One day in February, an invitation from Harvard University arrived in the inbox of Rachel Havekost, a TikTok mental health influencer and part-time bartender in Seattle who likes to joke that her main qualification is 19 years of therapy. @ruggedcounseling, a therapist from Chattanooga, Tenn., who discusses attachment styles on his TikTok account, sometimes while loading bales of hay onto the bed of a pickup truck. Twenty-five recipients glanced over the emails, which invited them to collaborate with social scientists at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard. They were not accustomed to being treated with respect by academia; several concluded that the letters were pranks or phishing attempts and deleted them.

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Persons: Rachel Havekost, Trey Tucker, a.k.a, Bryce Spencer, Jones, Kate Speer Organizations: Harvard University, of Public Health, Harvard Locations: Seattle, Chattanooga, Tenn, Chan