The article has full details, excerpts below
The week before Thanksgiving, Marshall Brain sent a final email to his colleagues at North Carolina State University. “I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university,” wrote the founder of HowStuffWorks.com and director of NC State’s Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Hours later, campus police found that Brain had died by suicide.
Marshall David Brain II established HowStuffWorks.com in 1998 as a personal project to explain technical topics to general audiences. The website grew into a major success that Discovery Communications acquired for $250 million in 2007. He later expanded his educational reach through books like The Engineering Book and television shows on National Geographic Channel […]
Brain was also well-known in futurist and transhumanist circles. In 2003, his “Robotic Nation” essay, published freely on the web, predicted that widespread automation and robotics would cause a massive labor crisis by 2050, warning that up to half of American jobs could be eliminated, leading to unprecedented unemployment and social upheaval. […]
At 4:29 am—just two and a half hours before he was discovered dead in his office, Brain sent a final email, obtained by Ars Technica, to over 30 recipients inside and outside the university. In the detailed letter, Brain disputed an announcement made by his boss, Stephen Markham, executive director of NC State’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship program. Markham had told staff Brain would retire effective December 31, 2025. Brain wrote that he had instead been terminated on October 29 and was forced into retirement as a face-saving option.
The termination followed Brain’s filing of ethics complaints through the university’s EthicsPoint system about an employee at the university’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The complaints stemmed from an August dispute over repurposing the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program meeting space.
“What got us to this point? The short answer is that I witnessed wrongdoing on campus, and I tried to report it,” Brain wrote in his email. “What came back was a sickening nuclear bomb of retaliation the likes of which could not be believed,” Brain wrote in the email. He stated that the accused person “excommunicated me from my department for reporting my concerns to her.”
In his email, Brain wrote that the school’s head of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering later informed him the department would stop recommending students for Brain’s Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. According to Brain’s account, this led to disciplinary action against Brain for “unacceptable behavior.”
“My career has been destroyed by multiple administrators at NCSU who united together and completely ignored the EthicsPoint System and its promises to employees,” Brain wrote. “I did what the University told me to do, and then these administrators ruined my life for it.”
[…] Dror Baron, an NCSU professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, wrote on X, “A professor I know died following various investigations. I know the people mentioned here, and call for a transparent and independent investigation.”
So far, that investigation has not been forthcoming. University spokesperson Mick Kulikowski declined to comment to The Technician about Brain’s death or the allegations. To date, the university has not issued a public statement about Brain’s death.
Barry and Kashani expressed disappointment in the university’s lack of public response. “It’s been six days now,” Kashani said at the time to the school newspaper. “There hasn’t been any acknowledgment of mistakes that were made, systems that failed, no resignations, not even a call to celebrate Marshall’s achievements.”
sad story. it’s emblematic of a mentality that is all too common in “ivory tower” positions
whether you work for a university or a news agency or a government organizations, etc. everyone ends up self censoring because they realize that rocking the boat is bad for your personal interests. after working so hard to get into this little elite club, you don’t want to jeopardize your position. your identity and sense of self worth is tied up with it
the few that end up trying get quickly chewed up and spit out by the whole.
it’s essentially group think and self censorship. too bad this guy killed himself instead of trying to move forward in his life with another avenue.
I can’t imagine how frustrated he was, but it just shows you how bad depression can get. He had hundreds of millions of dollars and could do basically anything he wanted. Start his own program, buy a little island, anything. And he was so upset and depressed he killed himself.
Yeah, he could have taken the “retirement,” and started a non-profit doing whatever his area of interest is in, while fighting a lawsuit against NCSU around his allegations.
He had so much potential, but I think you nailed it perfectly here:
our identity and sense of self worth is tied up with it
He was likely at a point where he couldn’t see what was right in front of him because he was so tied up with his position. And that’s often how people in distress work, they literally cannot conceive of anything outside of their problem and they get so wrapped up in it until they either end it or get help.
I’m really supportive into psychedelic research because I hear it can help you see other possibilities, if even for a small moment, and that glimmer of hope can help people get out of their crippling situation. I hope NCSU pays for this, and I hope we can make more progress on mental health research so we can prevent similar things in the future.
I didn’t know Marshall, however I worked for one of the engineering departments at NCSU, and I will state it was the most toxic, hostile work environment I’ve ever been part of. Direct colleagues were mostly great despite being underpaid and overworked.
The professors there have a culture where they feel and act like they are celebrities. I knew of three instances where professors had affairs with their students, divorced their spouses, married said students, and repeated the process over again a few years later. All “distinguished” professors too. Even though I was a sysadmin, one assigned me to transcribe a recording of some lecture he was giving while clearly in a bathtub having something sexual done to him just as a power trip. I reported it, nothing was done, and I received a poor performance evaluation that year despite very good ones years prior. Absolute horrible place to work.
The reason why these systems are put into place is to empower people who had wrongdoing done to them. If they fail to work, those people should use alternative methods to force consequences on them. That lecture recording should have been leaked. It could have been accidentally left somewhere and gotten out.
I was in my early 20’s at the time during the Great Recession. Honestly was afraid there were no options for me if I left that job.
Based on the current response to this incident, it doesn’t seem like a lot would have happened
I knew of three instances where professors had affairs with their students, divorced their spouses, married said students, and repeated the process over again a few years later.
text book academia… not just engineering.
profs using classes as stable of free pussy. admins did not do shit.
My grandfather was one of these self-absorbed narcissistic professors who had multiple affairs with students over the years as well. I think academia is just one of those domains that attracts this type of person.
The situation creates opportunities. Just like pedos gravitate to where the kids are.
What a sad situation. I googled around and went through some reddit threads and found my way to the final email. It was lengthy and one sided, and got off in the weeds towards the end, but the “ethics” complaints he felt it worthwhile to share were mostly centered around “lying, incompetence, hypocrisy, information hiding, etc.”
They boil down to, “They are taking my meeting space to give to a new professor and they waited until the last minute to tell me and fed me some BS about it,” and “the MechE department won’t be recommending my course for a certain requirement any more, and they didn’t tell me until long after they’d decided.” There were other grievances about the university not making lasting change after George Floyd, not taking his concerns about imminent environmental collapse (or the university’s role in preventing it) seriously, and a last-minute cancellation of a monorail proof of concept he wanted to do between two parking garages.
Honestly, it sounds like he was struggling and felt the weight of the world on his shoulders, and was no longer psychologically equipped to handle intense, but likely common, levels of office politics, academic fiefdoms, and baroque bureaucracy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear his workplace saw the signs, and simply treated him as difficult but ensconced, an inconvenience to be avoided.
This confirms my suspicion that this was was the end result of a lot of office politics within the university. He apparently missed the “stop publicly criticizing us” memo, and everything after that was just the university forcing him out. It also confirms the common story that a HR is for the company whether is sexual harassment or ethics violations.
I’m still reading tea leaves of course, but while he may well have been completely right about literally everything, I sense that what changed was his tolerance for BS, combined how much the administration valued him.
Regardless, it’s still an absolute shame. Of course the personal tragedy for his family, and then professionally, either this poor guy was railroaded and mistreated, or else he missed a chance for a productive final act in his career.
Either BS tolerance or over optimism.
This sounds like typical higher education bullshit to me. Especially the part about being informed of decisions too late, with bullshit reasoning.
Especially the part about being informed of decisions too late, with bullshit reasoning.
standard practice in corpos too tho
just parasites using institutions for personal circle jerks
Hierarchical systems favor sociopathy.
Wow, so sad. He engineered such a huge contribution to humanity thru HowStuffWorks, allowing regular folks to understand more deeply the complex world around us. Truly a superhero of epic proportions. Rest in Power, Marshall Brain!
Ok, so this might be controversial, but in these situations I definitely think the people that drove him to this situation should be investigated (and if needed, held accountable) by the police.
We put this enormous personal responsibility on everybody, that they should be able to manage anything that life throws at them, and give a free pass to bullies to hurt and destroy others, instead of realizing some people have more fragile souls and less resilience. We don’t need to turn our lives upside down to protect them, but at least we could make sure you can’t go around hurting them without repercussions.
If we want to treat mental health as seriously as physical health, then why is this accepted? A seemingly big hearted person, driven to suicide by the organizational politics of a few more savvy individuals. How is this any different, then the strong taking something from the weak, or pushing them off a cliff?
Anyone that finds your take controversial, I would consider insane.
More specifically… the school on paper also agrees with you. They rolled out a whole system to make sure these things go well for employees. There has just never been actually implemented and now we see the result.
So the systems setup for this need to be more than lip service for the brochure or “thoughts and prayers”. And yes this requires an investigation as this could definitely rise to negligent homicide or something.
There are ethics and whistleblowing policies and procedures in any large organization. Retaliation is still sickeningly common. I’ve seen others in my organization report bullying and ethics violations and still get driven out. Organizations are shit at policing themselves.
Dr. Steve Markham Executive Director, NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship
919.515.5592
“Hello, I’m calling to ask about the status of an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding Marshall Brain’s death and the allegations he raised prior to it. Can you confirm if such an investigation has been initiated and, if not, explain why?”
The school is in cover up mode, likely delete all communication on matter as we speak.
Did not he get ganged up on by a bunch indian proffs, so could be racial anonymous angle that school failed to address.
Time for an [independent] investigation into the departments
“We’ve investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing.”
“Furthermore and completely unrelated, the employee who called for the investigation has retired, effective immediately”
It all solved itself, they can go on with their little silly lives and nothing changes.
This was actually an important point in the article, I should have included it in the post
Dror Baron, an NCSU professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, wrote on X, “A professor I know died following various investigations. I know the people mentioned here, and call for a transparent and independent investigation.”
So far, that investigation has not been forthcoming. University spokesperson Mick Kulikowski declined to comment to The Technician about Brain’s death or the allegations. To date, the university has not issued a public statement about Brain’s death.
There’s an edit button
Oh no :(
I learned so much from him over the years. Used to visit HowStuffWorks almost religiously.
repurposing the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program meeting space.
It is 2024, everyone has zoom. It is a room that engineers can meet in and some dumb admin wanted to turn it into a commuter’s lounge or a decoration storage space. Just let the man keep his little meeting space! It is hard enough getting engineers to meet in person these days, no need to make it harder.
Not knowing anything about his death before reading the article, the headline made it sound like some odd coincidence. “Sudden death” makes it sound like something that just happened unexpectedly. Not sure why they didn’t just say “…before suicide.”
Maybe to avoid triggering folks with traumatic experiences? Only thing that I can think of.
The hard-to-solve problem with the news is that reporting on suicides causes suicide (as in: more people commit suicide, not just people who were on the ledge decided to go) yet people also want to know things.
I’m unclear if the usual disclaimers added to the article actually help or just are the only sounds-like-it-might-help thing that comes to mind so at least the publisher can feel better about the added deaths that, statistically speaking, they might be causing. I just remember it being covered in one of my college gened classes and the way it was presented was that everybody threw up their hands in frustration and gave up.
An acquaintance who screwed up her leg really bad and went through a whole process of getting bolted back together et al decided that she wasn’t going to tell people what happened. Because everybody always asks “how’d you do it?” as if it was some curse that she had personally triggered that they could avoid. And I thought about how the first question in my mind was “how’d you do it?” and I guess it made me think about the inanity of making sure to check for flying herring while traveling backwards hanging out the window of a train going between Albuquerque and Phoenix after having signed up for a triple indemnity life insurance plan… or something like that.
The only exception, of course, is you are doing something that the news orgs consider “wrong” like doing drugs or being certain categories of mentally ill or riding a bicycle for transportation.
I wonder if that has to do with a call to arms so to speak. I’m reminded of a John Mulaney skit where he says at the end if the boys and girls basketball club, the speaker gets up and says how it’s great they have this organization because the alternative to youths playing basketball is drugs and alcohol… and that was the first time he heard that there was an alternative, and so he became the best at that. I also wonder if public shootings happen more when they are reported on.
what the fuck
“excommunicated me from my department for reporting my concerns to her.”
This jumps out to me.
An entire department stopping talking to him means either the entire department was threatened against talking to him, or the entire department chose to stop talking to him.
I’d be interested in hearing from the department members.
Office Politics taken to 100%
Sounds like regular college/university politics to me.
Normal ones don’t end with dead wagies tho…
But yeah academia is toxic as fuck. So much sexual harassment etc makes corporate world seems decent, there you just get fucked in non sexual way.
I kind of get the feeling that we’re missing a lot of detail in this story
RIP, Marshall. Your novella, Manna (full text), was so impactful for me, as a 20-something at the time you first released it on your website.
