Weekend reads: Tragic news on former Cambridge prof; A ‘never AI’ research company was AI after all; OpenAI’s math breakthroughs don’t add up

As we were assembling this week’s Weekend Reads, we learned the tragic news that former Cambridge professor Jason Arday had been found dead in his home. Arday has been the subject of several news stories in recent weeks, including at Retraction Watch. We are shocked and saddened by the news of his death. Our hearts are with his friends and family. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org. Find a helpline in your country in this guide. The week at Retraction Watch featured: - BMJ Group retracts paper on COVID-19 vaccines and mortality featured in Senate hearing - Biology journal pulls 100+ articles and counting from special issues for peer review manipulation - JAMA journal won’t retract oxycodone paper despite author request, citing no ‘falsification’ - Princeton student says she did not conduct the experiments described in her now-retracted paper. A follow-up to our earlier story: A college student had to retract her paper. The move was ‘the starting point for a better study’ Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read): - A “never AI” research company that pitched us a guest post on retracted trials was, in fact, entirely AI. - “OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say.” - IEEE has retracted just 66 of 2,062 likely paper mill conference papers exposed in April study. - “Is the scientific paper still a fraud?” - Journal removes a researcher’s Columbia University affiliation from paper following our reporting. - “Examining the Prevalence and Persistence of Data Implicated in Article Retractions.” - “How common is academic plagiarism in Britain?” - Another university in Bangladesh launches a probe following media report on hundreds of retractions from the country’s researchers. And “Bangladesh must confront its failing research culture.” - Researchers look at “dentally related” retractions, “the impact on oral hygiene and caries management literature.” - On how the “father of modern cardiology” handled “the discovery that one of his favorite protégés had fabricated research.” - More than 80% of retracted central nervous system tumor articles included in a study were retracted due to misconduct. - “AI Slop Risks Future Discovery.” - The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine “has removed a chapter on climate science from a reference manual for judges after an outcry from critics on the right.” - “The Proposed NIH Policy on APCs Is Bonkers. Does it Matter?” - At one journal, it took four invitations to obtain two reviews in 2007. Last year, it took eight. - “From policing authors to stewarding science: Governing artificial intelligence across the scientific publishing pipeline in medical journals.” - “AI agents are checking the scientific literature — and spotting decades-old errors.” - “Follow-up investigation into ethics approvals” at Didier Raoult‘s former institution found “non-compliance with French and European laws governing clinical research” under his leadership. - “How well does AI peer review work?” And “Peer review is overwhelmed—can it survive in the AI era?” - “AI isn’t ready to research itself,” say preprint authors. - “Can we humanise peer review?” Arday might have deserved to lose his position but he did not deserve the insane amount of racially motivated reporting around his actions. I’m sure regular readers of this site can think of many other people in academia who did similar things and are still working! Cambridge made Arday exceptional in every aspect, starting with the announcement the he was the youngest Professor of African ancestry ever to be appointed. They stressed the racial element throughout the hiring process and beyond. He was a man who was very unwell and needed psychiatric help while his well-informed, cynical employers and supporters couldn’t have enough of his “blackness”. He didn’t deserve to lose his position. The racism of it all was making you all believe that he deserved to lose his position. White people have really done a number on they way everyone sees black people. It’s very sad to watch He didn;t deserve to get the position in the first instance. And he didn’t deserve his previous positions and before those a PhD. I personally don’t think this was “racially motivated”. Many white or “yellow” fraudsters have been vigorously denounced (and survived their shame). There is no specific rule to follow for Black people. The only culprit of the death of Jason Arday is the University of Cambridge that recruited him without vetting his background or qualifications, but simply to tick a box and demonstrate that it stands on the side of Good. Cambridge University exploited Jason Arday, without taking his frailty into account. Just listen to Kathleen Stock’s interview, specifically the part featuring comments by Hilary Cremin, Jason Arday’s boss (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YsCTD83W0s). Totally agree. Cambridge heads should roll on this, we shall see. The phenomenal amount of corrections below was done in 2023, on paper “Understanding Mental Health: What Are the Issues for Black and Ethnic Minority Students at University?”, published in “Social Sciences” MDPI. I have never seen anything like this in my life, and I have been in research for 40 years. No one in Cambridge thought this was a deep-red flag?? The publication (Arday 2018) has been amended to increase the clarity of citation sources within the text. Previously, the statement that the research had been adapted from Memon et al. (2016) appeared in Section 4, but inadvertently omitted overlap between the two publications in prior sections. The author has revised the text to address this, so that it is clear where ideas were adapted from past research. Consequentially, the number of times Memon et al. (2016) has been referenced has increased. Text corrections to clarify citation sources and revised text have been made in the following sections: Abstract; 1. Introduction; 3. Materials and Methods; 4.1. Exploring Mental Health for Black and Ethnic Minorities (BME) within Higher Education; 4.1.1. Personal and Community Factors; Cultural Identity and Fear of Stigmatization/Isolation; Social and Community Networks; Gender Differences; 4.2. Communication and Relationships between Service User and Healthcare Provider; 4.2.1. Communication: Cultural Naivety, Insensitivity, and Discrimination; 4.2.2. Power and Agency; 4.2.3. Language/Silencing; 5. Discussion; 6. Conclusions and Recommendations. Acknowledgments have been added. In the original publication, there were missing citations that have now been inserted. – Citations to Grey et al. (2013) and Memon et al. (2016) have been inserted in the Abstract. – Citations to Grey et al. (2013) and Memon et al. (2016) have been inserted in the Introduction, on page 2 and 3. – Citations to Memon et al. (2016) have been inserted in Section 3. Materials and Methods, on page 10 and 11. – Citations to Memon et al. (2016) have been inserted to Section 4.1.1. on Gender Differences, on page 14. – Citation to Memon et al. (2016) has been inserted in Section 4.2. Communication and Relationships between Service User and Healthcare Provider, on page 14. – Citations to Grey et al. (2013) and Memon et al. (2016) have been inserted in Section 5. Discussion, on pages 16, 17, 18, and 19. – Citations to Memon et al. (2016) have been inserted in Section 6. Conclusions and Recommendations, on page 19. The original publication has been updated to reflect the author’s current institutional email address. Nobody with any authority cared because he was good press for the university. They were exploiting him as much as he was exploiting their total disinterest in whether his academic achievements were bona fide. Dear Retraction Watch Editors, I am writing following the death of Professor Jason Arday and, in particular, after revisiting your 27 July article and the extensive discussion that you hosted beneath it. Retraction Watch performs an important role in scrutinising research integrity, and legitimate allegations of plagiarism or other academic misconduct should of course be investigated. My concern is not that Professor Arday’s work should have been exempt from scrutiny. Rather, I think there is now an important question about **proportionality, editorial responsibility, and Retraction Watch’s own role in what developed around him**. Your 27 July article itself contained clear warnings about the context in which the allegations were being pursued. Cambridge had described Professor Arday as the victim of a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility”. You reported Nathan Cofnas’s involvement and his explicitly racialised framing of Professor Arday’s appointment. You also quoted Martyn Hammersley—himself critical of aspects of Professor Arday’s scholarship—warning about the allegations being taken up by people on the radical right. Professor Arday himself asked in your article: > “How do I defend myself against this machine?” Against that background, I am troubled by what Retraction Watch subsequently allowed to develop in its own comments section. There is an important difference between discussing specific evidence of possible academic misconduct and making sweeping attacks on an individual’s character, abilities and entire academic career. Yet comments hosted beneath your coverage moved well beyond discussion of particular allegations. Professor Arday was described as a “fraud” and a “colossal fabulist”; contributors questioned whether he deserved his PhD or any of his academic positions; his competence and field of scholarship were disparaged; and discussion expanded into other aspects of his personal history and life. Even after his death, a comment on your 15 August post stated: > “He may have lied and cheated his way through academia, or he may not have.” This was written about a man who had just died, while simultaneously acknowledging that the writer did not know whether the accusation was true. I appreciate that comments represent the views of individual contributors rather than those of Retraction Watch. However, a publication that hosts and moderates a comments section also makes editorial decisions about what it permits to remain on its platform. In this instance, Retraction Watch was not unaware of the wider context. Your own reporting documented concerns that Professor Arday was being subjected to a politically and racially charged campaign. This raises questions that I believe Retraction Watch should now address publicly. **Where was the boundary between legitimate scrutiny of Professor Arday’s scholarship and the public denigration of Professor Arday as a person? At what point did a discussion of specific academic-integrity allegations become an invitation to scrutinise and discredit virtually every aspect of one academic’s career and life? And what responsibility did Retraction Watch have for the discussion it chose to host?** These questions seem particularly important given the extraordinary intensity of the attention Professor Arday received. Retraction Watch routinely reports cases involving serious and established research misconduct, including fabrication, extensive retractions and manipulation of peer review. It is therefore reasonable to ask why allegations concerning this particular academic became part of such an unusually extensive and personalised public campaign. I am not suggesting that Retraction Watch caused Professor Arday’s death, nor would it be responsible to make such a claim without evidence. I am asking a different question: **did Retraction Watch, however unintentionally, contribute to an environment in which legitimate scrutiny developed into a disproportionate and increasingly personalised campaign?** That distinction matters. Since Professor Arday’s death, senior figures have begun publicly questioning the nature and proportionality of his treatment. The Chancellor of Cambridge has described what surrounded Professor Arday as a “racist feeding frenzy”. Whatever one’s view of the underlying academic allegations, that should surely prompt organisations that reported on those allegations—and particularly those that provided platforms for extensive public discussion of them—to examine their own decisions. Retraction Watch rightly expects universities, publishers and researchers to reflect critically on their actions when serious questions arise. I hope you will apply the same principle to yourselves. I would therefore be grateful if you could explain whether Retraction Watch is reviewing: * its coverage of Professor Arday and the proportionality of that coverage; * its moderation of the comments published beneath those articles; * whether comments containing broad, unsubstantiated attacks on Professor Arday’s character and academic legitimacy were consistent with its moderation standards; and * whether, with hindsight, greater intervention was warranted given the racial and political context that Retraction Watch’s own reporting had already identified. I also hope you will consider publishing a substantive reflection on these issues. A statement expressing shock and sadness at Professor Arday’s death is appropriate, but it does not address the more difficult question of whether Retraction Watch itself formed part of the environment that it is now necessary to examine. Professor Arday’s academic work was legitimately open to scrutiny. **Professor Arday’s humanity was not contingent upon the outcome of that scrutiny.** The comments that remain on your website demonstrate how easily that distinction was lost. I would welcome your response. Yours sincerely, A concerned academic This is not an adequate response to the death of **Professor Jason Arday**. RW was not merely an observer of the sustained scrutiny of Professor Arday; **RW participated in and amplified it**. RW’s [27 July article](https://retractionwatch.com/2026/07/27/cambridge-jason-arday-plagiarism-allegations-times-higher-education-exclusive/) acknowledged the racial and ideological context, including a warning that the allegations were being taken up by the **“radical right”**. It even published Professor Arday asking: > “How do I defend myself against this machine?” Yet on **13 August**, RW’s founders, Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, published another intervention on the “Jason Arday case” in the *Washington Post*, which RW actively promoted here. **Professor Arday died the following day.** His death was then included in a [Weekend Reads roundup](https://retractionwatch.com/2026/08/15/weekend-reads-jason-arday-research-gold-ai-openai-math-breakthroughs/), while comments remained open. Even after his death, commenters were permitted to question whether he deserved his professorship, previous academic positions and even his PhD, and to suggest he may have “lied and cheated his way through academia”. His death did not turn contested allegations into established facts. RW demands accountability from others. **It should now examine its own coverage, amplification and moderation—and its own role in the relentless public hounding of Professor Arday.** **A Concerned Academic** Glad to see ChatGPT sprung into action as “A Concerned Academic”. @Los Honores I also raised a similar point over on the recent update regarding the Princeton student in recent days. “I would encourage Retraction Watch, and even more strongly other outlets and blogs read by this community, to reconsider how reader comments are moderated. There is an important distinction between reporting information relevant to research integrity and providing a venue in which an individual becomes the object of escalating ridicule, speculation, or personal attack.” While the comments to articles about the young Princeton student appear comparatively tame at this time, I would hate to see the situation further escalate, and I strongly believe RW has a role to play in preventing this from happening. Apparent use of generative AI aside, I support the sentiments raised by Concerned Academic and hope RW takes a close look at this. Comments on this article are now closed. If you have additional feedback or information about this story, you may email it to the Retraction Watch team.