"Research" is a very general term. Alot of other types of "research" other than STEM. are being funded. But additionally US universities are flush with cash so why is my federal taxes being sent to Belfium are they broke over there?
Arday himself claimed to be a mute autistic that didn't learn to read until 18. I think "mentally disabled" is the technical term for such a person, don't you think?
Arday himself also claimed to have been a professional football player and to have run 600 miles in six days, among other fabulist tales. No one at the University called him on it. Quite the dance, don't you think?
I respectfully disagree. The Trump administration has defunded education and science, and thinks academia is full of elites, and are anti-fact and anti-science. They never do things like this in good faith, and the administration is full of incompetent individuals with no experience in the fields in which they are hired to operate. Instead, what should happen is every academic, as part of their hiring, should be investigated for plagiarism and scientific misconduct (the way you do background checks before hiring someone working with children). If that had happened, all this would have been avoided. But there is a reason they don’t do that, and that is many academics actually engage in plagiarism and other research misconduct (as you report in your blog). Most academics are white guys - so this policy I’m suggesting would promote a true meritocracy while damaging white guys. This is the real reason institutions don’t take this responsibility - because they know some of their favorite academics won’t get hired or will end up on the wrong end of a pile-on. I’m sad the guy took his life, but I pretty much guarantee that if you investigate everyone, you’ll find a lot of plagiarists and frauds, they will be of all demographics, and some will unalive themselves if it comes to light. I have absolutely no tolerance for cheaters, but if you are a scientist, you constantly encounter them, and you just have to live with it because these institutions refuse to take responsibility for preventing it.
I am a professional academic in mathematical theory, and I wholeheartedly disagree. I agree with the Trump admins criticisms of academia, and I live and work there. You may view them as anti-science if you have an (incorrect) view of academia as a place of correct science, and pursuit of truth.
It isn't. I don't know what else to tell you. It is extremely difficult to succeed without joining everyone else and lying, because they publish far too fast for actual correct research to take place. This is just a basic criticism...you wouldn't believe me if I told you the truth about how completely absurd this place is. I do love it in the end, but the Trump admin criticisms are absolutely spot on, and as absolutely should be shutting the money off. These people KNOW they are lying to take this money, they laugh about it openly in the break room all the time, I am literally there! They think politicians are stupid, and deserve to lose it, and "it least it's not going to wars". That is their opinion on stealing taxpayer money by lying about the usefulness and applicability of their work...and half the time lying about what they're going to work on entirely.
They're just having fun doing whatever they want with enormous amounts of money flowing in. It has to stop. They have to be held to some kind of account. An excellent first step is defunding the worst offenders: the completely unscientific and irreproducible research surrounding left wing ideologues.
That's my professional opinion. I think it should be worth more than yours since I have published in top journals, and been a part of the very peer review process that you think results in "true science" (....don't even get me started). You think this work is correct because people told you. I know the truth because I can read it.
Re: hiring, you are completely wrong. Hiring for tenure is a serious process. You certainly need research that reads like real work, it is absolutely not the case that they just don't check at all. They don't study to prove it's correctness because that would take months, but it is absolutely not the case that they let Arday-like candidates through. He was let through because he was black, and I have personally witnessed this insane behavior. I have watched a room stand and clap for a black man who have a talk that would not have been good for an undergraduate talk. He looked confused. He knew his talk wasn't good. One person raised their hand to say "this is one of the greatest talks I have ever heard"...so weird. We see this with our eyes. You are assuming, I am not...I am there. EVERY offer of funding I get emailed EXPLICITLY says it is primarily for people of color or women. Not a SINGLE one fails to say this.
You can't act in good faith towards people who are not themselves acting in good faith. Academics are laughing at the government. Academics are taking their money to study whatever they personally enjoy knowing full well it will never benefit anyone. Want an egregious example? Look at how the homotopy type theorists convinced the air force that homotopy type theory was an important national defense interest. They got 7 million dollars. They still laugh about this today. It's literally fraud. How do you treat that in "good faith"?
You're also just conflating different things...the Trump admin policies have nothing to do with academics being more stringent in policing each others work. The Trump admin idea is to shut off the money to fields that are blatantly unscientific and do not serve the people of America. It is easy to prove their irreproducibility, so it's not an opinion that they are unscientific. Yes, people cheat, but it's in far, far, far more subtle ways than Arday did, and it takes enormous amounts of energy to uncover it...that's the reason people don't. It is literally a form of research work to uncover these things, and it would be a full time job. People would rather just do their own research.
No reason to be rude, colleague. I also publish in top journals. I agree with a lot of what you say, but you seem to contradict yourself. You praise Trump but skewer politicians - I agree with what you say about politicians, but that applies to Trump, too. It’s hard for me to understand exactly what you are saying, but I think it’s “defund it all” (e.g., burn it all down). That’s a legit POV, but my opinion of “do it right in the first place” isn’t so bad. Not all science is rocket science; people can do it without cheating. I’ve helped a lot of people get tenure without cheating. You seem to be complaining that it’s too hard to get ahead of all the cheaters without cheating yourself. Well, it is hard, but it’s not TOO hard. Are you defending cheating?
I wish you wouldn’t put words in my mouth. I don’t see academia as some place where true science comes out. I think peer review is a shit show. Yes, much of what is in journals is bad science. You talk like I’m not in academia with you - I am. You are right, it’s hard to succeed without lying or cheating. But it is our job, right?
You whine about minorities and women - but are somehow against checking all applicants for an academic position - why? In your response, you do not say why. We both agree many are frauds. I’d love to hear a real reason for not catching all the frauds before they are hired. Are you afraid they won’t all be women and minorities? They won’t.
It's not really a place to have a serious conversation, to be honest...you haven't read what I wrote carefully, either, which is the expectation. It's the comments section on the internet. It's usually a pretty safe assumption that people talking about science aren't scientists, and that's why I made that assumption about you.
I am not disparaging minorities and women. I am disparaging the white people who infantilize them by clapping for them when they haven't done anything useful. I like the man who gave the talk, I consider him a friend...but he is not a serious academic. He knows it. He doesn't want a job in academia, that's not what his life is about. What's ridiculous is when excellent mathematicians pretend he's the second coming. I've watched it happen many times, so I know that it's aimed at "under-represented groups". I'd say they do it most hysterically for trans mathemeticians, second so for black ones, and then slightly less vigorously for women, but the behavior is completely obvious. These are not borderline cases: I see them do this to people who should not be graduating at all, or people on the tenure track who never should have got post-docs. You can just say I don't, but...what kind of unbelievably distorted reality could I possibly live in? These people know they're doing it, they think it's just. Evening the score, somehow.
This has nothing to do with my opinion of minority or female mathematicians. I have met some exceptional ones, and I respect them for their work like anyone else. I actually find it insulting to these people who have fought so hard to master mathematics that people would falsely celebrate people who deliberately don't care, and don't want to care. I even find it hostile to the ones who don't care...they know they don't, they know their work isn't very good, so they know they're being infantilized. The only people who win are the clapping white people who feel good about what they've done.
If you don't believe my motivations, maybe you'll find it interesting to know that I don't support the man who outed Arday, because I think he's a racist. He believes race group differences are primarily caused by genetics, and I don't think he provides strong evidence for this, and I would not be willing to support such an obviously harmful claim unless it were supported by extremely strong evidence. I am not a blind ideologue like many on the internet...I can be against Arday without having to accept Confas.
Re: cheating, the behavior you are talking about is very different from the behavior this article is about. Yes, mathematicians cheat in subtle ways, but their work reads like real math...you can't tell by glancing at it. You have to study it very carefully to understand it's wrong...else it would be rejected, and they wouldn't have jobs.
That's not what's happening in the DEI space. The ridiculousness of Arday's claims was immediately obvious. This kind of behavior, in my experience, is not allowed in general in academia, especially past the post-doc phase. At least, it's not in math. You cannot get a tenure track job with obviously false math...unless you are under-represented. Then, you can. I've seen it first hand, we see it here, with the Arday case, and many people are talking about it all over the world.
I do not want to "burn it all down", and I certainly don't want to destroy the funding I personally use, and Trump doesn't. He hasn't negatively affected funding in math at all. He hasn't negatively effected it in most things, he has targeted certain fields which I strongly feel do not deserve to be called science at all. I don't trust Trump, I don't endorse everything Trump does, and am simply thrilled that someone is doing something...anything...about this issue I have been passionate about for years. I truly believe academia is colossally unaccountable, and I would be happy to take a hit in my own career if it were to be rectified. It's wrong. People break their backs building houses. It is wrong for us to take millions of dollars worth of taxes and just study whatever abstract nonsense suits our fancy while misrepresenting the benefits of doing so.
Re: "background checks", do you seriously feel that tenure track academics are not sufficiently required to have strong-appearing work? I don't think I've ever heard such a thing...people say it's nearly impossible to get past. Maybe it's different in your field (and it could easily be so)...but that is absolutely not the case in math.
To uncover the cheats, you'd have to spend months studying them...and yes, I absolutely expect you would primarily find white men doing this, because everyone does it, and there's more white men. I am not in any way suggesting that this is a thing minorities do more...that, you have put in my mouth, probably because you're angry at the idiots on the conservative side that do believe it. Fair enough.
Even the people I personally like cheat to some degree in math. Almost no one is completely honest...they judge the level of logical detail necessary as the "amount necessary for people not to notice". Of course...that may mean we aren't talking mathematical truth...but in math, there's no reality to compare to. Nothing to call you to account aside from others noticing...and they're focused on producing their own work.
Maybe this is why you don't see the audacity of this situation: we DO audit people. We DO check carefully (as in hours worth of reading...not the months it would take to truly know on a deep level) We DO catch people before they're given tenure...just not for DEI hires. The thing you are asking for is already here (in fields like mine, anyway)...and it did not stop Arday...and that is precisely the problem.
It is not feasible to manually check everyone's math, it would be a full time job to do that even for just one or two other academics. My field really is "rocket science", so verification and correctness are serious problems that can be easily done away with unless the culture changes, and people just do the math correctly themselves. AI may end up really bailing us out here, and I hope it does, but that is a different conversation.
Finally...Re: "can't get ahead without cheating", I just work very, very hard. I am very proud of what I produce, and frankly, I think people know it's the real thing, and they respect. I do it for myself. They could say it's crap, and I wouldn't care, because I know it's excellent, I demand it of myself. I do watch people get jobs at the same level as me by just tossing stuff together...math they don't even understand. I've been a part of collaborations like that where the consensus opinion was "no one is going to read it carefully enough to know, just leave it alone". I refuse, and I am proud that I refuse.
To me, math is literally meaningless if it isn't undeniably the truth. If not the truth, it's a random jumble of letters. I am not wasting my life producing random jumbles of letters. Am I defending cheating? No. When I was young, I thought academia was going to be a place full of people like me, and I was extremely disappointed. I forgive them...I understand why they do what they do...but no, I am not defending cheating. At all. And I call it out every single time I see it, and if it's a collaborator, and they won't listen, I leave the collaboration, completely unashamed. I don't care how much work we are throwing I way, I will not allow my name to go on anything that I am not 100% sure is literally and absolutely true. It's a religious zeal to me.
Anyway, there's a reason this account is anonymous. It's 1 in the morning, and this is stream of consciousness. If my name were on what I was saying, I'd say very little, and only when I was very sure...and probably only in person, where people are actually open to hearing other perspectives like they're coming from a conscious human being. It is, like I said, the comments section on the internet...I do enjoy stirring the pot a bit, I cannot lie. So there's your rant. I probably wouldn't read it.
Wow this is a long comment. Too many points to address, but in general, I think we agree more than we disagree. Here is where we disagree. 1) I’m on an NIH grant announcement weekly mailing list, and it used to be two pages, but Trump cut all grants, and now it’s empty. Is health not important? 2) I really don’t think it would be that hard to at least do a cursory investigation of every academic hired, especially into a tenure track position, to ensure they aren’t an obvious fraud. That would be fair and have prevented what Arday went through. 3) I also don’t like “clapping for people who haven’t done anything useful”, but that’s not a demographic thing, it’s a cronyism thing. It’s just more noticeable when people do it for minorities because it gets talked about a lot more. Just look in Retraction Watch and some of the authors with the most retracted articles are white guys. Why? Because people spent years clapping instead of calling them out. 4) I’m not anonymous. I’m pretty unafraid of being known for calling out scientific misconduct.
You seem to have very specific understanding of the math space in academia, and maybe it runs differently than the rest of academia (like where Arday was). They don’t really audit people in the rest of academia. There’s a lot of “hire frauds then only investigate and pile on the Black/gay/female/pick you DEI class” ones. Like you, I hate working among frauds which is why I made the comment. It’s too bad you’re anonymous - I’d like to read your work. It sounds interesting. Thanks for continuing to fight the good fight.
Well Biden got into trouble for plagiarism when he was in law school and the first time he ran for President. He also made up some amazing stories. But his position at U. Penn was more honorary, and certainly Arday’s stories set a high benchmark. Are you really claiming many academics plagiarized as much as Arday and made up crazier stories than running multiple marathons with a broken leg.
It depends on the directory. I’ll bet you really enjoyed saying that. What I’d really enjoy is if all the frauds were not hired in the first place in all of academia. Can you say the same?
Obviously, we would all prefer that all frauds were not hired...I do think you are assuming conservative people are more stupid than they actually are.
That sounds just as insulting as my headmaster did 60 years ago. What gives you the right to demean people who are just living their lives? And how does it help?
To what are you referring? Who is just “living their lives” that I’m demeaning? Unless you are defending scientists who engage in scientific misconduct as people “just living their lives”. If that’s what you’re saying, I’m sorry, I don’t agree. I think scientists who engage in scientific misconduct should not be scientists.
Your rhetoric reads pretty clearly anti-conservative with things like "are you afraid they wouldn't all be women or minorities? They wouldn't". The implication is that a person with conservative views on DEI targets women and minorities unfairly while allowing white people off the hook. I'm sure you can see how your implicit read of the "anonymous conservative"'s character gives away your feelings.
No, you misread me. I’m saying the reason why academic leaders don’t work to prevent hiring frauds is so they can hire all the white guy frauds they want, along with frauds of other demographics, then selectively pile-on to the minority frauds after they are hired. Saying you don’t want frauds to be hired in the first place is not an anti-conservative position - unless conservatives support hiring frauds, which I don’t think is the case.
To put it rather plainly, we’ve long since reached the point where we accept one of two options, destruction of large parts of academia, which produces primarily worthless scholarship, while engaging in naked racist and sexist bigotry, while accepting that a good deal of legitimate science will be caught in the blast radius, or letting things go on as they have before. I am not happy about the first option, and view it as akin to attempting to cure a cancer by lopping off a limb. But I am far more worried about the cancer at this point, and pretty much everything that has happened in the past 15 years, and especially the past 6, has pushed me much more in favor of emergency amputation. Equally, anyone arguing in good faith can’t really deny that we reached this point in substantial part because we spent the past 15 years debating whether the phenomenon commonly termed “wokeness” really was a cancer in the body of academia or not. Had someone like Arday been slapped down back in 2011, when his fabulism was comparatively sedate, we would not be in the position we are in 2026.
Oh come on. I’ve been publishing since the ‘90’s - it was always full of frauds that weren’t being caught. It has nothing to do with sex and race (although back then, it was admittedly whiter and more male). What has mainly changed is that there are way more academics and journals now, and technology has introduced way more ways to cheat. Like Louis said, academia is not some sort of magic machine that automatically produces truth. To continue your analogy, it’s not that the cancer is new, it’s just that the tumor is bigger and more obvious, and the limb it is on was already compromised anyway.
This is an honest and balanced reply. Thank you for elaborating on your ideas and choosing not to use trigger language. May I just check on something? I think you said DEI hires are not subject to full vetting prior to appointment. Is that correct?
No. I’m saying that no one is being vetted for a history of academic misconduct upon hiring (at least, in the fields I’ve operated in, which includes a lot of them by now because I’m old). Louis says they are vetted in math; I didn’t know that. But in most fields, no one is vetted for this. A simple check to see if the person plagiarized their dissertation or other published work, or did a study without ethical approval, etc. would prevent the hiring of frauds, and would have prevented Arday’s hiring.
My message was meant for Louis but thanks for your reply. If I had been the Chair of the search committee or department (who was a white woman) I would have done that search. Doing one is not a function of sex, age or race. The less we talk about them the better. Just do the job properly.
I agree, but to acknowledge Louis’s point, it is hard to do a fair investigation. I feel that if it is department policy that at least a cursory screen is done on all candidates to try to identify if there is obvious scientific misconduct going on, it would be fairer and easier to implement. It would have definitely prevented this Arday mess.
I am sure that Cambridge did a cursory review of Arday’s work and that was his undoing. The short list candidates clearly need to have their PhD thesis read and checked for plagiarism. Journalists and amateurs have figured out the weak points in this process and the thesis is their starter for ten ( cultural defence to University Challenge on British tv). The game is up! Get used to it.
I spoke to a guy yesterday who works in tech for a company that gets big public defence contracts. The checks he has to go through dwarf the regular academic ones. When the decision comes down to the final candidate(s), it should be thorough and that includes PhDs and all published and public pronouncements.
Their argument for suspending him amounts to "it's not what you said, it's how you said it".
And while I'm also glad the US is currently using its power this way, I am pained to discover US taxpayer is somehow funding Ghent University. Is there anything we're not paying for?
I have never been prouder of an American government official than I am of Ambassador Bill White and of the courage of a scholar such as Nathan Cofnas. It was with inspiration derived from their actions that I wrote this little poem in praise of them. https://birthofvenus.substack.com/p/ghent-can-get-bent?r=e6s49&utm_medium=ios
Classic case of killing the messenger. Deflecting blame so Those uni’s don’t have to soul search their role in enabling of this very disturbed and fanciful man.
I would like to know : Why does a Belgiu
m University get USA funding in the first place?
Oh, US funds all sorts of foreign places, like labs in China and Ukraine
💯
Its called international research. Thats how many medicines and treatment come into being.
"Research" is a very general term. Alot of other types of "research" other than STEM. are being funded. But additionally US universities are flush with cash so why is my federal taxes being sent to Belfium are they broke over there?
it could be also typical for this administration figment of their imagination.
You may be right
We have the most expensive higher education in the world. Why not direct the funding towards making it more affordable for Americans.
Arday himself claimed to be a mute autistic that didn't learn to read until 18. I think "mentally disabled" is the technical term for such a person, don't you think?
Arday himself also claimed to have been a professional football player and to have run 600 miles in six days, among other fabulist tales. No one at the University called him on it. Quite the dance, don't you think?
they prefer the term "retarded" now.
🤣🤣🤣
"mentally disabled" is the technical term for such a person, don't you think?"
Certainly not, Louis; the correct term is "other-abled neuro-atypical person of color oppressed by cis-het ablest reactionarialism."
Do try to keep up, dear fellow; mustn't marginalize lived experience or delegitimize other ways of knowing (might stampede the horses or something.)
It shouldn't be a surprise the De Sutter leapt to the defense of Arday: fabulists of a feather stick together as the proverb might have it.
"Cambridge scholar" is now rhyming slang for Zimbabwean currency, like "Oxford scholar" but worthless.
He calls Arkady mentally disabled. Arkady ends up killing himself. I mean if he was of sound mind he probably wouldn't have done so.
I respectfully disagree. The Trump administration has defunded education and science, and thinks academia is full of elites, and are anti-fact and anti-science. They never do things like this in good faith, and the administration is full of incompetent individuals with no experience in the fields in which they are hired to operate. Instead, what should happen is every academic, as part of their hiring, should be investigated for plagiarism and scientific misconduct (the way you do background checks before hiring someone working with children). If that had happened, all this would have been avoided. But there is a reason they don’t do that, and that is many academics actually engage in plagiarism and other research misconduct (as you report in your blog). Most academics are white guys - so this policy I’m suggesting would promote a true meritocracy while damaging white guys. This is the real reason institutions don’t take this responsibility - because they know some of their favorite academics won’t get hired or will end up on the wrong end of a pile-on. I’m sad the guy took his life, but I pretty much guarantee that if you investigate everyone, you’ll find a lot of plagiarists and frauds, they will be of all demographics, and some will unalive themselves if it comes to light. I have absolutely no tolerance for cheaters, but if you are a scientist, you constantly encounter them, and you just have to live with it because these institutions refuse to take responsibility for preventing it.
I am a professional academic in mathematical theory, and I wholeheartedly disagree. I agree with the Trump admins criticisms of academia, and I live and work there. You may view them as anti-science if you have an (incorrect) view of academia as a place of correct science, and pursuit of truth.
It isn't. I don't know what else to tell you. It is extremely difficult to succeed without joining everyone else and lying, because they publish far too fast for actual correct research to take place. This is just a basic criticism...you wouldn't believe me if I told you the truth about how completely absurd this place is. I do love it in the end, but the Trump admin criticisms are absolutely spot on, and as absolutely should be shutting the money off. These people KNOW they are lying to take this money, they laugh about it openly in the break room all the time, I am literally there! They think politicians are stupid, and deserve to lose it, and "it least it's not going to wars". That is their opinion on stealing taxpayer money by lying about the usefulness and applicability of their work...and half the time lying about what they're going to work on entirely.
They're just having fun doing whatever they want with enormous amounts of money flowing in. It has to stop. They have to be held to some kind of account. An excellent first step is defunding the worst offenders: the completely unscientific and irreproducible research surrounding left wing ideologues.
That's my professional opinion. I think it should be worth more than yours since I have published in top journals, and been a part of the very peer review process that you think results in "true science" (....don't even get me started). You think this work is correct because people told you. I know the truth because I can read it.
Re: hiring, you are completely wrong. Hiring for tenure is a serious process. You certainly need research that reads like real work, it is absolutely not the case that they just don't check at all. They don't study to prove it's correctness because that would take months, but it is absolutely not the case that they let Arday-like candidates through. He was let through because he was black, and I have personally witnessed this insane behavior. I have watched a room stand and clap for a black man who have a talk that would not have been good for an undergraduate talk. He looked confused. He knew his talk wasn't good. One person raised their hand to say "this is one of the greatest talks I have ever heard"...so weird. We see this with our eyes. You are assuming, I am not...I am there. EVERY offer of funding I get emailed EXPLICITLY says it is primarily for people of color or women. Not a SINGLE one fails to say this.
You can't act in good faith towards people who are not themselves acting in good faith. Academics are laughing at the government. Academics are taking their money to study whatever they personally enjoy knowing full well it will never benefit anyone. Want an egregious example? Look at how the homotopy type theorists convinced the air force that homotopy type theory was an important national defense interest. They got 7 million dollars. They still laugh about this today. It's literally fraud. How do you treat that in "good faith"?
You're also just conflating different things...the Trump admin policies have nothing to do with academics being more stringent in policing each others work. The Trump admin idea is to shut off the money to fields that are blatantly unscientific and do not serve the people of America. It is easy to prove their irreproducibility, so it's not an opinion that they are unscientific. Yes, people cheat, but it's in far, far, far more subtle ways than Arday did, and it takes enormous amounts of energy to uncover it...that's the reason people don't. It is literally a form of research work to uncover these things, and it would be a full time job. People would rather just do their own research.
No reason to be rude, colleague. I also publish in top journals. I agree with a lot of what you say, but you seem to contradict yourself. You praise Trump but skewer politicians - I agree with what you say about politicians, but that applies to Trump, too. It’s hard for me to understand exactly what you are saying, but I think it’s “defund it all” (e.g., burn it all down). That’s a legit POV, but my opinion of “do it right in the first place” isn’t so bad. Not all science is rocket science; people can do it without cheating. I’ve helped a lot of people get tenure without cheating. You seem to be complaining that it’s too hard to get ahead of all the cheaters without cheating yourself. Well, it is hard, but it’s not TOO hard. Are you defending cheating?
I wish you wouldn’t put words in my mouth. I don’t see academia as some place where true science comes out. I think peer review is a shit show. Yes, much of what is in journals is bad science. You talk like I’m not in academia with you - I am. You are right, it’s hard to succeed without lying or cheating. But it is our job, right?
You whine about minorities and women - but are somehow against checking all applicants for an academic position - why? In your response, you do not say why. We both agree many are frauds. I’d love to hear a real reason for not catching all the frauds before they are hired. Are you afraid they won’t all be women and minorities? They won’t.
It's not really a place to have a serious conversation, to be honest...you haven't read what I wrote carefully, either, which is the expectation. It's the comments section on the internet. It's usually a pretty safe assumption that people talking about science aren't scientists, and that's why I made that assumption about you.
I am not disparaging minorities and women. I am disparaging the white people who infantilize them by clapping for them when they haven't done anything useful. I like the man who gave the talk, I consider him a friend...but he is not a serious academic. He knows it. He doesn't want a job in academia, that's not what his life is about. What's ridiculous is when excellent mathematicians pretend he's the second coming. I've watched it happen many times, so I know that it's aimed at "under-represented groups". I'd say they do it most hysterically for trans mathemeticians, second so for black ones, and then slightly less vigorously for women, but the behavior is completely obvious. These are not borderline cases: I see them do this to people who should not be graduating at all, or people on the tenure track who never should have got post-docs. You can just say I don't, but...what kind of unbelievably distorted reality could I possibly live in? These people know they're doing it, they think it's just. Evening the score, somehow.
This has nothing to do with my opinion of minority or female mathematicians. I have met some exceptional ones, and I respect them for their work like anyone else. I actually find it insulting to these people who have fought so hard to master mathematics that people would falsely celebrate people who deliberately don't care, and don't want to care. I even find it hostile to the ones who don't care...they know they don't, they know their work isn't very good, so they know they're being infantilized. The only people who win are the clapping white people who feel good about what they've done.
If you don't believe my motivations, maybe you'll find it interesting to know that I don't support the man who outed Arday, because I think he's a racist. He believes race group differences are primarily caused by genetics, and I don't think he provides strong evidence for this, and I would not be willing to support such an obviously harmful claim unless it were supported by extremely strong evidence. I am not a blind ideologue like many on the internet...I can be against Arday without having to accept Confas.
Re: cheating, the behavior you are talking about is very different from the behavior this article is about. Yes, mathematicians cheat in subtle ways, but their work reads like real math...you can't tell by glancing at it. You have to study it very carefully to understand it's wrong...else it would be rejected, and they wouldn't have jobs.
That's not what's happening in the DEI space. The ridiculousness of Arday's claims was immediately obvious. This kind of behavior, in my experience, is not allowed in general in academia, especially past the post-doc phase. At least, it's not in math. You cannot get a tenure track job with obviously false math...unless you are under-represented. Then, you can. I've seen it first hand, we see it here, with the Arday case, and many people are talking about it all over the world.
I do not want to "burn it all down", and I certainly don't want to destroy the funding I personally use, and Trump doesn't. He hasn't negatively affected funding in math at all. He hasn't negatively effected it in most things, he has targeted certain fields which I strongly feel do not deserve to be called science at all. I don't trust Trump, I don't endorse everything Trump does, and am simply thrilled that someone is doing something...anything...about this issue I have been passionate about for years. I truly believe academia is colossally unaccountable, and I would be happy to take a hit in my own career if it were to be rectified. It's wrong. People break their backs building houses. It is wrong for us to take millions of dollars worth of taxes and just study whatever abstract nonsense suits our fancy while misrepresenting the benefits of doing so.
Re: "background checks", do you seriously feel that tenure track academics are not sufficiently required to have strong-appearing work? I don't think I've ever heard such a thing...people say it's nearly impossible to get past. Maybe it's different in your field (and it could easily be so)...but that is absolutely not the case in math.
To uncover the cheats, you'd have to spend months studying them...and yes, I absolutely expect you would primarily find white men doing this, because everyone does it, and there's more white men. I am not in any way suggesting that this is a thing minorities do more...that, you have put in my mouth, probably because you're angry at the idiots on the conservative side that do believe it. Fair enough.
Even the people I personally like cheat to some degree in math. Almost no one is completely honest...they judge the level of logical detail necessary as the "amount necessary for people not to notice". Of course...that may mean we aren't talking mathematical truth...but in math, there's no reality to compare to. Nothing to call you to account aside from others noticing...and they're focused on producing their own work.
Maybe this is why you don't see the audacity of this situation: we DO audit people. We DO check carefully (as in hours worth of reading...not the months it would take to truly know on a deep level) We DO catch people before they're given tenure...just not for DEI hires. The thing you are asking for is already here (in fields like mine, anyway)...and it did not stop Arday...and that is precisely the problem.
It is not feasible to manually check everyone's math, it would be a full time job to do that even for just one or two other academics. My field really is "rocket science", so verification and correctness are serious problems that can be easily done away with unless the culture changes, and people just do the math correctly themselves. AI may end up really bailing us out here, and I hope it does, but that is a different conversation.
Finally...Re: "can't get ahead without cheating", I just work very, very hard. I am very proud of what I produce, and frankly, I think people know it's the real thing, and they respect. I do it for myself. They could say it's crap, and I wouldn't care, because I know it's excellent, I demand it of myself. I do watch people get jobs at the same level as me by just tossing stuff together...math they don't even understand. I've been a part of collaborations like that where the consensus opinion was "no one is going to read it carefully enough to know, just leave it alone". I refuse, and I am proud that I refuse.
To me, math is literally meaningless if it isn't undeniably the truth. If not the truth, it's a random jumble of letters. I am not wasting my life producing random jumbles of letters. Am I defending cheating? No. When I was young, I thought academia was going to be a place full of people like me, and I was extremely disappointed. I forgive them...I understand why they do what they do...but no, I am not defending cheating. At all. And I call it out every single time I see it, and if it's a collaborator, and they won't listen, I leave the collaboration, completely unashamed. I don't care how much work we are throwing I way, I will not allow my name to go on anything that I am not 100% sure is literally and absolutely true. It's a religious zeal to me.
Anyway, there's a reason this account is anonymous. It's 1 in the morning, and this is stream of consciousness. If my name were on what I was saying, I'd say very little, and only when I was very sure...and probably only in person, where people are actually open to hearing other perspectives like they're coming from a conscious human being. It is, like I said, the comments section on the internet...I do enjoy stirring the pot a bit, I cannot lie. So there's your rant. I probably wouldn't read it.
Wow this is a long comment. Too many points to address, but in general, I think we agree more than we disagree. Here is where we disagree. 1) I’m on an NIH grant announcement weekly mailing list, and it used to be two pages, but Trump cut all grants, and now it’s empty. Is health not important? 2) I really don’t think it would be that hard to at least do a cursory investigation of every academic hired, especially into a tenure track position, to ensure they aren’t an obvious fraud. That would be fair and have prevented what Arday went through. 3) I also don’t like “clapping for people who haven’t done anything useful”, but that’s not a demographic thing, it’s a cronyism thing. It’s just more noticeable when people do it for minorities because it gets talked about a lot more. Just look in Retraction Watch and some of the authors with the most retracted articles are white guys. Why? Because people spent years clapping instead of calling them out. 4) I’m not anonymous. I’m pretty unafraid of being known for calling out scientific misconduct.
You seem to have very specific understanding of the math space in academia, and maybe it runs differently than the rest of academia (like where Arday was). They don’t really audit people in the rest of academia. There’s a lot of “hire frauds then only investigate and pile on the Black/gay/female/pick you DEI class” ones. Like you, I hate working among frauds which is why I made the comment. It’s too bad you’re anonymous - I’d like to read your work. It sounds interesting. Thanks for continuing to fight the good fight.
Well Biden got into trouble for plagiarism when he was in law school and the first time he ran for President. He also made up some amazing stories. But his position at U. Penn was more honorary, and certainly Arday’s stories set a high benchmark. Are you really claiming many academics plagiarized as much as Arday and made up crazier stories than running multiple marathons with a broken leg.
No, it’s usually more subtle. You are right, Arday was egregious. And I don’t defend Biden one bit.
Who left the chicken coop open again…?
Doesn’t matter how you got here, we are happy to have you!
“Most academics are white guys…” That is not true any more. Just go look or read some faculty directories, particularly people below the age of 50.
But I bet you really enjoyed saying that. Cheap thrills.
It depends on the directory. I’ll bet you really enjoyed saying that. What I’d really enjoy is if all the frauds were not hired in the first place in all of academia. Can you say the same?
Absolutely. No excuses for race, sex, class or anything else. A academia is not a social laboratory.
Exactly.
Obviously, we would all prefer that all frauds were not hired...I do think you are assuming conservative people are more stupid than they actually are.
I didn’t say anything about conservative people. Actually, to be fair, most people are pretty stupid.
Dear Monika
That sounds just as insulting as my headmaster did 60 years ago. What gives you the right to demean people who are just living their lives? And how does it help?
To what are you referring? Who is just “living their lives” that I’m demeaning? Unless you are defending scientists who engage in scientific misconduct as people “just living their lives”. If that’s what you’re saying, I’m sorry, I don’t agree. I think scientists who engage in scientific misconduct should not be scientists.
Your rhetoric reads pretty clearly anti-conservative with things like "are you afraid they wouldn't all be women or minorities? They wouldn't". The implication is that a person with conservative views on DEI targets women and minorities unfairly while allowing white people off the hook. I'm sure you can see how your implicit read of the "anonymous conservative"'s character gives away your feelings.
No, you misread me. I’m saying the reason why academic leaders don’t work to prevent hiring frauds is so they can hire all the white guy frauds they want, along with frauds of other demographics, then selectively pile-on to the minority frauds after they are hired. Saying you don’t want frauds to be hired in the first place is not an anti-conservative position - unless conservatives support hiring frauds, which I don’t think is the case.
What an AWFL thing to say
How intelligent! So cute!
To put it rather plainly, we’ve long since reached the point where we accept one of two options, destruction of large parts of academia, which produces primarily worthless scholarship, while engaging in naked racist and sexist bigotry, while accepting that a good deal of legitimate science will be caught in the blast radius, or letting things go on as they have before. I am not happy about the first option, and view it as akin to attempting to cure a cancer by lopping off a limb. But I am far more worried about the cancer at this point, and pretty much everything that has happened in the past 15 years, and especially the past 6, has pushed me much more in favor of emergency amputation. Equally, anyone arguing in good faith can’t really deny that we reached this point in substantial part because we spent the past 15 years debating whether the phenomenon commonly termed “wokeness” really was a cancer in the body of academia or not. Had someone like Arday been slapped down back in 2011, when his fabulism was comparatively sedate, we would not be in the position we are in 2026.
Oh come on. I’ve been publishing since the ‘90’s - it was always full of frauds that weren’t being caught. It has nothing to do with sex and race (although back then, it was admittedly whiter and more male). What has mainly changed is that there are way more academics and journals now, and technology has introduced way more ways to cheat. Like Louis said, academia is not some sort of magic machine that automatically produces truth. To continue your analogy, it’s not that the cancer is new, it’s just that the tumor is bigger and more obvious, and the limb it is on was already compromised anyway.
This is an honest and balanced reply. Thank you for elaborating on your ideas and choosing not to use trigger language. May I just check on something? I think you said DEI hires are not subject to full vetting prior to appointment. Is that correct?
No. I’m saying that no one is being vetted for a history of academic misconduct upon hiring (at least, in the fields I’ve operated in, which includes a lot of them by now because I’m old). Louis says they are vetted in math; I didn’t know that. But in most fields, no one is vetted for this. A simple check to see if the person plagiarized their dissertation or other published work, or did a study without ethical approval, etc. would prevent the hiring of frauds, and would have prevented Arday’s hiring.
Hi
My message was meant for Louis but thanks for your reply. If I had been the Chair of the search committee or department (who was a white woman) I would have done that search. Doing one is not a function of sex, age or race. The less we talk about them the better. Just do the job properly.
I agree, but to acknowledge Louis’s point, it is hard to do a fair investigation. I feel that if it is department policy that at least a cursory screen is done on all candidates to try to identify if there is obvious scientific misconduct going on, it would be fairer and easier to implement. It would have definitely prevented this Arday mess.
I am sure that Cambridge did a cursory review of Arday’s work and that was his undoing. The short list candidates clearly need to have their PhD thesis read and checked for plagiarism. Journalists and amateurs have figured out the weak points in this process and the thesis is their starter for ten ( cultural defence to University Challenge on British tv). The game is up! Get used to it.
I agree. Checking a thesis/dissertation for plagiarism should be standard and would prevent a lot of messes like this.
I spoke to a guy yesterday who works in tech for a company that gets big public defence contracts. The checks he has to go through dwarf the regular academic ones. When the decision comes down to the final candidate(s), it should be thorough and that includes PhDs and all published and public pronouncements.
And this is exactly why I voted for Trump, despite his faults, and would again given the same choice.
Their argument for suspending him amounts to "it's not what you said, it's how you said it".
And while I'm also glad the US is currently using its power this way, I am pained to discover US taxpayer is somehow funding Ghent University. Is there anything we're not paying for?
Oh God he was a gynecologist! 🤢🤢🤢
“Surviving My Struggle…?” How do you say “my struggle” in German???
Cracking piece! Thank you.
I have never been prouder of an American government official than I am of Ambassador Bill White and of the courage of a scholar such as Nathan Cofnas. It was with inspiration derived from their actions that I wrote this little poem in praise of them. https://birthofvenus.substack.com/p/ghent-can-get-bent?r=e6s49&utm_medium=ios
Excellent!
This story just keeps getting more unbelievable! Thank you for this update.
Um….. I am speechless. Kind thoughts.
Classic case of killing the messenger. Deflecting blame so Those uni’s don’t have to soul search their role in enabling of this very disturbed and fanciful man.