Former Cambridge Professor Jason Arday Found D£ad Days After Resigning Amid Plagiarism Row
Former Cambridge Professor Jason Arday Found Dead Days After Resigning Amid Plagiarism Row
Jason Arday, 41, was found “unresponsive” at an address in Battersea on Friday afternoon, emergency services said.
The former University of Cambridge professor at the centre of a plagiarism controversy has been found dead in south London, according to the BBC.
Jason Arday, 41, was found “unresponsive” at an address in Battersea on Friday afternoon, emergency services said.
The Metropolitan Police said officers were called by the London Ambulance Service and a 41-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. His next of kin have been informed.
In a statement, the Met said: “At this time his death is being treated as unexpected, but is not believed to be suspicious.”
Arday resigned last week as Cambridge’s Professor of the Sociology of Education following allegations of plagiarism, data fabrication and questions over several claims about his academic achievements. He denied the allegations.
The controversy centred initially on Arday’s PhD thesis, completed at Liverpool John Moores University. Investigations and academic critics alleged that substantial portions of the dissertation had been copied from the work of other academics without proper attribution.
Further scrutiny, including reporting by Retraction Watch, raised more serious allegations, including that Arday had reused qualitative interview quotations from other researchers’ studies and presented them as original data.
Questions were also raised over inconsistencies in his reported sample sizes, numbers of interviews and research methodologies, prompting concerns about the authenticity of some of the research underpinning his academic work.
The scrutiny subsequently extended beyond his academic publications to aspects of his personal and professional biography.
Arday had attracted widespread attention for his inspirational life story, including claims that he had been diagnosed with autism, remained unable to speak until the age of 11, and did not learn to read and write until he was 18.
However, recent investigations also questioned several other claims associated with his biography and CV, including books he said he had written, visiting professorships and honorary appointments, as well as extraordinary athletic and charitable achievements, including a claim that he ran 600 miles in six days to raise millions of pounds for charity.
The allegations triggered a widening institutional and academic controversy in Britain, ultimately culminating in Arday’s resignation from Cambridge last week.
He was found dead just days later.
