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Florida's scientist was red for refusing

to 'manipulate' COVID-19 data
Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon | Florida Today
Published 12:32 PM EDT May 23, 2020

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – The scientist who created Florida's COVID-19 data portal wasn't
just removed from her position on May 5, she was red on Monday by the Department of
Health, she said, for refusing to manipulate data.

Rebekah Jones said in an email to the USA TODAY Network that she single-handedly created
two applications in two languages, four dashboards, six unique maps with layers of data
functionality for 32 variables covering a half a million lines of data. Her objective was to create
a way for Floridians and researchers to see what the COVID-19 situation was in real time.

Then, she was dismissed. 

"I worked on it alone, sixteen hours a day for two months, most of which I was never paid for,
and now that this has happened I'll probably never get paid for," she wrote in an email,
con rming that she had not just been reassigned on May 5, but red from her job as
Geographic Information Systems manager for the Florida Department of Health.  

Rebekah Jones is the architect of Florida's COVID-19 dashboard

provided

A er USA TODAY Network  rst reported Jones' removal from her position in charge of
the Florida COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard she created, she con rmed, as
reported by CBS-12 in West Palm Beach that she was red because she was ordered to censor
some data, but refused to "manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen."

She provided no further details. 

In an email last Friday to researchers and other data users, Jones warned that with her
removal changes were likely coming to the accessibility and transparency of the dashboard
data. 

"They are making a lot of changes. I would advise being diligent in your respective uses of this
data," she wrote.  

Researchers who saw the email reacted with shock and dismay, suggesting it could
be evidence that the Gov. Ron De Santis' government was censoring information to support
the case for re-opening Florida.

Lucky Tran, a Biologist and public health communicator at Columbia University, on Twitter
reacted to the news in a series of tweets: "When politicians censor scientists and manipulate
the numbers, the rest of us su er," he wrote.

US Congresswoman representing Tampa Bay, Kathy Castor wrote: "Floridians will not feel safe
in opening up without transparency."

Governor Ron DeSantis' spokeswoman, Helen Aguirre Ferré, issued a statement to the Miami
Herald, saying: “The Florida COVID-19 Dashboard was created by the Geographic Information
System (GIS) team in the Division of Disease Control and Health Protection at the Florida
Department of Health. Although Rebekah Jones is no longer involved, the GIS team continues
to manage and update the Dashboard providing accurate and important information that is
publicly accessible.”

But emails from Jones through April showed that Jones was the one responding to feedback
from researchers in a bid to improve and update her product. Jones told the USA TODAY
Network that she alone was responsible for "every line of code." 

In a May 5 email in which she announced the launch of a Spanish-language version of the

dashboard, Jones wrote: "Please be patient as we get all this connected and running smoothly,
and do let me know if you see any errors." It was sent the same day she was removed from her
role managing of the dashboard.

For 60-days Jones said she never took a day o , not even when a powerful April 12 Easter
tornado leveled her parents' home in Southeast Mississippi. A GoFundMe page was set up to
help her family recover. Luckily, her mother survived. Her father, a truck driver, was in Texas
at the time. 

"Sorry if I’ve been a little slow to respond these last few days," she wrote to data users in an
email just 3 days later reporting updates to how data was organized, and the inclusion of
county-level race data. 

Jones provided detailed updates in emails every few days, o en technical and always
responsive to user feedback. At the time was dismissed, she was working on making historical
data more accessible to users. 

On April 25, Jones provided an explanation to why the data set would go from morning and
evening daily updates to just once per day. 

"We’re gearing up to provide more analytics and data, and would not be able to process the full
dataset twice daily with the sta we have," she wrote. 

"We have been directed to start tracking data related to reopening, and it is consuming a lot of
sta hours on very short notice."

Days later she would be removed from the position entirely and her data users sounded the
alarm that government might be censoring science. 

Jones had worked with the Department of Health as a geospatial analyst and then a
Geographic Information System (GIS) manager since since 2018. She was enrolled in doctoral
studies in Geography from the fall semester of 2016 through spring 2018 at Florida State
University.

She holds a masters of science degree in geography and mass communication from Louisiana
State University and a bachelors in Journalism and Geography from Syracuse University. 

The Department of Health has so far not replied to request for comment.

Follow Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon on Twitter: @alemzs

Published 12:32 PM EDT May 23, 2020

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