MY PHD IS FAKE
Celebrity psychologist who gives ‘expert’ talks to schoolchildren on suicide and who told parents the first-born is a lab rat admits:
A CELEBRITY psychologist who has been a guest on some of RTÉ radio’s most popular shows has admitted his PhD is fake, after an Irish Mail on Sunday investigation.
However, that was just one of a number of false boasts by the controversial ‘expert’, whose claims about child suicide have been described as dangerous and irresponsible. He also used his phony credentials to give expletive-peppered lectures to parents and teenagers in which he makes comments such as: ‘The first-born child is a little bit like the first pancake; you burn it and throw it away.’
When challenged by the MoS on who awarded him his PhD ‘Doctor’ Fergus Heffernan insisted on claiming that he was a victim of a scam: ‘I have been living a lie for the past 20 years.’
However, the MoS has uncovered a number of discrepancies and other
false claims about the Kilkenny man’s credentials. A glowing biography on his website, which was taken down this weekend in advance of this exposé, states that he has a Bachelors degree, two Masters degrees and a PhD in ‘Bio Psychology’. Elsewhere on his website, the subject of his PhD is described as ‘Neuro Science’.
It also states that he has taught in ‘major universities all over the world’, and he has claimed to be a visiting professor ‘at many major universities’ including Trinity College Dublin, Columbia University New York, and Boston University.
All three have told the MoS that they have no record of any employment or affiliation with Mr Heffernan.
Mr Heffernan has been a guest on RTÉ radio programmes on a number of occasions with top presenters including Marian Finucane, Ray D’Arcy, and Dave Fanning, and has been described as a ‘world renowned presenter’. He tours the country speaking to corporate and community groups about mental health issues and psychology.
There is also controversy over the content of his presentations, which he claims to deliver to 3,500 people a week – many of whom are teenagers or adults working with teenagers.
During a talk to a parents’ council in Galway last February, he frequently used expletives and referred to first-born children as ‘the
‘I do not expect you or anyone else to believe that’
screw-up child’. He told the audience: ‘You see, the first-born child is a little bit like the first pancake – you burn it and throw it away. The first born is actually the test-tube baby, a lab rat.’ When challenged on this by the MoS, he admitted to swearing and referring to first-born children in this manner.
However, he claimed: ‘Everyone in the room knows what I’m talking about. Absolutely everyone gets it.’
Statistics that he cited in relation to child suicides during the presentation have also been described as dangerous and irresponsible by the Irish Association of Suicidology.
He claimed that nine children under the age of nine died by suicide last year, along with 11 children between 10 and 12 years old; 17 between 12 and 14 years of age, and 27 between 14 and 17. A spokesperson for the IAS disputed the veracity of these statistics.
When asked about the fact that the universities mentioned on his website had no record of employing him, the 57-year-old conceded that he was not a visiting professor in any of them.
‘I am not an academic. Maybe the word “visiting professor” is not the correct terminology, and it should read “visiting lecturer”,’ he stated.
He suggested that universities such as Columbia and Boston may not have any record of him as his work there was with graduate military students as a guest of the United Nations.
But when pressed further on who awarded his PhD, over the course of five days his story changed. Eventually, he told the MoS that he had just discovered his PhD was fake. ‘This [the PhD] cost me a fortune and I went to considerable debt doing it. And now I have this horrible, horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I might have been part of an elaborate scam. Jesus Christ! There is an awful sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I have been living a lie for the past 20 years (not intentionally).’
He later added that he had confirmed his PhD was fake: ‘Believe you me, I am finding this out for the first time and my world has been ripped from under me. I do not expect you or anyone else to believe that.’ He also made claims during his presentations that he was a ‘child soldier’ with the Irish Defence Forces in Lebanon, where he had completed a six-month tour of duty in 1976. There was no Irish military presence in Lebanon and no conflict in that country until after May 1978.
The claim was repeated on his website, until it was taken offline. It stated that he joined the Irish Defence Forces in 1975 and served in Lebanon ‘while still a child’ at the age of 17 in 1976. Questioned about this discrepancy, he claimed – contrary to what was said on his website and in a public talk heard by the MoS in February – that he had not joined the army until 1976 and went overseas to Lebanon in May 1978. He then said: ‘If somebody is that narrow-minded and they want to argue over whether I said 1975 or 1976, well what can I say, but the fact remains this is the age I was.’
AN INVESTIGATION by the Irish Mail on Sunday uncovered evidence of discrepancies and inaccuracies in relation to the credentials of celebrity psychologist ‘Doctor’ Fergus Heffernan.
In light of those findings, a series of questions were emailed to him in a bid to get to the bottom of his PhD and other claims contained in his glittering CV.
‘ABSOLUTELY APPALLED’ THURSDAY, APRIL 6 AT 12.03PM
Responding to 10 queries relating to claims about his academic qualifications, military service and work with some of the world’s most prestigious universities, Mr Heffernan was initially indignant.
‘In reply to your email first and foremost I would have to say I am absolutely appalled how somebody would go this path,’ he wrote.
He responded to several of the matters raised by the MoS but did not address a question in relation to the provenance of his PhD. He said that the queries he had not addressed had been referred to his solicitor.
‘I will honestly say that at this moment in time I am hurting and burning… that I could arrive in a place where somebody would write in [to] a paper with the potential to destroy a person’s reputation.’
‘I AM NO IMPOSTER’ SATURDAY, APRIL 8 AT 1.38PM
The MoS asked Mr Heffernan to provide further clarification, particularly around where he got his PhD.
In response, he advised that the awarding body for his doctorate was King’s College London (KCL). Mr Heffernan said that this had been the choice of his employers, the Irish Defence Forces or the United Nations.
‘The contact person for the shared programme for the rewarding body… to clarify this is Professor Trudie Challoner [sic] of King’s College,’ he wrote in reference to Trudie Chalder, a senior academic at the university.
However, he acknowledged that the discipline in which he had received his PhD had been referred to as ‘neuro science’ and ‘bio psychology’ in different sections of his website and elsewhere.
‘In the cold light of day, this shows a mistaken misrepresentation on my behalf of which I am willing to take full responsibility,’ he wrote.
‘I am no… imposter out selling a new snake oil or trying to save the world offering a new panacea for wellbeing… I know I am not perfect and I have made some mistakes here.
I have made a huge error of judgment here and I won’t hide from it… I fully respect what you have to do now and I will take my medicine on the chin… ‘Thank you for honestly pointing out these things to me,’ added Mr Heffernan.
‘FIELD DAY IN COURT’ SUNDAY, APRIL 9 AT 1.41PM
The following day, he adopted a less conciliatory tone and suggested that he would ‘have a field day in the High Court’ if his academic credentials were impugned. He now referred to the misrepresentation of his PhD as ‘nit-picking’.
‘I was sitting here this morning in the process of scanning and sending all of my academic awards and citations to you for clarity, when something said to me: ‘How do I know who I am even sending these to is real?’ he wrote.
Mr Heffernan said that he had called his solicitor and her advice was not to share any evidence of his academic qualifications with this newspaper.
‘Now, part of me being the good boy would just love to send on the items and put everything to bed. But [my solicitor] said no,’ he explained.
‘Her advice is “let them write whatever story they want and then we will have a field day in the High Court in two years’ time” where we will have a vast army of experts to professionally and personally talk about who I am and the work I have been doing all over the world for the past 30 years.’
These experts include ‘Professor Trudie Challoner [sic]’, cited as the individual at King’s College London who could attest to the bona fides of his PhD.
‘Also sitting on the table in front of me here is three large boxes, which contain every thesis, every paper, every assignment, over the 30 years of my four degrees… So we will bring in all of these papers so a judge can decide if there was really a misrepresentation going on on a website or not, or if this is just nit-picking,’ he added.
‘A WITCH HUNT’ SUNDAY, APRIL 9 AT 2.01PM
The MoS responded to Mr Heffernan’s email by pointing out that his name did not feature on a list of PhD students who have studied under Professor Trudie Chalder and that there was no doctoral thesis by anybody called Fergus Heffernan on the British Library’s database of doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions.
‘I did not state I studied under Trudie. I mentioned her as somebody from King’s College who knew me and my work,’ he explained.
‘The time for talking is done now. This has become a witch hunt. I have all the paperwork in front of me and it will be produced in the appropriate setting at the appropriate time.’
‘VICTIM OF SCAM’ SUNDAY, APRIL 9 AT 3.18PM
The MoS noted that Mr Heffernan had again not explained why there was no record of him submitting a doctoral thesis for a PhD in the UK. The newspaper requested proof of his doctoral degree.
‘I am totally taken aback here,’ he responded. He agreed to scan and send a copy of his PhD parchment but explained by email that he could not do so immediately as his ‘internet was down’ and he was waiting for it to come back.
In a bizarre twist, Mr Heffernan then claimed that he had just now come to suspect that his PhD might, in fact, not be real – and that he might have been the victim of an elaborate scam.
‘This PhD cost me nearly €45,000. I applied online to an online advertisement in 1997. I attended for interview in a hotel in Leeds. I was appointed a supervisor. I met my supervisor once a month, always in the same hotel,’ he wrote. ‘Twice a year, we met in rooms in Camberley (a campus at KCL). We had four tutorials a year where there would be 10 other students of different nationalities. It was over five years with ongoing supervision and meeting with the supervisor always in the same location, who always had a podium and a logo of King’s College.’
Mr Heffernan stated that he had not attended the graduation in 2002 because he was abroad on business at the time.
‘This cost me a fortune and I went [in]to considerable debt doing it. And now I have this horrible, horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I might have been part of an elaborate scam. Jesus Christ!
‘And you’re telling me that having sat proudly looking at the cherished PhD in a frame on the wall, none of it is real?
‘I am sitting here with a growing sense of shame and embarrassment… I would have had no way of knowing until now,’ he said.
‘There is an awful sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I have been living a lie for the past 20 years (not intentionally). The work is real, the great career of working in the darkest places on the planet [is] real. But the title has been a lie. Oh my God...
‘Fergus Heffernan the great fraud… Fergus Heffernan the scam artist… Fergus Heffernan the liar… That’s what everyone will hear anyway. But what about Fergus Heffernan the victim? I don’t suppose anyone will want to hear that.
‘I don’t believe I did not know. But then again how would I, it was so elaborate (looking back on it now),’ he added.
‘WHAT YOU SAY IS TRUE’ MONDAY, APRIL 10 AT 11.09AM
Mr Heffernan emailed again to confirm what he had suspected – he does not hold a legitimate PhD.
‘I now know what you say is true, as I scanned the citation to Trudie and she has confirmed that is fake,’ he wrote. ‘Believe you me, I am finding this out for the first time and my world has been ripped from under me. I do not expect you or anyone else to believe that.’
He pleaded that our story be delayed until the end of the month, claiming his son was in Australia and that he was worried about how he might react to the revelations.
‘My wife will travel out to Australia next Saturday to accompany home our son… They fly back in to Ireland on Monday morning the 24th April,’ he wrote. ‘Purely from a humanitarian [perspective] we would ask that you hold back on printing this story until the Sunday after his return.’
Mr Heffernan’s only son, Kenneth, is currently selling his 5-Series BMW on a classified ads website. The MoS called him in relation to the advertisement this week. He said that he was in Kilkenny and available to meet and show the car this weekend.