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Brian Dunning lawsuit

briandunning said:
I appreciate that the tone of this conversation is not typical of most such posts on the Internet, where the posters almost seem to gleefully gloat over this. It is the most horrible and traumatic thing to ever happen to my family, and was shocking and unexpected to say the very least.

I'm preparing a blog post that will address as much of this as possible. It must be approved by attorneys and that's taking a long time. Until that happens, I regret that I won't say anything more about this. You all deserve an explanation, which I would love to give.

Those who know me personally have a much better idea of what kind of man I am than those who simply read these complaints that have been filed. Those who know how the legal system works know that complaints reflect one party's assertions, and do not include any part of the defense, or anything at all that does not support their position. They are intentionally written that way.

I ask you all, the closest community I've ever had the privilege to be a part of, to give me the benefit of the doubt and suspend your judgement and speculation until a meaningful percentage of the facts are made public. Please accept my apologies in advance for not participating any further in this thread or on any other until I'm able to post my blog. Until then, I'm continuing to do what I do best and be as productive as circumstances permit.
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I'd like to see another Dunning response to this thread.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
It seems the more one knows about gullibility and misdirection techniques, the greater the danger of using them oneself. It also makes any crime or unethical behavior all that more reprehensible. Sad story, indeed.
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A childhood friend's dad was a MA in history, graduated in the early 1960s... his thesis was PT Barnum's operations development.

He then went on to build a family business importing and distributing questionable health products. Current offerings include vitamins, ginseng pills, herbal pills for anything... His competitive advantage is that he's spent two generations fostering volume merchandising agreements with store chains around Canada (Shoppers Drug Mart, London Drugs, Overwaitea, Loblaws...)

It's created some distance between myself and my friend, as she is now in charge of the business and is not very receptive to criticism. She has a journalism degree.
 
I just started listening to Skeptoid, and breezed through all the episodes. Found them informative and entertaining. I just started a recurring donation within the last couple weeks. Today I was doing some research, and came upon this "issue." Still not sure what to make of it. I don't have a huge attention span, so reading a lot of legal documents and in depth stories isn't that easy for me (I am seeing a doctor about his -- side issue.) Anyway, what's going on doesn't, IMHO undermine the scientific method or skepticism, or what Brian taught about it. Is it a black eye on the skeptical community? Yes it is, and leaders in the movement should confront him about the situation personally, if they haven't already done so. There's still valuable resources in the podcast, especially the ones about logical fallacies and the scientific method. The other issues -- well, there's nothing wrong, but regardless of whether Brian is or isn't guilty of the charges against him (just because he reached a plea deal doesn't mean he did what he was accused of,) it still looks extremely bad.

I'm hoping the truth of the case comes out, Brian does whatever penance needs be done, but when it's all said and done, I hope he returns a humble person.
 
If it's a Federal court, it's possible the folks whose job is to transcribe or scan the paper documents and upload them to PACER are...not there.
 
Even if the courts are shut down, I can't find any news coverage. He is a minor celebrity of sorts, I would think at least some local California paper would have the story.
 
I think Dunning is a slimeball. He's always looking to cut corners and take advantage of his "fans." Here is a quick twitter convo I had with him:

Dunning: The Skeptoid Kickstarter project is 138% funded with half the time still remaining, you can still get in on it!

Me: if its already over funded, shouldn't people be funding other projects?

Dunning: Reaching the funding goal means it will be produced, not sold out.

Now, for one thing, kickstarter is for funding, it's not a place to sell products. Also, as was pointed out earlier in the thread, there is no "overhead" per sale for this project. Selling more of them doesn't cost more money.

Once other celebs have reached their funding goal, they have thanked the donors and stop asking for more donations. I believe it was Zack Braff that even told potential donors that the funding was complete and if they wished to donate they should find another project that they believed in.

Not Mr. Dunning. This guy got into the skeptical movement to make a buck, period. He started his podcasts bragging that they were a hobby and he was "the only podcast not asking for donations." Once his cash cow fell through (what he's in trouble for), that all changed.

There is nothing wrong with trying to make money, every person does it. But I expect more transparency from someone in the "skeptical" community. He's a charlatan just like those he's tried to expose.
 
If you read the comments, there was a fellow named "Wingee" trying to point out some of the issues he found with the whole process, especially concerning disclosure.
 
To be fair, Kickstarter does not allow someone to stop receiving pledges once the funding goal is reached, so he actually can't stop people from giving him more money. However, a nice thing to do is to have stretch goals for the extra funding, and moreover, he's actively encouraging people to keep pledging money after the goal is reached, and he's a shady guy all around and a criminal so, yeah... -_-
 
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