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If I have one hope for the future, it is that you will speak up, and turn this unique combination of scientific rigour and societal insight into positive change. This is what distinguishes us from other sciences, and you should be extremely proud to have mastered this discipline.

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To our graduates: you have both. You have received a strong education at the highest scientific standards, while being trained to see through the political, institutional, social and cultural mechanisms at play.

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On all sides of this debate, academic standards were disregarded: in hiring, in evaluating the work, in the coverage that followed. High standards are our scientific guardrails. They are what protects us from irrelevance, and what allows us to speak with confidence and actually be heard.

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However, if we want to be publicly involved in this and other debates, our answers have to be grounded in high quality research. This case demonstrated that the importance of upholding strict academic standards cannot be overstated.

This means that some of these fundamental questions stayed unanswered, and the focus remained on the individuals involved. Without the social sciences perspective, we haven't learned much.

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These are questions about institutions and path dependency. Media logic and framing. Representation and discrimination. Political forces and power imbalances. These are the questions of our discipline. And in the public debate around this case, the social sciences were almost entirely absent.

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Why can a pseudo-scientific worldview suddenly carry so much weight? Why are not all cases of academic fraud treated the same way?

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How does a scholar rise to the top that fast, and why does a university use it so openly as a PR stunt? Who decides this is international news, and who gets to speak? Why does a sector that has talked about diversity for so long still have so few minority professors?

At first glance, this looked like one of the many academic misconduct cases, interesting only to an in-crowd of academics, but with a tragic ending. But it was, and still is, much more than that.

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In July, allegations of plagiarism against Jason Arday, sociologist and youngest black professor at Cambridge, appeared in the British press. On 5 August the university opened an investigation and he resigned. Nine days later he was found dead at home. He was 41.

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Wim Van Lancker @wimvanlancker.be · 11/09/2026

'What good are the social sciences?' I get that question a lot, and I usually mumble something about understanding society. But it's not a great conversation starter. At the KU Leuven Faculty of Social Sciences graduation ceremony, I tried to give a more concrete answer. Here's what I said. 🧵

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Ik vermoed zijn verkiezingsbeloftes!

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Wim Van Lancker @wimvanlancker.be · 11/09/2026

Werklozen verder de duimschroeven aandraaien vind ik nu niet meteen een christelijke gedachte, Sammy Mahdi. Ik stel voor dat we ze meteen aan het kruis nagelen. 🙄

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Wim Van Lancker @wimvanlancker.be · 05/09/2026

Alleszins nooit verbeteren met honger. 😉

Wim Van Lancker @wimvanlancker.be · 05/09/2026

Feest met de buren om dit heugelijke nieuws te vieren? 😉

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Reposted by Wim Van Lancker

Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 03/09/2026

Part 2. There is no bottom to Ariely's malfeasance. The Arday tragedy is so raw now the comparison is unavoidable. Ariely's fraud cost millions. Books were sold, careers altered. People and organizations changed policies and practices based on his fake results...

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Reposted by Wim Van Lancker

David Brady @davebrady72.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Some one revealed to be a serial fraudster like Ariely (allegedly) surely will face the exact same level of public scrutiny as people like Claudine Gay. Surely he will be forced to resign… Surely, the right wing media and Twitter will vigorously go after him… dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

dukechronicle.com

‘Insane data’: Duke professor Dan Ariely accused of additional research fraud

New evidence released Monday shows that Dan Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business, likely tampered with or fabricated data in an influential research paper from ...

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Reposted by Wim Van Lancker

Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 01/09/2026

The emissions scenarios underlying the next generation of climate model runs that will be featured in the upcoming IPCC 7th Assessment Report are officially out! I have a big new explainer over at Carbon Brief taking an in-depth look at what they mean and whats changed: www.carbonbrief.org/...

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Reposted by Wim Van Lancker

Pat Hastings @ophastings.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

How well can we predict which children will end up poor adults or rich adults? Or how much education they'll earn? In a new working paper, @zparolin.bsky.social and I show the predictability of life outcomes depends on the country and outcome. www.inet.ox.ac.uk/publications... Highlights below! 🧵👇

Title: Rags or Riches? Predicting Life Outcomes from the Birth Lottery Across Five High-Income Countries

Authors: Orestes P. Hastings and Zach Parolin

Abstract: The stratification of life outcomes is a central concern of sociology, but to what extent can adult outcomes be predicted from childhood circumstances? Although decades of research have identified important family and socioeconomic factors associated with mobility and attainment, these models explain only a modest share of individual variation in outcomes. Using harmonized longitudinal data from the Cross-National Equivalent Files (CNEF) and an ensemble of machine-learning models, we estimate the predictability of adult outcomes in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and South Korea. Predictability varies substantially across outcomes and national contexts: educational attainment is more predictable than economic outcomes, poverty is far more predictable in the U.S., and income mobility is substantially less predictable than overall attainment outcomes. Additional U.S. analyses show that adding race, wealth, parental incarceration, and other variables improves predictions only slightly. We further show that predictability captures a distinct dimension of stratification not fully captured in other traditional measures of mobility, inequality, and opportunity. Together, these findings provide new insights into where and how the birth lottery most strongly shapes life chances.

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Reposted by Wim Van Lancker

Ashley @ashleysays.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Chefs kiss

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bsky.app/profile/wimv... 😁

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Final presentation of our session: Maria Ortega about Matthew effects in public childcare in Barcelona, exploring the role of childcare directors and the informal practices they adopt to ensure access for vulnerable families. Key is flexibility towards absenteeism and unpaid fees. #ESPAnet2026

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Third, Michele Ferrara on uptake of paternity and parental leave. Parenthood is a key driver of inequality, stratified update would reinforce these inequalities, particularly in terms of gender. She finds strong potential, drawing on pseudo panels, of leave to reduce inequalities. #ESPAnet2026

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Next up is Gerry Redmond on housing and educating policies combine to shape inequalities in children's life chances. Drawing on housing budget surveys and PISA data, he finds that renting increased, together with vast inequalities in school spending, in turn affecting achievement. #ESPAnet2026

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We continue with the final session today! Linda White is drawing on rollout of new design for childcare subsidies in two Canadian states to explore who benefits and how it affects childcare participation. She finds that design of the reform had unintended effects for low income families #ESPAnet2026

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Finally, Ann-Sophie Hummelshøj Pedersen presents her work on frontline recognition of child support needs. She asks who gets noticed and who doesn't, using autism as a paradigmatic case, and how such inequality has implications for later outcomes. One final session to go, tomorrow! #ESPAnet2026

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Giovanni Greco and Milan This on inequality in adult education operating through different channels, with potential knock-on effects. They focus on individualisation in adult education and will test whether this increases Matthew effects in training participation. #ESPAnet2026

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Now Joanna Geerts on depressive symptoms amongst 50+ unemployed persons, and how active labour market policies would mitigate this vicious cycle. Drawing on SHARE data 2004-2022 for 25 countries, she finds that financial scarcity predicts depressive symptoms. #ESPAnet2026

Second session begins! @mariavaalavuo.bsky.social on childhood mental health disorders and their cumulative impact later on in life. Drawing on Finnish register data, she shows that childhood mental health disorders are strongly associated with later outcomes, even controlled for grades #ESPAnet2026