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Apparently One Black Professor Is a Census
There is something almost magnificent about the intellectual gymnastics surrounding Professor Jason Arday.
The central argument: if misconduct by a white academic is treated as the failure of an individual, misconduct alleged against a Black academic cannot logically become evidence that Black academics, diversity or DEI have lowered university standards.
When One Academic Suddenly Represents an Entire Race
When a white Cambridge academic, William O’Reilly, was found by a university investigation to have plagiarised his own student—more than twelve pages of a published article were reported as having been lifted almost word-for-word from the student’s essays—the conclusion was apparently not: “White academics have destroyed Cambridge.”
Nobody announced the collapse of Caucasian scholarship.
Nobody demanded an inquiry into whether white people were being hired on merit.
Nobody asked whether universities had become dangerously obsessed with “white representation”.
O’Reilly remained in his job. (Varsity Online)
Yet Jason Arday arrives and suddenly we are conducting an autopsy on diversity itself.
This is fascinating.
Apparently a mediocre, dishonest or flawed white academic is an individual.
A flawed Black academic is a demographic dataset.
Imagine Applying This Standard Properly
Imagine Cambridge discovered tomorrow that Professor Nigel Smith had fabricated half his CV.
Would anybody write:
“This raises disturbing questions about whether universities have lowered standards by hiring white men.”
Of course not.
People would ask what Nigel Smith did.
But replace Nigel with a prominent Black professor and suddenly DEI is in the dock.
That is not an argument against DEI. It is an accidental demonstration of why DEI became necessary.
The standard being applied is beautifully simple:
White failure proves that a white person failed.
Black failure proves that diversity failed.
You could teach the logical fallacy in first-year philosophy.
Arday Is Not Beyond Criticism
And this is precisely where the anti-DEI argument becomes unnecessary.
There are serious questions about Arday.
Claims concerning extraordinary marathon achievements, millions raised for charity and various academic affiliations have been challenged, and some institutions reportedly disputed affiliations attributed to him. Those matters deserve investigation. Arday should be held to exactly the same standards of honesty as anybody else. (The Guardian)
But that sentence ends after “anybody else.”
It does not continue:
“Therefore Black professors…”
That leap is the entire trick.
Liverpool John Moores University previously investigated plagiarism allegations concerning his PhD and did not uphold them. Subsequent allegations went further and Cambridge announced another investigation shortly before Arday resigned. So describing the entire controversy as conclusively resolved would go beyond the evidence. (The Guardian)
But notice something extraordinary.
The same society demanding that Arday’s disputed biographical claims discredit diversity re-elected Donald Trump after The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term. (The Washington Post)
Thirty thousand, five hundred and seventy-three.
Imagine applying the Arday Principle.
“Trump made false claims. Therefore white men are diversity hires who cannot be trusted with senior positions.”
Absurd?
Congratulations. You understand the problem.
Now Meet Nathan Cofnas
Nathan Cofnas presents himself as a defender of hereditarian arguments about race and intelligence. He has argued that under what he regards as genuine meritocracy, Black representation in elite institutions would collapse dramatically; his writing envisaged Black people largely disappearing from high-profile positions outside sport and entertainment. Cambridge publicly stated that members of its community vehemently rejected the academic validity of his arguments. Emmanuel College terminated its association with him, although a later Cambridge investigation concluded that his published views did not violate the law or university free-speech regulations. (Nathan Cofnas’s Newsletter)
Why call the worldview racist?
Not because discussing genetics is forbidden.
Not because IQ cannot be studied.
Not because populations cannot differ statistically.
It is because Cofnas takes socially constructed racial categories, observed group disparities and contested causal arguments and uses them to construct a hierarchy in which Black underrepresentation becomes the expected outcome of “meritocracy”.
That is precisely where the science becomes extraordinarily shaky.
Modern genetics does not divide humanity into neat biological races corresponding to everyday labels such as “Black” and “white”. The American Society of Human Genetics explicitly states that genetics does not support dividing humans into biologically discrete racial subcategories, while the US National Academies warns against treating race as a proxy for genetic difference. (PubMed Central (PMC))
And here is the elementary mistake race-IQ evangelists keep making:
Heritability within populations does not establish the genetic cause of differences between populations.
Height is highly heritable. Yet average height can change dramatically across generations when nutrition, disease exposure and childhood conditions change.
Imagine two genetically identical villages.
Village A has excellent prenatal care, clean water, low lead exposure, stable schools, abundant nutrition and children educated in their first language.
Village B has malaria, malnutrition, displacement, interrupted schooling, contaminated water and examinations imported from Village A.
Village A scores higher.
Our scientific genius arrives.
He strokes his chin.
“Genes.”
Give him Stockholm immediately.
The IQ Argument Gets Worse
IQ tests are not “meaningless”; that would overstate the case. Properly designed cognitive tests predict some important outcomes and intelligence has a substantial heritable component within studied populations. (Nature)
But none of that proves that measured differences between racial populations are genetically caused.
That distinction is enormous.
Educational quality matters. Nutrition matters. Disease burden matters. Prenatal conditions matter. Language matters. Lead exposure matters. Poverty matters. Childhood stress matters.
And genetic studies themselves struggle with gene-environment correlations: even polygenic scores can capture environmental differences between families rather than some pristine measurement of biological destiny. (Nature)
Now imagine measuring children whose schools repeatedly close because of conflict against children attending £25,000-a-year British schools.
The British children score higher.
Professor Race Science enters the room:
“Evolution!”
No, Sherlock. One child had chemistry on Tuesday. The other had to flee his village.
Try the Same Logic on January 6
Nearly 1,590 people were federally charged over the January 6 Capitol attack. In January 2025 Trump pardoned almost all of them and commuted the sentences of fourteen others. (Investing.com)
Imagine responding:
“More than a thousand mostly white Trump supporters committed offences connected with an attack on the Capitol. This demonstrates that admitting white Americans into democratic institutions was an experiment in lowering standards.”
Nobody serious would accept that reasoning.
Because individuals are individuals.
Except, mysteriously, when discussing DEI.
Then Jason Arday apparently becomes all Black academics simultaneously.
The Most Embarrassing Part
This is what makes the anti-DEI exploitation of Arday so intellectually unserious.
If Arday exaggerated achievements, criticise Arday.
If Cambridge failed to perform sufficient due diligence, criticise Cambridge.
If his scholarship contains passages that breach academic standards, investigate the scholarship.
That is what standards look like.
But if your argument becomes:
“Jason Arday had problems, therefore programmes designed to reduce racial exclusion produce inferior Black academics,”
you have quietly changed the proposition.
And William O’Reilly is standing awkwardly in the corner ruining it.
Because O’Reilly provides the perfect thought experiment in real life: a white Cambridge academic whose plagiarism complaint was actually upheld.
Yet whiteness survived.
Nobody abolished white professors.
Nobody demanded that the next white applicant prove that his entire race deserved admission.
Nobody wrote:
THE O’REILLY SCANDAL: HAS MERITOCRACY GONE TOO FAR FOR WHITE PEOPLE?
Of course they didn’t.
That would be ridiculous.
And that ridiculousness is the point.
Equality is not pretending Jason Arday can do no wrong because he is Black.
Equality is allowing Jason Arday to be wrong without putting 1.5 billion other people on trial with him.
Judge his scholarship.
Check his CV.
Investigate every allegation properly.
Correct every falsehood.
Apply precisely the same standards to everybody.
But the moment one Black man’s alleged misconduct becomes evidence against Black advancement while a white man’s proven plagiarism remains merely the unfortunate behaviour of one white man, we are no longer discussing academic standards.
We are watching a double standard desperately trying to pass itself off as one.
The Science Onion
The Science Onion is what happens when history’s bad science finally meets good evidence. The book dissects the myths that once passed for “truth” — from IQ hoaxes to racial hierarchies, from “pure bloodlines” to “white civilization.” Each chapter exposes how empire, ego, and error turned curiosity into cruelty, and how genetics, archaeology, and reason now set the record straight.
Through biting wit and relentless clarity, the book rewrites the story of science itself—not as Europe’s invention but as humanity’s shared inheritance, born in Africa and misinterpreted by empire. It moves from colonial laboratories to modern algorithms, proving that bias can survive in new disguises unless we learn to recognise it.
This isn’t just a demolition of racist myths—it’s a love letter to truth. The Science Onion restores confidence in evidence, respect for complexity, and humility before discovery. Expect laughter, outrage, and revelation in equal measure. Once you’ve read it, pseudoscience will never fool you again.
Read The Science Onion Back to the articleFrequently Asked Questions
What is the Jason Arday controversy?
Jason Arday faced questions concerning parts of his academic work and several personal and biographical claims. Liverpool John Moores University previously investigated plagiarism allegations concerning his PhD and did not uphold them. Later allegations prompted Cambridge to announce a further investigation shortly before Arday resigned.
Does the Jason Arday controversy prove that DEI lowers academic standards?
No. Misconduct or alleged misconduct by an individual does not establish the quality of an entire racial group or hiring philosophy. The relevant test is whether the individual met the academic and professional standards required for the position.
Was Cambridge academic William O’Reilly found to have plagiarised a student?
As discussed in this article, a university investigation found that William O’Reilly had plagiarised material written by one of his students, including extensive passages reported as appearing almost word-for-word in a published article.
What does Nathan Cofnas argue about race and intelligence?
Cofnas has defended hereditarian interpretations of racial differences and argued that what he regards as true meritocracy would result in dramatically lower Black representation within elite institutions. The article explains why moving from observed group differences to biological racial hierarchy involves major scientific and conceptual problems.
Does heritability prove racial differences in IQ are genetic?
No. Heritability measured within a population does not by itself establish the cause of average differences between populations. Environmental conditions including education, nutrition, disease, pollution, prenatal health, language and childhood adversity can also influence measured cognitive outcomes.
Are IQ tests scientifically meaningless?
No. Properly designed cognitive tests can predict some meaningful outcomes, and measured cognitive ability has a heritable component within studied populations. The much stronger claim—that average differences between socially defined racial populations have therefore been proved genetically caused—does not follow from those findings.
What is the main argument of this article?
Academic standards should be applied to individuals consistently. If a white academic’s misconduct is treated as that individual’s failure, misconduct by a Black academic cannot logically be transformed into evidence that Black academics collectively or diversity policies generally represent lower standards.
