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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."
Slashdot's finally gotten to the point where its stories are driven by the Google Doodle!
#DeleteChrome
It's only been a mere 58 years. Now is the time to look into this.
His suicide was widely reported as fact. I have serious doubts that anyone who looked into the life of Turing actually believed that his suicide was a fact. (Opinions seemed to vary from conspiracy theories focussed on a government assassination, to it was probably suicide but the investigation was so botched up that we'll never know.)
As a chemist who has worked with cyanide, I question whether he would have chosen this method to end his own life. Cyanide poisoning is extremely unpleasant and chemists who work with it generally are aware of this. Cyanide gas is very easy to produce from cyanide solutions, just a matter of adjusting or failing to adjust the pH. I have given myself low level cyanide poisoning without being aware of it until the symptoms appeared hours later, and many others have been saved by having the antidote at hand when they realized they had been exposed.
The gas could easily have been produced in his laboratory by his own accident or neglect, or by someone else.
In my opinion Turing's death by cyanide poisoning was not an intentional suicide.
Verbum caro factum est
Back in the 1950s, anyone who was gay was considered as being vulnerable to blackmail by the "filthy reds", who could threaten to expose them unless the subject agreed to work undercover for the commies.
They even applied this standard to the relatively few people who were OPENLY gay, even though there was no basis for exposing somebody who was already out of the closet.
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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
You might as well do a criminal investigation on Julius Caesar.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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.
The beeb has an article that addresses the apple thing--he often ate an apple before bedtime, so the fact that a half-eaten apple was found on his night stand wasn't unusual at all, and the apple was never tested for cyanide.
Why should his sexual or criminal proclivities, real or imagined, have bearing on people caring how he died?
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Because if he didn't kill himself that very day, it isn't a plausible cause?
Mind the Gap
murder is so much more interesting!
Great Intellect...
No one that understands cyanide would choose that as a suicide method.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
And we all know that inhaling cyanide (as opposed to eating or drinking it) actually has therapeutic effects for depressed men who have been arrested, tried, and convicted of the crime of loving someone of their own gender and then subjected to chemical castration. It couldn't have been suicide.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Allen was a known associate of Torchwood from 1951 through 1956. He was reported dead on 8Jun54, but you can't believe everything you read. He began travelling with The Doctor 7May52. Allan lives! end transmission.
Raise your hand if you have an uncle who left you a nice sum of money because he wasn't married and/or doted on you with financial gifts beyond the usual proportions. How does this not enhance the survival of common genes? At the very least, the presence of non-procreating members in a tribe isn't harmful and might have conveyed some advantages over tribes with higher procreation percentages. There's also a grandmother theory that runs along similar lines. Post-menopausal women don't get the "Darwin award", but contribute to the tribe in various ways. I'm referring to tribes because until about 10,000 years ago that was the most common arrangement. That's a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
..is it worthy?
Come now, we know Julius Caesar was murdered by Brutus, Cassius Casca et Al. We even have Shakespeare's eyewitness testimony.
Back in the days when they had IDE hard drives.
Oh very good. IDEs of March hard drives, you're talking...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
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.)
He died a couple of years after the (grossly wrong) conviction/oestrogen injections,
I think I should clarify, "grossly wrong" applies to morality not to a miscarriage of justice. The law of the time was applied and there is no indication that there were any legal errors or that procedures were not followed.
As do I. Just today I've had someone tell me that the mere usage of the words "cunt" and "bitch" as insults is degrading to women.
Who said that? Some Girl's Blouse of a Big Jessie I'm sure.
Two homosexual friends working at NSA went to Moscow in the 60s
I hope they put them in different hotels, or how could they have kept their minds on their work?
Not because he was gay, but because he was in a depression caused by the drugs he was forced to take against his gayness (a then criminal offense in UK). He was forces to take hormones to modify his sexual behavior. He was having several medical problems (including growing boobs IIRC) and was forbidden to meet the man he loved.
And yes, as you point out, he was a polymath and a genius, someone who probably felt he was trapped in a retarded world and who could envision the future.
So, in a moment of depression, disguising a suicide as a fantasy brought by the bleeding technical edge of the moment (color theaters) seems a credible scenario for him, yes.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Um, [...]
"Um," indeed. Presumably, you're struggling to construct a sound argument.
[...] because he was a pederast, [...]
Failing to produce a sound argument or a single citation, you instead resort to circular reasoning.
[...] how fucking stupid are you?
Apparently not as fucking stupid as you'd like me to be, since I'm unpersuaded by your tautology and ad hominem attack.
Your failure to present even one reputable source citation further undermines not just your claim, but your credibility.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan