Female doctors have been taking to social media to share bikini selfies after a controversial new study alleged that surgeons who post these kind of pictures are "unprofessional."
The study, which was published in the Journal of Vascular Surgery, analyzed the impact of "publicly available social media content" and how it could affect future patients’ physician choices. In order to conduct the study, the researchers, who were mostly men, created "neutral" or undercover accounts to look at content posted online.
Many female doctors, however, have hit back at the study, and stated that it is sexist.
"If you are a true #heforshe, then you must speak up against this disturbing study,” tweeted Dr. Mudit Chowdhary. "Worse they are shaming our women physician colleagues for wearing bikinis."
Female doctors have since been using the hashtag "#MedBikini", and sharing pictures of themselves in bathing suits to clap back at the study.
"So this study was published shaming physicians for being ‘unprofessional’ by wearing bikinis or holding a beer in a photo?" wrote medical student Nicholas Leighton. "And the study was conducted by 3 men who created fake social media accounts to spy on applicants? This ‘study’ must be retracted."
Thomas Cheng and Jeffrey Siracuse, two of the authors of the study, have since tweeted identical apologies after the public backlash.
"Our intent was to empower surgeons to be aware and then personally decide what may be easily available for patients and colleagues to see about us. However, this was not the result," the authors wrote.
"We realize that the definition of professionalism is rapidly changing in medicine and that we need to support trainees and surgeons as our society changes. We are sorry that we made the young surgeons feel targeted and that we were judgmental."
"We were wrong not to have considered the inherent gender bias and have certainly learned from this experience. We will do better in the future and teach others from our experience," they added.
Well done, ladies!
