Neuroscientists: James Holmes Was Not a Mad Genius; Just a Mad Man

James Holmes is just an all-around unfortunate human being.  After going into a crowded movie theater and shooting dozens of innocent people, he is now getting bashed by all of his former colleagues, who have defined him as both weird and dumb, which is a bad combination.

One of Holmes’ former supervisors set the record straight by noting very clearly that he wasn’t smart. Now Holmes will be despised by the world as that guy who shot up a Colorado movie theatre, killing 12 people (including a child) and injuring 58 more who were just trying to enjoy a movie.

Holmes did a summer internship back in 2006 at the Salk Institute of the University of California in San Diego. John Jacobson, who worked to guide Holmes through the experience, described the former medical student as uncommunicative, irresponsible and thickheaded, which are not qualities that anyone is looking in a friend, let alone a doctor. After working with Holmes, Jacobson said, “he was absolutely stubborn. I was at a loss to how to get him to program in an object-oriented way. He just refused. Finally, I said, ‘Do it any way you can.’”

Jacobson told the LA Times that Holmes had mediocre grades, making the whole insane-genius idea that has surrounded the Joker-loving psycho highly inaccurate. Holmes’ straight B grades did not get him into the program.   It was actually the fact that he had done some computer programming while in high school.  Other neuroscientists have laughed at the idea that second-year graduate student  can be considered to be knowledgeable about anything.  Holmes dropped out of his program at The University of Colorado, so it’s not as if he had any significant training in the area.

Jacobson continued to describe Holmes as socially inept, saying, “I’m trying to introduce him to the other high school students and he’s incredibly uncommunicative. I attributed all this to adolescent shyness, maybe feeling intimidated to people around him.”

Or maybe, instead of it being a normal part of adolescent shyness, his behavior can be attributed to the fact that he was a murderous sociopath.  But that’s just a theory.

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