Professor Klaas Wynne, Chair of Chemical Physics at the University of Glasgow, has joined over seven hundred academics in signing a letter urging Ghent University not to take disciplinary action against self-described “race-realist” Nathan Cofnas.
In response to Hillhead Review’s request for comment, Wynne explained that he signed the letter “because [he does] not think a researcher should face disciplinary action for raising concerns about the integrity of published work.”
“I do not think a researcher should face disciplinary action for raising concerns about the integrity of published work.”
On 20 August, Cofnas was suspended from his post as a researcher of ethics in biology at Ghent University in Belgium, pending investigation into allegations of plagiarism and dishonesty made by Cofnas against the late professor Jason Arday.
Hillhead Review obtained the full list of signatories objecting to Cofnas’ suspension online, in which Professor Wynne’s name appears alongside 9 academics from other Scottish Universities.
Arday, a former professor of sociology of education at Glasgow University, had resigned from his professorial position at Cambridge University on 5 August amid controversy emerging following Nathan Cofnas’ public statements and reporting from Times Higher Education in which Arday is accused of plagiarising in his work, including parts of his 2015 PhD dissertation, and fabricating much of his biography. These allegations drew significant hostile media attention to Arday, who was found dead in his home in Battersea on 14 August.
Cofnas, whose work around the biology of race has been described as being closely associated with “scientific racism,” denies having been racially motivated in his criticism of Arday, and claims that he is being used as a scapegoat when “all [he] did was tell the truth.”
In his comments to Hillhead Review, Professor Wynne, who has worked in the University of Glasgow’s School of Chemistry since 2010, disavowed Cofnas’ work on race realism, describing it as “poor science” and stating that he “[wants] no association with it.”
In his full statement to Hillhead Review, Professor Wynne stated that:
“I signed because I do not think a researcher should face disciplinary action for raising concerns about the integrity of published work. Whether particular concerns are well founded is for journals and institutions to determine through a proper process, and that process should be allowed to run rather than being replaced by action against the person who raised them. My signature concerns that principle only. The letter is not about Glasgow and I have nothing to add on that.
“On Dr Cofnas’s opinions: no, I do not accept ‘race realism’. I regard it as poor science and I want no association with it. The point of defending due process is that it has to hold for people whose views one finds objectionable, and this is such a case.
“Jason Arday’s death is a tragedy and my sympathies are with his family and his colleagues. The allegations about his work were never tested to a conclusion and I do not think anyone should treat them as settled.”
Image credit: Joseph Black Building, University of Glasgow by Thomas Nugent CC BY-SA 2.0
