Another score for SCIENCE!
It’s frustrating that people in this day and age still think dowsing rods work on anything. And it’s even more frustrating that companies would take advantage of people and sell such fraudulent devices.
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Hey banning the export means they stay in the UK.
I can’t believe that people can be confronted with a device that is supposed to detect something, but the only user interface is a swiveling rod. Seriously, if a device can detect something, it should be able to give some sort of reasonably reliable readout for it. In fact, this is a digital device, so just store the direction in its memory and display it on a screen. It costs tens of thousands of dollars, yet people think it’s reasonable there is no LCD on it?
No LCD, no batteries – just a £40,000 price tag.
On the upside, the guy who sells them was arrested and charged with fraud the other day.
Speaking as an ex Customs officer, I wonder why we don’t just train a lot more sniffer dogs. They’re awesome, way better than any electronic device. They can smell money, explosives, drugs, you name it – and yet we’re messing around with body-scanners and “random” searches. Plus you can play fetch with them and give them a bit of a fuss to de-stress. Now that’s what I call a win-win.
“… I wonder why we don’t just train a lot more sniffer dogs.”
I presume it’s all down to cost … oh and the fact that dogs seem to like sniffing people’s crutches anyway!
I once had occassion to witness a roll of 20,000 Euros being pulled from a lady’s vagina – sometimes they like sniffing crotches for very good reasons!
Well I suppose it makes a change to ping pong balls!
I don’t know why but I have the image of an ugly fat woman in my head reading your comment.
Actually she was quite hot. Eastern European, probably Polish or Czeck; I’d guess she’d been working as a prostitute and was now being used as a money mule to take money back to the pimps back East. I never found out for sure though, since she never came back to reclaim the money.
I may never use paper money again :-(
Absolutely. I would rather be thoroughly sniffed, or even strip-searched, instead of being subjected to more radiation. I’ve already been subjected to unnecessary medical x-rays and even microwaves from an improperly shielded military antenna..
James Randi talked about this on his youtube channel. Apparently the US government was fooled by him too for a while in the 80′s. After hearing what Randi had to say, it is surprising that it has taken them so long to charge him with fraud.
Some people are just so exceedingly immoral it defies belief. What a scumbag.
Actually dowsing for water actually works with the right sticks. Just throwing it out there.
So long as we radically expand the definition of “stick” to include “drill” that actually finds out if water is down there by making a hole deep enough to, y’know, check.
I’ve heard rumours that the LAPD are very succesful at dowsing for black people with their nightsicks, though.
No.
Um… No. Every time dowsing has actually been tested, it’s been proven conclusively not to work.
Double-blind tests say it doesn’t.
Dawkins debunks dowsing
erm … dowsing exists outside of science that’s why you can’t test for it. WHAT HAS SCIENCE EVER DONE FOR US???????
Yes of course it does … maybe you just need the idiot sticks to beat people with when they’ve fallen out of the idiot tree and hit every branch on the way down.
“Actually dowsing for water actually works with the right sticks. Just throwing it out there.”
Thanks for your input Storm.
Thank you for making my day.
They should put the git in the middle of a minefield. Let him dowse his way out.
Win.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry is standing by the devices according to the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8477601.stm. Assistant Deputy Minister General Tareq al-Asl has said ;
“The reason the director of the company was arrested was not because the device doesn’t work, but because he refused to divulge the secret of how it works to the British authorities, and the Americans before them,”
My guess is that they will withdraw the devices, citing irregularities to do with the contracts. Then change the angle of the story by blaming American and British petulance at not being told the “secret” about how the devices work. Hey presto! nobody loses face (except all the people who had their faces blown off) and nobody gets sacked.
My other prediction? nobody will be found guilty of anything over this and the company involved will stay in buisness with its directors staying as rich as ever.