Or perhaps she was as good as she thought and their refusal to recognize it is why she killed them.

wow that is sad.

Occam's Razor says that no-one is as good as they think they are; she most likely decided that, because she believed she was deserving, then she was deserving.

Classic is/ought confusion.

She'll receive tenure, all right... at the Women's Prison.

Anonymous (post #1) you are a piece of excrement.

They simply call it "entitlement".... Just like the American missionaries who kidnapped the children in Haiti. These people honestly think that they can do it and get away with it. This says a lot for academic achievement and indeed quite a lot more about simple intelligence, or lack there of as is all too apparent in this sad incidence.... In this country, America, we habitually consider academics as being super intelligent...truth be known, many, yes many, are completely dense when attempting to fathom ways to be reasonable toward themselves and more particularly the people they habitually look down on....Yes, she looked down the barrel of a gun, once, twice and more....Am I still interested in reading her various academic journal contributions? -- I should think not!

She appears to think she is a legend in her own mind.

I am so sorry that she felt she had to kill people just to prove a point. I think she was mentally sick before this happen. She seems to have some issues that someone should have picked up on before now. This is not an excuse for her but I think it is the facts. Her whole life messed up because she was rejected.

There's a rumor going around that she and her husband had a major innovation, won a lot of grant money, and the other UAH faculty were going to keep it and all the rights to it. This is one of the things people don't know unless they've been in higher education - schools will keep your work and your inventions and even your class material after they deny you tenure, and give them to other people to use. It's not a justification at all for what she did, of course. But it gives a bit more insight than just saying she had a big ego.

I think she validated their choice to deny tenure

I agree with that - and yes, the materials, inventions, etc. are all kept by the university where they were created when someone is denied tenure.
I Alabama a concealed weapons state? Maybe she was a regular gun carrier? I know someone in my university's Political Science department who has a concealed gun at all times and announces it to his classes.

Yes, it is a concealed weapons state. I carry. And i bet you with almost 99.9999% assurance that she did not have a carry license. Just because you dont have a license to carry doesn't mean you cannot get a gun, conceal it, and then shoot up a place. In most cases, the people that have license to carry are the ones that never use them unless their life or someone else life is in danger. Concealment in most cases, means that you have went through the process, registration, and waiting period to get a gun and are probably a responsible carrier.

So I am not sure what you point is on her being a regular gun carrier?

So you can probably be assured that if there were a carrier there, there would have been just 1 person dead, and either 1 cold blooded murderer dead, or wounded. That is, her firing on her first victim and taking one from a licensed carrier....

I live in Bama, about 20 miles south of Huntsville. Easy to get a permit to carry in Alabama; but the Univ has a zero tollerance policy for firearms on campus. One news broadcast (chan 48, I think) interviewed a female student who, after the Virginia Tech massacre, appealed to the school to allow students and faculty with permits to carry to be allowed to carry on campus. That was denied at the time. Hopefully they will rethink that policy. If a couple of the other faculty members had been properly armed there may have been a few less deaths and injuries of of the innocent and the citizens of Alabama may not be facing the expense of a trial and incarceration.

So I guess this means that the community see that even "their" UAH is open to violence. Carrying a gun is not the answer. We are not evolved enough.

That's one bitter clinger.

She shot them because they were going to take her important discovery and all the grant dollars that her work had earned and spread it out amongst themselves. Some people might think that they deserved to be shot...although few would actually go so far as to carry out the shooting.

Still, it just goes to show that you do the wrong thing at your own risk. You never know when the person you wrong will be crazy enough to kill you. And speaking of entitlement, all of those sheltered academics who thought they were entitled to rip off an important scientific discovery which they would likely never be capable of making on their own probably never dreamed that they would actually be punished in any way. Certainly not in such a, um, permanent way.

I still say that the reason she may have been denied tenure was more than stealing her ideas...
Do you think they may have noticed that she MAY have tended to be violent or unstable?
There may have been valid reasons they denied her tenure. Like I said before... I think she validated their choice to deny tenure.

Terribly sad tragedy. Perhaps this woman professor was taking an SSRI antidepressant.

The Physicians Desk Reference states that SSRI antidepressants and all antidepressants can cause mania, psychosis, abnormal thinking, paranoia, hostility, etc. These side effects can also appear during withdrawal. Also, these adverse reactions are not listed as Rare but are listed as either Frequent or Infrequent.

Go to www.SSRIstories.com where there are over 3,600 cases, with the full media article available, involving bizarre murders, suicides, school shootings/incidents [53 of these] and murder-suicides - all of which involve SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, etc, . The media article usually tells which SSRI antidepressant the perpetrator was taking or had been using.

When Liberal Harvard Intellectuals go bad......

Will be interesting to see how the MSM spins this one.

There's a news item from November, describing her role in a faculty senate vs. the university president issue. The university president and administrators had decided to require students to live on campus in their sophomore year, which would cost a certain amount in housing fees. Apparently she was on the faculty senate and asking for a formal vote to censure the president, saying that the requirement to make students live on campus was unfair, that the poorer students would not be able to attend UAH, etc. By no means an excuse or justification at all, just another interesting piece of the puzzle of what went on there.
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2009/11/new_uah_student_residence_poli.html

I read she was onto how to make a computer out of neurons. She had been working on it for years, and it sounded as though she was making significant progress. What if UAH had filed a dozen patents on what she developed, thereby appropriating her work, and when they saw a way to develop it told her not to let the door hit her in the ass as she was leaving. She would be barred from further developing her invention by the UAH-held patents. In essence, if this was her life's work, they would be stealing her life. What would she have to lose?

There is such unfairness when it comes to tenure on university campuses. Usually it is the hardest worker, the one with a new invention, the one who has written a book or done some other outstanding accomplishment that makes other faculty members jealous and they in return deny that person tenure. It makes the "do nothing" faculty members look bad and they don't like it when someone is recognized for doing outstanding work. I understand how it feels for someone to say they will deny tenure as a threat and I also know the anger it invokes as well. I was never denied tenure, but how I was treated will always be with me. Faculty members need to be kinder when determining who gets tenure. The ones who have it already need to realize that they are destroying a person's livelihood when they deny a faculty member's tenure. This shooting in Huntsville could have been avoided if the other faculty members had a little compassion on their colleague. What a shame this is for a university to not monitor better promotion practices. A little kindness goes a long way.

Is this a teachable moment?

Hang her from the highest yardarm. Keelhaul her, water board her, better yet yet deny her tenure.

After that revoke tenure and outlaw unions.

this woman should be hanged...if you got the guts to shoot up a place like this and not pull the trigger on yourself you should have to suffer for years like these families are going to do for the rest of theit lives and then hang her so she feels the pain....this woman is never going to make it in a womens prison....Just keep the students,faculty, and everyones family in prayers.

There is never a good reason to murder anyone !! Liberals make up excuses instead of putting the blame on the murderer. We use courts to deal with matters... not guns

Funny... Most Conservatives feel it's okay to shoot someone who is robbing them. If the patent/tenure issue is true, what the difference between a street thug robbing you and other professors robbing you?

Lib on lib crime. Sweet.

Cube, I'll try to answer it for you. Conservatives think it's okay to shoot someone who's robbing you if you're in fear of your life. Conservatives think it's not okay to shoot someone just because you think he's pulling a fast one on a business deal. Conservatives think that's what courts are for.

Why all the discussion? Killing has no place in a civilized society. If everone acted like Amy Bishop and killed people because they felt they had just cause, I would not have time to write this reflection, nor would you to read it. Perhaps we should be greatful that more of this beahvior does not take place. Law courts do sometimes hand out handsome settlements to Assistant Professors who have been denied tenure, if a case of bias can be made.

There is no excuse for what she did. I wonder if she feels that spending the rest of her life in jail, or receiving the death penalty is worth it. She's obviously not as smart as she thinks she is.

Bishop seems like an accomplished woman. I work at an institution of higher education, and it occasionally happens that people are unjustly denied tenure.

That's no reason to shoot anybody. Hell, sit back, cool your heels, and rake in the major Ks without the pressure to publish. But people who use guns usually don't reason these things out.

some people don´t understand that the tenure process is supposed to be a holistic one, not based only on academic achievement. other variables as character, ability to work and interact with others, etc., are also measured. in the case of prof. bishop, as accomplished as she obviously was, is quite and sadly obvious now that she was a deeply disturbed person, and her colleagues were tragically right in denying her tenure. I know of many cases when tenure was unjustly denied, but her reaction should be enough proof that she isn´t sane enough to be educating young people.

Oooh... Obama voting liberals shooting each other. One thing is for sure, that no conservatives were injured. They are virtually non-existent on university campuses.

My appreciation to Rebecca and Mark: if you are going to believe rumors and declare that the victems probably deserved it, you can at least sign your name to that. I'll make certain to wear my kevlar before i hear either of your dissertations, though. You'll understand.

If you are Black or a woman and God forbide both it's almost automatic that you will be DENIED tenure. Tenure committees are mainly old White men who could care less about the research of women or minorities. Their main concern is keeping the university full of White men. This is a sad case and could have been prevented but tenure denial is a reality for some.

we all know the quality of the old white men of Alabama. We see your retatrded senator all the time in Dc. This Harvard woman was naiive to try to thik it would be different with her. And she forgot to dress her part. The only way to get around those bastards was to dress seductively,look at the harvard professor, no common sense!

This is why MSNBC is training a parrot to perform the task of firing Kweef Olberman.

The Manchurian Candidate - the real story;
Dr. Amy Bishop, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist and biology professor at Department of Biology, University of Alabama in Huntsville, AL, USA conducted research on SSRI class of antidepressants and found Prozac and Paxil very neuro-toxic. It seems that in response to that revelation, that threatened Big Pharma's bottom line, psychodrug experts from Eli Lilly and Co. used on her and her husband their mind altering psychodrugs in order to drive her and her husband over the edge and send her on a recent shooting rampage.
If you think I am kidding see this link.

http://www.dovepress.com/effects-of-selective-serotonin-reuptake-inhibitors-on-motor-neuron-sur-peer-reviewed-article-IJGM
Effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors on motor neuron survival

Hopefully another Harvard-educated individual will be denied tenure in 2012.

Denial of tenure is not something which is announced TO THE INDIVIDUAL in a public meeting. It is done in private, usually with the department chair and academic dean present. UAH is no different. There may have been a polite public announcement, something to the effect that she was leaving to pursure other opportunities, but she KNEW when she went to that meeting what the situation was.

I'm glad so many of you think this is glib. Several of these people who were shot were my friends, and one who was killed I had known for 15 years. These were good people, independent of these university politics that you all seem to be so knowledgeable about. I am angry and sad, and it hurts all the more to hear people speculate so flippantly about something that hits so close to home. I was trying to see if there were funeral services listed yet and this website came up with a keyword hit. I won't be reading any more of these things, but I wanted you all to know that all these shootings become more than just a news event when someone you care about is involved.

There are plenty of women who have tenure, and university departments are certainly not run by a monopoly of old white guys. Case in point - the head of my own department is a woman, even here in the deep south. Idiots.

Oiao; "...Liberal Harvard Intellectuals...", really?

That's as stupid as saying everyone from Alabama is a backward-ass country fool.

The people killed by Bishop were an Indian man, a black man, and a white woman. No white man was killed and no white-male conspiracy was trying to deny Bishop tenure. Get your facts straight before you start spouting, "the truth." In general, blacks and women get favoritism in the tenure-granting process: do the resarch and you will discover this.

It's amazing to read the commenters here who rationalize or justify these murders. Truly disgusting.

Of course she's mentally deranged.

She's a liberal isn't she?

She's probably also a vicious anti-gun kook too.

Why is it disgusting, Bugler? If I had poured long hours into a dream, a research project that I thought I deserved credit for, only to find that a bunch of jackasses intended to steal it from me, I would kill them in a heartbeat. No doubt about it. No difference to me from killing an ordinary street thug trying to mug me for fifty or sixty dollars in my wallet, in fact, it would be more justified.

That being said, in this case she should have known going in what the situation was, and that there was a very strong likelihood this could be the result. Unfortunately, her hands might have been tied. It would have been next to impossible for her to receive a grant as a private individual.

Maybe there is more that needs to be reconsidered than the tenure process, which should probably be scrapped. Maybe we should rethink the grant allocation process. Maybe we should re-evaluate the manner in which we award patents? There are a whole lot of issues we need to look at here.

But don't expect me to feel sorry for the murder of a bunch of people who are basically nothing more or less than polished thieves with an education and positions of authority. Good riddance to bad rubbish is my thoughts on the matter.

Why is it disgusting, Bugler? If I had poured long hours into a dream, a research project that I thought I deserved credit for, only to find that a bunch of crooks intended to steal it from me, I might be strongly tempted to do what she did. I don't see the difference in killing an ordinary street thug trying to mug me for fifty or sixty dollars in my wallet, in fact, it would be more justified.

That being said, in this case she should have known going in what the situation was, and that there was a very strong likelihood this could be the result. Unfortunately, her hands might have been tied. It would have been next to impossible for her to receive a grant as a private individual.

Maybe there is more that needs to be reconsidered than the tenure process, which should probably be scrapped. Maybe we should rethink the grant allocation process. Maybe we should re-evaluate the manner in which we award patents? There are a whole lot of issues we need to look at here.

But don't expect me to feel sorry for the murder of a bunch of people who are basically nothing more or less than polished thieves with an education and positions of authority. Good riddance to bad rubbish is my thoughts on the matter.

"Posted by PatrickKelley at February 13, 2010 11:31 AM"

Wow. You're crazier than Amy Bishop. Please get help.

Obviously, this calls into question the dealy practice of giving tenure to professors

To Rosiecee:

There are many stories about many things online. Like photoshopped pictures, stories online cannot be taken at face value. People making claims that their SSRI did this or that do not make it so.

People ascribe causality to all sorts of things and "know" they are right. Claiming that an SSRI "caused" some reaction in them is no more valid than someone who claims cops cause most of the crimes in this country because they are always around when crimes are committed.

Only systematically holding one variable constant while manipulating another will yield ultimate answers to these kinds of questions. Won't happen with this issue. Beware of anecdotes: like
a--h---s, we all have 'em.

Rosicee is posting the exact same post all over the blogs. She obviously has an agenda.

Hey for those who are ignorant about the academic process, this person is not as good as she is being made out to be. She published seven papers in seven years. In my group, I routinely publish 6-7 papers a year and I am considered ordinary.
An inventor of a patent will always get their share of the money even if they leave university.
Thirdly, grant money is not distributed to academics when someone is denied tenure.
Next time, before you ignorant people make accusations, at least get your facts right.

She was informed on Friday morning that she would not be tenured. The shooting took place at 4 pm Friday afternoon, so the initial blog post should be redacted. There is some evidence (neighbor's interview) that her husband and four children were preparing for a weekend trip with her. The gun she used was a 9 mm, so it would have been easy for her to conceal her purpose in stopping by the office before their "trip." Having been close to a miserable and overtly political (rather than fact-based) faculty decision affecting someone's chances of tenure, I can attest that the victim of such a situation often feels incredible rage at the injustice of it. Not saying that this case was one such, but it certainly crossed many academics' minds as soon as they saw the details. To the person who knew the individuals involved: I am sorry for your loss, and for your whole community. It is unspeakable that this mother of four snapped and not only ended the lives of three colleagues, but endangered her husband's and children's futures with her act of destruction. She, like her victims, was a person with the full complexity that implies; her students liked and respected her as a caring and committed professor (but hard), and she was obviously trying to reach across departments at UAH in putting together that launch-and-payload experiment that flew last March. It is tragic that this has happened, and if it was *not* one of those intensely political decisions, it's also hard to explain. Her publication record is better than the records of the tenured faculty for last few years, certainly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Bishop
For publications list, Google Scholar is better (she's been doing a few a year for years):
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=&num=10&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=Amy+Bishop&as_publication=&as_ylo=2003&as_yhi=2010&as_sdt=1&as_subj=bio&as_subj=med&as_sdts=48&btnG=Search+Scholar&hl=en

This is going to be covered, probably in enough detail that we'll find out some of "why" it happened.

I go to school at uah and believe me when i say that as corrupt as some of you may say it is, it is no more than any other university. I have been dealing with the science department since i started school there and they are actually some of the nicest people on that campus. None of them deserved what happened yesterday. It cannot be justified. To those who are trying to be "cool" or "edgey" or whatever by saying that they deserved it because they "think" that her ideas were being stolen, ask yourselves, and be honest, how would you feel if the people being carried out on stretchers were your mom or dad or someone you really cared about? Would how they played office politics make you feel any better or worse about their lives being taken? Probably not. So how about you all just shut your mouths and do like the rest of us and pray for all of those involved.

Hey look, she's from my home town!

(Just read the latest news reports about her shooting her brother in 1987)

She was denied tenure several months ago. This was a calculated cold blooded revenge murder - period. She was a less than average teacher - research that for yourself (hint - ratemyprofesser). Prior shooting of her brother... The lady was a complete nut job. Her 3rd place $25,000 grant project wasn'r worth ripping off.

"Denial of tenure is not something which is announced TO THE INDIVIDUAL in a public meeting. It is done in private, usually with the department chair and academic dean present. UAH is no different. There may have been a polite public announcement, something to the effect that she was leaving to pursure other opportunities, but she KNEW when she went to that meeting what the situation was.

Posted by: Tregonsee at February 13, 2010 09:46 AM "

Tregonsee and Max Power are correct. Dr. Bishop was told after her 5th year that she was not getting tenure. She filed an appeal during her 6th year which is normally when a professor not getting tenure would spend the time hunting for a new job. She lost the appeal, and I believe that was communicated to her earlier this year. I think this was just a normal staff meeting. She probably wasn't invited because as someone who was finishing out her last semester her attendance wasn't essential.

There was some dispute about a technology she and her husband had developed, but if you accept a job with a university you have to sign a legal document waiving claims to any patents in favor of the university. You don't have to sign, but you don't get the job unless you do.

Not getting tenure can be a devastating experience for an academic. Deciding to murder a bunch of people in a fit of pique and leaving your husband + 4 kids abandoned is not a sensible solution. She may well be nuts, but she's going on trial for capital murder. Alabama is a death penalty state and it actually does apply the sentence.

"Oooh... Obama-voting-liberals shooting each other. One thing is for sure, that no conservatives were injured. They are virtually non-existent on university campuses."

Thanks for the laugh, Bishop Tutu. But one can say more. I've been observing liberals and leftists on college campuses for some time now, and I think the conclusions to be drawn are that (1) academia is no more fair than any other realm, and (2) liberals and leftists cannot get along with each other, despite agreeing on many things.

Re: (1). If academics cannot create fairness in a realm they dominate, why expect that fairness will be created elsewhere? And why expect that the government can create it?

Re: (2). People who are left-of-center think it is conservatives who are messing things up, but I've seen too many bitter fights among liberals and leftists in academia to believe this anymore.

Academia should be used by everyone as the model of what happens when liberals and leftists dominate. It's not pretty.

I doubt it will make much difference to the ignorati spouting off about academia, tenure, patents, etc.; but:

1. Almost every private company has an "invention and patent" policy in place. You discover something, find a new and better way to do do things, etc., and your actions fall under said policy. Good companies have a policy in place that rewards you, provides other incentives, and ensures that everyone "wins." Bad companies don't. Have worked at one such, and they were amazed at how little innovation suddenly started taking place there, and they went the way of the dodo. Do you know what the policy is where you work? Again, almost every company has one, and if you don't know it, that's your problem as ignorance of the law extends...

2. The policies of an academic institution, especially a research institution (and UAH is one), are well known and discussed. In point of fact, they are often a recruiting tool. I had the honor of working with one of the foremost medical/biomedical researchers in the world, and the first thing he did when recruited to the institution where I met him was to get them to change the patent/invention policy so that the researcher had a strong incentive, the department and/or college involved gets a cut and has an incentive, and the university in question benefits too.

3. While tenure can be very political, the process is spelled out, well known, and almost always the head or others have made suggestions to the people involved on ways to improve, deal, etc. They may not listen, they may not like, and in some cases I have known of people to leave and go to another institution as they felt that they were being asked to do something that would compromise their principles. Some have prospered at these new homes and gone to do good things.

4. For anyone not intimately familiar with UAH and the situation in this particular department and all the people involved, to offer that tenure and denial of same justifies the shooting done is the zenith of moral bankruptcy and intellectual vacuousness.

5. For the thing above babbling about how "republicans" feel that deadly force is good during a robbery but shouldn't be used in a business deal: given your obvious immaturity and lack of general knowledge, most legal systems recognize the same as do most people with any degree of intellectual awareness. Most legal systems, Western, Eastern, and otherwise, have recognized the difference for most of recorded history. To equate the two is what is called the "apples ad oranges" logical fallacy since one involves immediate threat to life and property, and the other lacks that urgency since there is time for a (hopefully) neutral party (the judge and/or jury) to review, rule, and redress as necessary.

6. I did some study at UAH, having earned a specialized certificate there as part of the continuing education program. My jobs both times I lived in the Huntsville area caused me to work with people at that institution. Some were good, some were not; some were liberal, some were not; etc.

7. I am neither a degreed researcher nor an acadmic.

8. I intensely dislike working at places that require you to be an unarmed victim who is not supposed to fight back. While I would hope that this might wake up some people, I doubt it as this is what qualifies as a religious belief rather than a rational approach for many in academia.

9. To say I am disgusted by many of the comments made here, and the people behind them, is a huge understatement. Despicable does not even come close.

LW

Let me throw a curve ball for all to ponder. Read this list of dead scientists since 1994 paying particular interest to their field of endeavor. Now simply overlay that list, with the story of Amy Bishop. I don't have any answers, but something in my mind is definitely askew. Ask yourself if its plausible that a Neuroscientist, mother of 4, inventor, professor, simply takes out a 9mm unregistered handgun from her purse and starts shooting up a room. I think this could be a manchurian candidate scenario. She took out 5-7 bio researchers in a few mintues. The three who are deceased, herself, her husband (career finished and he's in custody without charge) and maybe 1 to 2 more if those in critical condition don't make it. Just check it out for yourself before you start laughing at the proposition.

The post wouldnt allow me to attach the link but you can find the list at steve quayle dot com and search of dead scientists on the left

Will the MSM do it's job and start reporting on Monday the reasons why we should feel sorry for her and why it's not really her fault because the victims mistreated her? Maybe they can do some in depth research and figure out that it's her parents fault.

This babe shot and killed her 18-year old violinist brother with a shotgun in 1986 - but that time it was an "accident".

I see it didn't take long to blame Obama. I guess next they'll blame him for Limbaugh being so disgusting

I want to know who else was considered for the biology professor position that Amy Bishop held at the University of Alabama in Huntsville?

Was there another more qualified person that might not have passed the requirements of the US Education's liberal agenda.

I am not a joking about my question!
If anyone knows of any one that was trying to get that position and was refused that position please contacting ASAP!

David Kennedy
dragonsport@yahoo.com