Archive for the ‘dowsing’ tag
Quackery is harmful to one’s freedom, but not his wallet
Jim McCormick, director of the company ATSC, was yesterday (Friday 23rd) arrested on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation.
For around £30,000, he would sell you an “explosives detector” (Iraq spent about £52 million on them) which worked using the “body’s own static electricity” for power. The device had a wand on a loose hinge and “detector cards” would slot into the base to make it detect different things, in ATSC’s claims anything from TNT to semtex to elephants with the ADE-651 (the device in question). I didn’t make that last one up.
Except that BBC’s Newsnight got hold of one of the cards, one for TNT, and had it analysed. It turned out to be nothing more than a simple retail anti-theft tag. In essence, the device is a dowsing rod, which have never been shown to work any better than dumb chance in any trial. Iraq has ordered an investigation, the UK has banned their export and Mr McCormick is looking at time behind bars.
I’d like to know what the hell Iraq was thinking of? The FBI had had warnings out since 1995 not to use “bogus explosives detectors”, the ADE-651 had never passed a single effectiveness test and James Randi offered McCormick his $1 million USD prize for proof of paranormal power should the ADE-651 pass a controlled effectiveness trial.
All the warning signs were there, yet Iraq still blew £52 million on a piece of plastic, a few clothes tags and a bent coathanger which was even claimed by its own vendors to operate in a “non-scientific” way.