday, Nature does not mention the fabricated CV once.
Americans' confidence in higher education was 57% in 2015. It's 38% today.
That’s a 19-point collapse.
Over the same period, confidence in other core institutions - Congress, the Supreme Court, big business, organized religion - fell 5 points on average.
Higher education is falling about four times faster than institutions people already hated.
Seventy percent of Americans now say higher education is going in the wrong direction. In 2020 it was 56%.
You can blame Trump. You can blame social media. You can blame the pandemic.
Some of that is fair.
But when things are going badly in your life, there are always factors outside your control and factors inside it.
And a person who focuses only on the ones outside develops learned helplessness.
So does an institution.
This was a terrible response from Nature.
The entire Jason Arday situation could have been avoided if academics - whose sole job is to seek truth - sought the truth.
Instead they bought Jason’s obvious lies, because he was black.
But even in their reflection, the academic establishment fails to understand why Jason was scrutinized so heavily.
They fail to understand that years of institutional focus on race - in admissions, in hiring - is the thing that built up the pressure that was unleashed on Jason, who lied grotesquely.
The racial promotion strategies of these institutions are what created a rational basis for suspicion of black intellectuals.
DEI put an asterisk on every meritorious black person’s achievements.
In an effort to correct past systems of racial discrimination, they created a new one.
The reaction to Jason was the consequence of that system.
Every academic should view the acceptance of Jason’s lies as the primary issue.
Because he did the opposite of what academics are supposed to do - present the truth.
But instead, Nature and others misdirect attention from his actions and the failings of academia, to the public’s reactions.
What a tragedy.
Our academic institutions disgrace themselves further with every passing year.
Please - stop being activists.
We need academics.
In the next section, we'll talk about the systemic racism claim, and how it completely derails rational discourse and accountability.
From here, you'll learn:
Why an explanation that accounts for everything accounts for nothing
The three conversations that become impossible the moment systemic racism is the answer
Why being told the world is against you feels like power, and what it actually costs
What the faculty numbers and the Harvard admissions data do to the theory
Blumenbach’s five racial categories, the three we quietly dropped, and what’s still built on the rest
