Amy Bishop story gets even weirder

From an article in the Boston Globe:

The town’s current chief, Paul H. Frazier, said police were prepared to arrest and charge Amy Bishop immediately after the shooting but were ordered to release her by the chief at the time, who called the death accidental. The file containing the report from officers at the scene disappeared from the station not long after.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘coverup,’ ’’ Frazier said at a press conference yesterday afternoon. “I don’t know what the thought process was of the police chief at the time.’’

. . .

Frazier, who was a Braintree officer in 1986, said Bishop fired three shots: one that hit a wall, one that killed her brother, and a third into the ceiling as she fled their Hollis Avenue home on foot. Bishop also pointed the pump-action gun at a passing vehicle in an apparent attempt to get the driver to stop before she was captured by police behind a business on nearby Washington Street, according to Frazier, who said his account came from one of the officers who responded.

Bishop was being booked when the lieutenant handling the booking received a call from Polio, “or possibly a captain on Chief Polio’s behalf,’’ ordering her release, Frazier said.

He said that Bishop’s mother was a town official at the time, possibly on the personnel board.

“This would not happen in this day and age, I can tell you that,’’ said Frazier. “The members of the department were not happy with the turn of events that occurred’’ in the Bishop case.

Frazier said that the Bishop case file was missing from the records yesterday and that he was told by an officer that it had been missing since at least 1988.

Reading the rest of the story, the shooting doesn't sound very accidental to me.

* * *

Some interesting comments at RateMyProfessors.com :

“This class was great. Bishop makes the class interesting by talking about her research and her friends research. That speaker she had for class was hard to understand but smart. She expects alot and you need to come to every class and study. She is hot but she tries to hide it.And she is a socalist but she only talks about it after class.”

“I am in her lab and her class. She is smart, talks about more stuff than just the book. She lets me sit in her office and study. She always dresses nice. She should stop trying to straighten her hair and go natural!”

“This prof is absolutely the bomb! Knows her stuff cold, and quick witted too. Never met anyone who knows more random knowledge. Sci-fi to quantum mechanics with a little art history thrown in the mix. Who knew? Definitely take one of her courses!”

“I don't know what you people are talking about! She is not "easy" unless you are her favorite. She gets off on random**** all the time and is sooo completely scatter brained! I was there everyday, studied HARD, and still barely passed. I don't like her and don't recomend her.”

* * *

It should be pointed out that despite her Harvard PhD, she was teaching biology to nursing students at a bottom tier state school (the University of Alabama Huntsville is the least prestigious of the Alabama campuses, and one could make the case that even the flagship University of Alabama isn't really all that prestigious), and she couldn't even get tenure there.

Comments

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"It should be pointed out that despite her Harvard PhD, she was teaching biology to nursing students at a bottom tier state school (the University of Alabama Huntsville is the least prestigious of the Alabama campuses, and one could make the case that even the flagship University of Alabama isn't really all that prestigious), and she couldn't even get tenure there."

This Harvard educated, white nerd girl was crying out for help. She couldn't handle working in a world where nobody respected her scientific talents.

Instead of worrying about earning tenure, Bishop really needed to find a wild stud to take control of her life, dominate her nerd-woman body, make her feel like an animal in bed.

Amy needs a man.

She needs Half Sigma.

[lcs]

Also denial of tenure is seldom a surprise unless the person is already fatally clueless. Usually hints are dropped in advance.

[C]

Also note that she was already 45 years old. Generally, people get tenure by the time they are 35, some much earlier.

Another thing to note, is that women get tenure much easier than men, even in Biology. After the MIT report on women in sciences, all universities are fighting to get women. I imagine a low tier university such as University of Alabama Huntsville has some serious issues getting good researchers in general, but even more so good women researchers.

As I can see the reason for her not getting tenure can be either because she's really really bad, but more likely has to do with some personality or ideology. Really, the university would probably want to keep her just for teaching. It must be the fact that she's a huge liberal trying to influence people, locals and the faculty with her ideas. She's stupid enough not to realize that faculty become political only after they get tenure.

[Sheila Tone]

Without even reading the story, I know that shooting your brother "accidentally" as a teenager is kind of like when some unknown stranger murders your ex-spouse. Hard to get that lucky.

[Melykin]

Those rateMyProfessor posts are weird. She doesn't look "hot" in her picture.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/02/14/us/14alabama-web/14alabama-web-articleInline.jpg

Maybe Amy Bishop wrote those reviews herself. She must be bat-sh*t crazy. She killed three members of the biology department, and injured 2 others (one critically). Wow. What the hell will happen to people who are taking biology courses there? How are they going to find 6 replacement profs in the middle of the semester?

And now it looks like she murdered her brother over 20 years ago. You couldn't make this stuff up.

[Yawner]

That she was teaching losers at a lame school does not really indicate anything was wrong with her. The fact of the matter is that in academia, even graduates of elite schools often wind up teaching the dregs in low-ranking state schools. This is the natural consequence of massive overproduction of PhDs.

[Ray Midge]

The "rate my professor" comments seem wholly at odds with the statements re: her teaching ability in the N.Y. Times article, esp. students petitioning against her.

I got the impression from that article that her tenure rejection was, in large part, based on that inability.

[AshAndMistyInLove]

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/scientist-who-laid-ground-work-nobel-prize-drives-bus-cant-get-job

He was a scientist and now he drives a bus...

How sad...

"He looks like a regular guy with a regular job driving a shuttle van.

However, Douglas Prasher is a genius credited with helping to make one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century.

Three scientists just won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry thanks to Prasher's groundbreaking research, though there was no mention made in part of him when the award was announced last week and he won't get any of the $1.4 million prize money.

"You know, that's life," says Prasher.

Prasher's extraordinary story began when he was studying biochemistry at the University of Georgia. He isolated the gene that causes jellyfish to glow in the dark.

Prasher had a hunch that his discovery could one day be used to track the growth of tumors in cancer patients. So, when his grant ran out, he turned his findings over to other scientists, who completed his work and just won the Nobel Prize!

Two American scientists from Columbia University and UC San Diego and a third U.S. based researcher from Japan celebrated the announcement with toasts of champagne and national attention.

INSIDE EDITION caught up with Dr. Roger Tsien of UC San Diego, by phone, and he agrees, they couldn't have done it without Douglas Prasher.

"Doug Prasher had a very important role and I think it's a shame that Doug has not been recently in a position to do science that would use his talents."

Prasher has fallen on tough times. He was laid off from his job at NASA, and couldn't find another job as a scientist. In order to support his family, he took a job driving a courtesy van at a Toyota dealership in Huntsville for $10 per hour.

"It's hard to get real excited about what I'm doing now...it just doesn't pay," he says"

Maybe she snapped because didn't want to be like Doug Prasher.

[Steve Miller]

Just from looking at her recent publications, it seems she was denied tenure unfairly (in other words, because her colleagues simply didn't like her). She easily exceeded the research standards of a school like UAH. The details haven't been released, but it's surprising she didn't just appeal her department's decision to the Provost or University Committee if they have one. If she had asked for an extra year, which any mother of four would have been granted, she would have breezed through the process (especially with 3 publications in the past year). By all appearances, she was a mediocre teacher, socially awkward, with a solid research record and even greater research potential. I'm sure that's better than most people who would be granted tenure at UAH.

[Camlost]

Worst perversion of justice since Chappaquiddick.

[Sheila Tone]

Yes, their story sounds like BS. Even if we believe everything they say about the incident, her behavior indicates severe dysfunction and the family looks weird too.

1) People who name sons "Seth" and send children to Harvard don't tend to even have guns, much less leave them lying around within easy access. You'd think if a family like that did buy a shotgun for self-defense, the whole family would have taken a gun safety class.

2) The sort of people who go to Harvard tend to be sensible. It's not sensible to try to handle a gun alone, in a home with others around, when you don't know how to use it. Once the gun goes off by accident and shoots a wall, a person with any sense would not run out of the room with it and wave it around asking for help. They'd get as far away from it as they could, immediately.

3) And how is it that the family didn't hear the gun the first time it went off? You'd think they'd have come running to her, not the other way around.

4) She ran out of the house *with* the gun and pointed it at a passing car? To get it to stop? Really?

The "I just panicked and don't remember" defense to suspicious facts is extremely overused and usually hogwash. But I wonder why the parents would have helped her cover it up if the shooting was deliberate. Perhaps they had some role in it. And they must have had reason to believe they themselves weren't at risk from her.

[Sheila Tone]

Speaking of sisters shooting brothers, anyone here ever see "House of Yes," with Parker Posey?

[The Undiscovered Jew]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6DmoAp1q6w

An Angel's Smile Is What You Sell
You Promise Me Heaven Then Put Me Through Hell
Chains Of Love Got A Hold On Me
When Passion's A Prison You Can't Break Free

You're A Loaded Gun
There's Nowhere To Run
No One Can Save Me
The Damage Is Done

Shot Through The Heart
And You're To Blame
You Give Love A Bad Name
I Play My Part And You Play Your Game
You Give Love A Bad Name
You Give Love A Bad Name

Paint Your Smile On Your Lips
Blood Red Nails On Your Fingertips
A School Boy's Dream You Act So Shy
Your Very First Kiss Was Your First Kiss Goodbye

You're A Loaded Gun
There's Nowhere To Run
No One Can Save Me
The Damage Is Done

[Trumwill]

"It should be pointed out that despite her Harvard PhD, she was teaching biology to nursing students at a bottom tier state school"

In terms of student quality, UAH students have SAT and ACT scores competitive with those at UAB and the flagship university and exceeds the regional colleges by a significant margin. USN@WR ranks it in Tier 3, with UAB, though Bama is ranked in Tier 2 (though at the bottom of it).

UAH may not be top-flight, but it's not bottom tier (which would be those that fall into Tier 4 and are not designated "National University"). It's helped by the fact that it is located near a NASA installation and in the areas of one of the best public school systems in the country.

[Jokah Macpherson]

"It should be pointed out that despite her Harvard PhD, she was teaching biology to nursing students at a bottom tier state school (the University of Alabama Huntsville is the least prestigious of the Alabama campuses, and one could make the case that even the flagship University of Alabama isn't really all that prestigious)."

The University of Alabama Huntsville is probably the most rigorous technology/engineering school in the State of Alabama. Auburn University is the main technical school but based on what I have seen anybody could get a degree from there (Alabama's university system is set up weirdly in that Alabama and Auburn are two mostly autonomous systems). UAH is certainly not prestigious but it is far from a bottom-tier state school.

[sn]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/02/ala_slay_suspec.html

Alleged Ala. killer was suspect in Harvard professor bomb attempt

During a search of Bishop's computer, authorities found a draft of a novel that Bishop was writing about a female scientist who had killed her brother and was hoping to make amends by hoping to become a great scientist

[Professor Agnes Livingstone]

We must have perspective and priorities here. She is said to have been a socialist, and to me that means her heart is in the right place.

I think they should let her go. She may have killed three professors, and her brother, but at least she did not give birth to a Down's syndrome baby and run for Vice President of the US with John McCain.

Let Amy go, and prosecute Sarah Palin instead. You know she deserves it.

[AshAndMistyInLove]

"That she was teaching losers at a lame school does not really indicate anything was wrong with her. The fact of the matter is that in academia, even graduates of elite schools often wind up teaching the dregs in low-ranking state schools. This is the natural consequence of massive overproduction of PhDs. "

I wonder what is the risk/reward for academia is now. I posited earlier that in addition to high "g", a hard science PhD must have high conscientiousness and low neuroticism in order to endure the course work and the post doc. Low conscientiousness, while supposedly seen as an undesirable trait, can be advantageous by preventing one from putting too much effort into endeavors that will fail. (While low conscientiousness may be "advantageous" from an individual perspective, it is a "bad" societal trait since it discourages people from trying anything new even though the individual has an accurate assessment of his/her abilities and the risk of the activity.) I supposed you do need high conscientiousness to preserve as a PhD even though a "good" job is not guaranteed. The conscientious always preserve in Horatio Alger novels, but this is not necessarily true in real life resulting in low conscientious people saying "fuck it" to the PhD. In Japan, the low conscientiousness (with high neuroticism and low extraversion) people who say "fuck it" live as hikikomori in their parent's home, while in the US they are forced to compete in the "bellum omnium contra omnes" of the international (via free trade) and intranational (via mass immigration) labor markets while popping antidepressants if their insurance pays for it while suffering with depression if they do not.

As another question: I previously asked what jobs that are just "pure g" that is not also requiring conscientiousness and low neuroticism.

http://www.halfsigma.com/2010/01/even-top-fourteen-no-longer-a-ticket.html

[Steve]

>>"He was a scientist and now he drives a bus..."

Yeah, but remember, America has a desperate shortage of scientists and needs to import them from abroad.

[Steve]

" By all appearances, she was a mediocre teacher, socially awkward, with a solid research record and even greater research potential."

You left out the part about her being a psycho killer. That seems like good grounds for rejection, even at a bottom tier school.

[Yawner]

"it seems she was denied tenure unfairly (in other words, because her colleagues simply didn't like her)."

If true, this was not "unfair". Lack of "collegiality" is an accepted, and widely used, reason to deny tenure.

http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2001/ND/Feat/Conn.htm

"Faculty members who have been denied tenure, not renewed, or terminated from a tenured position because of a lack of collegiality have frequently gone to court. They have sued their college or university, claiming that such negative actions violated their rights. As a result, courts have carefully scrutinized collegiality as a criterion in faculty evaluations—and they have consistently upheld its use."

[Frank]

"she was teaching biology to nursing students at a bottom tier state school"

Knowing something about this business(I'm in it), it sounds as if she was abused in terms of her duties but there seems to be something else going on. Usually all faculty get a mix of 100-level dregs where complaints are aplenty and 400-600 level where students are motivated. If she were to be rejected based solely on 100-level courses where it should be 25% of the teaching duties that would be most unusual.

In terms of tenure denial, a couple of things could have happened here.

1 The faculty recognized that she was crazy (most likely). That's hard to put to paper of course so excuses like terrible teacher would come up.

2 The external reviews of her research indicate that she was a tag along, not a leader but a pair of hands in the research. It's expected that you're research was conceived by the tenure applicant and not by other faculty.

3 She really was abused given only 100-level nursing courses by a spineless chair who was looking out for his tenured buddies giving them cushy teaching assignments so they could puff up there portfolio for raises. Once tenured you are NOT guaranteed raises.

It seems that a mixture of 3 and 1 could have set off someone on the edge such as Amy Bishop.

[Astra]

"Just from looking at her recent publications, it seems she was denied tenure unfairly (in other words, because her colleagues simply didn't like her)."

Not really unfair. Because you are stuck with someone for the rest of your respective careers once you have granted them tenure, all tenure evaluations include the option to deny tenure based on lack of "collegiality." Given Bishop's subsequent behavior, I find that an easy sell.

[Sandy Smith]

I am a biology major at UAH and many of the professors at UAH are from prestigious schools, such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, etc. Dr. Bishop is not the only Harvard grad who teaches (or I should say taught) at UAH. Maybe for some degrees, Alabama and Auburn are more notable universities, but for a degree in science, UAH is by far the best in Alabama and one of the best in the South. I have science major friends at Alabama and Auburn whose science courses do not even compare to mine in difficulty, amount of material covered, and depth of material covered. Their tests and labs are much simpler. I've compared some of my tests to those at VATech and University of Washington via Koofers.com and they consisted of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank (with a word bank!) formats, whereas the vast majority of mine have been written, essay format. One of my peers found an MIT organic test on the Internet and claimed that he had a less difficult time completing that test than he did ours. I think this awful incident was a case of an egotistical woman who felt she was brighter than the rest of the biology dept. faculty and couldn't face the facts that they were her intellectual equals. She also may have just been selfish and wanted full credit and profit for her invention even though she used the university's lab and equipment and was employed by them to teach and perform her research. Please stop the comments about UAH being a bottom tier, lame school. You don't go there, so how would you know? While it may be lacking in some areas, it's top notch in science. As I stated earlier, many of the science professors have just as prestigious degrees as Dr. Bishop and have published MORE papers and secured more grants than Dr. Bishop has. Look it up on uah.edu! She applied for tenure last April, it was denied, she appealed, it was accepted and then turned down by higher university officials, not the dept. chair. Dr. Podila, the dept. chair who was killed, actually SUPPORTED her tenure too, so it's unbelievable that she went after him, and it shows just how much of a twisted mind she has.

[AshAndMistyInLove]

" Please stop the comments about UAH being a bottom tier, lame school. "

Reflexivity, perception does change reality...

"Their tests and labs are much simpler. I've compared some of my tests to those at VATech and University of Washington via Koofers.com and they consisted of multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank (with a word bank!) formats, whereas the vast majority of mine have been written, essay format. "

Does any care about the content on the tests? I thought the college is what matter to most people since that is the primary measure of intellect, not test content?

[Trumwill]

"Does any care about the content on the tests? I thought the college is what matter to most people since that is the primary measure of intellect, not test content? "

In this case, we're gauging exactly how good the college is. The quality of students is one such measure. As I pointed earlier, the student body of UAH appears to be on the same level as the other U of Alabama schools, suggesting that HS was off-base about it being a bottom tier school. According to Sandy, the science department in particular is supposed to be pretty good. That coincides with my own impression of the school. It has a pretty solid reputation among those that have heard of it. Sigma is trying to suggest it's more analogous to a low-tier regional school. Its reputation is considerably better than that of the University of North Alabama and is not a bad school for those wanting to go to a good state college and doesn't care about the lack of a football program.

[AshAndMistyInLove]

Ok, it is not a low-tier regional school (and the test quality is a testament to this), but nevertheless, no one cares about who hard the tests are relative to VaTech and U Wash...