A cardiologist can proceed with a defamation lawsuit against the University of Pittsburgh after he was demoted for publishing an article about racism, the 3rd Circuit ruled.
While Norman Wang was practicing medicine and teaching at Pitt, he grew concerned that certain minorities were suffering from discrimination due to the affirmative action policies of medical schools and residency programs.
In the March 2020 issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association, Wang wrote an article called “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity: Evolution of Race and Ethnicity Considerations for the Cardiology Workforce in the United States of America from 1969 to 2019.”
He concluded that “long-term academic solutions and excellence should not be sacrificed for short-term demographic optics.”
The dean of Pitt’s medical school called Wang’s article “incredibly offensive and racist.”
Wang’s boss, Dr. Samir Saba, fired him as the director of a cardiology fellowship program. He also reposted a tweet from Wang’s colleague, Dr. Kathryn Berlacher, that accused Wang of using “misquotes, false interpretations, and racist thinking.”
Two days later, Pitt banned him from teaching with an email that read “any educational environment in which you partake is inherently unsafe, increasing our learners’ risk for undue bias and harm.”
At the university’s request, the American Heart Association retracted Wang’s article, stating that it “contains many misconceptions and misquotes and that together those inaccuracies, misstatements, and selective misreading of source materials strip the paper of its scientific validity.”
Later in the year, the U.S. Department of Education investigated whether Pitt’s “campaign of denunciation” violated federal law. The medical school dean declared that Wang had not lost his faculty status.
Wang filed a defamation lawsuit against Pitt, the AHA, and the publisher, among others. The federal court dismissed his case, which also included claims of First Amendment retaliation and civil rights violations.
However, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, stating that Wang can continue his defamation claim against Pitt, Saba, Berlacher, the AHA, and the hospital system.
Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas stated that the tweets “accused Wang of misquoting and misreading data and sources – both of which are falsifiable claims. So they were more hit job than academic argument.”
As a limited public figure who inserted himself into a public debate, Wang is also required to prove actual malice in his defamation claim.
Bibas ruled that Wang made a sufficient pleading, stating that it was plausible that Berlacher and Saba knew that their statements were incorrect.
“First, the things that they said Wang got wrong were, as Wang alleges, easy to verify,” Bibas wrote. “Berlacher and Saba could easily have checked Wang’s sources, all readily accessible and properly cited, and found that his citations and quotations were almost uniformly accurate. Second, the tweets themselves imply that Berlacher and Saba did in fact check Wang’s sources.”
Bibas also described Saba and Berlacher’s actions as a “reckless rush.”
“Within a couple of days of the first complaints, they demoted Wang. Within two days of that, they lambasted him on social media,” he wrote. “Berlacher and Saba’s coordinated campaign of denunciation was thus a stark departure from normal academic practice. The allegations in the complaint suggest that the doctors were reacting to Twitter outrage, not reasoned scholarly inquiry backed by facts.”
The judge added that Wang can also continue his civil-rights claim.
Circuit Judge Patty Schwartz partially dissented from her colleagues.
“I conclude the defamation claims fail for two reasons,” she wrote. “First, the challenged statements are non-actionable opinions of academic research and scientific methodology based on disclosed facts.
“Second, even if those statements were actionable, Wang is a limited purpose public figure, but his complaint does not allege facts from which to infer that the challenged statements were made with actual malice,” Schwartz added.
