"When Zhou began looking into the Toano, Virginia-based company back in 2013, he says he found online complaints about its Chinese-made flooring. So he bought products from Lumber Liquidators and paid to have them analyzed. The results led him to publish a post on investing website Seeking Alpha on June 20, 2013, that advocated shorting the stock because the tests showed levels of formaldehyde above California requirements."
So while others might indeed lie, we seem to have enough confirmation from the subsequent investigations that Zhou did not. And there was no reason to believe he lied, this is a target rich environment after all.
And while 60 Minutes is entirely untrustworthy (I've watched them lying on the air for decades, since the '70s), likely would have started with "guilt in mind", in this case they chose a worthy target.
Wait, what? Any proof for that statement? How come they are still on air? Why wasn't their parent broadcaster sued out of existence, if what you claim is true?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_100#Reported_sudden_uninte...
There was plenty of less overt stuff in the '70s. Then you might mosey through this list, which only has the worst of the worst: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes#Controversies
Per that, it took 15 years for Audi sales to recover.
On the other hand, we have plenty of evidence that people are really bad at being suspicious of the often unreliable stuff they read on the internet. For example, measles has made a roaring comeback in the USA, so even when their own children's health is involved, it seems people aren't willing to actually read farther than a couple of emotionally-charged blog posts before making decisions.
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/29/7929791/measles-outbreak-2014
tl;dr Measles was imported to a group of unvaccinated Amish by a resident returning from a missionary trip. The Amish accounted for a large portion of those infected in the US. The good news is that many Amish opted to take the vaccine after seeing the effect of measles in their community.
Here is an older article (2024)
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/health/measles-cases-in-us...
A few snippets from the article.
* There were fewer than 200 cases last year (2013); the record low was 37 cases in 2004.
* Eighty-five percent of this year’s cases were in people not vaccinated because of religious, philosophical or personal objections, Dr. Schuchat said.
* Almost half the cases were part of a continuing outbreak in Amish communities in Ohio
* In an unusual twist, over half were ages 20 or older. They may have included adults whose parents refused to vaccinate them years ago, she said.
* Forty-three of the 288 who contracted the virus were hospitalized, most with pneumonia. None died.
* There were 60 cases in California, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Orange County, where large numbers of wealthy parents refuse to vaccinate their children.
* France, the world’s most popular tourist destination, had an outbreak of 20,000 cases from 2008 to 2011.
The 2014 CDC MMWR report if you want
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6322a4.htm?s_cid=...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://im...
Kid used message boards to pump and dump stocks until the SEC intervened.