The founder of MeTooSTEM showed up as the woman on a fake Twitter account claiming to belong to a bisexual professor of Native American geology at Arizona State University who died of coronavirus.
BethAnn McLaughlin told The New York Times on Tuesday that he created the fake account after some members of the clinical network began asking if it was legitimate.
“I completely take my turn in creating the Twitter account @science_bi,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “My movements are inexcusable. I unreservedly apologize to all the other people I’ve hurt.
McLaughlin is a neuroscientist who in the past worked as a professor at Vanderbilt University, but was not appointed in 2017. She is also the founder of MeTooSTEM, a non-profit organization that seeks to raise awareness of sexual assault and sexual harassment in the clinical community
The account, @Science_Bi, was created in October 2016 and concerned McLaughlin, as well as allegations of sexual assault suffered by the manufactured user and his months-to-month war with the coronavirus.
Last Friday, McLaughlin announced on Twitter that user @Science_Bi had died suddenly, leading other scientists to send their condolences.
“It’s not happy to report that @Science_Bi died of COVID tonight,” McLaughlin tweeted.
On Sunday, Twitter users began to wonder if the account was genuine and whether McLaughlin had created it to get approval from MeTooSTEM, which issued a “Site Cannot Be Reached” warning starting Wednesday.
“It’s all really insidious,” Michael Eisen, a computer biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, told BuzzFeed News. “The transparent purpose here was to make sure that many other prominent people are this user and MeTooSTEM.”
Twitter sunday suspended McLaughlin’s account and @Science_Bi account, prompting a violation of tampering policies.
“We are from this activity and have suspended those accounts for violating our spam and platform manipulation policies,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
BuzzFeed News contacted a spokesperson for Arizona State University after the twitter charges and suspensions, who stated that the school had a record that matched Science_Bi’s description as a professor of Native American geology battling 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 organized a virtual memorial for @Science_Bi over the weekend, but only five participants joined the call, and McLaughlin was the only one who said he met @Science_Bi in person.
Members of Native Americans denounced McLaughlin for manipulating the account.
“This appearance of being aboriginal has a long history of being connected to the actual theft of resources and land,” Kim TallBear of the University of Alberta in Canada told BuzzFeed News Kim TallBear. “The fact that this idea of women can get away with it shows how little the existing scenario of other Aboriginal people in the United States understands.
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.”