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Comment by akomtu | Hacker News Reader

Suing a cult with hundreds of members is a dumb idea: they'll turn vindictive and will go after you. Instead, you appear mildly suppotive and friendly to them, gather information, give them publicity via media outlets, and give anonymous tips to FBI.

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I hope nobody takes your idea seriously. Most people aren't super-spies who can go undercover and save society from a cult. Just go to law enforcement, report it and listen to what they have to say.

There once was a professor doing research on cults who sent out his grad students to secretly embed themselves in various cults and report on them. Not all of them came back.. And now we get learn about why that was a bad idea in the ethics portion of psychology classes! Yay!

How are you defining “bad idea”?

Professor sent out the grad students. Some of them didn’t come back (died?).

Those are all the facts. Any pontificating about whether it is Good or Bad is just nonsense.

Do you know when/where this happened? Im not doubting you Im just very curious.

The US and any time before the 2000s. Sorry I can't be of more help than that. It was only a brief but very memorable mention in a lecture many years ago. I did just try searching for it online but there is a ton of cult related content online. More than I ever imagined. Also it's not like the researchers were exposed and murdered dramatically, rather that some just ended up joining and staying with the cults.

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