The founder of MeTooSTEM has come forward as the woman behind a fake Twitter account that claimed to belong to a Native American bisexual professor of geology at Arizona State University who died of the coronavirus.
BethAnn McLaughlin told the New York Times on Tuesday that she created the phony account after some in the science community began questioning whether it was legitimate.
“I take full responsibility for my involvement in creating the @sciencing_bi Twitter account,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “My actions are inexcusable. I apologize without reservation to all the people I hurt.”
McLaughlin is a neuroscientist who previously worked as a professor at Vanderbilt University, but she was not granted tenure in 2017. She is also the founder of MeTooSTEM, a nonprofit organization looking to raise awareness of sexual assault and harassment within the science community.
The account, @Sciencing_Bi, was created in October 2016 and frequently referenced McLaughlin as well as claims of sexual assault the fabricated user experienced and her monthslong battle with the coronavirus.
Last Friday, McLaughlin announced on Twitter that the user behind @Sciencing_Bi had suddenly died, prompting other scientists to send their condolences.
“Sad to report @Sciencing_Bi died from COVID this evening,” McLaughlin tweeted.
By Sunday, Twitter users began questioning whether the account was real and if McLaughlin created it to gain endorsements for MeTooSTEM, which issued a “site can’t be reached” warning as of Wednesday.
“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.”
Twitter suspended the @Sciencing_Bi account as well as McLaughlin’s account on Sunday, citing violation of manipulation policies.
“We’re aware of this activity and have suspended these accounts for violating our spam and platform manipulation policies,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
BuzzFeed News contacted an Arizona State University spokeswoman following the claims and Twitter suspensions, who said the school has no record matching @Sciencing_Bi’s description as a Native American professor of geology battling the coronavirus.
“We have been looking into this for the last 24 hours and cannot verify any connection with the university,” ASU spokeswoman Katie Paquet said. “We have been in touch with several deans and faculty members, and no one can identify the account or who might be behind it.”
McLaughlin held a virtual memorial for @Sciencing_Bi over the weekend, but only five attendees joined the call, and McLaughlin was the only one who said she met @Sciencing_Bi in person.
Members of the Native American community have denounced McLaughlin for faking the account.
“This faking being Native has a long history of being tied to the actual theft of resources and land,” Kim TallBear of the University of Alberta in Canada told BuzzFeed News. “The fact that this woman thought she could get away with this tells you how little she understands about the actual state of affairs for Native people in the United States.”
The editor of a Native American magazine, Pollen Nation, also slammed the fabrication of @Sciencing_Bi.
“There are millions who want to be us,” said Jacqueline Keeler. “These people are centering themselves in our issues, they are heading Native American departments, they are telling Native students what they can and can’t study — it’s to protect their own position. And so it does change our ability to advocate for ourselves when we are constantly being replaced by frauds, white people, or other people of different backgrounds pretending to be us.”
