I’m NOT A Liar – Thoughts on the attacks on Professor Arday

Image by NoName_13 from Pixabay

by Nanny Aut

There has been a lot written about Professor Arday. Unprecedented amounts. The majority of which sought to paint him as a liar and a fabulist.

Accusations that, in my opinion, did not stand up to any level of scrutiny whatsoever. The papers that were screaming that this lynching was justified in the name of ‘academic integrity’ failed to show, even marginally, journalistic integrity. 

No fact checking. No balanced reporting. Simply innuendo and suggested implication.

Why the press would do this witch hunt seems fairly obvious – and there has been a lot on social media as to the racial motivations behind this. And it’s an abhorrent indictment of society today.

What I struggle with more is understanding why it was so easy for the press to get their readers to accept their lies. Why these lies were devoured and regurgitated without any evidence of critical thinking whatsoever. Why the appetite for those lies was so strong it encouraged the Press to continue feeding the mob long after any semblance of need for ‘transparency’ existed.

Why – when evidence was shown to disprove those lies – the majority refused to accept it and still hold to the liar narrative.

And I’m still struggling to make sense of it. How Up can be declared Down, Dogs declared Cats, Hot declared Cold – and not have it challenged and shut down immediately.

So here are some of my thoughts as it now stands.

Comfortable Lies

The neuromajority are familiar with comfortable lies, it’s a core part of their social structure. Not just the ‘white lie’ to save people’s feelings but social lies they use to justify maintaining the status quo. 

 ‘Immigrants are stealing our jobs’, ‘Disabled people are ‘less than’ and shouldn’t be allowed to be a burden on society’, ‘Accomodations are simply a way to cheat the system and gain an unfair advantage’. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Lies they can tell themselves so they can pretend they aren’t racist, ableist, sexist – so they won’t have to face their own disability – a deep-seated fear of anyone different to them.

Professor Arday – by his very existence challenged those comfortable lies. Here was an autistic black man, from a working class background in the hallowed halls of Academia. No less than three ‘less thans’ disproved in one human being. Unthinkable!!!

Far easier to cling to your comfortable lies and believe that this was achieved through some sort of trick rather than merit.

And then along comes Cofnas – dangling that rope of innuendo.

Suggesting that Professor Arday cheated on his PhD because Turnitin noticed similarities.

And the Press amplified this, screaming ‘Plagiarism’. Failing to report that these similarities had already been picked up and investigated, thoroughly, by the Awarding Body and no plagiarism was found. Errors yes, due to gestalt processing and echolalic scripting, both common within the autistic community, but no plagiarism.

And when the first accusation was shown to be false, they started to scrabble, looking for anything that could throw doubt on Professor Arday’s integrity. 

Finding two racist students who objected to having a black professor, and ignoring the hundreds of students who considered him outstanding. 

Calling into question his earlier athletic achievements such as 30 marathons in 35 days on a broken leg! Not reporting it was a hairline stress fracture, common amongst marathon runners, and equally commonly missed. Or the fact that, at the time, he was an exceptionally fit individual – and that there is news coverage of this achievement and numerous eye-witnesses. Just simply declared ‘Not possible’.

Calling into question his fundraising efforts – ignoring the time that this fundraising occurred over – ignoring the number of people involved in this fundraising.

Because the comfortable lie that an autistic black man from a working class background is naturally ‘less than’ is compelling. So compelling that people grasp at any straw, however flimsy, and grip tightly to it. 

Something the Press is highly aware of and uses to their advantage every day.

Confirmation Bias

Every human being on this earth, autistic and non-autistic struggles with confirmation bias. We all have an inherent set of beliefs that we rely on. That we hold as true. That we defend fiercely even when presented with evidence that contradicts that belief.

It is possible for us to let go of those beliefs if sufficient valid data is presented – but it’s uncomfortable to do so and we will resist.

To protect ourselves from that discomfort we set up systems to actively protect ourselves. We create echo chambers and surround ourselves with people who think like us.

We leap on anything that helps reinforce our beliefs and actively attack anything that threatens them.

And Professor Arday challenged core biases for a LOT of people – not just the bitter die-hard eugenicists like Cofnas. The hallowed halls of Cambridge that are barred to the majority. Barred on the grounds of lack of wealth, education, social standing – all false equivalents for ‘lack of meritocracy’. A false belief that goes back to believing God made Kings. That some people are somehow better than others because social circumstance made them so.

A belief that tells you that if someone you look down on got a well-earned space in a golden hall you look up to – they HAD to have cheated – it’s unthinkable they deserved it. 

Ignorance and Lack of Critical Thinking

This is not stupidity, some of those commenters I have seen doubling down on the lie could be considered intelligent people. People you would think are too intelligent to fall for the lies being peddled. 

People who consider themselves too intelligent to fall for other people’s lies.

And that is where the trap lies. The Press lays out their wares and flatters the reader – ‘You and I are so intelligent we can see that others can’t – we see the lies, the cheating, the fabulist, when the smartest people in Cambridge were fooled.’

And because the reader lacks key information – information intentionally withheld by the Press – Ignorance – and has been trained into trusting the integrity of the Press without questioning – lack of critical thinking – this trap closes shut all too easily.

We don’t know what we don’t know – so when the Press says Turnitin detects plagiarism, that is accepted. Only academics Masters level and higher have been through the rigours of Turnitin, and are fully aware of its many flaws and failings. That every query has to be checked by a human being and many queries are found invalid. Cofnas knew – but relied on his blog readership not knowing. Did the Press know? Maybe, not many PhDs in journalism, so maybe not. But they knew enough to dig. They knew enough to talk to people who DO understand Turnitin. And chose not to because it didn’t fit the narrative they were selling.

Unless you are a Marathon runner, you have no idea of what the body is put through, or the pain that is so enveloping that the pain of a hairline fracture is easily missed. So you apply what you DO know, how hard it is to run a single marathon let alone 30 in 35 days – so hard it’s easy to tell yourself it’s impossible. You DO know that it’s impossible to run on a broken bone – because the bone you envisage is fully broken, two ends flapping apart – an impression reinforced by the journalists. You don’t know there is a massive difference in pain levels between a hairline fracture – a crack with the bone itself still intact – and a full break.

A responsible press would have educated and explained the difference. But this was never about being a responsible press.

And this belief in the Press as ‘truth tellers’ is a carefully cultivated one .It’s  no coincidence that critical thinking isn’t taught in school, that it’s actively discouraged for students to lift the lid on what they are spoon-fed. To ask why.

The majority of the population lack the critical thinking skills they need in order to ask what information  has been intentionally omitted, to recognise why they are being fed this comfortable lie, to recognise their belief system is being carefully cultivated because it makes them easier to manipulate.

So when a lie is presented by someone they consider a creditable authority – the Press they pay to get their news from – they lack the skills to question the lack of balance, the lack of supporting information, the bias that drives the narrative.

Lack of skills and lack of information is NOT lack of intelligence, but is regularly conflated as such. And since those who prize intelligence have it as such a core part of who they are, this makes them especially easy to manipulate. Something the Press knows and uses.

Thin Slice Judgement

This one is autism specific. A little known fact is that the neuromajority have an innate hostility towards autistics. So innate that most are unaware of it, but is clearly evident in their actions and attitudes towards autistics. 

Much research has already been done evidencing the innate hostility towards visible difference, but it was assumed for a long while that masking autistics got to fly under the radar. This has now been disproved. It has led to a term being appropriated for this visceral response ‘Uncanny Valley’ – where the negative response is stronger the more effectively the autistic masks.

And this hostile response isn’t just in person. One research paper looking into thin slice judgement – the instant response on first meeting or seeing someone – used photos of autistics and non-autistics. Autistic and non-autistic participants were asked to describe each photo – ascribing characteristics. The photos were intentionally neutral in expression. No participant knew which photos were of autistics and which weren’t.

The autistics were pretty uniform across the board, generally assigning positive characteristics to everyone. The non-autistics – not so much – assigning negative characteristics to autistic photos and positive to non-autistics.

Which means that non-autistics, seeing photos of Professor Arday in the press would be already primed to assume the negative about him. A ‘gut feeling’ he was a liar before a single word was read. A feeling that would encourage them to dismiss anything that challenged this – such as facts and truth.

I can see why Professor Arday stopped fighting. Why he recognised the impossibility of establishing truth in the face of a baying mob who held onto the lies so fiercely.

What I can’t see is how we change things to stop this happening again.

Accountability and holding Cofnas and the Press responsible for manslaughter feels like justice. But it changes nothing until the systems are changed. Until  what made it possible for these gaslighters to succeed is brought into the light and dismantled.

And that is never going to happen. The systems that destroyed Professor Arday are just too useful and lucrative to remove.

References

Sasson, N., Faso, D., Nugent, J. et al. Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments. Sci Rep 7, 40700 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40700