I was reported to police over the Jason Arday case. I was just doing my job
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I was reported to police over Arday case. I was just doing my job
My investigation into alleged plagiarism was undertaken seriously – journalistic enquiries should not be a matter for Scotland Yard, writes THE journalist Jack Grove
Published on
August 5, 2026
Last updated
August 5, 2026
Jack Grove
Twitter: @jgro_the
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Source: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock
Scribbling down shorthand notes at a hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice on 3 February this year, my phone began to silently buzz – a call from an unknown mobile number. Waiting until the eminent KC had finished his speech, I left the oak-panelled chamber to listen to the message. Rushing to file copy, however, I decided, on second thoughts, to take the voicemail at my desk, about 10 minutes away in Holborn.
I was shocked to hear it was from the Metropolitan Police, asking me to call them back. Why? Nothing remarkable had happened to me in the previous year. When I rang back the officer explained a complaint had been made against me regarding the University of Cambridge professor Jason Arday, but the matter was now closed.
But it was important, the officer explained, that I didn’t contact him again, because it was affecting his mental health.
However, I hadn’t emailed Arday in four months – my last direct email had been in September, offering formal right of reply to allegations that he had plagiarised his PhD.<br>ADVERTISEMENT
That allegation was not made lightly: I had assembled a 63-page report which detailed how he had apparently used, without proper citation, huge chunks from a thesis written in 2009 by another student, Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, now a highly respected education academic at Brunel University of London. Further checks found passages that seemed to be lifted from the work of researchers based in the US, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in the UK. In total, I submitted 97 pages of evidence to both Cambridge and Arday’s awarding institution, Liverpool John Moores University, for their investigation.
Serious allegations, certainly. Deeply embarrassing and distressing, definitely. Although Arday was eventually cleared of plagiarism by an LJMU review, a frenzy of coverage led to Cambridge opening an investigation into Arday’s academic record and CV, followed shortly afterwards by Arday announcing his resignation.<br>ADVERTISEMENT
But were my inquiries grounds for a criminal complaint? That was hugely troubling to me as a reporter who specialises in examining issues of research integrity and ethics.
At Times Higher Education, we cover stories of this sort frequently: in June a French science communicator was stripped of his PhD and we covered the matter. That article attracted little complaint; the expert checks had been done, misconduct established and the decision confirmed publicly. Journal retractions, inappropriate use of artificial intelligence in research and breaches of ethical norms are part of the diet for THE readers.
Source:<br>Heather Walker/THE
But maybe my journalistic pursuit of this story was too “incessant”, as Arday has claimed, hounding him about details on his personal biography that had little bearing on his academic role, as he suggested.
In fact, prior to the letter that garnered a response from his solicitors, I submitted only three polite emails directly to Arday over the course of two months, asking about suspicions raised by multiple professors about plagiarism or odd data in his 2018 Social Sciences paper, then a further one about discrepancies in his CV and, finally, when and where his much-vaunted running achievements and charity activities took place.
Phrased very politely, these emails were factual: there was almost no evidence, I said, that he had completed any of these runs, particularly the 600 miles in six days slog. That feat, according to one YouTube talk, took place between Edinburgh and London in 2013 but there was no record of it, despite lesser runs gaining acres of publicity in local and national news.
I continued to receive no response from Arday, with all subsequent responses coming via the Cambridge press office.
I believe these were all legitimate enquiries to put to Arday – particularly regarding the concerns around his prior papers, which had been the basis of his rise from a PhD student to professor within six years.
I wasn’t inclined to explain to the Scotland Yard officer the minutiae of research ethics or plagiarism conventions in UK academia, but I explained that I was a journalist looking into a story with a public interest dimension, and asked him whether he realised that he was calling a journalist.<br>ADVERTISEMENT
He told me that Arday had said I’d been making online posts against him. But I hadn’t made any online posts about Arday, so...