Controversial radiologist and former White House COVID-19 advisor Scott Atlas deletes Twitter account

Controversial neuroradiologist and former White House COVID-19 advisor Scott Atlas, MD, deleted his Twitter account on Tuesday amid a purge of users on the popular social media site.

Atlas confirmed the move to STAT news this week, noting that the platform’s decision to expel some 70,000 users after the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill influenced his thinking.

“In my view, Twitter has become a destructive place that mainly inflames extreme thinking and disseminates distortions, rather than elucidating factual information and respectful, civilized discussion,” the senior fellow at Stanford’s conservative-leaning Hoover Institution told STAT, noting that he had lost some 12,000 followers as of Monday night.

Atlas himself stoked controversy on Twitter in November, urging Michigan residents to “rise up” against strict lockdown measures, which he had railed against while part of the administration. The blowback from that statement led to the Stanford Faculty Senate issuing a resolution “strongly condemning” his comments. Atlas asserted that he did not intend to incite violence, only encourage Americans to “peacefully protest.”

He formally resigned from his post on Nov. 30, with his 130-day temporary employment set to expire.

Marty Stempniak

Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic. 

Around the web

The ACR hopes these changes, including the addition of diagnostic performance feedback, will help reduce the number of patients with incidental nodules lost to follow-up each year.

And it can do so with almost 100% accuracy as a first reader, according to a new large-scale analysis.

The patient, who was being cared for in the ICU, was not accompanied or monitored by nursing staff during his exam, despite being sedated.