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Hypothetically would you still get the LOR if your PI just got arrested for threatening arson and murder
My PI just got arrested for threatening arson and assault, get LOR?
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I'd go far to say that if your app doesn't have a LOR from a felony, it gets tossed in the trash.
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Interesting question, you have to consider the likelihood the admissions peeps would know this fact, along with the ability for the PI to write a strong letter. If they are having a very rough time in their personal life, your letter may be very low priority and end up pretty crappy.
It may also be considered odd if you did a ton of work in the lab, and yet no LOR.
It also depends on the perceived quality of the PI's research and overall perceived reputation and sanity. For example, Amy Bishop of Alabama, not so good. Same thing with Ted Kaczynski (presumably he worked with math students at some point). However, if someone had done all their research work in the lab of Daniel Gadjusek, who despite his criminal convictions and own problems as a child molester, was held to be someone who did very good scientific work, his recommendation letter as a researcher was potentially still of some value. He was just a total creeper, but his judgement on research, as a Nobel Laureate and National Academy member was probably pretty good.
For better or worse, a lot of people will forgive all sorts of weird, unstable, even criminal behavior in scientists if they "do good work".
As an aside, at the very least, as a service always provide people with a starter point for a letter. You can write an example letter that summarizes all your work with the person and contributions you made to their lab/research. Writing rec letters sucks, so you want to make it easy on people.
It may also be considered odd if you did a ton of work in the lab, and yet no LOR.
It also depends on the perceived quality of the PI's research and overall perceived reputation and sanity. For example, Amy Bishop of Alabama, not so good. Same thing with Ted Kaczynski (presumably he worked with math students at some point). However, if someone had done all their research work in the lab of Daniel Gadjusek, who despite his criminal convictions and own problems as a child molester, was held to be someone who did very good scientific work, his recommendation letter as a researcher was potentially still of some value. He was just a total creeper, but his judgement on research, as a Nobel Laureate and National Academy member was probably pretty good.
For better or worse, a lot of people will forgive all sorts of weird, unstable, even criminal behavior in scientists if they "do good work".
As an aside, at the very least, as a service always provide people with a starter point for a letter. You can write an example letter that summarizes all your work with the person and contributions you made to their lab/research. Writing rec letters sucks, so you want to make it easy on people.
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Since you are asking I am going to consider this to be a letter you feel your application is not complete without. If that is the case then still ask for it. You said "arrested for threatening;" who knows what charges will come out of that, and what convictions he/she will end up with. It could end up not so bad. As long as your PI is still together enough to write a good letter admissions people at other schools are really unlikely to know the finer points of pending legal charges against him/her (for threats and not acts no less) and you will give your application its best shot.
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Bear in mind that many adcoms will call your letter writers, and if when they call his secretary says, he's in prison, that's not going to bode well. I'd find another letter writer or wait until he's cleared.
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Wow, you can do bona fide prison time for making threats?
That seems a little too Minority Report-esque to me.
I always find it absurd when a seemingly stable adult just snaps like that.
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Yes, the "assault" in "assault and battery" is the threat itself, the battery is the part where you touch them. "Causing the victim to reasonably apprehend harm" is assault, or something along those lines.
Of course you can get in trouble for making threats. If someone is actually threatening to do me harm, I should have recourse through government action to prevent that harm. If making threats is not illegal, and the ability to call on the police does not exist, all the police are good for is cleaning up the mess after something bad happens.
Minority report would be arresting you now for a threat you are thinking about making in the future, or will make in the future. Making a serious claim that you will do violence to someone is in and of itself a crime for a lot of good reasons.
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how about residency directors? Will they call too? (i'm soon to be a MS2). I'm guessing they won't because they will already know what happened to this dude.
edit: I'll bet he'll let me write it myself so I'll just get it in the unlikely event that I will use it.
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You completely misunderstood my point--I didn't mean it shouldn't be a crime to threaten someone. I'm saying I'm surprised that you can do serious prison time for it. It seems a little extreme to send someone to prison for years for making a threat, a la cutting off someone's hands for stealing.
Minority Report was arresting someone for MURDER they were about to commit, not threats. So, if you were at all uneasy about someone going to prison for a murder that they were "actually" going to do, it seems logical to feel uneasy about someone going to prison for "threatening" to commit a murder.
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If you threaten to murder me, and actually mean it, how are you any less of a threat to society than someone who makes it to the point of following through on that threat?
If someone states their intentions of causing grave bodily harm to another, where else should they be but prison?
I wouldn't be uneasy about the minority report thing actually if it really worked. It's just different because the whole point of the minority report story was that the predictive power wasn't always correct.
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That's part of my point. How do you measure "actually mean it?" Intentions are also not actions. If they were, the phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" wouldn't exist. How do you measure the predictive power of a threat? Maybe they do that in court, and that's something I was hoping to learn about this. Like if he had replied, "Oh, well, they sentence you based on the x, y, and z criteria for evaluating the 'seriousness' of a threat."
If you threaten to murder me--maybe they should put an ankle bracelet on you, make you take a class, fine you, or even have you do some jail time--but years in prison seems extreme to me.
Anyway, it was just an offhand observation on my part. I wasn't trying to like expound the thought--I was really just more curious about it, and somehow it turned into me defending the position, which wasn't my intention. 😉
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It's about facts and circumstances. If you threaten to burn down a building and kill everyone inside, you might not do hard time, but if you start assembling the materials and making arrangements to pull that off, you probably would, even if you never lit a match.
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Maybe they will threaten to burn down and/or murder the program to which you are applying if you don't get in.
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If he asks how to spell annihilator, definitely proceed.
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I would not get a LOR from him or her. Can you give us details haha?
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This him?
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/08/internet-searches-cited-in-california-professor-arson-case/
If so, ya I'd avoid a LOR from this guy. He planned to kill everyone in his son's high school and then burn the building down. Not exactly the most creditable of letter writers...
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/08/internet-searches-cited-in-california-professor-arson-case/
If so, ya I'd avoid a LOR from this guy. He planned to kill everyone in his son's high school and then burn the building down. Not exactly the most creditable of letter writers...
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You would think that we would not have time to write a LOR with the whole trying to stay out of jail thing going on the next few months.
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