Founded in 1869, Nature has long been one of the world’s top science journals. Thus many were surprised by its editorial yesterday on who’s to blame for the tragic death, thought to be suicide, of disgraced Cambridge scholar Jason Arday:
It is an enormous tragedy for his family, friends, students and colleagues. It is also a catastrophe for the research community. The death of an autistic Black scholar who inspired a generation is shocking. The persistent media attention, the racism that pervaded much of that coverage and the plagiarism allegations against Arday, and the University of Cambridge’s handling of his case all raise difficult questions. These are concerns not only for the institutions involved, but for everyone in higher education and the media.
“The death of Jason Arday must prompt deep reflection,” September 2, 2026
The open access editorial that accused the academic world and the media of racism left out the principal reasons that Arday’s career took a nosedive. Soon a Note was attached to Nature’s tweet at X (below right).
Significantly, both the The Guardian, and the New York Times — neither of which is often accused of racism — had asked hard questions earlier about why Arday’s scholarship and extravagant claims were not scrutinized more carefully.
In the editorial, Nature also joined the chorus of commentators who are blaming “unrelenting media attention” and want media’s role “scrutinized.”
Lost somehow in the rhetoric is the fact that Arday’s memoir with publishing giant Simon and Schuster (one of the Big Five), Great and Unfortunate Things, had dropped August 11, 2026 to massive acclaim.
That was amid the allegations about a pig’s head sent to Arday and claims about superhuman marathons that he ran. Plus the fact that, as Retraction Watch reported in July, he had hired a leading defamation firm to scuttle a Times Higher Education story about those plagiarism allegations.
And then three days later (August 14), he was dead. A society in which media are supposed to muffle a story like that would not resemble a free one.
And then there is this…
The really remarkable element of the Nature editorial is a throwaway admission:
Sociologists in the United Kingdom whom Nature has spoken to say they know of no other case that matches the level of attention and mass scrutiny unleashed on Arday, raising questions about why this specific instance was singled out when so many allegations of plagiarism go unreported. “Deep reflection”
Is there really so widely accepted plagiarism in academia? In that case, perhaps our respect for these institutions is misplaced.
Look in the mirror for once, Nature
“The Jason Arday scandal was a tragedy because it resulted in the death, probably by suicide, of a disturbed man who lied and plagiarized his way to the highest levels of academic celebrity at Cambridge University. Everyone should mourn that outcome.
But too many among the liberal intelligentsia seem intent on conjuring the wrong causes for the mess their own attitudes created. Rather than recognizing the potentially dire individual, institutional, and societal consequences that can result from elevating people beyond their actual capabilities, the editors of Nature instead castigate Cambridge for turning on Arday when his fabulism and egregious academic wrongdoing became undeniable.”
“Nature Misdirects Blame for the Jason Arday Tragedy,” National Review, September 3, 2026
Smith isn’t alone in this view. Darwinian evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who would not agree with him on much else, closed a reflection on the editorial with, “I think Nature is learning the wrong lessons.”
Michael Shermer thinks so too:
Wokeness is corrupting science from within. Nature went woke years ago with their support of trans pseudoscience (sex is binary, not a spectrum) and now they think the death of Jason Arday sends a wake-up to us: yeah, stop lying. x.com/swipewright/st…
To 4 million views at X, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker raised the stakes: “The degeneration of Nature, Science, NEJM, and Scientific American into woke propaganda dispensers (and their refusal to publish normie, centrist, common-sense responses) is a scientific scandal.”
Nature may have opened a bigger discussion here than it can just shut down by invoking its massive prestige. Respect cannot be commanded; it must be earned.