The Assad regime’s, or anyone else's use of chemical weapons in Syria, Russian, or anyone's responsibility for whatever happened to the Skripals in 2018, doesn't belong in this essay.
Those are matters of grave importance, but whatever Prof David Millar has to say on them deserves to be carefully examined, but examined elsewhere.
The Arday affair is one of institution corruption, illusion, delusion and charlatanism, not about disputed conclusions about chemical warfare.
It looks like the name David Millar has just been dropped on top of this pile of garbage to insult him.
Good scholarship is judged by whether its claims follow from its evidence. That principle applies equally to a paper on Critical Race Theory, quantum physics, or a newspaper column about universities. If an article criticises weak reasoning while itself relying on cherry-picked examples, category errors, and rhetorical flourishes in place of systematic evidence, it undermines the credibility of its own critique.
Something I found baffling about the David Milller case was that he wasn't an antisemite in his spare time, bizarre conspiracy theories were part of the syllabus he taught. There was no attempt at intellectual rigour even if you ignore the bigotry.
Three distinct phases in the combined measure. 1970-1991, slow growth. 1991-2012?, increased rate of increase. Post 2012?, massive surge.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Western elites stopped worrying about workers defecting to a rival ideology or having to mobilise them in an existential struggle. They have engaged in pretty relentless, multi-pronged assault on their working classes ever since—trade, offshoring manufacturing, immigration, land use policies driving up rents and house prices, culture, discourse…—because they have no reason to care.
My next manuscript is going to be titled, 'Whiteness and the colonial oppression of black transgender sheep'. It is sure to be my most cited paper, despite me being a retired agricultural scientist.
The exceptional aspect of this case is one can't disregard the other examples of fantastical claims beyond academics. People are caught up plagarizing, but running 600 miles in six days, etc?
Follow the money. Go to Cremin's LinkedIn and you'll see the entire neuro diversity/ADHD/mental illness/welfare industry laid out before you costing taxpayers billions and billions in PIP, Motability, Special Needs, etc etc. Not saying there are some genuine cases, just swamped by hundreds of thousands of grifters, serviced by "peer-reviewed" educational and psychology and sociology academia.
Far be it from me to gainsay any theory about the intellectual collapse of the progressive classes, but they also respond to incentives like everyone else. If the money - and the institutional credit - comes via this stuff then it's no surprise efforts will cluster there, any more than it's a surprise that this system should self-rationalise whilst doing so. It would be tempting to turn this into a hearts and minds issue, about how we need to either win the argument with these people or remove/replace them, but the trickle down effects of a tweak to the incentive structure would achieve more
Academics do have incentives to do policy relevant research - it helps greatly with funding and promotion applications and is demanded by some journals - so it is interesting that you think there is too little of it. (Sorry to reference some of my own work, but this suggests epidemiologists increasingly claim policy relevance, some might say dubiously: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.13.25340175).
Given there is at least some incentive to do policy relevant research, what barriers do you think are against it, other than academics' tendancy to onanism (usually metaphorical, though literal with that Manchester PhD student)? The Civil Service has the Areas of Research Interest website, but I find many of the questions aren't very well defined or, alternatively, are too specific to do with available data without any extra research funding.
You've focused here on research not being useful because it is off topic, but did you have experiences where the research was on topic, but just not very good or missing key aspects that would make it truly useful? If that's the case, what were those aspects? How do you think well meaning research could improve?
There is incentive to be “innovative”. Policy relevant, not so much. Research grants are an innovation cargo-cult without serious reality-tests.
Aristocratic patronage worked much better. Aristocrats handing out their own money who cared about their reputation gave us great art, music, buildings, literature, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.
Anonymous bureaucrats handing out other people’s money got us fashionable slop, feminist glaciology and the replication crisis. Incentives do, indeed, matter.
Your party kept increasing funding while in power, even though all the evidence was that the policy introduced by John Major wasn’t having the effect of creating a more skilled workforce.
Interesting piece thanks for your time researching this. I do agree with you that there is a depressing groupthink and intolerance of diverging viewpoints in these academic areas and that to the lay reader a lot of it can sound like a jargon salad. I also agree that most of these studies are probably pretty useless though I don’t think EDI is useless or pointless in itself. I’m actually encouraged the figure is only about 2% though noting your key words won’t have detected everything.
As an academic insider, I can also tell you that this language has poisoned much theological study, and this is not unconnected with the intellectual collapse of the Church of England.
“Watching Cambridge (failing to) grapple with the Arday case was like watching one of your best friends end up on heroin and living in a skip. Its tragic. You still love them, but you know you have to help them get off the smack.”
^ Absolutely nails it.
So, what happened around 2018 to prompt the steady climb to become a surge?
The Assad regime’s, or anyone else's use of chemical weapons in Syria, Russian, or anyone's responsibility for whatever happened to the Skripals in 2018, doesn't belong in this essay.
Those are matters of grave importance, but whatever Prof David Millar has to say on them deserves to be carefully examined, but examined elsewhere.
The Arday affair is one of institution corruption, illusion, delusion and charlatanism, not about disputed conclusions about chemical warfare.
It looks like the name David Millar has just been dropped on top of this pile of garbage to insult him.
Good scholarship is judged by whether its claims follow from its evidence. That principle applies equally to a paper on Critical Race Theory, quantum physics, or a newspaper column about universities. If an article criticises weak reasoning while itself relying on cherry-picked examples, category errors, and rhetorical flourishes in place of systematic evidence, it undermines the credibility of its own critique.
Something I found baffling about the David Milller case was that he wasn't an antisemite in his spare time, bizarre conspiracy theories were part of the syllabus he taught. There was no attempt at intellectual rigour even if you ignore the bigotry.
Three distinct phases in the combined measure. 1970-1991, slow growth. 1991-2012?, increased rate of increase. Post 2012?, massive surge.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Western elites stopped worrying about workers defecting to a rival ideology or having to mobilise them in an existential struggle. They have engaged in pretty relentless, multi-pronged assault on their working classes ever since—trade, offshoring manufacturing, immigration, land use policies driving up rents and house prices, culture, discourse…—because they have no reason to care.
My next manuscript is going to be titled, 'Whiteness and the colonial oppression of black transgender sheep'. It is sure to be my most cited paper, despite me being a retired agricultural scientist.
The exceptional aspect of this case is one can't disregard the other examples of fantastical claims beyond academics. People are caught up plagarizing, but running 600 miles in six days, etc?
Follow the money. Go to Cremin's LinkedIn and you'll see the entire neuro diversity/ADHD/mental illness/welfare industry laid out before you costing taxpayers billions and billions in PIP, Motability, Special Needs, etc etc. Not saying there are some genuine cases, just swamped by hundreds of thousands of grifters, serviced by "peer-reviewed" educational and psychology and sociology academia.
Far be it from me to gainsay any theory about the intellectual collapse of the progressive classes, but they also respond to incentives like everyone else. If the money - and the institutional credit - comes via this stuff then it's no surprise efforts will cluster there, any more than it's a surprise that this system should self-rationalise whilst doing so. It would be tempting to turn this into a hearts and minds issue, about how we need to either win the argument with these people or remove/replace them, but the trickle down effects of a tweak to the incentive structure would achieve more
Academics do have incentives to do policy relevant research - it helps greatly with funding and promotion applications and is demanded by some journals - so it is interesting that you think there is too little of it. (Sorry to reference some of my own work, but this suggests epidemiologists increasingly claim policy relevance, some might say dubiously: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.11.13.25340175).
Given there is at least some incentive to do policy relevant research, what barriers do you think are against it, other than academics' tendancy to onanism (usually metaphorical, though literal with that Manchester PhD student)? The Civil Service has the Areas of Research Interest website, but I find many of the questions aren't very well defined or, alternatively, are too specific to do with available data without any extra research funding.
You've focused here on research not being useful because it is off topic, but did you have experiences where the research was on topic, but just not very good or missing key aspects that would make it truly useful? If that's the case, what were those aspects? How do you think well meaning research could improve?
Cheers.
There is incentive to be “innovative”. Policy relevant, not so much. Research grants are an innovation cargo-cult without serious reality-tests.
Aristocratic patronage worked much better. Aristocrats handing out their own money who cared about their reputation gave us great art, music, buildings, literature, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution.
Anonymous bureaucrats handing out other people’s money got us fashionable slop, feminist glaciology and the replication crisis. Incentives do, indeed, matter.
It was incredible the amount of money poured into COVID related research, yet the quality of most of the studies was utter garbage.
Your party kept increasing funding while in power, even though all the evidence was that the policy introduced by John Major wasn’t having the effect of creating a more skilled workforce.
Interesting piece thanks for your time researching this. I do agree with you that there is a depressing groupthink and intolerance of diverging viewpoints in these academic areas and that to the lay reader a lot of it can sound like a jargon salad. I also agree that most of these studies are probably pretty useless though I don’t think EDI is useless or pointless in itself. I’m actually encouraged the figure is only about 2% though noting your key words won’t have detected everything.
As an academic insider, I can also tell you that this language has poisoned much theological study, and this is not unconnected with the intellectual collapse of the Church of England.
I pretty much agree with everything said here, but we should at least comfort ourselves that it's about 2% of theses containing these words.
Superb stuff - more positive contribution to society in one of your substacks than in hundreds of these nonsense word theses.
Wonderful Post. Good that someone sensible is cataloguing this contemporary nonsense. I'm just glad it isn't me.
“Watching Cambridge (failing to) grapple with the Arday case was like watching one of your best friends end up on heroin and living in a skip. Its tragic. You still love them, but you know you have to help them get off the smack.”
^ Absolutely nails it.
So, what happened around 2018 to prompt the steady climb to become a surge?