Nathan Cofnas is a philosopher and postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, known for controversial writings arguing that racial disparities in high-status professions reflect group differences in ability rather than discrimination. Views that led Cambridge’s Emmanuel College to end its association with him.
This year he published Substack allegations that Cambridge sociologist Jason Arday had plagiarised his PhD thesis. Arday resigned soon after and was later found dead. Ghent has since suspended Cofnas, investigating him for alleged discrimination against Arday.
He is coming on the show later this morning to discuss Jason Arday, what has happened to him over the last several weeks and his paper that some have argued is highly controversial.
Comment your questions below.
Exposing frauds, replication and other tools are self-correction mechanisms in academia, but they seem to have been abandoned/vilified in recent times, in favour of ideology. How does academia get out of this shithole, if those tools are made unavailable and knowledge produced without self-correction is used to justify abandoning self-correction?
What evidence would convince you that average group differences in cognitive ability are entirely environmental rather than partly genetic?