Two Yale University researchers studying how drug users engage with addiction and homeless services are facing accusations of bias from a Harlem community group, after they were caught on a hot mic saying a leader of the group “sucked” for his critique of drug programs in the neighborhood.
The researchers made the remarks earlier this month after a Zoom interview with Shawn Hill, cofounder of the Greater Harlem Coalition, a group that opposes new facilities in the neighborhood, saying Harlem already has a disproportionate share of the city’s addiction services. The Yale investigators said they wanted to interview more people who opposed drug treatment and harm reduction services but who are even more blunt about their opposition than Hill.
“Let’s try to get some more interviews of people who suck,” Ryan McNeil, associate professor of medicine at Yale, said to a colleague, research associate Gina Bonilla, shortly after Hill left the July 15 Zoom call.
“I want to find someone who we can give enough rope to hang themselves with,” McNeil added.
The entire call was captured by the artificial intelligence-powered transcription app Otter, which then sent an automated email with a recording and transcript directly to Hill, including the off-the-cuff remarks between McNeil and Bonilla. The Greater Harlem Coalition then shared the remarks in an emailed newsletter last week and posted them on their website.
Yale University said it was investigating the incident. Both McNeil and Bonilla issued a joint apology and Yale officials said the pair would be temporarily pausing their research.
The incident comes as the city seeks to expand lifesaving services for drug users, sometimes in the face of community opposition. Advocates say research on the services is critical to show their effectiveness.
The city is aiming to open more overdose prevention centers, where people can use illicit drugs, like fentanyl, under staff supervision. But some community members have pushed back against both of the existing facilities and plans to expand them, citing concerns that the centers will attract more drug use to their neighborhoods.
There are currently just two overdose prevention centers in the city, including one that opened in 2021 on East 125th Street in Harlem, which Hill’s group has protested. So far, research on the two facilities shows that they prevent fatal overdoses on site and don’t contribute to additional crime in the vicinity.
Research can measure the value of services for drug users and dig into the validity of neighbors’ critiques. But the Yale researchers’ unfiltered thoughts, including their discussion of the types of interview subjects they hope to find, calls into question the objectivity of their particular study.
“The highly inappropriate and unprofessional comments we have made and the words we used have caused distress; we sincerely apologize and acknowledge that this was a serious lapse in judgment,” McNeil and Bonilla said in their joint statement on the incident. “We are committed to rebuilding the trust our research partners have placed in us. We would also like to make clear that our comments and opinions are our own and do not represent the views of the Department of Internal Medicine or of Yale School of Medicine.”
Celia Fisher, director of Fordham University’s HIV and Drug Abuse Prevention Research Ethics Training Institute, said the context of the researchers’ comments and how they proceed in their study matters.
“Obviously, if the researchers are trying to bias their results in participant selection, this would be inconsistent with standards of research ethics,” she said.
Studies show that people who are addicted to opioids are far less likely to die of an overdose when they have access to treatment with medications — such as methadone and buprenorphine — that can help them curb their use of fentanyl and other risky street drugs. But groups like the Greater Harlem Coalition have protested the city’s concentration of opioid treatment programs and other services for drug users in just a few neighborhoods, particularly those that are largely home to low-income communities of color.
The Yale study, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, aims to follow people in New York City and San Francisco who are homeless and use fentanyl in combination with stimulants, like cocaine. The researchers are hoping to better understand the group’s needs and how well they are served by different services, including housing, treatment and harm reduction programs.
McNeil told Hill on the Zoom call that they were also interviewing a “variety of different stakeholders” to get their perspectives on existing substance use services.
After receiving the transcript and recording of the meeting, Hill flagged the interaction with Yale administrators, according to correspondence he shared with Gothamist.
“We appreciate you bringing this concerning situation to our attention,” Darin Latimore, deputy dean and chief diversity officer at the Yale School of Medicine, told Hill in an email. “We can assure you that we are currently reviewing this issue and will be back in touch with you as soon as we have additional information to share.”
Hill said he was initially happy with how the interview went and how he expressed himself but was “aghast” when he saw the rest of the researchers’ conversation.
“They were not only just petty but mocking and superficial,” he said. “They mocked our organization and my participation in the study.”
Fisher from Fordham said the researchers might have been surprised by Hill’s views on harm reduction services. Such services are designed to reduce the risks of drug use without forcing abstinence.
“If this experience challenged their presuppositions and increased the representation of their interview sample to those who support and those who do not support harm reduction in their communities, it would be a good thing for science and the design of effective community-based intervention programs,” said Fisher.
In the interview with the researchers, Hill said children in Harlem who see people struggling with addiction were “collateral damage” of the neighborhood’s services. He also said the concentration of addiction treatment programs in the area attracts crime, while businesses suffer.
McNeil and Bonilla discussed their skepticism about some of Hill’s claims and talked about doing more research to find out how local business owners are faring. McNeil also lamented that Hill was “super rehearsed and being very deliberate about how he was choosing his language.”
“I was hoping he was going to be, honestly, a bit more of an outwardly prick,” he added.
An April study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the overdose prevention center in Harlem and its sister site in Washington Heights have prevented many fatal overdoses among participants and moved at least some public drug use indoors. Another study published in November 2023 found that the overdose prevention centers did not contribute to more crime in their respective neighborhoods.
But those studies haven’t been enough to assuage the concerns of residents like Hill.
The hot-mic incident further “poisons the well,” he said, and may make people even less trustful of academic research on drug use and services.
