the article's current treatment of the cult issue is unsatisfactory it quotes journalist ian johnson at length for his common sense argument that falun gong is not a cult its members marry outside the group have outside friends hold normal jobs however it fails to quote any professional cult scholars like singer except to deride their work as legitimizing the crackdown the respect towards the anticult movement within academia an unclear issue but continuously repeating that they are an extreme fringe does not automatically make it true is not necessary to have their opinions in the article the issue of whether falun gong is a cult is important to cover from the point of view of studying the media battle between falun gong and the outside world the fact that apologist authors like ownby are forced to grapple with the cult issue even if his comments like johnson's are based on personal impressions and not an objective psychological checklist like singer's means that the question is notable btw the academic field of religious studies is well known for its postmodernist defenses of what popular opinion nearly unanimously derides as dangerous cults like scientology wouldn't it be interesting if someone commented on this tendency as it relates to falun gong