The more I read about this affair, the more disgusted I am by @simonschuster, @Cambridge_Uni, and every other institutions that exploited Jason Arday as a mascot for signalling their own virtue. All along, Simon & Schuster was sitting on internal evidence that Arday was a pathological fabulist, without any need for fact-checking. All they had to do was compare the original book proposal with the final manuscript and notice that the confabulations were entirely different and contradictory: - In the proposal, he spends months in a coma after being hit by a car. Doctors recommend unplugging his life support, yet he remains conscious throughout, trapped in "locked-in syndrome," before miraculously awakening. The published book mentions NONE of this, nor the full year he supposedly spent "relearning everything—how to walk, to talk." Instead, the memoir tells an uneventful year of finishing secondary school and taking exams. Are you f*cking kidding me, @simonschuster? - The "testicular cancer" in the proposal somehow transmogrifies into "two brain tumors" in the finished manuscript. Another medical miracle. - The chronology of his dramatic suicide attempt—standing on a bridge before being saved by an Eagles song—changes completely. In one version it happens during the pandemic; in another, before it. - The elderly "shaman woman" who predicts his meteoric rise during his (non-existent) trip to Brazil with WaterAid suddenly turns into an aid worker in her 30s. A woman with truly magical powers. Despite knowing all this, @simonschuster cynically forged ahead with publication, because they thought they could make big bucks out of this "near-mythic" (dixit his agent) story, and flaunt their own virtue. Pull this book off the shelves, @simonschuster, and stop humiliating this very troubled man. The Atlantic's investigation is devastating: