British bomb detectors finally banned

Dowsing rods as bomb detectors in Iraq?!? If you haven't read about this yet, you must hurry over to Bruce M. Hood's blog, SuperSense (yet another of those blogs named after the author's book - I fully expect to write a book on pleiotropy when I go on sabbatical). It's a fantastic tale with tragic consequences, unbelievable levels of gullibility, shameless criminals, and ultimate justice.
Clearly this was pseudo-scientific babble. To my eyes, the ADE651 was a sophisticated looking dowsing rod, and yet the company ATSC Ltd that made them had already sold £50million worth of these devices to the Iraqis and had just secured another major contract.
I guarantee you this will end up as a movie-script one day.

I just found this on youtube:



Looks like a parody, and the company doesn't appear to be the same. In this video it's called Prosec, but Jom McCormick's company is ATSC. Here's one by ATSC:

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2 comments:

  1. bruce HoodJanuary 23, 2010 1:35 AM

    Thanks for the mention... It is a fantastic success for the blogosphere

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bjørn ØstmanJanuary 23, 2010 8:37 AM

    Here's the new wikipedia article on the ADE-651.

    ReplyDelete

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