Woman says she created hoax ASU professor Twitter account

The woman many believed had created a fake persona of an Arizona State University professor on Twitter admitted on Tuesday that she created the social media account.

BethAnn McLaughlin told the New York Times, through a lawyer, that she was behind the @Sciencing_Bi Twitter account.

That account attracted widespread attention over the weekend after McLaughlin announced that @Sciencing_Bi had died from COVID-19 after a months-long journey with the disease, which was detailed on Twitter.

The account had blamed ASU for the illness earlier this year, but got basic details about the university’s response to the pandemic wrong.

After McLaughlin announced the death, other people began sleuthing out details that tied the accounts together. ASU said on Sunday that the alleged death appeared to be a hoax.

People who had interacted with the account and subsequently mourned the death of who they thought was a real person later said they had been duped.

Instead, it appeared McLaughlin had faked the death of a persona she had created on Twitter — a queer, Hopi scientist who worked at ASU. She acknowledged that was what happened on Wednesday.

“I take full responsibility for my involvement in creating the @sciencing_bi Twitter account,” McLaughlin’s statement to the New York Times said. “My actions are inexcusable. I apologize without reservation to all the people I hurt.”

McLaughlin, a former professor at Vanderbilt University with a controversial track record from her time leading a group called MeTooSTEM, also said she needed mental health treatment and was pursuing that now.

She said she would step down from her involvement in MeTooSTEM, the organization she founded to root out harassment in the sciences. She told the New York Times she would leave the organization to “ensure that it isn’t unfairly criticized for my actions.”

Both McLaughlin and @Sciencing_Bi’s accounts were suspended from Twitter for violating policies on spam and platform manipulation, the company told The Republic.

McLaughlin did not say why she created the account, but some have speculated that it was to boost her own credibility as she faced backlash within her organization. The @Sciencing_Bi account had defended McLaughlin when she came under fire last year for allegations of mistreating people who worked with the MeTooSTEM group, and for a lack of transparency. Several members of the organization resigned.

Women of color who were involved in the organization said they felt white people were frequently prioritized over people of color’s voices, according to Buzzfeed News.