John Barnett former Boeing employee and current whistle blower was found dead in his truck on 03/11/2024. He was 62 at time of death, in Charleston to participate in legal proceedings linked to his whistleblowing case.
This resolves YES if consensus among mainstream media in 3 months is that he died of foul play. Resolves NO consensus is that he died from suicide, natural causes, or an accident.
If at market close this is unresolved I'll extend the market.
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John sounds like he was a good guy.
Investigators also detailed the contents of a notebook with Barnett's fingerprints found next to him in the car passenger seat which, according to the police, contained "what amounts to a suicide note."ย A copy of the note was released, in which Barnett told his family and friends he loved them, and wrote "I can't do this any longer" and "I pray Boeing pays."
Over that time, he developed concerns about the way the company was operating. Before resigning, he filed an administrative complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The agency said it had no reasonable cause to believe Boeing violated whistleblower laws. He then filed a lawsuit in 2021, alleging a litany of safety concerns. Among them: stray titanium shavings falling into electrical wiring, defective oxygen tanks, and managers urging him to cut corners.
We should probably be making markets about what consequences Boeing will have for violating safety regulations, if any.
The notebook seems like reasonable evidence to me but how is this considered evidence?
Investigators closed the case after receiving a ballistics report stating the bullet had been "fired by the firearm located in the victim's hand" and a completed autopsy from the coroner's office confirming Barnett died by suicide.ย
As if you can't shoot someone and then put the gun in their hand. In fact it would be weird to murder someone and then put a totally different gun in their hand. There is no reasonable world where the gun in his hand isn't the gun that shot him, this information does not discriminate between murder and suicide.
(I think it was probably a suicide, I'm just saying the quoted evidence isn't good evidence.)
and a completed autopsy from the coroner's office confirming Barnett died by suicide.ย
The autopsy confirming a suicide seems like bigger news than the ballistics report.
My years of watching serialized network television tells me that a quirky coroner with a morbid sense of humor must have checked the angle the bullet was fired for, compared it to the body's position, checked the body for gunshot residue, etc etc.
I think if the police investigation is not closed by June 11 I'll have to extend this market.
Please convince me I am wrong.
@GCS Yeah extending until after the police investigation ends and the media has time to report on it seems very reasonable
I looked at all the prominent whistleblowers in the last ~50 years, and while some people have been seriously harassed and felt their lives were in danger, there's only a single case where someone was plausibly murdered by a private company. (Governments murder whistleblowers all the time.)
@etirabys Let me know if you have any ideas for other versions of this market with different resolution criteria that you'd want to bet on!
I think it's very very unlikely that there is media consensus that there was foul play.
@etirabys I'd be willing to bet at least 500k mana / 500 usd at 17% on the media consensus in 3 months not being foul play, and similar on similar markets
Whistleblower Josh Dean of Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems has died
submitted for your betting pleasure: another sudden whistleblower death
Surely America's most trusted news source counts as part of the media
https://www.theonion.com/boeing-promotes-mysterious-employee-known-only-as-the-1851333169
@Gabrielle if you have a proposal for different resolution criteria for a new market I'd be curious to hear them.
@Joshua I don't have a good alternate proposal; it's a hard thing to make a market against! A MSM consensus like this is probably the best proxy we can get, but it's just still not a good proxy.
The JFK assassination is the most obvious comparison for this, and we still don't have an objective answer to that sixty years later.
@traders I have limit orders for NO, fill them if you think this actually happened.
Not sure how to bet on this. I'd estimate 75% chance of murder, but much lower chance that mainstream media widely recognizes it as murder. My argument for it being murder is basically on priors:
- if he was gonna commit suicide, he could do it at any point in his life
- if Boeing wants to murder him as a cover-up, they will do it shortly after he comes out with accusations against them
The fact that he died shortly after whistleblowing is a big odds update toward murder