The Death of a Fake Twitter Personality Reveals the Systemic Rot of Academia

An impersonator gained sympathy and attention in an industry where warnings from women of color aren’t taken seriously

Like any mystery, it started with a death. On July 31, scientists on Twitter heard the news that one of their own, a queer Hopi woman who taught at Arizona State University and went by the handle @Sciencing_BI, had died from Covid-19. What followed over the next week was a public unmasking of an attention-seeking Twitter fraud, a round of apologies, and the downplaying of a systemic issue within academia — the impersonation and appropriation of a Native researcher.

The news of @Sciencing_BI’s death came courtesy of her friend, BethAnn McLaughlin, creator of the nonprofit MeTooSTEM, who announced the death as part of a lengthy eulogy. The Hopi scientist was “a fierce protector of people,” McLaughlin wrote. “She let me take my shoulders away from my ears knowing she was meaner and more loving than everyone else… I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

For four years, @Sciencing_BI had been a fixture in the Science Twitter community, speaking out about diversity and sexual harassment and alternately confiding in and sparring with other scientists. In April, she announced she’d caught Covid-19 due to being forced to work on campus. Still, the news of her passing came as a brutal shock. Multiple researchers publicly mourned her as a confidante and offered tributes to her bravery. All held her up as an example of the threat awaiting faculty who were drawn back to campus amid the pandemic.

But if @Sciencing_BI had died, where was the body? When Rachel Leingang, a reporter with the Arizona Republic, contacted ASU, a college spokesperson told her they weren’t aware of any faculty or grad students dying; a spokesperson later confirmed to BuzzFeed that nobody matching @Sciencing_BI’s description taught at the college, and that the school had switched to online classes in March.