Heh, I recently rewatched "Shattered Glass" (about the New Republic fabulist Stephen Glass). Glass knew that the trick is to come up with great stories that can't be entirely confirmed or disconfirmed. But it's hard to do that repeatedly without getting caught. In the case of Jason Arday, how hard can it be to check if he wrote a book that was published by a certain publisher? (Hello, Internet?)
I think this is correct and this is the genuine problem for the university because its "mission" is really hard to define. The historian Lawrence Veysey came up with three that exist simultaneously: to train minds, to create credentialed experts for the market, and to do research. And all three are hard to quantify. It does of course bottom out somehow: students might stop enrolling, funders might cut funds, but it's not even clear when and how this might happen.
Heh, I recently rewatched "Shattered Glass" (about the New Republic fabulist Stephen Glass). Glass knew that the trick is to come up with great stories that can't be entirely confirmed or disconfirmed. But it's hard to do that repeatedly without getting caught. In the case of Jason Arday, how hard can it be to check if he wrote a book that was published by a certain publisher? (Hello, Internet?)
'Plausible deniability' is the number one tool of every manipulator, from verifiable psychopaths to garden variety shysters.
I think this is correct and this is the genuine problem for the university because its "mission" is really hard to define. The historian Lawrence Veysey came up with three that exist simultaneously: to train minds, to create credentialed experts for the market, and to do research. And all three are hard to quantify. It does of course bottom out somehow: students might stop enrolling, funders might cut funds, but it's not even clear when and how this might happen.