This is amazing: Byline Times has responded to Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s scathing account of their false claims that Jason Arday has been “cleared” of plagiarism charges. They said they added a note to the article, which said that a single journal article of his used to have a note attached to it that it was under investigation and now doesn’t anymore. But the journal has refused to comment on what this means. Prescod-Weinstein tore into the publication, saying: “It’s troubling that not one person saw the problem here, even as it went into VERY wide circulation. “There is still no explanation of the timeline, what exactly was said, and whether this was an article that had previously been edited. Was he cleared of plagiarism or did they think the first round of edits to address it were sufficient? Those are two different things. “As a Black academic who has written extensively about racism in academia, I don’t appreciate our stories being treated cavalierly or being used for clicks on a piece that is actually focused on something else — the right wing. Let them be their own hook. “If your position is that Arday was mistreated by the press, and it’s clear you’ve got a target on The Times, then you should be modeling the editorial standards you’re accusing others of not having. You should be asking experts familiar with those journals about their experiences with those notices. “You also could have looked for other articles that received similar notices and compared them.”

You know it’s bad when even Michael Hobbes won’t go along with a narrative that would confirm his priors.

This supposed “clearing” of Jason Arday for plagiarism is based on the fact that a single scientific journal decided not to retract a paper of his or take any further action such as issuing a correction. The journal did not come out with a statement saying they had “cleared” him. Nor did they asses all the papers of his that show evidence of fraud or plagiarism. They apparently took yet another look at a paper to which they had already attached a correction. But because the Byline Times is wedded to the narrative of claiming Arday was never at fault for anything, and because so is Bluesky, the claim flies unquestioned. Somehow these arguments never acknowledge that there is strong evidence that Arday stole another academic’s data and presented it as his own, which would be fraud.