this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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The difference here is that they continued to engage in correspondence after his conviction.
oh yeah in that case fuck em
I'd have no problems taking dirty money, as long as I wouldn't need to do anything for it... am I just dumb, or why would it be immoral to make dirty folk less-rich?
Ethics are important in science
Thanks, that's good point! it's refreshing when smart people don't feel the need to be rude.
I'm sure the women you work with would be so pleased to know that the pursuit of science is much more important than holding a sex-trafficking rapist and pedophile accountable. It would make them really comfortable to be around you.
That wasn't the question. My question was, how would he be benefiting from me taking his money?
I was wondering why this thread was so long and full of personal attacks, then I noticed who you were interacting with. Ugh, that person is pretty toxic.
In one side, in academia lots of researchers use email lists of benefactors, without checking every single one and automate the donation request for higher chances of success. So people can allege ignorance.
On the other end, there is optics. It is easier to investigate a no name than someone who is constantly donating money, people's morals can be compromised when they think "It is a tenuous accusation, and if we freeze their funds, all of this science projects, charities and good deeds would also be affected, so best to err on the side of caution", giving associates of the evil person time to hide or destroy evidence, tip the evil person about the investigation, and give the henchmen of said evil person time go blackmail, threaten and even murder the people behind the investigation.
Decisive action is important in law enforcement, and both optics and soft power can be a hinderance to investigation when used in that way.
You don’t see how it’s immoral to take funding from Epstein?
I can also dodge questions by asking a different question. Is it immoral to steal from billionaires?
You: "hey, child rapist, can I have some money please?" Child rapist: "sure, no problem, my friend"
...
"see, fellow child rapists, most people will allow us to do what we want because we have money. They don't see anything wrong with personally profiting from us. Right, who's up for more child rape?"
Now, if you were to take all the money from the child rapist and then use it to tackle human trafficking, etc etc etc, then, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. But taking any money from any paedo/evil cunt is just allowing them to carry on doing their evil shit by sharing their riches.
It’s essentially signing off on his other actions by engaging in business as usual after his conviction.
I didn’t think I needed to spell that out to anyone who wasn’t an Epstein supporter.
Maybe it's some kind of language barrier, but my definition of business is "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit". So again, where would his profit be in giving me money with no strings attached?
How do you get so caught up in thinking wrong? I asked a hypothetical question and you're acting like I'd ever support him? The only negative thing about him being killed is that his victims can't get retribution.
It's the soft power of being charitable. There's reasons that the rich fund projects like this - it's to make people like you defend them even after they've committed terrible crimes against humanity.
I have never defended anyone with excessive wealth in my entire life, and especially not a sex trafficker or other criminals. Do you normally slander people, or what's your problem with putting false words into someone else's mouth?
You are arguing with me right here and right now how it should be totally OK to take this predator's funding.
No, I have never done that. You're slandering me yet again.
A refresher: I originally asked what the problem would be. And then it took me asking 4 different times before you gave the answer "soft power". You could have just done that originally, instead of being toxic and insulting me.
Not everyone is as smart as you, why do you have to be such a jerk about it?
"Just asking questions"
I have no patience for someone asking why taking funding from Epstein is a bad thing. Read the post. There's a reason DinoCon put their foot down. They BANNED those scientists who thought the same as you. It's deplorable. It's right there in the post from DinoCon.
Not fully understanding why no-strings-attached money is a bad thing, isn't the same thing as sealioning.
You've wasted so much time trying to justify your toxic outbursts instead of simply saying "soft power" from the start. Then you could have used your time and energy for something more productive. Do you get joy out of this or what?
The answer is obvious from the post itself.
If DinoCon can correctly identify why it's bad to take funding from Epstein after his conviction, why are you in the comments asking questions to justify taking dirty money?
Think about it from any of Epstein's victims point of view. That the world continued to do business with Epstein, to protect him, to shield him from consequences because....of money.
Also I did answer you right here in one of my first comments.
The pursuit of science should not be more important than holding a sex-trafficking rapist and pedophile accountable.
To be fair, I honestly stopped reading after I saw it was a personal attack, because people who feel the need to stoop that low don't usually have anything to contribute to a discussion. Can you blame me? I come here for normal discussions, not Reddit-tier personal attacks.
Not to mention, that still didn't answer it, because I didn't understand until other people explained it that no-strings-attached money would actually be a moral issue.
Grow up and stop being a toxic asshole on an obscure internet board.
Grow up and stop acting like it's confusing that sex criminals shouldn't be allowed to do business after they've raped children.
What about people doing business with Trump? What about people doing business with the U.S. government under Trump? What about all federal government jobs? What about working for any company that gets any kind of direct or indirect federal subsidies?
The US government is different than an individual like Epstein.
If they were dealing with Trump as a businessman and not the president, I'd have the same view.
Not sure I agree that it's significantly different. I feel like this is just an excuse to forgive oneself for getting money from one devil while lambasting someone else for getting money from a different devil.
Knowingly using dirty money is immoral, even if used for a good cause [with the expection of undoing what made the money dirty in the first place]. On a tier-list, it would be a D tier option, above things like stealing toothpaste from a walmart, but below scalping via artificial inflation.
The immoral part is via association. Even if you denounce what the donor has done, you are still allowing them to be partially responsible for any good that comes out of the work/research.
Desperation for funding has often led people to compromise morality for progress, and I struggle to judge what is the correct decision, even if the moral option is clear.
Is that expected of paleontologists?
I mean really, honestly most people didn't give a shit about Epstein until someone suocided him. And even then, gave very few shits until earlier this year.
Like I'd expect that bar for politicians, celebrities, public figures...people who have money to begin with and staff to tell them that this person shouldn't be associated with...I don't know if I can set that same expectation on academics reaching out for funding from somebody whose been known to fund academia.
You don't think the line should be drawn at pedophilia?
What are we doing here? We're wholesale signing off on supporting a prolific and dangerous pedophile?
Epstein wasn't a household name until his death; even post "suicide" and the revelations about his pedo empire it's still not common for people to extensively research the background of strangers they're cold-calling, and Epstein had more than enough money to SEO away reports of his conviction.
If you didnt know him or weren't told directly about him being a pedo, it was unlikely that you could have known about him at the time. Most of the folks in the epstein files did know him though - and it's pretty easy to check which group someone falls into.
I would say his name became pretty well known before his death. I'd say more like 2018 with the Miami Herald exposé.
Less known but still pretty public was Giuffre in 2011 with the allegations against the Andrew formerly known as a prince. It was a pretty big story for the UK royal family. Maybe not "household" level though.
Epstein's arrest was also pretty big news, though yes it was only a month or so before his death, but I would have to say he was known by a pretty significant number of people by this point, definitely household name by the time of arrest.
After his death is when the conspiracy theories went all over the place, but I wouldn't equate that to his being a household name.
I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure what you're saying here.
You said he wasn't a household name until he died.
I would not agree with that, it was definitely earlier enough to cause issues, including reopening investigations, long before he died.
Thats all.
Thank you for clarifying! And I'm sorry, I don't think you're right. You may have known about him, but prior to his death practically nobody else knew or cared about him.
Even his arrest was global news, random google chart aside.
Reps were calling for Acosta to testify about the plea deal before his arrest, following the herald's exposé.
Before that it was brought up for ties to Clinton, quite regularly, especially during the campaigning up to the 2016 election..
Skyrocketing interest following his death (more to find out about his death than anything else) or following a very public and continual series of comments about the Epstein files doesn't really indicate anything other than google searches following significant events, not whether people were aware of him. That is really all that "interest over time" chart says, IMO - more people were searching for additional news, nothing more, on very recent, very public, very notable news.
Do you have any evidence of your claims? Because your out of hand dismissal of the Trends data is based on your anecdotal impressions and really isn't valid. It even shows a very clear spike in interest following his arrest, like you'd expect.
Please back up your position with anything concrete or drop this, I'm not interested in playing "facts vs. feelings" with you.
You provided an opinion, I provided mine.
There is nothing we can point to as evidence. I have pointed out why that chart isn't evidence, its simply searches, and greatly impacted by active and ongoing events. Change it to the past 12 months, the peak in February is massive, and there was no apparent interest in August of 2025.
Except there was - its just relative. February is when files began being released.
Google trends is not evidence or proof of anything in the slightest.
I'm sorry this bothers you so much to have someone disagree, but I do, and there isnt much more to say about it.
Enjoy your day/evening.
Yeah, didn't think you had anything. Charcterizing hard data as opinion, and dismissing something becoming common knowledge because it was receiving too much coverage, are both pretty absurd things to retreat to. And this is my opinion: it's deeply weird you're so hung up on not being wrong about something this dumb. Seriously.
edit: ...presumably it was searched for because of Epstien? That doesn't contradict anything I've said thus far, I'm once again confused as to what you're trying to say here.
I'm not trying to "win" anything, I think that may be the root of the issue here.
I also think you grossly misunderstand what google trends shows, which I tried to explain, but you seemed to think meant I was trying to "win" something.
I'll be done with you here. I would recommend you learn how google trends works though, because it doesn't mean what you think it does.
I'm still lost as to what you were trying to say with lolita express as a search term, but if you're gonna try and pull the "nah, you don't understand your source" reddit switcheroo thing I'm happy to write this off as a bad attempt at trolling and move on.
(edit: I'm genuinely confused as to what your point is. The data tracks pretty cleanly)
It seems pretty clear that the spike is due to the 2016 Trump/Epstein lawsuit.
Lolita express was Epstein's private plane.
There is no "switcharoo", trends does not show what you think it does, and does not work how you seem to think it works.
I'm aware of the plane, but I don't know why you've brought it up. You're trying to illustrate a point and fair enough, but the point you're making isn't clear - it just looks like Trends behaving exactly like it should. You're pointing at evidence and saying it's wrong, but... why do you think it's wrong?
There's no basis for you to make that claim - that's why this feels an awful lot like you're trying to win an argument, not actually explain your point.
Trends is just search history over time. It is entirely impacted by major events, and in no way demonstrates common awareness. Massive peaks - such as those resulting from ongoing events like a vote to make the release of Epstein files as law, and the ongoing nonsense and slow fed drip of heavily redacted files - skew the charts substantially.
Give me a moment to grab my laptop, and I'll edit in to demonstrate.
This is 2010 to 2016. The peak is shown in 2016, and another big jump in interest in 2015. Lets compare that same bit out to 2018.
Still has big peaks, specifically in 2015 and 2016.
Now lets go past the day he died - August 10th, 2019.
What happened to those peaks? Well, he died in custody, under very strange circumstances. Interest was higher, but there was awareness much earlier. What happened was a rapid spike in searches because of what happened, not because he was unknown.
Point being, Google Trends shows search activity, not commonality in awareness. Major events skew the chart. It does not, in any way, demonstrate the commonality of awareness of the existence of a person.
AH - Okay. I see where I have misunderstood what you were saying.
"Awareness" is a separate issue - there's no way to demonstrate awareness without some really comprehensive periodic survey results (that don't exist). The claim I made, household name, is based on people actively thinking about or discussing him. There's no way to know what people have forgotten, and random criminal names from years before may or may not stick around, so the only indicator we have is of people interacting with information about him.
Exactly. Thats all I'm saying. Epstein (and especially the Lolita Express) were not unknowns until after Epstein died. Did he become a more common discussion after? Absolutely, but it isn't as though people in general were unaware of his existence.
Thats all I'm saying.
Glad you two got it