Posted on 02/27/2024 1:29:00 PM PST by nickcarraway
— Being the target of social media misinformation "can happen to anybody"
Dartmouth Health otolaryngologist Andrew Spector, MD, was in the operating room Friday afternoon when he started getting urgent calls and texts from an administrator.
Between cases, he called her back, and she told him people were calling and emailing Dartmouth Health about a TikTok video where a man driving a Toyota yells racist slurs at a woman.
Social media had decided it was Spector behind the wheel of that vehicle -- even though it wasn't.
"It's not me in the video," Spector told MedPage Today in an interview. "This is a case of mistaken identity."
Regardless, the threatening messages started coming. "People started saying, 'We're going to find you. We're coming for you and your family,'" Spector said. "My wife was getting some menacing messages on Facebook from random people, as was I."
The video, posted by @priceless_nina on TikTokopens in a new tab or window, shows a man leveling a racist slur at the woman taking the video. He then reaches out and appears to try to grab her phone as he drives by. He calls her the racist slur again as he drives away, and then his Massachusetts license plate comes into view.
"Internet detectives looked up this person's license plate, and ... the vehicle was registered to someone named Andrew Spector from Woburn, Massachusetts," Spector said. "That's not me."
Nonetheless, speculation abounded, with people jumping to conclusions after seeing Spector's Dartmouth Health physician profile onlineopens in a new tab or window.
"I have the unfortunate genetics that I am bald, and so is the driver of the vehicle who was saying these horrible racist things to this woman," Spector said, noting that people also speculated the driver might instead be related to him.
"I have no relationship to the man in the video," he said. "I am not his brother. I am not his father."
The original TikTok post has more than half a million likes and over 20,000 comments. It was widely picked up by other social media accounts, including a YouTube channel with more than 1 million subscribersopens in a new tab or window and an Instagram account with almost 200,000 followersopens in a new tab or window.
Commenters urged each other to post negative reviews on his physician profiles, Spector said.
"The word that comes to mind is defamation," he said. "I've been in the same practice since 2005 and with Dartmouth Health since 2014 -- so nearly 20 years of establishing an excellent reputation of taking quality and compassionate care of my patients and community."
"With a couple of keystrokes, that's been tarnished," he said.
Dartmouth Health helped him tremendously, he said, urging him to call his local police department to report the incident, and issuing a press release on his predicament to help him begin to recover his reputation.
"If I were in private practice and I didn't have the backing of Dartmouth behind me, this would have been absolutely ruinous," he said.
Cassidy Smith, a spokesperson for Dartmouth Health, said that Spector is a "fantastic clinician and it was so clear he was being unfairly targeted." Helping to get the word out "just felt like the right thing to do," she added. "We protect our people."
Spector is clear that the person who sustained the most harm is the woman who posted the video.
"Make no mistake, the victim is the woman who recorded the video of some horrible person slinging racial epithets at her and verbally abusing her," he said.
But his case does speak to a deeper societal problem, he said: the "irresponsible use of the internet and social media," to which medicine is no stranger.
"It's easy to click a button on a keyboard without looking somebody in the face and saying negative remarks," he said. "Misinformation spreads much more quickly than the truth does. And once the truth has been established, it seems like the [news] cycle ... has passed."
He said he hopes his case serves as a warning that "this can happen to anybody" and that it opens up a wider discussion about responsible use of social media.
"The last 72 hours have been a bit of a nightmare," said Spector.
Kristina Fiore leads MedPage’s enterprise & investigative reporting team. She’s been a medical journalist for more than a decade and her work has been recognized by Barlett & Steele, AHCJ, SABEW, and others. Send story tips to k.fiore@medpagetoday.com. Follow
He should file a defamation lawsuit against every single person who liked the post, and against TikTok.
With AI this willl happen every day
There truly is an alternate dimension that exists and operates in the same space as normal reality.
Phone-faced zombies, paradoxically disconnected from human interaction as they communicate away...
Dystopian horror flicks are looking better by the day.
Yes, we get a constant stream of patient care related calls that need to be addressed, regardless of being in the OR
“It doesn’t matter. He should be fired and cancelled, to send a message.”
Yes!
That would be a better arrangement,
More just.
It will be the October Surprise. He's the most scrutinized man in history. If they haven't found anything yet, they aren't going to... so they'll make it up. It will be all over the news in the lead-up to the election. After the election, there will be a correction...
I hope his will is in order...
He has, figuratively, one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel...
The video is 11 seconds long with no context.
Yep
the doctor who operated on my shoulder wanted to know what I wanted on my play list
AC/DC and Gun and Roses
Voila
Tiktok but now on you tube too https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NSmWitOBld4
I believe this is the video that defamed the Good Doctor from Dartmouth Health.
That’s your playlist when you were operated on?
I want to know the context.
_______________________________________________
Good question. I didn’t want to deal with TikTok, so I didn’t see what happened. And, of course, if she started something, she wouldn’t post it.
Yep
Lucky his old business partner wasn’t slicing and dicing.
The receptionist was Susie Deathrow and the surgeon was Dr Butcher.
True story, in Los Gatos
I think I'd pick classical. Keep the doctor calm. Listening to Guns n Roses might make him decide to look like one of the illustrations on the insides of their albums.
If she started it she wouldn’t post it? You sure? A feature of such types is that they do not even recognize their behaviors that start the trouble.
I'm from Milfid, MA...near Wistah. I stick out like a saw thumb down here in Jawnsin City in Tennessee.
Statement on Distractions in the Operating Room
So the ACS doesnt suggest banning cells.
But if that admin knew the doc was in the OR, his/her butt should be wearing somebody's boot prints.
Hahahahahaha...there is much to poke at with the accent! I’ll bet you DO stick out!
Fortunately for me, my dad was career military, so if I developed any kind of accent, was from living in Virginia (born in Norfolk!) and Maryland for chunks of time, so my accent to Massachusetts folks is “Southern” even though to people from further South, it probably sounds like a northerner.
When my dad retired, he and my mom moved our family to their hometown in Massachusetts, and in my last two years of high school, I was universally (but generally good naturedly) made fun of for my “Southern” accent. (I was the only one who “talked like that”)
My wife, OTOH, IS from this area, and I do hear her accent sometimes...:)
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