BethAnn McLaughlin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
BethAnn McLaughlin
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McLaughlin in 2018
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| Born | |
| Nationality | American |
| Education |
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| Children | 2 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Neurology |
| Institutions | Vanderbilt University |
| Thesis | Striatal vulnerability to mitochondrial inhibition (1998) |
BethAnn McLaughlin is an American neuroscientist, activist, and hoaxer. She is a former assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University. Her research at Vanderbilt focused on neural stress responses and brain injury. After being denied tenure in 2017, she sought to have the decision overturned. The decision to deny tenure was upheld, and her employment at Vanderbilt ended in July 2019.
McLaughlin was suspended from Twitter in August 2020 for running a "years-long Twitter identity scam, wherein she allegedly pretended to be a bisexual, Native American anthropology professor at Arizona State University." McLaughlin soon after admitted responsibility for the hoax.
Early life and education
McLaughlin was born in Boston and raised in St. Louis and New Hampshire. She had an early interest in nature and science but was not as engaged in "formal science classes", in contrast to her brother who took to academic studies more readily. McLaughlin describes her brother as gifted, particularly in math, but the academic pressure "looked miserable" so she leaned more towards sports. During high school, McLaughlin was involved with the school newspaper and worked as a waitress.
McLaughlin obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Biopsychology from Skidmore College in 1990. During this time she spent a year in Africa studying wildlife management which inspired her to advocate for nature through organising campus events for Earth Day; she credits the success of this event as the point when she became "...hopelessly committed to causing good trouble." McLaughlin obtained her PhD in the Neurological Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998.
After graduation, she continued her postdoctoral training in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. As a postdoc, she received a National Institutes of Health grant awarded through the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke's National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Training Fellowship in Neurodegeneration.
Career
In 2002, McLaughlin joined Vanderbilt University as a research assistant professor at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a non tenure track position. In 2005, McLaughlin received a new appointment at the same institution as an assistant professor, a tenure track position.
Her research team studied how the brain responds to stress so that therapeutic solutions can be developed for acute and chronic injuries. The McLaughlin Lab also looked into identifying new genes that affect vulnerability to injury and the reasons behind cell death. Their research focused on stroke, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and autism. Specifically, McLaughlin focused on understanding cell loss post hypoxic and ischemic insults (often in cardiac arrest and stroke).
McLaughlin has collaborated with researchers in physics and chemistry to study organoids for drug screening, cholesterol in the brain, and sensitive sensors for metabolic signalling.
McLaughlin applied for tenure in 2015, but Vanderbilt delayed a decision on her application for two years while a disciplinary investigation was conducted. The disciplinary investigation was based on accusations that McLaughlin was sending derogatory tweets to colleagues, from anonymous, multiuser Twitter accounts. She admitted to sending threats to colleagues. She was denied tenure at Vanderbilt in 2017. She appealed the decision by filing a grievance with the university, and started a petition garnering social media support for her tenure. However, in 2019 the decision was upheld, and she left the university in July 2019.
Twitter hoax
On July 31, 2020, McLaughlin posted on Twitter that her colleague, "@Sciencing_bi", supposedly a female Indigenous anthropology professor at Arizona State University (ASU), had died of COVID-19. She claimed the woman contracted COVID-19 after "[s]he was forced by her university to continue teaching in person until April", though ASU had suspended classes in March 2020. The anonymous account was created in 2016 and had been heavily involved with MeTooSTEM.
After McLaughlin held a Zoom memorial service, attendees noticed that no one knew the account's true identity. A spokesperson for ASU later said the university had no evidence that any professors had died, or that the professor in question existed. An instance resurfaced wherein @Sciencing_bi had solicited donations over Venmo, and the Venmo account belonged to McLaughlin. On August 3, 2020, McLaughlin's Twitter account was suspended for violation of its "spam and platform manipulation policies" which prohibit maintaining fraudulent personas on the platform. Shortly afterwards, the @Sciencing_bi account was suspended under the same policy.
On August 4, 2020, the New York Times published a statement from McLaughlin provided by her lawyer in which she admitted responsibility for the hoax, and would be "stepping away" from MeTooSTEM. She was subsequently removed from the editorial board of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Mclaughin was also subsequently removed from the MIT Media Lab 2018 MIT Disobedience Award, which she had originally shared with biologist Sherry Marts and founder of the #MeToo movement Tarana Burke.
Recognition
In 2018 she received the Society for Neuroscience Louise Hanson Marshall Special Recognition Award for her work on the advancement of women in neuroscience.
