Housekeeping
By W. F. Twyman, Jr.
In two weeks, I will cross the third anniversary of this lonely Substack. I started this lonely Substack with zero subscribers. Today, I am approaching five hundred (500) subscribers. I am grateful to everyone for your readership and support over the weeks, months and years. My Substack is less lonely over time.
Out of 1,085 essays, there is one essay I do not like. The essay is one many of you have read since it ranks as my top ten essay. I feel queasy about the popularity because the essay does not meet my standards. I do not write for likes or views. If I did, I would aggressively do all the things like X, Tik Tok, Instagram, You Tube and all the rest. I write because I love bringing people together and sharing tales from the front lines of human life. The more I write, the more convinced I am the final frontier for us might be life before politics.
I have enjoyed sharing my inner world with you. Too often, writers and intellectuals care more about conformity than human dignity, creative expression and the individual. My favorite essays remove the veil between you and me. I am thinking of The Burbank Happening and Other Signs of Intelligent Life, The Dartmouth Scar Experiment, and And I Fade Away. It is a very dangerous, and powerful, thing to walk through this world unveiled. See Don’t Misread Me.
My desire to not be misread, and to not misread others, brings me to my most disfavored essay, 52% of Black Doctors Are Nigerian Immigrants. The premise of this essay was wrong. The facts were wrong. “According to AAMC data from 2018–2019, about 3.8% of all active U.S. physicians were born in Nigeria and received their training there. More targeted studies and media coverage indicate that approximately 5–10% of Black physicians in the U.S. are of Nigerian birth or descent.” I provided a strong correction of the factual record in the comments and thanked a reader for bringing the error to my attention. I relied upon falsehoods from an alleged “Nigerian doctor” (who may never have existed, given what we now know about AI-generated personas) which appeared corroborated by five other internet sources—all apparently repeating the same fabrication. The claim seemed plausible at the time because I credited a Nigerian doctor who presumably would have personal knowledge of the matter. So the entire argument was built on a viral falsehood from a “Nigerian doctor” that I failed to verify adequately. Was probably AI generated falsehoods. There was even an (AI) image of a Nigerian doctor in one of the sources. I fell prey to fake AI-generated images and fabricated statistics that appeared credible at first glance.
I eventually wrote my regrets in the comments after consultation with my trusted writer friends, Jennifer Richmond, and my erstwhile novelist in the hinterland. At the time, they counseled I should strongly take exception to falsehoods in the comments. And I did so. The essay appeared on January 19, 2024. Over a year later, after consultation with trusted friends, I published strong objections to the false sources in the comments. But even that correction gnawed at my conscience.
Over the year, this essay gnawed at my conscience. Was a strong disavowal in the comments enough? Yesterday, my good friend, Dan, warned me he could no longer tell the difference between what was real and what was fake. His realization scared me. It’s so difficult now to separate factual from fictional. Dan and I are of the same trusting generation. We did not grow up in a milieu of fake AI images.
I concluded I fell prey to fake AI images and falsehoods when drafting my essay. A strong disavowal in the comments would not do. Therefore, I am deleting the whole essay from existence and not just correcting the statistic. I don’t like to be misread and I am sure Nigerian and black doctors feel the same way. I was trying to say Nigerian doctors form a disproportionate percentage of black doctors which is true. Unfortunately, the false statistics in the false (AI generated-?) source corrupted the essay for me. The premise was unsupported and failed my inner moral compass for writing. The essay used this false statistic to argue x percentage of black doctors were Nigerian. The entire argument collapsed once the premise proved unsound.
The 52% statistic seemed plausible because Nigerian immigrants ARE remarkably successful in American medicine. I wanted to understand why. The false statistic appeared to corroborate sources, repeated across websites. I failed to trace it to an original, verifiable source. A lone “Nigerian doctor” is not an original, verifiable source. I trusted the internet’s consensus. That was my error.
I wanted the Nigerian success story to be true in a particular way — to prove a particular point about culture and achievement. My desire for that narrative made me credulous about statistics that supported it. But truth doesn’t care about our narratives. Facts don’t bend to what we wish were true. What IS true: Nigerian immigrants are indeed overrepresented in American medicine relative to their population. They’re remarkably successful. These facts remain interesting and worth exploring. But the specific 52% claim — the dramatic statistic that anchored my essay — was based on a false, and likely, AI source. Who would do such a thing as spread falsehoods to snare writers and intellectuals and scholars?
This essay has haunted me for too long. Time for it to leave my portfolio of creative expression. I’m deleting 52% of Black Doctors Are Nigerian Immigrants from my lonely Substack. If you read it, I’m sorry the statistics mislead you. If you shared it, please share this correction instead.
In two weeks, I’ll celebrate three years of this Substack. Nearly 500 subscribers. Over 1,000 essays. I’m proud of nearly all of them, except this one. This is the only one that needed to go.
Thank you for holding me accountable. Thank you for reading even when I get things wrong. Thank you for expecting better.
I’ll keep writing. I’ll verify more carefully. And I’ll keep walking this world unveiled — mistakes and all. This is time for letting go of a poor essay.
I’m recalling the writing but not remembering the specifics but can imagine that the main points you wanted to stress were the positive attributes and accomplishments of so many Nigerians (especially doctors), unsuspectingly falling into an AI trap in trying to make your argument more convincing. If I understand a little about AI and search engines, frequency matters, so if this is your only transgression, the AI Gods may forgive you, especially if no one goes viral about it.
Here’s a question. Can AI penetrate Substack? And more fundamentally, do AI writers and subscribers want it to? As for this subscriber, I’ve appreciated your willingness to turn over many stones in your quest for understanding the human condition and your writing talents are supreme, so keep doing what you are doing so notably. A more impactful counter-strike to AI influences might be to pack your writings with buzz words and slogans for the masses and then to inundate the algorithms. But I doubt you would be happier in that quest. Your honesty and care for your readers is self-evident, no apologies required.