British military comes to its senses, bans useless “bomb detectors”
January 22, 2010 1:05 pm
If you’re not a regular visitor to randi.org (that’s famous skeptic James Randi’s website), you might not know about their fight against dangerous quackery; more specifically, their attempts to expose bogus “bomb detectors” that are nothing more than dowsing devices. The device in question, called the ADE-651, has no electronic components to speak of and has a rather unimpressive looking antenna on it. This didn’t stop the Iraqi military from dishing out a massive $85m dollars on the piece of junk. If you’re wondering how they could spend such an exorbitant amount of cash on a handle with a TV antenna on it, it’s because each device costs about $40,000.
I can’t imagine how many people have died as a result of using this expensive piece of shit. Not only does it fare not better than random chance at detecting anything (the only thing I would venture to say it detects is complete gullibility), it’s based entirely on dowsing “principles”. You might remember dowsers as the old foggies who run around with a stick thinking it leads to water that you used to point at and laugh as a child. Well, laugh no more, as its use has put hundreds and thousands of people lives at risk. There’s no telling what kind of damage this thing has done, or how many deaths can literally be attributed to it.
The CEO of ATSC who produces the ADE 651 was recently arrested on suspicion of fraud, but he continues to defend his product, claiming that the only reason people don’t like it is that it looks crude:
Mr McCormick told The Times that his device was being criticised because of its crude appearance.
He added: “We have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.”
Is this fucking guy for real? No, we don’t need flashing lights on your piece of junk; we need you to give all the money back, followed immediately by your long incarceration, where I hope you’ll be beaten senseless on an almost daily basis for the terrible pain you’ve inflicted, fuckface.
(props to Kevin for the find)
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8 Comments
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January 22, 2010
Holy shit.
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January 22, 2010
That’s really good news. I was just talking about this to my wife last night. I used it as an example of why I get frustrated when my mother-in-law talks about acupuncture and how good it is.
But I thought it was Iraqi government buying this things from that McCormick dude. What does the British military have to do with it?
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January 23, 2010
Over 250 Iraqis have lost their lives in the last 4 months due to the failing of the scam device ADE651.
Further, the picture you have above is of another scam device the HEDD1 it is NOT the ADE651.
regards
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January 23, 2010
Update guys – we’ve arrested the guy who made the things:
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January 23, 2010
I’m in the wrong business
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January 24, 2010
fucking sad
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January 29, 2010
$40k per device eh? I would love the meet the person responsible for creating that purchase order. Presumably that person is also responsible for acquiring other life saving equipment? Will the next thing we hear be the military dumping medical doctors and medicine for homoeopathy?
I would love to put it down to straight stupidity on the military’s part, but I’m sure that if you look hard enough you will find some of that $87m found it’s way back to the people who signed the purchase order.
OFL – http://bit.ly/cG177s
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July 9, 2010
Being a new blogger, I would like to tell you that you have given me much knowledge about it. Thanks for everything.
Mr.parts tools
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