This weekend, news broke of the Lonely Planet writer, Thomas Kohnstamm, who admitted he fabricated portions of his guidebook coverage, and we've had several contributers -- both Gadling writers and our faithful readers -- weighing in with their opinion.

Aaron gave us 5 reasons to be outraged by this news, while Jeff White was doubtful of the legitimacy of guidebooks from the beginning. Matthew Firestone -- a guidebook author for Lonely Planet and Gadling contributer -- reminds us that not all LP authors are like this.

But it turns out Kohnstamm himself isn't even like this. His supposed unethical, stick-it-to-the-man, "they didn't pay me enough to go" actions of not even visiting the country in which he was writing about was a sham, too.

This article from the Guardian suggests that Kohnstamm -- in the guidebook publisher's defense -- "was hired to write about the country's history and not to travel there to review accommodation and restaurants."

Just another example of Kohnstamm blowing things out of proportion for the sake of shilling his own book -- all at the expense of Lonely Planet, their dedicated staff of writers, and the millions of guidebook readers throughout the world.

"It was expected I would never go to Colombia," he added.

We have a few other Lonely Planet authors on the Gadling team, so expect to hear from them, too.

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