It's a fascinating article because of the picture it paints of a killer and it's well worth the time to read. Yet it doesn't really answer the question posed in the title: "What Made This University Scientist Snap?"Wallace notes the theory that Bishop snapped because she was denied tenure at the University, a serious blow to anyone's career and especially to someone who, apparantly, believed she was destined for great things. However, she points out that the timing doesn't fit: Bishop was denied tenure several months before the shooting. And she shot at some of the faculty who voted in her favor, ruling out a simple "revenge" motive.
But even if Bishop had snapped the day after she found out about the tenure decision, what would that explain? Thousands of people are denied tenure every year. This has been going on for decades. No-one except Bishop has ever decided to pick up a gun in response.
Bishop had always displayed a streak of senseless violence; in 1986, she killed her 18 year old brother with a shotgun in her own kitchen. She was 21. The death was ruled an accident, but probably wasn't. It's not clear what it was, though: Bishop had no clear motive.
Years later Bishop, possibly with the help of her husband, sent a letter-bomb to a researcher who'd sacked her, Paul Rosenberg. Rosenberg avoided setting off the suspicious package and police disarmed it; Bishop was questioned, but never charged.Amy had said something that upset her father. That morning they’d squabbled, and at about 11:30 am, Sam, a film professor at Northeastern University, left the family’s Victorian home to go shopping... Amy, 21, was in her bedroom upstairs. She was worried about “robbers,” she would later tell the police. So she loaded her father’s 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and accidentally discharged a round in her room. The blast struck a lamp and a mirror and blew a hole in the wall...
The gun, a Mossberg model 500A, holds multiple rounds and must be pumped after each discharge to chamber another shell. Bishop had loaded the gun with number-four lead shot. After firing the round into the wall, she could have put the weapon aside. Instead, she took it downstairs and walked into the kitchen. At some point, she pumped the gun, chambering another round.
...[her mother] told police she was at the sink and Seth was by the stove when Amy appeared. “I have a shell in the gun, and I don’t know how to unload it,” Judy told police her daughter said. Judy continued, “I told Amy not to point the gun at anybody. Amy turned toward her brother and the gun fired, hitting him.”
Wallace argues that Bishop's "eccentricity", or instability, was fairly evident to those who knew her but that in the environment of science, it went unquestioned because science is full of eccentrics.
I'm not sure this holds up. It's certainly true that science has more than its fair share of oddballs. The "mad scientist" trope is a stereotype but it has its basis in fact and it has done at least since Newton; many say that you can't be a great scientist and be entirely 'normal'.
But the problem with this, as a theory for why Bishop wasn't spotted sooner, is that she was spotted sooner, as unhinged, albeit not as a potential killer,by a number of people. Rosenberg sacked her, in 1993, on the grounds that her work was inadaquate and said that "Bishop just didn’t seem stable". And in 2009, the reason Bishop was denied tenure in Alabama was partially that one of her assessors referred to her as "crazy", more than once; she filed a complaint on that basis.
Bishop also published a bizarre paper in 2009 written by herself, her husband, and her three children, of "Cherokee Lab Systems", a company which was apparantly nothing more than a fancy name for their house. There may be a lot of eccentrics in science, but that's really weird.
So I think that all of these attempts at an explanation fall short. Amy Bishop is a black swan; she is the first American professor to do what she did. Hundreds of thousands of scientists have been through the same academic system and only one ended up shooting their colleagues. If there is an explanation, it lies within Bishop herself.
Whether she was suffering from a diagnosable mental illness is unclear. Her lawyer has said so, but he would; it's her only defence. Maybe we'll learn more at the trial.#
H/T: David Dobbs for linking to this.
17 comments:
Yeah she was nuts from the very beginning, so what?
Did you guys ever notice that the "bad evil people" never smile on pictures?
About Bishop: We'll see what the psychologists say about her.
About the reason why people didn't notice before or accepted her behaviour "because Science is full of eccentrics": Isn't that just an excuse for people as to not blame themselves for the consequences of the massacre?
It's just understandable that colleagues say, that they couldn't know because they have to believe that they couldn't.
gehirniskraemeri: Quite possibly.
The other problem with that theory is that no-one ever sees it coming. It's not like spree-killers-to-be are always noticed beforehand in other situations and it's only in science that they slip through the net.
they're usually known to be "a bit weird" or "a loner", but there's plenty of those; I don't think anyone ever predicts beforehand that this student or this high-school pupil will end up a killer.
Actually the most unusual thing about Bishop is that she's a woman. Every similar killer I can think of was male.
I'm no expert on mental illness, but isn't it possible that bi-polar disorder could explain both her violence and the delay between her denied tenure and her shooting? Perhaps a short time after she was denied tenure, she went through a mood swing and that brought on violent and erratic behavior.
@gehirniskraemerei
Not to nitpick, but I can think of a few pretty bad people that smiled in their mugshots. Specifically, Tom DeLay and Jared Loughner come to mind.
Peter: It's possible she's bipolar, but there are lots of other possibilities that are no less likely.
Personally I'm interested in the killing of her brother. The shooting could have been an accident - though it would have been a very stupid one, given the details that Amy Wallace points out, but people inexperienced with guns have done even stupider things.
If it were an accident, having that happen would have to have screwed her up pretty severely.
But really this is all speculation. The trial might reveal the truth but maybe not; she & her lawyers clearly have a very strong motive to make herself seem as "crazy" as possible. And everyone else is likely to disbelieve her and be trying to undermine that theory. So between those two, the truth has little room to get out.
Sad. I won't attempt to diagnose, but I'm sure a diagnosis will be provided at trial. In any case there seemed to be plenty of warning signs. Both the odd killing of her brother and the letter bomb incident were opportunities for either the criminal justice system and/or the mental health system to step in more assertively. But, of course, that is 20-20 hind-sight.
We'll never know about the shooting of her brother, accident or murder.
But the letter bomb is a no-brainer.
And as for the mentally disturbed never smiling in pics...take a look at the pic of the kid in Tucson, Ariz. who shot and killed several, wounded several others (the congresswoman from AZ.)
He exhibits a strange smile on his mug shot.
Well, i'm pretty sure her husband knew about it, as he even helped her with the letter bomb.
I guess that's really a worst-case scenario, when one confidant doesn't stop one from commiting crimes but instead even encourages the execution of those ideas.
I'd be disturbed if she was smiling.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the killers that opened fire were marginalized folks making a statement. I'm assuming women scientists are in the minority and on that basis why she opened fire would make sense. But perhaps she lacked the 'real world' experience to fully grasp her plight given she was raised in an academic environment.
In that respects I can see where she's coming from. Clearly she is brilliant and also with 4 kids, and that possibly rubbed off as 'crazy' or unconventional for a woman. Whoever those male colleagues were who sacked her (that 'inadequate' reason sounds more like a social slur) and persistently heckled her should be investigated. They likely instigated this negative spiral and should be held partly responsible.
From an institutional point of view, to prohibit these negative trends from spiralling, there should be more transparency, accountability, or sensitivity to protect women academics from being treated deploringly. What happened was tragic, but it could've been prevented if the academia used the same policing as major corporations when it comes to gender sensitivities.
For example, just seems way out of line to call a colleague 'crazy'. It usually takes one to know one right. That guy would've been sacked immediately if he was working in a corporation. Ego tirade is a given in some instances, especially with women managers who often do blow up come that time of the month. But demeaning a colleague due to personal differences and calling them 'crazy' is not professional, a mature person keeps that to themselves in a work setting.
Eccentrics tend to be secure in their own skin. Musicians, artists, actors and so on are eccentric. But most of the academics I've interacted with were boring, not so secure, and seem to use eccentricity etc. to deflect their lack of social skills or real world experience. Me having began my career as a classical musician would say the academia seems stifling for an eccentric.
So I'm of the opinion her actions were not due to eccentricities or what not, but it was pre-meditated and she knew what she was doing. Tenure debacle was perhaps the last straw and for 11 months she prepared for a new launch. In her case to sell her story, her books, make a name for herself, accidentally killing her brother, it all morbidly made sense, this was her destiny, something she had to kill for, and provide for her family. She's no longer the star inside her own book, she's now living the story in real life. Now the world can write about her. Genius when you think about it.
When a human being is desperate it's horrific what they can be capable of and how delusional they get. In this case it was her books and not violent video games fanning her delusions. So she became a killer, her husband an accomplice. But initially not to her fault though. She was marginalized, grossly mistreated, pressured, lack of support networks combined with mental problems and lacked the social fluency to fully grasp things. Sad. Failure of the system really.
There seems to be an ideological bias in the whole attempt to explain: mental health diagnoses describe, though they (yet) can´t explain anything (that would be called reification). Trying to make human behavior a predictable matter is at this moment a fantasy. Trying to understand, though, shoul be much more interesting and fruitful. Definitely a black swan, I believe.
Fantastic blog, by the way.
This woman sent a letter bomb...and they still employed her as a professor. If she was a teacher as well as researcher, that's even more extraordinary.
Plenty of teachers and academics have criminal accusations or convictions - for drug possession, sexual misdemeanors, or being on political demonstrations where the police are in an arresting mood.
But trying to blow someone up? That's not just 'eccentric'. It sounds to me like a systemic failure that she was employed at all.
She was never convicted for the letter-bomb so it wouldn't have shown up on her criminal record.
At the time it was treated as unexplained, its only now in hindsight we know it was her (she may have confessed to it, I'm not sure).
Ditto for the shooting of her brother. No conviction so she had a clean record.
If there's a failure it was with the police in both cases, and I believe there is ongoing legal action re: that, although of course it's easy for us to blame the cops in retrospect, they must have had their reasons.
Two suspicions:
1. She knew she was somewhat crazy and chose her specialty in part in an effort to understand herself.
2. She has incidents just as striking as the ones accounted in her adult life as a child. Dimes to donuts she had quite a reputation as a school kid.
If she was on medication especially a diagnosed mental illness i.e. depression, isavn't it common knowledge that suicidal behavior is a known side effect as well as aggression. I know from personal experience that some bipolar medications have these potential problems and they have been on the market for years. That is why airline pilots were forbidden from taking some of them!
You've stated that A. Bishop "sent a letter bomb" to her supervisor but neither she nor her husband were EVER charged in that due to lack of evidence. So it's slander on your part to say that she did this. Just saying. True that she and her husband were investigated but there was insufficient evidence back then and a recent review of the investigation of the mail bomb showed that the investigation had been carried out responsibly and thoroughly.
I know this family and the way the media is portraying them is beyond ridiculous. The children are wonderful, well-behaved, well-adjusted, and very smart. They have friends that were often over at the house. They do a ton of activities, lessons and classes. They are victims in this too. Their mother's actions were indescribably horrible but the people who had complaints about her are only coming forward to have their 15 minutes of fame. Many people liked Amy. Many of her students did too. That's what makes this tragedy even more depressing, if that's even possible The media doesn't want to highlight anything good about her because it doesn't fit with the evil villainous murderer. Most don't want to think that a decent person might have some serious pyschological issues and might just literally snap. It is tragic that her possible mental illness was not addressed. Who knows if anyone will ever know what made her "snap." I hope we will so that we can learn more about the complexity of humans. But all of these theories about her are pure speculation. Amy Wallace did not even TALK to Amy Bishop.
Thanks for the very informative comment.
Re: The mail bomb, given what we now know, it seems very unlikely that she didn't send it. But point taken that it's not proven.
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