Shooting at Univ. Alabama Huntsville (merged thread folds in Parents Cafe comments)

<p>The part about crushing the bird egg in the article about her brother was sad.</p>

<p>Who goes around announcing his/her IQ? I wonder why she was tested. And isn’t the number fairly meaningless without information about exactly which test was used? (Although I imagine a score of 180 is astoundingly high on any test.)</p>

<p>180 would put her in the profoundly gifted category. Neither she or her husband sound like it.</p>

<p>She certainly seems to have bounced around at the Harvard hospitals. She apparently did neuroscience at Children’s - that may have been her thesis work - and then was working in the cardiology dept. at Beth Israel. What was she doing in cardiology?</p>

<p>I read the 1986 profile of Seth Bishop in the Braintree paper. He certainly sounds like a wonderful young man.</p>

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<p>I agree. I did go into (actual, real) shock once when I received some devastating personal news, and I absolutely know that if I had had the press around, I would have come across with absolutely no affect in my voice. Everyone who knows me said I just wasn’t myself, at all, during that time.</p>

<p>I don’t even know what my IQ is.</p>

<p>I’m still thinking that Asperger’s has something to do with the way she acts.</p>

<p>I am with the others here who don’t understand why the husband is giving all of these interviews to the press and TV shows. Things that he says may hurt her case. I have every confidence that she will go away for murder, since she obtained a gun, practiced with it, brought it to the meeting and killed with it, which was witnessed by the survivors. But common sense would tell her loved ones, if there are any left, to keep their mouths shut in public. If my spouse had done this, it would be a relationship-ender for me, but I wouldn’t be saying anything in public. I would answer any questions from law enforcement, but otherwise, nothing.</p>

<p>I know that on the IQ scale that Mensa used to use back when I was in my teens (it might have been the Cattell), a 175 was approximately equivalent to a 150 on the more commonly-used Stanford-Binet scale. So it would be entirely possible to have an IQ of around 180 and be smart, but no genius by any stretch of the imagination.</p>

<p>Well, common sense doesn’t have a whole lot to do with book smarts.</p>

<p>140 would put one into the highly gifted category.</p>

<p>But I agree that common sense and book smarts are quite different things.</p>

<p>My post count has increased quite a bit because of this thread. Thank you to whomever started it.</p>

<p>Ambition fueled a smoldering rage
Morbidly shy and driven, ornery and oddly sweet, Amy Bishop craved fame in the worst way. She found it.</p>

<p>This story was reported by Meghan E. Irons, Eric Moskowitz, Michael Rezendes, Peter Schworm, and Stephen Smith of the Globe staff. It was written by Smith.</p>

<p>HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - Eric Seemann ran into Amy Bishop one day last spring on the University of Alabama at Huntsville campus, where the faculty takes pride in creating a collegial academic cocoon. They’d developed a bond over the years, starting as junior professors together in 2003 and chatting from time to time about the triumphs and frustrations of the research life.</p>

<p>Seemann knew Bishop could be aloof and opinionated to the point of abrasiveness. But on this day, there was something different. She seethed.</p>

<p>More: [Ambition</a> fueled a smoldering rage - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/21/ambition_fueled_a_smoldering_rage/]Ambition”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/21/ambition_fueled_a_smoldering_rage/)</p>

<p>[Ala</a>. shooting suspect brilliant, but social misfit - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100221/ap_on_re_us/us_ala_university_shooting;_ylt=ArgALZqpPayKt7SzuQjSAapvzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTMwbms2OGdoBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMjIxL3VzX2FsYV91bml2ZXJzaXR5X3Nob290aW5nBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDeW5fYXJ0aWNsZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2xpc3QEc2xrA2FsYXNob290aW5ncw--]Ala”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100221/ap_on_re_us/us_ala_university_shooting;_ylt=ArgALZqpPayKt7SzuQjSAapvzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTMwbms2OGdoBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMjIxL3VzX2FsYV91bml2ZXJzaXR5X3Nob290aW5nBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDeW5fYXJ0aWNsZV9zdW1tYXJ5X2xpc3QEc2xrA2FsYXNob290aW5ncw--)</p>

<p>"Amy Bishop was at Northeastern University when she shot her brother, and there was no interruption to her schooling. She graduated cum laude in 1988 with a biology degree, completing an honors thesis titled, “The effect of temperature on the recovery of sea lamprey from full spinal cord transection.”</p>

<p>180 IQ yet she graduated with cum laude honors. If she was in reality as intellectually gifted as she likes to portray herself, wouldn’t one expect her to graduate with a higher honor designation than cum laude?</p>

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<p>Oh, jeez, that should have been a warning sign, too. “I just shot my brother to death. Whoops, gotta get to class!” :o</p>

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<p>With the fifteen jillion discussions on CC about the surprisingly low correlation between intelligence and grades, I can’t even believe you’re asking this. Anyway, where did you get the idea that *cum laude *somehow isn’t very good?</p>

<p>Sure it’s good. However, I would have expected someone with a 180 IQ to have a higher GPA.</p>

<p>They say Einstein’s grades weren’t all that good. I think extraordinarily intelligent people are sometimes too busy thinking their own thoughts to bother with mere classroom learning, seriously.</p>

<p>^^^post 1074: One of the article linked above says she left Northeastern for several months after the shooting, so it does sound like she took a semester off.</p>

<p>This article was published on Dec 17th, the same day that the police officially took statements from the Bishop after the shooting. They were so shaken up that the police couldn’t interview them, but they had no problem talking to the newspaper which probably happened many days earlier. Anyway, lots more good things said about Seth.</p>

<p>[Seth</a> Bishop: He ?loved us to distraction’ - Braintree, MA - Braintree Forum](<a href=“http://www.wickedlocal.com/braintree/news/x640758690/Seth-Bishop-He-loved-us-to-distraction]Seth”>http://www.wickedlocal.com/braintree/news/x640758690/Seth-Bishop-He-loved-us-to-distraction)</p>

<p>"Yet as state police bided their time making the “arrangements,” Amy Bishop sat in her Braintree family’s living room and told the Forum & Observer reporter about her “calm, giving, funny brother who was always there for me.”</p>

<p>Mom Judith Bishop also spoke at length to the reporter, describing her son - nicknamed “Dandelion” for his blond hair - as a brilliant science major and gifted violinist.</p>

<p>And Judith Bishop spoke gratefully about the Braintree police in the article. “You cannot imagine how kind the Braintree police were to us,” she said. The responding officer, Bill Finn, “even came back that evening and asked if he could buy us food…”</p>

<p>"Thomas Pettigrew, the Quincy man whom Bishop allegedly threatened with a gun after she shot and killed Seth, said police have yet to contact him.</p>

<p>“I still haven’t heard nothing. I’m surprised,” he said yesterday…"
[As</a> staties held back, Amy Bishop spoke out - BostonHerald.com](<a href=“http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100221as_staties_held_back_amy_bishop_spoke_out_startling_evidence_of_botched_86_probe/srvc=home&position=also]As”>http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100221as_staties_held_back_amy_bishop_spoke_out_startling_evidence_of_botched_86_probe/srvc=home&position=also)</p>

<p>I am a little tired of seeing Bishop constantly described as “brilliant”. Fact is she has a pretty weak record by the criteria generally used to evaluate academic scientists. I can find only 12 articles in Pubmed that appear authored by her. Three of these are reviews, which generally don’t count for much. None of her papers are in top-tier journals. She apparently only has two papers published as an independent investigator (i.e., from her own lab at UAH). (Her family science project paper does not appear, presumably because the journal is of insufficient merit to be cited in Pubmed). She appears to have no grant funding.</p>

<p>What is most telling is that she apparently bounced around a number of labs in Boston after completing her PhD (at least 2, maybe 3). Fact is, it is sometimes not that hard to find a position here, if you appear to have moderate skills and are US-trained. Sometimes a PI (principal investigator) has funds and a project and needs a warm body. And if you are any good, you can parlay that opportunity into a successful career. And you have to be pretty bad to last only a year or less. </p>

<p>Frankly, I am amazed she got a position at UAH in the first place. Someone was not forthcoming in her recommendation letters, or faculty at UAH were insufficiently critical in reviewing her application.</p>

<p>I don’t mean to be piling on this tragic situation. I just want to make clear this does not appear to be some brilliant, unappreciated prodigy who thinks in a different way and snapped. This is a person with poor social skills (understatement of the year award), dubious teaching ability, and moderate-to-poor scientific productivity. In the sciences (compared to humanities, for example), it is pretty clear what one needs to do to be considered successful. Bishop did not come close, and it certainly is no surprise she did not get tenure. That she imagined this decision was somehow a conspiracy by others, who deserved to die for their maliciousness or ignorance, is simply psychotic narcissism.</p>