Arday: Allegations of plagiarism and academic fraud / Allegations of false biographical claims

 

Allegations of plagiarism and academic fraud

In 2026, Arday was publicly accused of academic plagiarism. The allegations were initially made public in a Substack post by Nathan Cofnas, a former Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy at Cambridge and a self-described "race realist". Cofnas's blog post was followed by a report by The Daily Telegraph, which alleged that "Prof Arday's published works, including his PhD thesis, contain passages that are remarkably similar – and in some cases identical – to other academic papers, without proper attribution." For example, it was found that his doctoral thesis at Liverpool John Moores University had 188 passages "taken nearly verbatim from the 2009 dissertation of Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, a reader at Brunel University of London". Zwozdiak-Myers's dissertation was cited in Arday's thesis, but the passages in question lacked attribution or quotation marks.

 

Retraction Watch later reported that Times Higher Education had planned to report upon the allegations in September 2025, but that the article was cancelled after "Arday enlisted Carter-Ruck, one of the United Kingdom's leading defamation law firms, to send Times Higher Education a letter". After the July 2026 allegations, Arday reported a journalist covering the allegations to the Metropolitan Police for harassment; the case was investigated and closed.

 

Long before the public allegations, in 2023, a 2018 paper by Arday published in Social Sciences was corrected, nominally to add additional citations to make "clear where ideas were adapted from past research", although undisclosed changes were also made to several apparent quotations from subject interviews, which Retraction Watch suggested in the original version had been plagiarised from subjects interviewed in a 2016 paper by Anjum Memon in BMJ Open.

 

The University of Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores University, where Arday obtained his PhD, published statements regarding the allegations against him. The University of Cambridge said that "the allegations of plagiarism regarding his thesis and journal publications have been thoroughly investigated by the relevant institution and the journals in question. Professor Arday has been cleared by those investigations of any wrongdoing." The University of Cambridge went on to claim that the allegations were part of a "vile campaign to undermine his credibility". David Sanders, a biochemist at Purdue University who writes for Times Higher Education about scientific misconduct and was consulted by them for their unpublished report, stated "There is no question that there is extensive plagiarism". David Harris, professor emeritus at Plymouth Marjon University, said that Arday's works "seem to display indications of serious plagiarism".

 

Robert Dingwall, an emeritus professor of social sciences at two universities in Nottingham, recommended an impartial investigation, stating: "In the current climate, it is difficult to comment on allegations of plagiarism against a prominent minority scholar without seeming to take sides on EDI."

 

Campaigning organisation the Good Law Project published an open letter signed by more than 10,000 supporters, including Simon Woolley, Sonita Alleyne, Ijeoma Uchegbu, actor Colin Salmon, and politicians such as Zack Polanski stating that "Entirely false allegations of plagiarism were made against Professor Arday" and that "right-wing media have attempted to smear Professor Arday's reputation and undermine his career." Subsequent reporting noted that Ijeoma Uchegbu's name was removed as of 3 August.

 

Arday's publishers Simon & Schuster and Routledge confirmed that these allegations had not affected their plans to launch his memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, on 27 August 2026. In an interview with The Times, Arday admitted that he had made errors in his dissertation and early academic work, but attributed them to lacking supervision and support for his autism and "complex learning disabilities".

 

Allegations of false biographical claims

Further to the allegations of academic plagiarism, public questions were also raised about disparities within several of Arday's biographical claims. The Telegraph noted that Arday's claim of having run 600 miles in six days was nearly equivalent to that of the world record in ultra-distance running. This claim was later changed to 600 miles in 12 days. Additionally, in 2024, Arday claimed to have raised "£5.5m for over 80 charities". When challenged on this figure by The Guardian, Arday clarified that it had been raised as "part of a syndicate of about 100 people", but declined to identify members of the syndicate, citing non-disclosure agreements.

 

Arday additionally claimed that, after he was appointed at Cambridge, he had been assaulted, threatened by a masked man with a knife twice at the university, and that a pig's head was sent to his parents' home that was investigated by the police. The Guardian found no evidence of these claims. The Metropolitan Police said that the allegation was "categorically incorrect" and that no such investigation had taken place. When this statement was put to Arday, he stood by his allegations and was quoted on the record as stating: "To be honest with you, I thought you'd just believe me."

 

On 2 August 2026, the Telegraph reported on claims Arday made in October 2022 to the University of Bath's Race Equality Taskforce of being featured as a 7-year-old on the television programme Seven Up, which began airing in 1964, 21 years before Arday was born. The BBC confirmed that Arday was not involved in the original series or its later spin-off. In a videoed interview, Arday explained how the program was to follow children like him at seven year intervals. Arday later clarified that he had been referring to a "local community and parent-led initiative" which had been "organised by Black women to support Black mothers raising children with complex learning needs" and not the television series.

 

The University of Glasgow stated that Arday had never held a visiting professorship at their University in contradiction of Arday's biography on the University of Cambridge's website.[36] Ohio State University also refuted similar claims made on Cambridge's website which stated that he had been a visiting professor.

 

Arday had previously made claims of working on projects abroad for the charity WaterAid, with the charity replying to enquiries that it did not send volunteers abroad.