On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:45:22 -0700,, Scott Lilienfeld wrote: > >For those of you who haven't seen it, interesting.... > >http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/james-holmes-application-letter-iowa-163256614.html > >The connection to Dan Tranel, the prominent neuroscientist at Iowa, is >especially intriguing. One can assume that Tranel was picking up on some >salient things in Holmes' file, some of which have not yet been made public (I >believe). > >Some statements in Holmes' letter of intent strike me as a bit odd, although >admittedly I may be guilty of hindsight bias here (certainly, the letter is not >patently psychotic).
I had seen a couple of different articles on this earlier in the day but resisted the urge to post something to TiPS because it was clear that whatever the graduate admission committee members saw/read/experienced that caused them to flatly refuse Holmes, it was not going to be made public, at least not until a trial or after a trial or never. It is unclear if there is a written record of whatever it was that made them decide not to admit Holmes: they may have discussed the issues among themselves but put very little on paper or on electronic record. A person "not being a good fit" can mean any number of things and some of those things might be legally actionable (e.g., a candidate is turned down because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. -- though these don't seem relevant here). In Holmes' case it could be an academic problem, but the evidence seems to be against this though one of his earlier "mentors" John Jacobson seemed to have a negative opinion which I had pointed out a while back; see: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg08128.html Quoting from that post, here is a quote from Johnson: |Jacobson said he was taken aback when in a video of a summer-end |presentation, Holmes called him his "mentor." "That's almost slanderous," |Jacobson said. "I was never his mentor." One wonders if the Iowa folks spoke to Johnson about Holmes. I assume that that would have been okay even if Holmes had not put Johnson as a reference. But one does wonder if there are legal consequences for the grad committee members if they spoke to Johnson about Holmes and decided not to admit him on the basis of what Johnson said. Of if there was some other person that had been contacted about Holmes that might have said something negative about him. One wonders how much back channel activity there might have been and how influential (and possibly actionable) it was. I may be wrong but it seems to me that it is unlikely that there is anything in the application itself that would have led the committee to flatly refuse to admit Holmes. After all, he was offered a position at the University of Illinois in addition to UC-Denver. They didn't see anything in the application to make them to reject Holmes. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=20114 or send a blank email to leave-20114-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
