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I assume they looked at that and said, "nah, didnt happen, you can stop searching strava".

That picture is terrible it looks like he’s in prison 🤣

Yeah that's what I keep hitting on, the profound selfishness of what he's done. Literally every Black student in the university will be given the side-eye, for YEARS, because of this, and yet he decided to do it anyway.

“I thought you’d just believe me: Reputation and the sociology of not checking"

My favourite exemplar is Alves dos Reis who managed to print a lot of extra currency in Portugal and it led to a financial collapse. Fascinating book about it 'the Man from Lisbon'. One should always avoid being taken in, of course, but we always are.

"Six Degrees of Separation" handles this exact subject in a really interesting (if thoroughly 90s) way

Particularly to do so before he was born.

It seems his soon-to-be-published memoir was ghost written, which must be odd for any academic.

Yeah, as a parent of a non-verbal child, this is not how it works. If someone is non-verbal at 11 (or even at 7), they are NOT going to become a Cambridge professor even through fraud. You'll be lucky if they can reliably dress themselves.

I feel like these claims should be fairly easy to establish by speaking to those that knew him.

Okay, this story about his childhood may not be true either. Which makes the whole mess worse but even funnier.

I'm quite fascinated by how these stories came out. Did he just keep adding more improbable details because he wasn't challenged on the previous ones?

Hey, that happened to me once.

‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ is something I’d expect the average dope on the street to live by. That actual universities don’t is madness

Rocking up at the tropical diseases unit and saying that you have natural immunity to ebola. You’d think at the very least one of your colleagues would want to *study* you.

unable to read until 18 but still got a bachelors degree five years later too?

"It’s like being professor of war studies and claiming you survived having a tank dropped on you!" Wow, very impressive.

The Non-Verbal until 11 is true. Acquaintances went to primary school with him

As a layman, I found the claim that he made the leap from "unable to read" to "doing a degree" in just two years, erm, somewhat incredible, and yet it is still on the St Mary's website.

As Mrs Tim (previously head of a special school) would doubtless note, a child can, of course, be a 'selective mute', although obviously that's not the same as non-verbal.

I don’t know if this is true but “please can you read this, I haven’t got my glasses” would often be code for “I can’t read or write”.

Precisely. And the fact that the top science university fell for this fantastical yarn is all the more surprising. Balliol College Oxford (Primus alumnus splattificatus Boris Johnson) maybe..

And he still graduated age 23 apparently. How are you meant to go from illiterate to a uni student in 2 years

Yeah I knew an autistic kid who was unable to read at 13/14 when I knew him. Last I heard he was able to get an Open University degree in his mid 20s. No shade on the Open University, but another autistic guy got into Cambridge at 17 and the process for that was hard for him regardless of age.

I was just going to message you about this because it has been one of the bits that has been most eyebrow raising for me.

Was did he respond to the suprise at his first words by saying, in a strong German accent, "up until this point everything has been satisfactory"?

Just to use a low culture example, Jilly Cooper outlines this *really well* in Rivals. (Taggie's dyslexia being both severe and not really caught/mitigated for until she is early teens means she both leaves school with one O level, functional but struggling literacy and non existent confidence)

Yes, that’s the part that got me. How did he make up for that massive gap in his education to *checks notes* go straight to university and get a degree? At one time I worked with adults who had missed education and it took a lot of hard work on their part to get ready to start a degree.

its feckin awful. You can sit there thinking I know it would never happen, i dont understand how it could have happened but it did for him....so maybe....one day will wake up and things will just get better

so, according to him he learned to read and write at age 18 and then…appears to have immediately gone to college and graduated within 4 years???

I work in special education, and my coworkers and I have encountered some smart nonverbal/semiverbal kids (no future Oxbridge professors so far), but they could all write more fluently than they could speak.

I imagine the specific answer to that might be: So that they can go from PhD graduate to full professorship in seven years.

Head down, writing his memoir from the age of 6.

Sorry what

That's actually worse I think. Sometimes you get non-verbal autistic kids who learn to read and write. But if he was *also* claiming to have been illiterate, that raises so many more questions.

A blinking convenient happenstance that you can imagine helping explain him being a bit creaky and confused in the viva, though.

Corrective surgery for Münchausen syndrome?

Says went to Sunday School with him and he was chatty. 🤷 www.tiktok.com/@strictlyvib...

I don't need to lie #cambridgeuniversity #Jasonarday #tarnished #funny #fy TikTok video by No Mannerswww.tiktok.com

He has the details right - name of school. Heath Brook Primary School, Wandsworth. Name for the brother. Sounds authentic.

Nah. Sprite.

I think with all the others they’re strong contenders, but the “this is obviously subject-related” gives it an added piquancy.

100% agree with this

Ooh yes. Very much like 'The Salt Path' confabulations about rare neurological condition

But most people who study education are not, I would hope, unfamiliar with educational outcomes if you are illiterate at 18.

See also this from @drstevenkapp.bsky.social, who was part of the DSMV autism working group. www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/13...

Any department that allows the three cueing system to go on for decades deserves all the prejudice against it that's possible

One of my favourite a stories was a lad who lived in my friends 6 person houseshare. Everytime they'd go out to eat as a group the fellow would be quick to calculate the cost/person for everyone when they split the tab. It turned out he only calculated -5- shares and was getting free meals for years

somebody is sitting on a fistful of library cards

I think it depends on whether you assume competent special needs provision… if he was always capable of learning to read but someone decided he wasn’t, and didn’t teach him, that would make a huge difference. The other statements are relevant to how likely it is in this case, but that has happened.

It's the "600 miles in 6 days" bit for me. Do they not have any runners in Universities? Anyone that could look at it and think "5 miles an hour for 20 hours for 6 days in a row sounds a lot?"