Yeah, that sweetheart.

Well, he’s at it again. He just doesn’t think that his reputation can get any lower, despite being able to comfortably limbo underneath a mosquito’s belly with room to spare. Trudeau recently urged his minions to send protesting emails and text messages to federal judge Robert Gettleman — the hero who raised a fine against Trudeau from $5 million to $37 million, to better match the money Trudeau defrauded out of people for his books. Gettleman is currently working on potentially revising his order after an appellate court found his ruling too broad.

I can’t imagine Trudeau’s actions will help his case any.

And, oddly enough, Gettleman doesn’t think so either. Especially since some of the notes were threatening. Seriously folks, how stupid must you be to send threatening emails to a frakking federal judge?

Well, they are loyal to Trudeau, so I guess that answers that.

Anyway, Gettleman had Trudeau hauled into court yesterday, where he slapped the fraudulent huckster with a contempt of court charge:

Gettleman ordered Trudeau to turn over his passport, pay $50,000 bond and warned he could face future prison time.

Gettleman, on his own authority, can sentence Trudeau to up to six months in prison. In addition, the judge referred the matter and the emails to the U.S. Marshals Service, which investigates threats to judiciary.

It would certainly be interesting indeed if Trudeau were thrown in jail for the rest of his life, with the added rule that he is not allowed to sell any wares whatsoever in books, magazines, on TV, radio, or any and all future media. If you think that’s too harsh, then maybe you need to familiarize yourself with Trudeau’s past antics. Some purveyors of alt-med quackery may be honest in their beliefs, but if you read Trudeau’s history you may find yourself being just a wee bit skeptical of his pure motivations.

I love seeing justice being served in cases like this. I really hope judge Gettleman throws the book at Trudeau… and that’s something Trudeau really doesn’t want you to know.

Tip o’ the coral calcium to BABLoggeee Chris Babarskas. Originally posted on the Bad Astronomy Blog.

Someone offered the following item for free on the list:

Offer: Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About
By Kevin Trudeau. Excellent book – I just have two of them.
In Virginia.

In case you’re not familiar with this particular book, it is yet another product by convicted felon Kevin Trudeau, who has made himself a millionaire many times over by selling quackery, much of it of the “natural cure” variety. This book, like most of his books, is essentially an upsell brochure intended to draw you in to purchase his worthless pills and supplements. Thus, Trudeau’s organization happily gives the book away, in addition to its being a bestseller in bookstores.

This particular offer came from Virginia, even though this list is explicitly limited to items from northern Minnesota.

Ryan was not so fond of this book being offered, so he posted the following reply:

This may be inappropriate for this list, but I decided to post anyway since this a matter of health and safety.

Kevin Trudeau is a notorious con-man and huckster.  He has been banned by the FTC from ever selling anything on TV again because his claims about health are so wrong and dangerous.

Here’s some information about him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=1574

http://www.skepdic.com/trudeau.html

http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/2005/07/29/trudeau

Again, sorry if I’ve overstepped bounds here, but I’d hate for someone to delay real treatment for health problems based on what’s written in this book.

The list is moderated, and it seems Ryan’s reply was moderated to that great freecycle bin in the sky. It was never posted. I can totally understand this: The purpose of the list is to get items recycled, not to talk people out of recycling a given item.

Personally, I think it’s better for the public good to have Trudeau’s books in a landfill and not in a potential victim’s hands, but we have free speech in this country. Trudeau is free to write his books (so long as he manages to thread the needle and avoid breaking laws), the poster was free to offer it and say it’s a great book, Ryan was free to write his reply, and the list owners are free to accept or reject whatever posts they want based on whatever criteria they want.

Freecycle’s charter is to keep stuff out of landfills, not to be a filter for what’s good science and what’s bad science. It’s just a little irksome that they bent their northern Minnesota rule to allow the Trudeau sales brochure “books” from Virginia, but wouldn’t bend the rule to allow a public safety and health warning from a local member in good standing. Those books aren’t headed for a landfill; they’re being given out to suckers, wherever they can be found, to get them to buy worthless supplements. In short, the offer was spam.

EastRangeFreecycle is, of course, free to choose whichever of their own rules they wish to bend for whatever reason they like.

It’s all well and good for us to sit back and snicker at Kevin Trudeau for being a scumbag and selling snake oil, but it’s also true that he’s kicking our ass. Absolutely kicking our ass. He makes millions of dollars selling useless products, and the skeptical community makes virtually nothing offering only scientific fact. As a consequence, Kevin Trudeau has more marketing dollars and spreads his message much wider than we could ever hope to.

Please don’t misinterpret this as a defense of Kevin Trudeau or his ilk. As harmful as his products and his messages are, it’s useful to also understand how and why he is able to get such traction with them. Whatever else he might be, he is a brilliant marketer.

I look around The Amazing Meeting and I see a lot of ingenious scientists and critical thinkers, but I also think how valuable it would be to have a few people with Kevin Trudeau’s marketing savvy. Skepticism is certainly not about making money, it’s about helping people. But, like a hospital or a magazine, it has to make money to survive. You can’t spread your message if you have no budget with which to do it.

On the one hand, the message that critical thinking offers is the one “product” that’s actually truly valuable. Our message protects people from fraud. It encourages them toward evidence based medicine. It protects them from a host of irrational paranoias and xenophobias. We help people to make good life decisions based on reality.

But on the other hand, our message is also the opposite of what’s easy to sell. We don’t promise fast, easy answers. We don’t promise that you are in total control of what happens inside your body. We don’t promise overnight wealth. We don’t promise to double your mileage. Instead, we promise only that those goals are difficult to achieve and require hard work.

Does this conundrum doom the critical thinking community to obscurity and irrelevance? Or, can the core message of skepticism be wrapped in a package that our target audience, the general public, will want?

I believe that it can. Becoming a skeptic is not rocket science; people can be taught how to do it. They can reap real rewards by doing so, unlike Kevin Trudeau’s customers. Do we have a message that Oprah would want to promote? We might, if we can package it right. As skeptics, we often like to pat ourselves on the back for being the enlightened few in a world of darkness. That’s fine, but it’s not as helpful as shining that light outward. We just need more megawatts, and I believe the power is available. Let’s turn more of our attention toward generating that power, and finding a way to make skepticism commercially viable.