Thursday, January 28, 2010

When Nonsense Kils

Pseudoscientific nonsense such as Dowsing (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing) has been around for ages. It's something that I detest, but never more do I abhor such nonsense as when it actually results in death and bodily harm.

Jim McCormick, based at offices in rural Somerset, UK., has sold $85 million (yes, million) worth of completely fake ''bomb detectors'' to various governments for profit under the guise of offering protection. These ''devices'' are nothing more than glorified dowsing rods, and the ''chips'' inside them were discovered to be useless RFID chips, such as those found on price tags. There were warnings about this fraudster over a decade ago when he was selling these from within the US, mainly coming from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) but these went ignored.....

Now that people have been killed by bombs not being detected by this stick with fake technology in it, the UK government has finally stepped in.

The large question here is why are governments buying untested technology from a single person making wild, unsubstantiated claims? This has to stop. Police using ''psyhics'' is bad enough, and now this. When our very governing bodies buy into pseudoscientifc bugaboo with nary a discerning glance, we're either dealing with rampant stupididty and gullibility, amazing greed, or both. Either way, we need to WAKE UP.

Read the story and watch the embedded video to get all of the details.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm

2 comments:

  1. Wow this makes the FBI look really bad. Plus how could they just up and move and keep selling the same thing under a different name? It just boggles the mind.

    Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

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  2. That shit happens all the time. The heat is on, they pick up and move, and do it all over again.

    This world is fucking stupid. Look at Peter Popoff. Outright busted for being a fraud, 20 years later, he's back out in public, doing it again, in the same fucking country, even. And he's not being arrested, NO, he's making millions again.

    I guess if your business is religion, there are no rules.

    ReplyDelete

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