I, like everyone reading this report, had never heard of late Cambridge professor Jason Arday until the British press had turned him into a story. On some level, it is a strange story because it is so generic. The wife of billionaire Bill Ackman, Neri Oxman, is said to have plagiarized her dissertation, yet remains a sought-after designer and consultant. The VroniPlag Wiki documents hundreds of cases of plagiarism in Germany, most of them unknown, save for a politician who lost his doctorate then went into business. Joan Peters, a widely-debunked hoaxer, saw multiple reprints of her forgery, “From Time Immemorial,” long after she’d been exposed. Similarly, Jason Arday was hired under unusual circumstances then accused of plagiarism and fabulism. Nathan Cofnas, the racial hygienist who first reported on Arday (and who is himself the subject of an academic fraud investigation) thought Arday’s personal story—‘the autistic, high-achieving son of African migrants’—would bring Cofnas media attention. At present, Cofnas has no academic position. He lost a wrongful termination suit against Cambridge, and, most recently, some temp work at Ghent. By contrast, Jason Arday enjoyed substantially more academic citations while teaching full-time. However, once Cofnas’s story had spread, British media hounded Jason Arday until he resigned. A few weeks before Arday’s suicide, Cofnas threatened on TV: “The lesson is this what’s [sic] happened [sic] if you don’t give Cofnas a job!” […]