Bloomberg Business Week has today published an article about the direct selling industry that appears to be little more than a propaganda piece straight from the pen of MLM critic Robert FitzPatrick. It astounds me that supposed journalists do so little research on these self-declared “experts” and even less on the claims they’re making. So I’m going to do their job for them and write a series of articles on some well known MLM (and Amway) critics, who they are, and how their claims stand up to the facts.  My current list –

General MLM Critics
Robert FitzPatrick (Pyramid Scheme Alert)
Jon M. Taylor (Consumer Awareness Institute)
Dr Stephen Barrett (MLMWatch)
Bob Carroll (The Skeptics Dictionary)
Rick Ross (The Ross Institute)
Tracy Coenen (Sequence Inc)
Steven Hassan (Freedom of Mind Institute)
Dean Van Druff (What’s wrong with multi-level marketing?)
Peter Bowditch (ratbags)

More Amway-specific Critics
Russell Glasser (The Perils of Amway)
Scott Larsen (Amquix)
Steve Nakamura (JoeCool, various blogs)
David Touretzky ( Amway/Alticor/Quixtar Sucks!)
David Brear (various blogs)
Shyam Sundar  (Corporate Frauds Watch, India)

If there’s others you’d like me to address, please drop me a note in the comments below!

Update:

New post on Steve Nakamura aka JoeCool –  Who is Amway critic Joecool? And does he owe me $50000?