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Turing Archive Director Questions Alan Turing Suicide Report
That Alan Turing committed suicide is widely accepted as fact. Now, an anonymous reader writes, "According to Professor Jack Copeland, director of the The Turing Archive for the History of Computing, 'The coroner [in Turing's case] didn't really investigate the evidence at all, he just jumped to the conclusion that he committed suicide. He seems to have been very biased from the statements in newspapers at the time.' Copeland further said that medical evidence suggested Turing died from inhaling cyanide rather than drinking or ingesting it."
It's only been a mere 58 years. Now is the time to look into this.
So you're suggesting that one of the greatest polymaths since Eratosthenes had the the mentality of a 5 year old girl, in part because he was gay?
Verbum caro factum est
Please note that most seem to be construing this news as a cue to believe that Turing may have been murdered (by the British government, naturally), when in reality, Prof Jack Copeland, the foremost Turing scholar, and Turing's own mother thought it to be a careless accident rather than a suicide, with Copeland saying "the evidence should be taken at face value - that an accidental death is certainly consistent with all the currently known circumstances." The truth is that the initial inquest was so sloppy we will never know for certain, so those who are apt to believe in government conspiracies will no doubt believe he was assassinated (after he was already subject to humiliating chemical castration), even as the premier Turing expert believes it was more likely an accident.
Because if he didn't kill himself that very day, it isn't a plausible cause?
Mind the Gap
The Darwin Award is strictly for people whose genes never propagate in cases where that is the preferred outcome. Basically, people too stupid for their own good. I highly doubt one of the first computer scientists falls under that category.
Great Intellect...
That's the thing - no one knows for certain (no diary entries, notes, conversations with friends, etc) that would indicate either way, and yet it's being pushed as direct causation.
Plausible? Maybe. Possible? Certainly. Probable? Unknown.
OTOH, I don't like how quickly and easily correlation instantly becomes causation and gets pressed into an ideological cause... no matter who does it, or why they do it.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
That his personal and professional life was destroyed by bigotry due to his homosexuality is well established and uncontroversial. If he did commit suicide, then the existence of a causal link is nearly inevitable. The part that hasn't been well established is whether he did, in fact, commit suicide.
(Correlation can imply causation if there is no other viable cause and the absence of a cause is unlikely. He could have suffered a devastating mental illness that made him suicidal, but there is no evidence of this, whereas the discrimination is well documented.)