In Shockley's case we have the benefit of seeing his whole life, from end to end. If for example a person loses a job, that could be a fluke; that could be due

In Shockley's case we have the benefit of seeing his whole life, from end to end. If for example a person loses a job, that could be a fluke; that could be due to anything. I would draw next to no conclusions from a person losing a job one time. But if we can see their whole career at a glance, and notice that person was fired 15 times in 40 years, that's a pattern. We can say that's out of the ordinary, that doesn't happen to the average working person. The record speaks for itself: this person must have had some quality that made his employers want to fire him. Shockley was like this. Repeatedly in his life we see this pattern of people scrambling to get away from working with, or under, him. It's unusual for people to dislike someone that much: that's not common. If it was one anonymous guy over his whole career lodging a complaint, we might ignore it. But so many people voted to not be around Shockley, with their feet and with their employment. That's not common for a scientist, Democrat, Republican, entrepreneur, or anyone really: there must have been some unpleasant quality about Shockley that made people not want to be around him, as this pattern repeated over his whole life shows.