Twitter suspended the account of a former Vanderbilt University professor after some in the science community linked her to a potential sock-puppet account of a supposed Native American professor who claimed she was infected with the coronavirus.
BethAnn McLaughlin was a neurology professor at Vanderbilt University who was denied tenure and subsequently left the institution in 2019. She is also the founder of a sexual assault awareness group within the science community called MeTooSTEM. On Sunday, Twitter announced it suspended her account, as well as an account called @Sciencing_Bi “for violating our spam and platform manipulation policies,” according to BuzzFeed News.
The @Sciencing_Bi user claimed to be a Native American bisexual professor of geology at Arizona State University who had been battling the coronavirus since April. @Sciencing_Bi’s account was created in October 2016 and frequently referenced McLaughlin, according to BuzzFeed News.
On Friday, McLaughlin tweeted that the woman behind @Sciencing_Bi had suddenly died, prompting fellow scientists to send their remorse and condolences.
“Sad to report @Sciencing_Bi died from COVID this evening,” McLaughlin wrote on Twitter.
By Sunday, however, some questioned whether McLaughlin, who has been accused of bullying those who suffered sexual harassment, created the Twitter handle. The account was subsequently set to private.
Twitter then suspended both @Sciencing_Bi and McLaughlin’s account Sunday night.
“We’re aware of this activity, and have suspended these accounts for violating our spam and platform manipulation policies,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
Arizona State University also came forward amid the confusion and said the university has no records of a professor matching the description of @Sciencing_Bi.
“We have been looking into this for the last 24 hours and cannot verify any connection with the university,” ASU spokeswoman Katie Paquet told BuzzFeed News. “We have been in touch with several deans and faculty members, and no one can identify the account or who might be behind it.”
The university added that no staff deaths have been reported to the administration from family or friends.
In addition, McLaughlin held what was intended to be a memorial for @Sciencing_Bi on a virtual meeting over the weekend, but only five attendees joined the call, and McLaughlin was the only one who said she met @Sciencing_Bi in person.
Others have come forward describing their interactions with @Sciencing_Bi, including one scientist who said she messaged with the account in 2019 concerning McLaughlin’s campaign to receive tenure at Vanderbilt.
During the conversation, @Sciencing_Bi said she would send the scientist a Google Doc, but when she received it, it was reportedly linked to McLaughlin’s Gmail account.
I sent my email, and later received an invite from BethAnn’s gmail account to the google doc that aligns with the timeline of what Sciencing_Bi said to me. pic.twitter.com/ha4xe6D1A6
— Amber JUSTICE FOR BREONNA TAYLOR Barnard (@chromcatography) August 2, 2020
The person tweeting from @Sciencing_Bi also claimed in early June that she had been assaulted by a Harvard anthropology professor named Theodore Bestor.
BuzzFeed reported that @Sciencing_Bi approached other complainants at Harvard after a Crimson article was published concerning allegations of sexual harassment by professors within the school’s anthropology department.
“She claimed she also had a Title IX at Harvard against [professor Gary Urton] and contacted me with a sob story about how much she suffered, while at the same time encouraging me to reach out to Bethann,” one of the Harvard complainants anonymously said.
@Sciencing_Bi made repeated claims that she was sexually harassed while at Harvard, and cited McLaughlin’s group MeTooSTEM with helping her, according to BuzzFeed.
“The whole thing is really insidious,” Michael Eisen, a computational biologist at the University of California, Berkeley told BuzzFeed News. “The clear purpose here was to get a lot of prominent people behind this person and behind MeTooSTEM.”
