
At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly - rglovejoy
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/us/14alabama.html
======
mnemonicsloth
When a postal worker goes postal, it's going postal.

When a PhD from Harvard -- _the_ first detail mentioned, note -- goes postal,
they are suffering in an academic pressure cooker.

Dumbly applying the nearest pop-psych explanation to hand to explain the
inexplicable only makes it more difficult to show respect for the victims and
sympathy for the grieving.

~~~
physcab
I don't think the author was applying an explanation either dumbly or trying
to reduce its significance. I think it is part of our human nature to try and
contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it. I'm not a
therapist, but I sincerely believe this human trait persists in many people as
a coping mechanism. That's why it makes sense (even as an academic myself) in
some weird, comforting way.

~~~
joe_the_user
_I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by
labeling or attributing some cause to it._

Are you implying that tragedies have no cause.

It seems like human to try understand tragedies as they are significant part
of our human world. Moreover, tragedies usually do have causes.

Claiming that there is no cause to an event may serve some psychological
purpose...

~~~
nostrademons
Tragedies usually have _so many_ causes that it's impossible to point out a
single cause in a 3-paragraph comment and have it mean anything.

Usually, if you do a root cause analysis of _anything_ , you come up with so
many contributing factors that the resulting document is hundreds of pages
long. Think of industrial postmortems or court proceedings. Everything is more
complicated than it seems at first.

Saying "This was because she was denied tenure" does a disservice to everyone
involved. It was probably _partly_ because she was denied tenure. It was
probably partly also because she had easy access to guns, and she was super
focused on her research, and she didn't get along with the school
administration, and she had once accidentally killed her brother, and plenty
of other factors that we could never know about.

------
hyperbovine
"Ms. Bishop, a grant-winning scientist"

That is like saying, "a salary-earning division manager." I don't know of any
serious academic scientist who isn't funded by grants. Seems like the writer
really wanted to put "award-winning," but there were no awards.

~~~
scott_s
There _are_ academic scientists who don't get grants. They are denied tenure
outright. Since she was denied tenure, it's worthwhile to note that she did
have grants. If she had no grants and expected to get tenure, then that would
tell us something. This also tells us she met some requirements for tenure.
(But not much, because we don't know how much money these grants were, and how
much her department expects.)

------
anamax
See [http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=392617&#...</a>

------
Eliezer
When will people come to their senses? How many more senseless killings are
required before we can take action? Ban academia now!

------
razerbeans
The irony of this is the fact that I had a lecture that very day across
UAHuntsville's campus in which my literature teacher said often times, when a
person murders someone, there is a significantly higher chance they will do it
again. I'm not saying that the death of her brother was indeed a murder, but I
couldn't help but get a chill when I found out the news later that day. All of
the teachers at UAHuntsville have passion about what they do; this is evident
especially in the passion that the teachers seem to imbue in us as students.
It is saddening to hear that three faculty have been killed, especially since
one of those teachers was my own this past semester.

------
houseabsolute
I find it veeery interesting that she "accidentally" killed her brother when
she was twenty. Casts some doubt on that situation too.

~~~
maxharris
Wrong conclusion. I think that she must have been emotionally scarred by the
accident.

Did the accident make it easier for her to kill those faculty members
yesterday? That's really hard to say. Would it be easier for the former first
lady to murder someone because of the deadly car accident she was involved in?
I'm inclined to say no.

~~~
julius_geezer
The Braintree police don't seem to think that it was an accident. To be sure,
they seem to be operating on "oral history".

~~~
hga
Not much choice when all the official records are "missing" except for one
recording it as an accident.

If the reports that 3 rounds were fired are correct, that's some "accident".

------
maxharris
What Dr. Bishop did was unjustified, no matter what other facts we may find
(excepting force initiated by the victims); justice requires her death.
(Because this penalty is irrevocable, and all possible legal systems are
fallible, the closest we can get to this ideal is life imprisonment.)

Having said that, look at how the system worked. These guys were stringing her
along for six years (or so?), while maintaining the illusion that her
activities (against university initiatives and attitudes) would have no impact
on her career. Obviously her against-the-grain attitudes had a great deal to
do with the way they treated her.

What's the best way to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring? The only way
is to take the pressure off by eliminating tenure completely. That way,
there's no insane buildup of emotion on either side. In a properly functioning
organization, people that don't work out (for whatever reason, including
personality conflicts) should be informed of the situation as early as is
possible, which takes what, about a year?

Existing faculty could be offered buyouts (which, of course, would have to be
lucrative enough to be accepted), and you're at a nice clean slate.

~~~
neurotech1
I would suspect Dr Bishop has a personality disorder, such as Borderline
Personality Disorder.

I find it interesting that they have a 6 year rule, when the average is around
10 years to get tenure.

I think that people missed warning signs, that she was feeling stress, and
that there is a stigma against seeking help, and people often deny they have a
problem.

I agree with most of your comments, except the bit about "requires her death".
She was possibly suffering major depression at the time of the incident, and
other mental health issues.

~~~
maxharris
How do you "recover" from something like this? If I had done something like
what she did, and I had full memory of it, I would attempt suicide - not out
of some perverse sense of duty, but as a way to escape.

(I believe that the soul dies with the body, and that supernatural events are
categorically impossible. So when I say "escape", I mean a completely
different thing than a religious person would mean.)

~~~
neurotech1
I don't believe she would "recover" from this. She will quite likely spend
along time in a prison psych ward.

John Hinkley, Jr who shot Reagan in 1981 was sent to a psych ward and is still
under the care of the psychiatric facility, even though now allowed
conditional release.

------
patrickgzill
This is one of the things I hate about the NYT... an imposed narrative
contained in a headline without any identifying details. Wouldn't "Huntsville
University Killer May Have Killed Over Lost Tenure" be a) more accurate b)
less obtuse?

------
amichail
Why did she care about tenure? She could have just focused exclusively on the
startup, making it more likely to succeed.

~~~
nostrademons
Remember that not all people have the same goals as HN readers. We self-select
for people whose goal is to found a successful startup. For many other people,
their goal in life might be to be a good parent, or to be a professional
sports player, or to be a tenured professor. It seems like she was well on the
road to success by _our_ standards, but that doesn't mean she was successful
by _her_ standards.

~~~
amichail
What gave her the idea that being a tenured professor is better than a founder
of a successful startup?

Perhaps this is the result of societal pressure on intelligent people rather
than her own thinking?

~~~
rdtsc
> What gave her the idea that being a tenured professor is better than a
> founder of a successful startup?

The same thing that gives HNers idea that starting a startup is better than
being a tenure professor -- personal choice and personal set of goals and
motivations.

