Neuroscientists debunk idea Colorado suspect was supersmart

[flamingdem]

snip--

James Holmes seemed well on his way to a career as a scientist.

A video from a science camp he attended after high school shows him making a presentation about temporal illusions, misfirings in brain cells that lead to misreading the passage of time — the feeling that time stands still. In the video, Holmes refers to "an illusion that allows you to change the past."

He was one of six students admitted to the University of Colorado's graduate program in neuroscience last year. He received a $26,000 federal stipend.

But neuroscientist David Eagleman says Holmes' credentials were no better than those of an average student. The suspected mass killer is no elite neuroscientist, says Eagleman, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

"He was just a second-year grad student," he says. "He didn't know anything."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-07-24/john-holmes-smart-academics/56467518/1

[Gman]

1. Sounds like something Sheldon would say

"you only have a masters."

Even worse, you're just a second year grad student.

[LisaL]

13. He wasn't even a second year grad student. He quit at the end of first year.

[Lex]

2. Seems like maybe he had come to the end of his intellectual ability

to move forward in school anymore. School was starting to get really rigorous. I read the whole article and that's what I came away with.

[flamingdem]

5. I think they'll be tightlipped about any incidents where he hit a wall at school

The university doesn't want to get a black mark for their program. Grad school can be all about tearing down the ego in order to install new thinking.

[gkhouston]

8. Sounds like he tanked his prelims, but it might not have been for intellectual reasons.

If he was already lost in his fantasies, that, rather than limited ability, could have been responsible for his performance. Thinking back to my own grad school experience, very few flunked the big exams due to lack of ability -- it was almost always nerves or someone with an outside job who flat out wasn't doing the reading. That, and one student who ignored all hints from their advisor that he wasn't ready to defend. He was hell-bent on finishing by a certain date and scheduled a defense, anyway, ignoring his thesis advisor's advice and surprise, surprise, the rest of the committee also agreed that the thesis needed more work.

[Lex]

11. These were some the pre-grad school things that caught my eye

in the article where 2 different former teachers are quoted.

"Holmes' high school transcripts showed Bs and no advanced-placement classes."

" . . . Holmes worked in his lab to write a computer code for an experiment Jacobson was working on. He told the newspaper Holmes never finished it.
"What he gave me was a complete mess," Jacobson says."

" . . . was a "mediocre" student who was stubborn and did not listen to direction."

" . . . the teen parroted his advisers' words in his presentation on temporal illusions" and was a "dolt."

[LisaL]

12. It was pre- undergrad school.

That science camp was for high school students.

[Lex]

14. If it was pre-undergrad, then it was pre-grad too

time-wise.

[LisaL]

15. The point is, he was still in high school.

I am not arguing that Holmes is some sort of genius.
But since that high school camp, he did very well in college and got high tests scores to be admitted into competitive graduate program. So, I don't think describing him as intelligent would be wrong.

[gkhouston]

16. Without knowing what the other kids at the summer program were like, it's hard to

say how "mediocre" or "dolt"-ish he really was. He might be reasonably intelligent, but look mediocre by comparison if the other kids were superstars. Bs on his transcript could mean he was bored or didn't study (or both); "no AP classes" is significant only if they were offered. An incomplete, crappy program doesn't make him dumb, it just makes him a poor coder. At 18, I'd expect him to largely be parroting the ideas of his mentors and "stubborn/doesn't listen to direction" is a recipe for failure, not a commentary on his intellect.

Seems like the media learned he was a neuroscience grad student with a grant and inflated him into a sooper-genuis and the academics are merely saying, "Yeah, he's not that special". Sounds like he was like a lot of grad students: reasonably bright, but not likely to win the Nobel Prize next week. At this point in his career, I'd expect him to have a reasonable grounding over the breadth of his discipline, but not yet be an expert in any sub-area.

[Zalatix]

3. If THIS GUY was "one of six students admitted to the University of Colorado's graduate program"...

then that calls the intellectual credibility of the other five students into serious question.

(Read the whole article and you'll know what I mean)

[LisaL]

21. That's a pretty strange thing to say, considering one guy knew Holmes when Holmes was

still in high school, and the other guy didn't know him at all.

[Zalatix]

28. What do you think an employer will say if one of six neuroscience grad students

was utterly mediocre, according to an actual professor?

They're going to suspect the very standards of that school. Which means they're going to look harshly upon the prowess of all six students.

Trust me, I know how these hiring managers and HR staff work, and it is a perfectly logical response.

It's going to be little better than graduating neuroscientists from Chico State.

[LisaL]

30. Maybe you should re-read the darn article.

The guy who calls Holmes mediocre only knew him in high school.

[Zalatix]

31. Maybe YOU need to re-read the article. Perhaps you missed this part?

Holmes had difficulty with a June 7 preliminary exam, given orally by three university faculty members. It is designed to evaluate students' knowledge at the end of the first year. Three days later, Holmes dropped out.

Where I come from, that means something big. It means that his mediocre grades in high school translated to mediocre academic performance. It's fairly obvious that he couldn't hack it in the end.

The testimonies all say that Holmes couldn't listen to direction, and his grades were not exceptional. You might have a point if you can show that David Eagleman (a neuroscientist) and John Jacobson (a former researcher) were wrong, and produce evidence that Holmes did better in college.

Good luck showing the former. And in light of him dropping out after choking on his exam, I really wish you great luck in showing the latter, you're gonna need it.

The boy was a mediocre student. This reflects poorly upon the graduate program that accepted him.

[LisaL]

33. He was accepted into program not based on his high school record (whatever it was)

but on his record at his undergraduate university. Where he did extremely well. His graduate program wouldn't be looking at his high school record at that point. So get a clue.

"He was an honor student, so academically he was at the top of the top," University Chancellor Tim White said at a press conference. "He really distinguished himself from an academic point of view during his four years with us, graduating with highest honors."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57477097/colo-suspect-james-holmes-smart-but-quiet-teachers-and-neighbors-say/

[Zalatix]

38. If he graduated with honors then why did he have so much trouble handling his first year grad exam?

[gkhouston]

39. Probably because that's not what he's been thinking about for months.

He likely spent most of his time fantasizing about and planning the shooting.

[Igel]

41. U. Calif. has structure.

There are flagship schools, there are specialty schools. There are 2nd tier schools. And there are 3rd tier schools.

A few years back a study looking at something completely different pointed out that the bottom quartile of students at UCLA/Cal, the ones most likely to drop out, have entering test/GPA/profiles of students graduating with B/B+ averages at UC-Irvine.

UC-Riverside is below UCI. The upper 1/3 of the grade range is typically compressed: Pinning the meter at UC-R might make you a C+ student at the flagship schools, but you might also be an ace student. Can't tell.


Don't know how U. Col. is for neuroscience. At the grad level some programs are stellar but others in the same building can be dismal. Even saying it's a "good school" doesn't entail "It's a good school for chemistry". Or neuroscience. Six students in the first year class? So 30 max for the PhD at any given time, plus some post-docs. That's a good number. They probably want terminal MSs.


Prelims are tricky things. Talk to different students and it's obvious the faculty meant them to do different things. Some test content, some test thinking, some test how you handle pressure. Some are there as hazing or to scare you into working and living up to your potential. From the students' POV they're just scary and intimidating. The psychologically fragile shouldn't go into them, esp. if they're intended to test anything more than content.

[Surya Gayatri]

43. His up-coming exams were probably the last thing

on his twisted mind as he built up his lethal arsenal and laid his murderous plans.

Mental illness and academic success don't mix very well.

[pnwmom]

47. That "actual professor" is a competitor at Baylor with his own self-serving agenda.

The Chancellor at University of California/Riverside, said Holmes was among "the top of the top."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1020378

Also, the Baylor prof was dissing graduate students in general when he referred to Holmes as "just a second year grad student." He no doubt thinks most the second year grad students he works with are dolts, too. That's the kind of humble guy he is.

[pnwmom]

46. Hardly. He had graduated with highest honors from U.Cal/Riverside.

The others probably have similar credentials.

Extremely bright or creative people are not exempt from mental illness; they might even have a greater risk.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. "He was just a second-year grad student," he says. "He didn't know anything."

Ouch.

Anyone want to sign up to work with David Eagleman? Remember, in addition to the derision, you also have to take a Baylor pledge!

Double ouch.

[gkhouston]

10. Sounds like the sort of faculty we used to call walruses.

They're old, they're big, they defend their territory, and every now and then they roll over and crush their young.

[petronius]

20. ROFL! I've never heard that, but now I'm picturing half my colleagues with big

fishy-smelling whiskers!

You've just immeasurably improved departmental and committee meeting for me in the future...

[gkhouston]

22. I hope it will provide a useful degree of detachment

when you see the same old arguments rehashed yet again at the next meeting. Or, better yet, when some policy that has been grimly adhered to for years because "it's always been this way" finally gets changed and they immediately assume an "it's always been this way" stance about the new policy (while sporting a "who farted?" expression).

[Igel]

42. That's good.

Mental images of several faculty immediately popped into mind.

Tell me, do walruses also eat their young?

[gkhouston]

44. In academia, yes. In the wild, I don't know. n/t

[frogmarch]

6. When I read Holmes had said that, I

thought of the movie The Butterfly Effect. I thought maybe Holmes had been inspired by that movie when he went on his murderous rampage. Maybe he thought he could go back and undo what he'd done.

[pnwmom]

7. Scientists tend to be super-competitive. Maybe Holmes was a dolt or maybe

this guy just enjoys shooting his mouth off.

I fail to see whether it matters whether Holmes I.Q. was 120 or 140. The question, IMHO, is if he has a psychiatric illness that would prevent him from assisting in his defense.

[Posteritatis]

36. Grad students in most programs can be pretty hostile to one another

I witnessed enough of it during my undergraduate studies (the graduate students were usually nearby), and ran into a shitload of it firsthand during my MA, with the extra fun of the professors getting in on the childishness that time.

[jberryhill]

9. Let's put it this way

Someone else described grad school pretty well on another thread.

Most Americans do not have a college education. That itself is no measure of anyone's intelligence, but we can safely assume that most of the minority which do, have at least demonstrated some ability to get over that hurdle.

You can excel in college, but when you get to grad school, you find out that those who are now "average" we're skimmed off of the upper portion of those who did well in college.

That again, doesn't mean a whole lot when we are talking about a specific individual, but in general it is a safe bet that a second year grad student has a pretty good grasp of their field of study far beyond a randomly chosen person in the general population.

So, it really depends on what kind of comparison you are making. Also, expertise can be pretty narrow. But someone in grad school has demonstrated sufficient chops to get admitted as an undergrad, get through a degree program, and do so with enough success to then get accepted into a grad program (along with the requisite SAT and then GRE scores, which roughly correspond to Binet or similar "intelligence" scores).

The real danger in all of that is a peculiar form of arrogance in which the person, having put years if effort and exploiting their innate intellectual gifts, starts to look down on others as generally inferior, not recognizing that people are not one-dimensional. This is, more or less, the archetypical "evil genius" mentality of, for example, Batman villains. It's not as if these villains were dreamed up out of nowhere. Yes, the "nerds" get bullied by the "jocks". That's not nice. It is also not nice that some bullied nerds develop sophisticated revenge fantasies to "get even" with all those "dumb people" whom they see as their inferiors.

[gkhouston]

17. Agreed, but let me add...

Grad school is a closed subculture. You're working all the hours that God sends, surrounded by others doing the same, and taught by profs who act as if having a Ph.D. is the end-all and be-all. Even though you've been admitted to the program, there will be some "gate-keepers" among the profs who act like all the students are floor sweepings and the department really could have done better than to let in the sorry likes of you. Some of them look down on the master's students, and you get to the point where you feel you really have to finish the Ph.D. rather than take that much-derided master's degree and leave academia.

Now, imagine you've already bought into this mindset but you aren't succeeding at something "everyone" wants and is achieving. How do you react to that?

[jberryhill]

18. Oh, absolutely

Remember that math grad student who took out his advisor with a hammer?

[gkhouston]

19. Oh, yes. I'm kind of surprised the target was a movie theater, and

not some visitor's Friday afternoon talk. I can think of a few I would have almost been relieved to see interrupted by violence.

[flamingdem]

25. What was that Malcolm McLaren movie where he shot up the college?

This shooting has something of that era, a poor Clockwork Orange, a cliche of itself.

[gkhouston]

27. Do you mean Malcom MacDowell and "If..." ?

I think that movie ended with a shoot-up of the prep school, but I haven't seen it in ages.

[Posteritatis]

37. That's probably the main adjustment with graduate studies

Every single person in the room for that first seminar on the first day has, for several years, probably gotten quite used to being considered - and often rightly being considered - the smartest person in the room.

Adjusting to that no longer being the case is a big, big deal in those programs, and is probably a good chunk of why so many graduate students flame out. A lot of people have some trouble doing so, and end up spending awhile just carrying on the assumption that they're the sole person around who knows what they're talking about. It can lead to a lot of petty behaviour and casual arrogance, especially when their peers might not necessarily be studying the same things. Leads to fun stuff like someone studying, say, twentieth-century Russia feeling disdain for someone studying sixteenth-century China because they don't know what the Cheka was or the like.

It meshed with my own graduate experience a lot, and I keep hearing that a lot of the time the biggest pains in the ass in any university's department are whichever crop of students is freshest from their undergraduate work. Obviously not all of them are like that, but it can usually take that first year for people to get some perspective or humility (or demonstrate they actually are as good as they think).

It's a problem on its own (and gets worse if they're working with undergrads), but even a fairly well-adjusted graduate student's going to have the chance of running into some trouble just from putting up with what can be a really ugly environment if you had bad luck with your cohort.

TL;DR version: going from undergrad to graduate work can be a gigantic social and mental adjustment, and lots of people don't make the jump, not even necessarily through any fault of their own. Something Should Be Done(tm) there, but I don't know what.

[gkhouston]

40. I'd say that depends on what your undergrad experience was like, and also what

your grad program is like. My undergrad school was very competitive, so I don't remember a "smartest person in the room" let-down coming into grad school. Then again, I don't remember that being a problem between high school and undergrad, either, so I guess that's something I was never hung up on. The big thing I remember about the high-school-to-college transition was that I no longer needed to explain jokes.

Thinking back on it, I do think the adjustment was rougher for students who came to the program from less competitive undergrad programs. Part of it was that they had sometimes not seen the material before, but a lot of it did seem to be the "smartest person in the room" let-down. The biggest problem wasn't students being shitty to each other; it was the way much of the faculty (at that time relatively young and inexperienced) treated the students. They had their personal notions of who was and wasn't a "serious student" and could be pretty shitty to anyone who wasn't "serious" enough, i.e., anyone not inclined to kiss their asses. Now and then, they'd decide we were all worthless slime, so the students tended to band together against faculty insanity rather than fight amongst ourselves.

[aikoaiko]

23. Classic doctoral professor remark. Mine told me not to show up for my masters hooding...

...because, and I quote, "I don't want you to think that you accomplished anything important."

[flamingdem]

24. I'm beginning to think the program contributed to pushing carrot top over the edge

What a can of worms, if the other students were allowed to speak. Maybe PhD programs need to be regulated!

[LisaL]

26. Oh give me a break already.

Neither one of the people quoted are from his PHD program. One guy doesn't know him at all.
The other knew he when he was in high school. Blaming his PHD program is absurd.

[aikoaiko]

32. A rough grad program can certainly push an unstable person over the edge.

I saw a couple of my friends break from the stress. Not violent breaks, but there were personal crises.

It kind of surprises that we don't hear more about violent outbursts from struggling grad students.

[LisaL]

34. A lot of things can push an unstable person over the edge.

[aikoaiko]

35. Of course.

I'm not blaming the grad program, I'm just chatting about things.

[gkhouston]

29. Snorf. That is *so* typical. n/t

[pnwmom]

45. He graduated with "highest honors" from University of California/Riverside.

So he wasn't an average student there.

Eagleton is just some competitive academic at Baylor spouting off; he doesn't have any special knowledge of Holmes.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-07-22/us/us_colorado-shooting-suspect_1_holmes-show-gun-range-james-holmes

He entered the University of California, Riverside, in 2006 on a scholarship and graduated with highest honors with a bachelor's degree in neuroscience in 2010.

"Academically, he was at the top of the top," Chancellor Timothy P. White said.