Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein

[UpInArms]

2. Am so glad Aaronson listened to his mom

Instead of Googling Epstein, Aaronson, then 29, turned to what he considered an even more reliable source: his mother. She did some checking. “Be careful not to get sucked up in the slime-machine going on here,” she wrote back, adding, “Since you don’t care that much about money, they can’t buy you.”

Her wise counsel, Aaronson says, saved him from doing something he later would have greatly regretted. “If not for my mom, I might have gone and talked at a workshop to kick off the project,” he says. “I don’t think doing that would have made me complicit. But, you know, it would have been very embarrassing for me.”