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The Dangers of Being A Microbiologist
Anonymous Coward writes "Globe and Mail is running a story for all the paranoid conspiracy theorists among us: "Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months.... Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond.""
Maybe this has something to do with that nifty Self-assembling "nano-building" virus from a couple stories ago :)
"Wait, this isn't my drink! AARRGGHH!!"
You forgot CowboyNeal.
Until you add in the part where the Anonymous Coward who submitted the news item was hired by the same biotech company who paid an editor at Globe and Mail to publish a story to scare the living crap out of their microbiologists.
Ahhhh, the simplicity of safe-guarding IP.
A "Pagan" is not a "Satanist". It makes me very angry when I hear those two terms interchanged.
Perhaps some of those deaths seem suspicious, but please: a murder-suicide by an associate of the deceased? I really do not see how the "spooks" could cause something like that.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
The assassin was *deranged*???! Not everybody lives on the East Coast, you guys. "License To Ill" isn't on out here for a while! A spoiler warning would be nice next time!
(apologies to the Beastie Boys)
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Scientists' deaths are under the microscope By ALANNA MITCHELL, SIMON COOPER AND CAROLYN ABRAHAM COMPILED BY ALANNA MITCHELL Saturday, May 4, 2002 - Print Edition, Page A1 It's a tale only the best conspiracy theorist could dream up. Eleven microbiologists mysteriously dead over the span of just five months. Some of them world leaders in developing weapons-grade biological plagues. Others the best in figuring out how to stop millions from dying because of biological weapons. Still others, experts in the theory of bioterrorism. Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage, a big whack of imagination, and the plot is complete, if a bit reminiscent of James Bond. The first three died in the space of just over a week in November. Benito Que, 52, was an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten on Nov. 12 in a carjacking in the medical school's parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body showed no signs of a beating. Doctors then began to suspect a stroke. Just four days after Dr. Que fell unconscious came the mysterious disappearance of Don Wiley, 57, one of the foremost microbiologists in the United States. Dr. Wiley, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard University, was an expert on how the immune system responds to viral attacks such as the classic doomsday plagues of HIV, ebola and influenza. He had just bought tickets to take his son to Graceland the following day. Police found his rental car on a bridge outside Memphis, Tenn. His body was later found in the Mississippi River. Forensic experts said he may have had a dizzy spell and have fallen off the bridge. Just five days after that, the world-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian defector Valdimir Pasechnik, 64, fell dead. The pathologist who did the autopsy, and who also happened to be associated with Britain's spy agency, concluded he died of a stroke. Dr. Pasechnik, who defected to the United Kingdom in 1989, played a huge role in Russian biowarfare and helped to figure out how to modify cruise missiles to deliver the agents of mass biological destruction. The next two deaths came four days apart in December. Robert Schwartz, 57, was stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his farmhouse in Leesberg, Va. His daughter, who identifies herself as a pagan high priestess, and several of her fellow pagans have been charged. Dr. Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing and pathogenic micro-organisms, who worked at the Center for Innovative Technology in Herndon, Va. Four days later, Nguyen Van Set, 44, died at work in Geelong, Australia, in a laboratory accident. He entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen. Other scientists at the animal diseases facility of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization had just come to fame for discovering a virulent strain of mousepox, which could be modified to affect smallpox. Then in February, the Russian microbiologist Victor Korshunov, 56, an expert in intestinal bacteria of children around the world, was bashed over the head near his home in Moscow. Five days later the British microbiologist Ian Langford, 40, was found dead in his home near Norwich, England, naked from the waist down and wedged under a chair. He was an expert in environmental risks and disease. Two weeks later, two prominent microbiologists died in San Francisco. Tanya Holzmayer, 46, a Russian who moved to the U.S. in 1989, focused on the part of the human molecular structure that could be affected best by medicine. She was killed by fellow microbiologist Guyang (Matthew) Huang, 38, who shot her seven times when she opened the door to a pizza delivery. Then he shot himself. The final two deaths came one day after the other in March. David Wynn-Williams, 55, a respected astrobiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer space, died in a freak road accident near his home in Cambridge, England. He was hit by a car while he was jogging. The following day, Steven Mostow, 63, known as Dr. Flu for his expertise in treating influenza, and a noted expert in bioterrorism, died when the airplane he was piloting crashed near Denver. So what does any of it mean? "Statistically, what are the chances?" wondered a prominent North American microbiologist reached last night at an international meeting of infectious-disease specialists in Chicago. Janet Shoemaker, director of public and scientific affairs of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, D.C., pointed out yesterday that there are about 20,000 academic researchers in microbiology in the U.S. Still, not all of these are of the elevated calibre of those recently deceased. She had a chilling, final thought. When microbiologists die in a lab, there's a way of taking note of the deaths and adding them up. When they die in freakish accidents outside the lab, nobody keeps track. Suspicious deaths The sudden and suspicious deaths of 11 of the world's leading microbiologists. Who they were: 1. Nov. 12, 2001: Benito Que was said to have been beaten in a Miami parking lot and died later. 2. Nov. 16, 2001: Don C. Wiley went missing. Was found Dec. 20. Investigators said he got dizzy on a Memphis bridge and fell to his death in a river. 3. Nov. 21, 2001: Vladimir Pasechnik, former high-level Russian microbiologist who defected in 1989 to the U.K. apparently died from a stroke. 4. Dec. 10, 2001: Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death in Leesberg, Va. Three Satanists have been arrested. 5. Dec. 14, 2001: Nguyen Van Set died in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia. 6. Feb. 9, 2002: Victor Korshunov had his head bashed in near his home in Moscow. 7. Feb. 14, 2002: Ian Langford was found partially naked and wedged under a chair in Norwich, England. 8. 9. Feb. 28, 2002: San Francisco resident Tanya Holzmayer was killed by a microbiologist colleague, Guyang Huang, who shot her as she took delivery of a pizza and then apparently shot himself. 10. March 24, 2002: David Wynn-Williams died in a road accident near his home in Cambridge, England. 11. March 25, 2002: Steven Mostow of the Colorado Health Sciences Centre, killed in a plane he was flying near Denver.
Now, however, that it's a story on Slashdot, (along with several other Big Hot Button stories which have made Slashdot headlines over the past couple of days), we'll get to sift through all the Perfectly Logical Explanations.
Let the Paranoia and Head-in-the-Sand-'Rationality' begin!
-Fantastic Lad --The Truth is somewhere in between. .
I bet this is put out by the same people that believe we (the human species) never landed on the moon. That's not to say that this isn't bad, it is. This stuff is not far off, whether or not they were assassinated is not the question...
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, not just chemistry, reality!
Imagine that there had been a missile attack scare in the US. This is roughly like looking through the ranks of recent deaths of computer scientists and implying that anybody who died who was working on Ada compilers, control systems software, robotics, or large-scale software engineering was somehow related to SDI work.
Of course, an X-Files style conspiracy would be so much more interesting, I suppose.
$1 billion spent on a miniature model and a smoke generator. See for yourself. They even managed to compute the wrong period for a satellite "438 miles above the planet". Ok, where did the rest of the money go?
and i cannot wait until you fucking choke on your own stupidity. making a mockery of something that might actually be a conspiracy makes an idiot out of you. so in closing, i really hope your entire family (yourself included of course) dies of a mutated strain of tuberculosis. fucking asshole.
H2G2 was right again!
I sig, therefore I was.
They died from using stupid M$ products. All microbiologists worth their weight in salt should know to use clusters of Linux machines!
Why did he have to shoot her WHILE she was opening the door to get a pizza? Answer: the "pizza boy" was a robot (android). She opens the door, he busts in, and kills her with his "pizza" (which is a spinning weapon--deadly) and makes it look like she got shot. He shoots her body, just to make it realistic. The he shoots the other guy, and gets his fingerprints all over them. Walla! And he eats pizza while looking over his handiwork before taking off.
Obviously the writer of the article is some right-wing Christian fundamentalist idiot. Everyone knows (except for the religious crazies) that Satanists are not pagans.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
"Statistically, what are the chances?" Well, the article answers this question pretty good, but I have something to add. This is like that study you may have heard of that linked ice cream sales in Florida with rape. Does that mean all ice cream vendors are rapists? Obviously, no, since I still like ice cream =). Especially Ben & Jerry's. But I'm getting Offtopic. So what if 11 top-level microbiologists died outside the lab? Don't forget, tons of people die EVERY SINGLE DAY and there are 6x10^9 people on the earth. A lot. Even more have EVER walked this earth. So if you look at the chances, they're relatively high.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
As most visitors to Slashdot should already know, at least one of these scientists is most definitely NOT dead. One year from now, we will discover that it wasn't him that died, but instead his robotic clone. At this time, he will most likely die again, only to be replaced one year later by a different scientist that is actually being controlled by yet another robotic clone of Dr. Wiley.
My apologies to the family of the victims, but I couldn't help but share my geekish laughter at the idea of "Dr. Wiley" (sic, sort of) mysteriously dying. My only hope is that the doctor, while he was still alive, got a good laugh out of his name and title, too.
First antiseptics... Then antibiotics... Now genetic resequencing... The bacteria, virii, and microbial life forms are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. This is just their way of saying "Pick on someone your own size you digusting, smelly, featherless, bipedal bags of mostly water."
I remember almost a decade ago, there was a rash of mysterious deaths in the UK of top programmers working on top secret military projects. That was also dismissed as a "statistical anomoly" and that working under such high pressures can cause suicidal tendencies.
Yeah, like the one guy who took a lamp cord, bared the two ends, and taped them to his metal fillings in his molars and plugged it in.
A lot of the deaths also occured in a brief span of time, and lots of strange and horrible ways to die.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
well, the fact that everyone is now wondering about these deaths, and is on the lookout for more deaths, might affect the result in several ways
1. microbiologists might start being more careful
2. people might try to kill more microbiologists, since it's the popular thing
3. contrarians (which many murderers are) might decide not to kill microbiologists, it being too passe
4. other effect
So, by all means, let us continue our scientific observations, but keeping in mind that the act of observing may influence the results, and may be dangerous to your health (if you are a microbiologist)
is that they got all finally got a conscience which was set to self destruct in 5 secs
I remember hearing news reports of his disappearance right in the middle of all the anthrax mailings. There were more than a few conspiracy theories around that. Though some of the deaths sound a bit like some KGB assassinations from the cold war days, they would use poisons like ricen to cause what appeared to be heat attacks and strokes, They some Bulgarian dissident like that in London.....
Do I count as a microbiologist if I mailed baby powder to congress? (That's a joke, don't take it seriously) I like the idea of a big time conspiracy. I haven't had a good real life conspiracy since Eric Crouch lasted until the 3rd round. (I'm a football nerd too)
HE would be able to piece this together!
why are there most trolls on friday night?
so where is the consipracy theory? a bunch of people died, but the article doesn't provide any theory linking their deaths.
the only redeeming element to this list of characters was the inclusion of a pagan high priestess. cool.
that intro shammed me with its talk of plots.
damn anonymous cowards!
-anonymous coward
Isaac Asimov wrote an excellent short story about
scientists who committed suicide for no good reason, comparing it to bacteria that try to escape their part of the petri dish or something.
That's what I think about when I think about this.
I've never heard this word before, what does it mean? Nervy as in nervous? Nervy as in 'having a lot of nerv', Nervy as in 'like the fictitious NERV organization in Neon Genesis Evangelon'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
While the fatal anthrax attacks of last year remain unsolved, the flippant tone of many of the comments on this seems inappropriate to me. It is clear that the anthrax attacks were not carried out by Islamic terrorists, and that the main suspect is still at large and is a US government employee.
See for example this Guardian story.
This in itself is chilling enough, along with the fact that the suspect is apparently being protected. This does not of course prove that these deaths are all part of some conspiracy: it does suggest, however that there are some very disturbing unanswered questions which could be related to this story.
Momma warned me not to become a microbiologist, but I did anyways. She did her fellowship in infectious disease after all.
Yeah, it probably is just a big coincidence, but the FBI *still* hasn't figured out who mailed out all that lovely anthrax last year. And that's a bit disturbing.
-- "Sucks to your ass-mar"
"Statistically, what are the chances?"
The moon is covered with the results of astronomical odds.
Nathan
The article said that "Nguyen Van Set... ...entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen."
Um, isn't nitrogen one of the most inert and least dangerous gases there is, practically a noble gas? Isn't nitrogen used specifically when you DON'T want something bad to happen? Isn't the atmosphere like 70-80% nitrogen?
Can someone explain?
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
Really neat!
With the advanced warning that Fantastic Lad's views on these matters come with a heavy bias, since I have become utterly convinced that prevailant forces beyond the understanding of conventional science are at work all over the place all the time, here are my observations. .
Anyway, I've found the whole process of making these observations utterly fascinating, and I know there are some out there who might also be interested. And of course, Caveat Lector should be employed at all times when reading my stuff. While I tend to know WAY more on most of these topics than a bevy of New Age morons, I'm still only on the lower parts of the knowledge mountain myself! For every bit of verification I find, I run across 25 lies and bits of fabricated sensationalist crap.
-Fantastic Lad
Somebody had to bring it up. But if there really is a conspiracy
the 'group of scientists decide to cull te human race and then get whacked by evil forces who want to immunize themselves before releasing the plague'
is a pretty good one.
Now they only need a Olympic to spread this biological disease at.
Tom Clancy, the Nostradamus of our time.
//Humming
I'm too stupid to preview.
I think that if you take a job that is anti-Scriptural you have to be willing to accept the risk of being killed by the moral community. Play with fire and get burned, etc.
I live in San Jose, and I've been laid off about three months. The other day I was watching View to a Kill, and I found myself genuinely hoping that Christopher Walken's character would succeed in blowing up the Silicon Valley.
Christ, I need to find a job.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The Clinton Body Count
This reminds me of the time Voyager had to form an aliance with the Borg. I mean, I'm all for using viruses as tools, and I appreciate the irony of using one of our species traditional enemy, (forgive the melodrama,) but what stops these viruses from mutating into something other than what there were meant for. I don't even mean something dangerous, nescessarily, just that viruses have a way of changing when you least expect it.
A figure of 20,000 academic microbiologists in the U.S. is stated, but that's perhaps only a count of those who are members of ASM. The actual number of academic microbiologists is likely much more. Plus, "mysterious" deaths in the U.K. and Australia are also described. I don't see anything alarming on the whole. That's not to say some of the deaths aren't suspicious of foul play, but where's the basis for saying it's a conspiracy? The article is clearly inflammatory, in that it never really tests its hypothesis.
Even more amazing is that such a flimsy article got recognized on /.
Pathetic really.
Posted anonymously, like that will help if they want to whack me too.
The Bush administration was on shaky ground, and they are right wing nuts. They have some grievances with the arab world (which in itself isn't necessarily wrong, I do too). They decide they want to finish on Binladen, which Clinton failed to do.
Motivation: Grudges, prestige of winning a war, etc. Possibly getting legislation passed.
So, they have to be really careful. The CIA uncovers a really flaky Alquaeda plot to destroy some stuff. However, they're unable to succeed on their own. So the FBI looks the other way, certain airport security firms do the same thing, allowing something that could never have happened otherwise.
Meanwhile, goverment black op spooks distribute some weapons grade anthrax to various offices in Florida and Washington. Partly to start hysteria to fuel war support, and partly to give some oomph to Big Brother laws.
Also, microbiologists start dying mysteriously. Some were no doubt the kinds of experts who might have discovered the true origins of the anthrax, others were "celebrity" targets meant to add more panic to the hysteria that was building. Possibly, some were even witnesses to be disposed of. I won't even rule out that one or two might have been reluctant co-conspirators that were no longer useful.
But something changed, and Bush reconsidered the all out war. Probably something we're not aware of. However, the kill orders for the scientists weren't easy to retract, nor was it even necessary to do so. Tha anthrax angle may have been ruled too risky, and it was curtailed. Or maybe it was time to prepare for a new plague? After all, who else could get ahold of smallpox? Certainly, if it had been some whacko mailing the anthrax, (sometimes there really is no conspiracy, after all) wouldn't their have been credible letters taking credit? We never saw such.
And don't ever forget, full of loony shit though they are, who else might have printed such a conspiracy story, had they actually gotten ahold of it, other than a tabloid? I betcha that photographer had some really snazzy photos that are now sitting next to the Ark of the Covenant in the Indy Jones Federal warehouse.
I don't claim that this is the whole puzzle, but I've got the edge pieces put together.
I live in Toronto, and I get the Globe and Mail in paper form, so I've had all day to think about the following question: who would want these microbiologists dead?
IIRC, these scientists are the type of people that could develop biological weapons -- or develop the cure to biological weapons.
I assume that the majority of the world is against biological weapons, and, possibly, some group of people, who think that they are "doing good", are systematically killing the people that are most likely to develop them.
At the other end of the consipracy spectrum, terrorists with biological weapons would definitely not want cures found to their biological weapons, otherwise, their weapons cease to pose a powerful threat. Also, any country that develops biological weapons would be against other countries developing a cure or creating biological weapons, themselves.
So, there's some food for thought. Maybe, this is all a very statistically unlikely coincidence, or, just maybe, someone is doing a very good job of systematically killing the worlds leading microbiologists. I've heard people today accusing Iraq of planning it.
Peter
is here
The author is an academic and lawyer who had a hand in drafting US anti-biowarfare laws - he knows the history, the players, and the reasons related to US biowar activities, the Gulf War Syndrome, strangely convenient anthrax attacks on the US Congress, and well-founded suspicions about what's going on here. It's authoritative and frightening.
Throw in a few Russian defectors, a few nervy U.S. biotech companies, a deranged assassin or two, a bit of Elvis, a couple of Satanists, a subtle hint of espionage...
I give up. Is this MTV's latest The Real World cast? Where's the loveable, misunderstood homosexual?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Too bad the lone gunmen are dead. They'd have been able to get to the bottom of this....or maybe they already did...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Check any research field over the last 5 months. In any field that's about the same size as microbiology, it wouldn't seem unreasonable for that many people to die.
So they could probably have written this article about the mysterious deaths of cabbage farmers in the midwest, I suppose. It'd be about as relevant...
- "I'll probably get modded down for this."
Oh my god! The server has suddenly gone down! I can't read the page that slashdot has linked to! It must the the conspiracy at work....
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I'm not knocking the article you linked to, but http://www.etherzone.com/2002/lang051002.shtml is another story on the site. Just so you know what sorta crap they'll pass off as an article.
the quality of comment posts is declining. Are you doing anything about it?
We have a moderation system.
One of the unfortunate side-effects of the increasing popularity of
Slashdot is that the number of trolls, flame-warriors and all-around lamers
increases as well, and it only takes a relatively small number of them
to make a lot of noise. Keeping this noise to a minimum is one of the primary
goals of the moderation system (which is explained in detail elsewhere
in this FAQ).
Since this system is essentially an experiment in trying to solve the
problems inherent in mass communication, one would expect its success to
be variable, and indeed, this is the case. Some days it works great, and
some days it doesn't.
Microbiologists "mysteriously dead" after developing "weapons-grade biological plagues".
Woohoo! We Canucks'll crack Washington's BS yet!
m ic robio.html
On Nov. 24 a Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashed on its landing approach. Of the 33 persons on board, 24 were killed, including the head of the hematology department at Israel's Ichilov Hospital, as well as directors of the Tel Aviv Public Health Department and Hebrew University School of Medicine.
on Oct. 4, a commercial jetliner traveling from Israel to Novosibirsk, Siberia was shot down over the Black Sea by an "errant" Ukrainian surface-to-air missile, killing all on board. The missile was over 100 miles off-course. Despite early news stories reporting it as a charter, the flight, Air Sibir 1812, was a regularly scheduled flight.the plane is believed by many in Israel to have had as many as five passengers who were microbiologists. Both Israel and Novosibirsk are homes for cutting-edge microbiological research. Novosibirsk is known as the scientific capital of Siberia, and home to over 50 research facilities and 13 full universities for a population of only 2.5 million people.
http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_14_02_
Now, I'm not sure this is anything more sinister than Washington doesn't want a cure or cheap treatment for AIDS found... read between the lines of the 1974 NSSM200 report and match it up with the extensions of drug patents and other well-known actions contrary to Washington's hand-wringing about this epidemic.
http://www.africa2000.com/SNDX/nssm200all.html
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0937307041
wow.. this actually is a very informative and well thought out post, off topic but its a good read
my Question
Q: is this going to be the next "big black post" like the "other" post of the recent blackout fame?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
> I remember almost a decade ago, there was a rash of mysterious deaths in the UK of top programmers working on top secret military projects.
To be precise, a total of 20 programers linked to Marconi Defense Systems or the Ministry of Defense died suspiciously between 1985-1987.
The first mainstream magazine to break this story was the April 30th 1987 edition of Computer News (UK), but unfortunately the article does not seem to be available online.
However, it gets a mention in the Risks Digest, as well as plenty of conspiracy sites such as this one.
Um, okay...
First, if you're running a conspiracy to off microbiologists, why those eleven? There's no pattern as to nationality, research subject, etc.
Second, unless you know how many microbiologists there are (20,000 academic in the U.S. is the only number given, which is clearly inadequate), how can you even show this is an unusual rate of "unusual" deaths? Only until you establish that there's a statistcally unusual number of deaths is there any grounds for any speculation at all.
There were 103,632 other deaths in this timeframe - how do they fit into the conspiracy? I mean the grandma, the backalley bum, and the construction worker must have had something to do with it...
Actually, you retard, it's the same post. Before, it was an unforgivable troll... this time, it's some lame-ass copycat. At least, the first time around it was original, what's the excuse this time?
Now, you see, conspiracy theories about those deaths have what the one posted here does not: logic. They were all Britons involved in defense software, and the rate of deaths by apparent suicide was twice the national norm according to THE INDEPENDENT.
It could still have been a statistical blip; things do occasionally happen to clump, and a doubled rate in a specific subsample isn't all that unusual. But a prima facie case for somebody bumping off British programmers exists.
I think you're *all* religious fundamentalist nuts.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Say, there are about 100 different communities like microbiology, linux adepts or literary critics, with each 100 experts. The chance of 1 expert dying in half a year is may be 2% (there usually somewhat aged). 10 experts dying in half a year from a community of 100 is then about 1 in 1000 (ie 0.02^10/(0.98^90) times a number of possible distributions), so something like this should happen about every 5 year within one of the hundred communities.
So let me get this straight. You believe in astrology and channeling, while simultaneously and pre-emptively denying the validity of unnamed charlatans whenever and whereever you deem them undefendable.
Let's examine these too beliefs. One belief is that practically any personality trait or significant event actually has something to do with the arrangement of stars and planets in the night sky. Or, in some cases, what they happened to be on the day you were born. Does this mean that it might be preferable for pregnant women to medically delay birth, for a more favorable astrological "sign" ? If they have a C-section, does it count. If an embryo is frozen for 3 years, and then implanted in a womb, does this affect things at all, or is it truly the birth date?
What, you retards never actually tested any of this? Your 10,000 year old voodoo beliefs? What, are you afraid that if there were such tests, things might show it to be unsupportable superstition? And if you aren't afraid that is the case, what prevents you from doing this?
See, this is what science is about. Figuring out what is going on. If atrology were in any way valid, not only would it strengthen your arguments that it is, but science would allow you to refine just what you know.
Statistics, lies though they are, don't even come close to supporting anything that atrology ever claims. Made up bullshit by the trolls here on slashdot, is statistically indistinguishable from this garbage.
Channeling? Hmm, dunno. I won't rule it out, but the truth is, this one would be much more defendable by you, on its own. It's certainly not repeatable though, let alone reliable. But this once, you get a "Get out of jail free card". I won't attack this one just yet.
As for me being "programmed" to not believe stupid new age garbage, I thank you, I don't often recieve compliments on slashdot. For those of you that don't speak the fruity dialect of nutcasian, that translates to "having common sense".
You see, it's not out of malice or distrust that the natural inclination is to not believe something until proven true. It's simply that there are any number (read: infinite) of possibilities, all contradicting. And it would be IMPOSSIBLE to give all the benefit of the doubt simultaneously. So therefor, you figure out the things you know for sure, while setting aside all the crazy stuff, until you get around to test this.
Why? Because it's the only way to function as a human being, otherwise you'd starve to death worrying that if you ate at the wrong time, the gods would punish you (which they might, if all theories are equally plausible until tested, they might very well kill you for such a transgression, and by the time you find out, it's too late).
And if you don't agree, all you have to do, is prove it to me with repeatable results. That's the cool thing about science, my belief doesn't matter if it's true.
For some reason, the original isn't accessible anymore... perhaps it has something to do with the content. If anyone knows people at google, maybe now would be a good time to change jobs - who knows whom does lunatic murderers will go after now!
dead scientists
Dumbassed media, can't even get the terminology right...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Reading stuff like this, although it is not placed in context (as others mention here), is startling. It does make me frightened in any case. A good starting point for the spread of biological and chemical weapons in the world, and perhaps more importantly who supports whom, is the federation of American Scientists website.
I'm a South African and was shocked to read about the support given by almost all Western Governments to the Dr.Mengele of the Apartheid Government, Dr.Wouter Basson, a.k.a. Dr.Death, in that regime's attempts to create bio weapons which would only affect black people. (Although why they had this strange idea that blacks are some other species I don't know). In any case, although probably many people don't remember it, in the mid 80's an East German microbiologist claimed that the actual origions of the HIV virus(various newspaper archives) were in fact in a USArmy bioweapons lab in either Virginia or Maryland (Ft.Derrick? I don't remember the name). He was laughed off at the time. I also, in terms of normal common sense found it somewhat implausiable. But the problem is, who do you believe, and who do you trust?
I was somewhat amazed at the many coincidents (reminiscent of a good episode of the X-Files) in the Anthrax attacks in the US last year. Why Florida? Why the isolated cases of lonely old women? Why liberal or popular politicians? How did the FBI get to the conclusion so rapidly that it was not linked to the 9/11 higjackers and that it was "probably of domestic origion"? Why has nothing ever come out of the investigation?
I don't really like conspiracy theories, as they tend to cloud real events, but who do you believe? And what do you believe? Did anyone in any so-called country ever give their politicians an explicit right to muck around with stuff as dangerous as this?
This reminds somehow of the movie _Twelve_Monkeys_
Shit its started already.
I'd imagine (or at
least hope) that Philosophy would be eliminated entirely
Oddly enough the military loves morals and ethics classes for their officers, as well as basic logic classes. If anything Philosophy would be highthened. ^_^
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Egads! That perl is daft! If you insist on using that array for your message, at least use the proper tools to reassemble it:
If you assumed a flat probability of death for each age for a large population, say only 1% per year for everybody from newborns to the elderly, you'd expect 1000 deaths per 100000 people. With an average life expectancy of 70 yrs (M) - 77 yrs (F) in health-economy-advantaged nations, you can expect a death rate of 1.4% as a decent guess. Higher death rates may apply. And if you realize that morbidity is higher for neonates and the elderly and lower for the teenaged to middle-aged, then the presence of a death rate of 132 per 100-thousand per year for 20-70-to-more years older is in fact NOTHING at all. It is not even a statistical anomaly. It is not anywhere close to being significant.
I haven't bothered looking at the data for actual death rates and your MMV (morbidity may vary).
But it is always smart to read numerical data in reports carefully and skeptically. The math does not support any conspiracy in this case. Of course, it does not rule it out. But that's what conspiracy theories are all about.
"If you tolerate this, your children will be next"
(I don't know why i even bother with this obvious ignorant tripe, but...)
c 1. pdf
0 2. htm
n o.html ), and that Israel can prove that, and that's why the administration is bending itself in knots to do what Israel wants.
>They have become ungrateful for the things that the greatest nation on earth has given them,
Which includes:
tens of millions of civilians killed; untold suffering and misery of a couple billion more; scores of interventions for `democracy' not one of which has resulted in democracy (and often demolished what there was)
http://americanstateterrorism.com
war crimes in Iraq (including but not limited to conspiring and lying to start both phases of the Gulf War)
http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-index.htm
war crimes in Yugoslavia
http://www.iacenter.org/warcrime/wct2000.htm
conspiring against their own people
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/news/20010430/do
I thank God there remain a few Americans (such as fmr Att'y Gen'l Ramsey Clarke) who face how Washington has soured what could have been a good thing.
As for 9/11, the FBI has not been able to scrape together any evidence to support the theory of the Nineteen (it appears it's not even going to try to fake it, as it has been known to do - COINTELPRO)
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/speeches/speech0419
What evidence *is* available points to another conspiracy within Washington to start another imperial war (much as it is now known, from gov't documents, to have done in Pearl Harbour; with comparable loss of life in number and greater loss in per-capita terms http://www.independent.org/tii/news/020311Cirigna
The truly sinister, wretched cancer in the US is the indoctination, ignorance, and demonisation of informed, rational thought practiced by the US state-run education system.
I counted up 58 direct deaths and 304? 306? people who happened to be nearby
http://www.devvy.com/deadmenlies.html
Sucker.
Your post makes me wonder about something. Perhaps someone on that list did have something to do with the anthrax attack. Four or five of those deaths could be potential suicides, and a stroke could be stress-related. Suppose it was a US researcher that made the anthrax, but that he was intending to make people wake up to the threat rather than kill anyone. It is certainly possible that such a person could suffer a severe fit of guilty conscience.
Alternatively, someone might have found out what the person responsible for anthrax had done and killed him or her. I wouldn't even put it past the US government to do such a thing if they felt the guy would spill national security secrets or they would have to divulge too much classified info to pin the crime on him.
On the other hand there might just be some anthrax crazed vigilante who is whacking high profile microbiologists.
Some of the deaths are almost certainly just coincidental, and maybe they all are, but I do hope that the FBI is at least taking a serious look at whether there is some connection.
I thought the biggest threat to a microbiologist was doing something stupid like mouth pipetting, or cross contamination. Although the wild world of Microbiology in water filtration doesnt see the wild side... Hell it's actually damned boring.... Oh look the same microbes I found yesterday... and the day before.... and the day before that.. Oh wait that one is different.... Gram stain... Yup Gram Positive... and it's oh wait... same thing....
The most exciting part of your day is handling the live sample bottles of E-coli.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I remember hearing on the radio a week or two ago about the findings of the inquiry into the death of Set Van Nguyen - the Australian microbiologist who died in an airlock filled with nitrogen.
I did a search on Google and found a multitude of sites that go a bit further than this article and actually put forth a few theories. Some of these people sound like nutters but it's a bit interesting. Here are a couple of them.
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm236911.html
http://www.rense.com/general18/returb.htm
make a short video about the 'facts' of the case
and you too can own the distribution rights to this newsy event before someone else makes a movie about this with Pierce Brosnan or Wesley Snipes
Fuck the MPAA!
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Yeah, who would do that? It's almost like the "agents" of whatever "agency" that killed them was wanting to make it obvious these people were killed.
Yet the police mysteriously overlook everything.
The truth is, you can't trust anyone. Especially when money is involved. It's the one thing that can get you anything.
Remember that.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Benito Que - murdered, beating
Robert M. Schwartz - murder, stabbing
Victor Korshunov - murder, beating
Ian Langford - murder, "partially naked/wedged under chair"
Tanya Holzmayer - murder, shot by Huang
Guyang Huang - suicide, gunshot
Don C. Wiley - ???, "fell off bridge"
Vladimir Pasechnik - natural causes, stroke
Nguyen Van Set - accident , laboratory
David Wynn- accident, automobile
Steven Mostow - accident, airplane
7 deaths were murders, or seem very suspicious
3 deaths were accidents
1 death was due to natural causes
http://www.disastercenter.com/cdc/111riske.html
I suppose the next question would be is how large a sample group needs to be to make a significant comparison against the statistics of society as a whole?
German Schizo-junkie cracker Karl Koch was probably eliminated in relation to these events. He supposedly cracked WIMEX in the mid to late 80's gaining access via defense contractors insufficiently secured systems.
/Dr. Tinfoil
Only dead fish swim downstream......
Of course the morals and ethics they tend to get into tend to be justifications of their jobs. And as Sept 11 showed, it is sometimes difficult to have an intelligent conversation with a man bent on trying to kill or destroy you.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Does anyone else have a vague (or better, clear) recollection of a similar reporting of odd deaths, by automobile accident and suicide (alleged), in the UK in the 1980's. As I recall, vaguely, in Britain in the eighties, a slew of scientists working for GE UK were found, in a reasonably suspicious span of time, to have died in automobile accidents, suicides, or 'suicide by automobile accident,' etc. etc. I believe allegations were made they were working on some top secret or most secret electronics for Her Majesty, under the auspicies of GE UK. I do recall a couple of the suicide victim's surviving families were VERY dubious about these being suicides. If you recall this, or better yet, if you have any online SOURCE materials for this, please email me as well as posting them? Thank you.
Where are Joseph Malik and Saul Goodman when you need them?
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
... That pretty much sums it up ...
So, as I have a doctorate in microbiology, I now have a legitimate excuse for indulging in paranoid fantasies?
But seriously, the conspiracy angle has a bit of flaw -- while the former Biopreparat (Soviet biological warware program) scientist Valdimir Pasechnik is dead, Kanatjan Alibekov (or Ken Alibek as he likes to call himself these days) who was nearly at the top of the Biopreparat hierarchy, is still very much alive -- wouldn't he be the obvious target of any conspiracy? Or, wait, he would be, but that would be too obvious. Anyway, gotta go, someone's knocking on my door (which is a bit odd, as none of my friends get up this early on weekends...)
"David Wynn-Williams, 55, a respected astrobiologist with the British Antarctic Survey, who studied the habits of microbes that might survive in outer space, died in a freak road accident near his home in Cambridge, England."
Who ran this guy over? I also didnt know you could die of exposure to nitrogen.
According to the article, the doctor died in a plane crash on March 25.
= 2002 ), no fatal accidents were on March 25. There was a fatal accident on March 24 near Denver, but the pilot was an Airline Transport Pilot flying a corporate aircraft from a company (not the biotech company.) ( http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/articl e/0,1299,DRMN_15_1048706,00.html )
According to the NTSB ( http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/AccList.asp?month=3&year
Here are links to news stories on six of the deaths.
Dr Benito Que was beaten to death on Nov 12 by 4 unknown men Miami Herald. He was a cell biologist working on infection diseases at the University of Miami's School of medicine, and was killed as he left work.
Dr Don Wiley drowned under mysterious circumstances on Nov 16.
CNN.
Only a week after Dr Que, Dr Wiley disappeared after a dinner party. Criminal intent has been noted by the Memphis police. Dr Wiley was the foremost infectious disease research at Harvard.
Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik was found dead on November 23 Nytimes.
Dr pasechnik was a soviet defector from the Russian biological warfare who was an expert in Anthrax.
Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death on Dec 10. msnbc.
Dr Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing, 'cultists' are blamed.
Set Van Nguyen died in an airlock on Dec 14. Chemical incidents report center. He was in the field of animal diseases (anthrax) and died in an airlock filled with nitrogen. This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.
Steven Mostow died in a mysterious plane crash on March 25.Colorado 9news
One of the country's leading infectious disease and bioterrorism experts from the Colorado Health Sciences Center. Preliminary reports say the airplane engine failed. This is an extremely uncommon event, and does not necessarily lead to fatality. I am a pilot and can testify that the events of this death are highly suspicious.
Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence!
news report on plane crash
http://www.bk2k.com/bushbodycount/bodies.html Both lists are a hodgepodge of coincidences, incredible stretches, and faulty conclusions. Notice many of the names appear on both lists...
It was the NSA...
When the terrorism bill still wasn't getting
the attention they desired... they blew
up the world trade center.
Nice how they can count on knee-jerk
reactions. The public is so pathetically
akin to sheep.
Or the other way around, 11 dead in five months would correspond to a community of about 3000 experts, which seems to be a probable size.
As you can see, it is all well within the normal death rate. Nothing strange here, just some math-handicapped newspeople making up a story out of nothing.
p.
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
Why don't they try the same "analysis" on some other vocations like plumbers, sanitary engineers, p0rn stars, etc.
Lets see what other conspiracies exist.
I think the deaths have to do with a corporation that has a twenty-year-old pile of PCB transformers rotting in the middle of the Boston harbour, and has surreptitiously genetically engineered a bacteria that converts PCBs to salt water.
Either that, or I've been reading too much Neal Stephenson again.
- undoware.ca
What the hell sense does that make? As a scuba diver, I know that humans can (and do) regularly take large pressures of nitrogen... so what does that mean?
We were always that microbiologists wash their hands before going to the bathroom.
Stories like this make me glad I selected something microbe-free for a career.
.
My father is a blogger.
This new generaiton of Spooks and Operatives dropped the ball again - people are finding out. The just need to keep it simple - a drowing here, a maiming there - and nobody notices. Just like it should be. By now-a-days, these whipper snappers have to get clever - swords, nudity, pagens and these new-fangeled aero-planes. Lets get back to business, and just do our jobs, and leave the 'flair' for the Operatives in San Francisco.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
More on the pizza delivery hit can be found in the Mercury News article. This looks like a case of a brilliant scientist spiraling out of control after being fired. (They worked together. She was involved with his firing. He shoot her.) Such a thing is, sadly, not unknown in Silicon Valley.
Of course, just keep telling yourself it's only a novel... ;-)
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Man, there's not even as much documentation on this as there is on Arkansas Sudden Death Syndrome. And here's another site on the same subject.
An as long as I'm posting, here's a nice statistical roundup of the Clinton Administration in gener.
If you're going to spout absurd conspiracy theories, it's nice to have at least some documentation for some of your claims...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Jeez folks....it was meant as a comparison...I don't beleive any of the Clinton list, or the Bush list, or for that matter half of what they say on Connections....we could probably link global warming to MS or the decrease in the penguins at the South Pole to Linux users for that matter.
Preliminary reports say the airplane engine failed. This is an extremely uncommon event, and does not necessarily lead to fatality.I am a pilot and can testify that the events of this death are highly suspicious.
If you're a pilot, then you're probably also aware that light twins (which this was) are often referred to as "doctor killers", because they're typically owned/flown by doctor/pilots who only fly them occasionally, thus don't have the reflexes to deal with an emergency like this.
Light twin on final (low and slow) losing an engine -- leading to asymmetric thrust and consequent yaw/roll moments? And in a snow flurry?
Nothing surprising about crashing under those conditions.
-- Alastair
Or for those of you with short attention spans, there was a lot of evidence/speculation that these cases were assasinations by MI5/6 with a less than credible attempt to implicate the KGB
My guess is that they realised that no matter how skilled you are as a computer professional, and even if your work is essential to the nation's security, in the UK you are still treated like piss, and killed themselves using the only implement available to C programers -the poison tipped umbrella.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
On the website that you just sent a link to, the crash was on March 24 -- not March 25. And, the NTSB investigates all plane crashes -- if it's not on their web site, it didn't happen or nobody ever found it. Somebody obviously would have found this plane crash -- otherwise, it wouldn't have been in the newspaper article. So, what are you implying in your post? There could not have been an "absense of evidence (sic)" in this crash, because somebody must have found it for it to be reported.
The Truth is somewhere in between. . .
The truth is rarely in between. But perhaps you're confusing the truth with the LCD. However, I do think that using an uppercase letter for the "Truth" is cute.
Scythe
Damn. What a death. "He entered an airlocked storage lab and died from exposure to nitrogen." Those unreactive gases sure are dangerous.
Surely those who write articles on such topics could do a little research. The author most likely saw that he died in a nitrogen environment and concluded that he died from the nitrogen. Silly writers. Nitrogen isn't a deadly gas! It comprises a huge portion of our atmosphere. It's the lack of oxygen that killed him. Next they're going to run a story about the deadly effect of H20 in our tapwater.
Those who calculate the "unlikihood" of a particular event "raw" miss a big point.
Sure, the raw chance of an anomolous event of this sort might be low.
But this would only be a decisive statistic IF you had reasonable hypothesis that predicted the event beforehand and you were scanning for these particular events.
What's really happening is conspiracy theorists are scanning all death clusters and all event really looking for anomolous events.
But in a universe of many, many statistics, anomolous are likely to occur, indeed also most certain. It could be planes exploding one week, dentists winning lotteries the next and so-forth. But strange things are certain to happen IN THE COURSE OF NORMAL EVENTS.
So really what needs to be asked "is this an event that is SO, SO anomolous that it would be stand out above **normally unusual events**. And the answer seems like no. If this event has a %0.2 chance of happening, that makes it quite within the realm if conspiracists are scanning tens of thousands of possible.
I had a lab with lots of fun stuff to play with. I recall organisms responsible for tetanus, gohnorrea (you try to spell that one from memory), and botulism. I think there is a good chance of death with 20,000 microbiologists. I don't know that much about statistics, but if you say 4.2 per 5 months is average, I wouldn't think that 5 per 5 is all that unusual. Of course I'd be able to say better if you had the standard deviation in your explanation.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
...were probability (in high school and University) and atmospheric photochemistry. And people often find themselves in a poisonous fog in both cases.
In brief, you are confusing statistical results after the fact with results before the fact. Lets use the "betting fallacy" on which Los Vegas continues to enrich itself: If I flip a coin twice, both times getting heads, the probability of that after two coin tosses is 1/2 x 1/2 or 1/4. But the chances of getting another head as a result remains 1/2, even though that outcome occurs only 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 or 1/8 of the time that I make three flips, because the outcome of the first two flips has already occurred.
If the result only occurs 0.02% of the time, then it will almost always occur so long as I select 50,000 events (0.02% = 1/50,000). Here, the statistical cluster involved microbiologists. If it had involved firefighters, would we have thought arsonists were getting rid of the opposition?
Statistically unlikely events occur all the time. Being able to pick and choose among them after the fact doesn't in themselves give them any significance.
Let's act like true Slashdotters: "Gee, I had no idea that Micro$oft was getting into biotech!"
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
Doesn't this movie come out on May 31?? That story is The Sum of All Fears right. j/k.
died in an airlock filled with nitrogen. This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.
IIRC, you don't feel the lack of oxygen in the bloodstream, rather you notice the buildup of carbon dioxide. Breathing pure nitrogen doesn't cause CO2 buildup, but it will kill you before you realize anything is amiss.
This story has been on www.whatreallyhappened.com for months. They've been wondering why nobody's picked it up yet. Now I guess someone has.
You don't have to believe all these conspiracy theories; I don't believe them all, but I admit that at least some of the info on that site looks possible, even probable. My friends look at this stuff and flatly refuse to even consider the possibility that their black-and-white worldview may be wrong, asking me "which side are you on, anyway?".
It's not about sides; it's about right and wrong. It's about the truth.
After that last comment, I think I should sign this Fox Mulder, but that's too lame, even for me.
Signed,
J. Doggett
(just kidding)
Michael M.
(not kidding.)
This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.
Actually, no, he shouldn't. In most people (though there are some medical conditions under which this is not true), the sensation of suffocation is not caused by lack of oxygen, but by buildup of carbon dioxide.
Since breathing an inert gas allows the exchange of CO2 into the atmosphere, the only symptoms suffered are those of oxygen deprivation -- which impairs judgement and leads to giddiness like being drunk -- not a sensation of being suffocated. Due to the impaired judgement, people suffering from the symptoms generally don't recognize that they are suffering the symptoms, making inert-gas asphyxiation an especially easy way to die.
(Note: specifically because there is no sensation of pain or suffocation, inert-gas asphyxiation has been proposed as a humane method of execution.)
(Note: specifically because there is no sensation of pain or suffocation, inert-gas asphyxiation has been proposed as a humane method of execution.)
The mere idea of having execution become seen as humane frightens me. Someone once speculated that the problem with "stun weapons" is that because they did no (well, rare... well, pretty rare, anyway) lasting harm, police and authorities would use them with greater impunity. Hey, why not shock a demonstrator or two? No permanent damage, and it's humane!
Of course, you probably didn't mean to imply that execution is humane, just that inert gas asphyxiation is a better way to go than a bullet or the chair, and that's gotta be true. Still... I think it's better not to attach the words. Execution may be necessary sometimes... but let's never fool ourselves about what it is.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
The time heresy was feared more was during the EARLY EARLY days of the Catholic Church, long before the Schism between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, before the Reformation, and before Henry VIII wanted a divorce. We're talking first millenium AD here.
Perhaps you have read the Nicene Creed? Parts of it were written specifically to preach against things like Gnosticism, Arianism, etc. etc.
Er, yes. The idea being, if you're going to execute somebody anyway, asphyxiation with an inert gas isn't quite as brutal as electrocution, cyanide gas, lethal injection, a firing squad, hanging, or beheading, the methods usually employed in the world today.
Similarly, when fighting a war, accept surrenders, treat POWs like fellow human beings, don't use poison gas, don't deliberately target civilians, etc. War is brutal enough as is.
...is that Evan Chan better be watching his back...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The idea being, if you're going to execute somebody anyway, asphyxiation with an inert gas isn't quite as brutal as electrocution, cyanide gas, lethal injection, a firing squad, hanging, or beheading, the methods usually employed in the world today.
"Less brutal." That seems accurate.
OK, the raving semantic consequentialist in me is placated. : )
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Most people on here seem to think this story is a big Xfiles joke.
Go read up on each death.
Looking at it from a Forensic research point, there's something a little off on each death.
F I S H Y F I S H Y
The Lone Gunmen are *dead*???!! Jeez, just spoil it for everybody!
Breakfast served all day!
Cool post, I totally concur with the points you made. Very Interesting.....
This is not the first time there there has been a suspicious cluster of violent deaths of scientists reported in the British press. Last time, it was programmers. See Comp.Risks, RISKS DIGEST 6.67 : and Who's killing Star Wars Scientists?
For those interested in a book which follows a plot with a striking similarity to the Marconi incidents, try The Chain of Chance
by Stanislaw Lem.It is a shame that noone will ever read this because I posted so late.
Actually, I'd be inclined to say eight. There are 11 untimely deaths, but only 8 are truely mysterious.
The guy who got offed by his daughters and her satanist friends is reasonably well explained, and "normal" in that -- If you're going to get offed, chances are it's going to be by family or 'friends'. You even have living, breathing conspirators who, if they were part of a larger comspiracy, would probably be happy to talk about it. The only thing really unusual about it is the satanist connection.
Similarly, the Pizza delivery murder-suicide is similarly well explained and fits the family/friend statistical norm. In this case, however, everybody who was directly involved is dead. Unless someone can point to some evidence that the suicide was 'forced', I'm going to chaulk this one up to a love triangle, or something and mark it 'untimely but explained'.
3 untimely death in a short time period is probably not that far off for a group of this size. As for the other 8 deaths, I'm betting that they take this group far outside the statistical norm.
Any epidemiologists out there?
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
It's in here