bellinghman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bellinghman) wrote2010-01-22 03:05 pm
bellinghman) wrote2010-01-22 03:05 pm
One heck of a chicken is eyeing up its perch
It looks as though this story - Useless bomb detector sold worldwide risks lives - is finally getting mainstream attention.
To summarise - the Iraqi security forces have been gulled into paying up to $40,000 per item for a woo device that supposedly 'dowses' for explosives or whatever.
Of course it doesn't work.
When one fails to detect a bomb (as will be the case in Iraq), people get blown up. People get mutilated. People get killed.
What gets me is that not only is there a guy making serious amounts of money out of selling these useless objects, but that there are people around the world who have been convinced to buy them.
People - this is an attempt to use magic. And when it comes to the hard, physical world, magic doesn't work. On soft, psychological aspects, it may do - the human mind is a complex thing, and belief in something can have amazingly strong effects, to the extent of affecting one's physiology. But it won't work miracles - the strongest belief that one can fly without using wings won't going save one falling off a cliff.
This is almost as shameful as promoting homeopathy for curing AIDS.
To summarise - the Iraqi security forces have been gulled into paying up to $40,000 per item for a woo device that supposedly 'dowses' for explosives or whatever.
Of course it doesn't work.
When one fails to detect a bomb (as will be the case in Iraq), people get blown up. People get mutilated. People get killed.
What gets me is that not only is there a guy making serious amounts of money out of selling these useless objects, but that there are people around the world who have been convinced to buy them.
People - this is an attempt to use magic. And when it comes to the hard, physical world, magic doesn't work. On soft, psychological aspects, it may do - the human mind is a complex thing, and belief in something can have amazingly strong effects, to the extent of affecting one's physiology. But it won't work miracles - the strongest belief that one can fly without using wings won't going save one falling off a cliff.
This is almost as shameful as promoting homeopathy for curing AIDS.
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(But these fraudulent devices have been hawked around the world for a decade and a half. We really could do with some way of stomping on outright quacks a lot earlier.)
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Because a few LEDs flashing on and off are obviously going to make all the difference when a 2,000 IED goes off in that truck you're standing right beside.