Reply With QuoteNewsnight seemed to claim all the credit on this one! The dateline of this thread shows otherwise.
Better yet, let's hope that the Iraqi inquiry isn't a whitewash, and they ask us to send him there for trial.Originally Posted by FarSideOfTheMoon
Newsnight seemed to claim all the credit on this one! The dateline of this thread shows otherwise.
I wonder who tipped them off.But the ban only applies to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Newsnight programme. There are (I think it was said) another 28 countries to which the ADE 651 is exported and the Govt. does not have the authority to ban to these countries.The ban on the ADE-651 and other similar devices starts next week.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ht/8471187.stm
Are there official admissions from other countries that they are buying them?
You could hardly trust the word of an apparent professional deceiver on how many he sold to who, and for how much.
Latest on the BBC website.
Looks like a lot of people fell for it, who really should know better.
Why did it take so long for "hot shot" journalists to expose that detectors based on woo woo haved contributed to the deaths of 100s of people ?
when do think the story of the woo woo bomb detector ADE651 first came up ?
last nights Newsnight article
or the New York Times 4/11/2009
UK Skeptics forum Oct 22 20/9http://www.ukskeptics.com/archive/index.php/t-3086.html
NPR September 8, 2009 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=111750111
no even in Aug 2008 it was old news http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/211-
swift-august-22-2008.html
and that article made the point that Richard Saunders on the Aussie skeptics had even trialed the device
so he must have been on the case a long time
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/178913-2.pdf
warns about dfetectors based on dowsing as none have ever worked in scientific trials
....I can't find a date for this one
I came across two interesting quotes in today's Independent...
If the quote is accurate, the Iraqi General's comment is very odd, seeing as the "bogus" equipment obviously does NOT detect bombs.Major General Richard J Rowe, of the US army, who oversees the training of Iraqi police in Baghdad, stressed that the American forces did not use the ADE 651. He said: "I don't believe there is a magic wand that can detect explosives. If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work." The American professional magician James Randi has charged that the detectors were a "blatant fraud" and offered Mr McCormick $1m if he could prove that they work.
However the device has some defenders in Iraq. Major General Jihad al-Jabiri, the head of the Interior Ministry's directorate for combat explosives, said: "Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is detecting bombs. I don't care what they say. I know more about bombs than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...n-1876388.html
It's not remotely odd if the general is deeply gullible, or is on the take himself.
Remember that a huge part of the price supposedly paid is for 'training and middlemen'.
I think we all know just what 'middleman' can mean.
The quotes listed above are from the original story in the New York Times on the 4th November, the link is below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/wo...=ade651&st=cse
As an aside the New York Times are doing a follow up story on this saga tomorrow, watch out for it.
regards
Now let's hope that Jimbo gets the full monty. A jail sentence and ll his ill gotten gains confiscated would be too good for him.
Cannot praise Techo, Lumpy et al enough for keeping up the campaign through thick and thin. We promised these b******s we'd get 'em. No credit required. Just the satisfaction of having helped keep the pressure up to a point where the story broke.
Now we want Gary Bolton at Global Technical and his GT200. Also the people behind the Alpha 6 and the PSD 2.
Also David Vollmar at SNIFFEX in Germany. Come on folks. Let's pressurise the authorities to completely shut down this dowsing scam!
I'm Meirion from Newsnight and I just want to clear up a couple of things.
First is as we all know the person who deserves the credit for first calling attention to these bogus detector scams is James Randi back in the mid 1990s. That's why when we broke our story on Friday at 14.00 GMT on the BBC Online website we said...
"Concern over the use of dowsing rods to detect bombs was first raised by American sceptic, James Randi.
Mr Randi has confirmed to the BBC that he is still offering Mr McCormick $1m if he can prove that the ADE-651 works."
Credit where credit's due.
That said there are about a dozen websites which have carried on the campaign over the last couple of years including yours and I have found them useful. I keep an eye on Randi - we once put him in debate with Uri Geller and showed exactly how Geller bends spoons etc and I awas aware of the fake bomb detector stuff from way back. I occasionally browse UK-Skeptics amongst others - especially when you're discussing one of my stories - such as homeopathic cures for malaria in 2006 (Royal Pharmaceutical Society will finally get round this summer to the disciplinary hearings for the chemists who we exposed prescribing water for dangerous tropical diseases - four years after the programme).
I only realised in November 2009 when I read Rod Nordland's excellent article in NYT that these so-called detectors devices were being widely used at checkpoints in Iraq. I assumed following this that something had been done. It wasn't till our former Baghdad correspondent Caroline Hawley came to me outraged after the December blasts that I realised they were still in use. Then we saw that McCormick was back in Baghdad with an Interior Ministry General and they were still both saying the devices worked. We decided that something had to be done urgently to close this down. Although similar devices to the ADE651 had failed tests at Sandia, US Navy Labs and Quantico no-one had specifically tested the ADE651 and proved that it didn't work and published that.
We set out to do that because we thought that might force the UK government to act quickly (whether for fear of embarrassment or because they needed some hard evidence or whatever others can speculate). On January 5th we went to ATSC's offices. The following day McCormick was arrested although the arrest was kept quiet. We acquired the supposedly key element of the ADE651 the "programmed substance detection cards" and arranged for lab tests. If they had had chips in them we would have extracted the code and tested what they could do. We expected to be able to prove that the "programmed substance detection cards" could not detect explosives or any other substances and therefore that the ADE651 could not work. About ten days before transmission we contacted government departments and told them we expected to have hard evidence. They said that they were looking at whether they could ban exports but there was no time frame for doing that.
On the Tuesday before transmission we told them that we had the hard evidence - because the electronic circuit in the card could not store any information let alone be programmed to detect anything - and we would broadcast on Friday. I imagine it would have been clear to them that if they did not take action urgently when we broadcast there would be a public outcry and political storm. But if you wish to believe that it was a coincidence that they announced a ban on exports two hours after our story appeared on the website and two hours before we put a short version of the story out on the Six O'Clock news... hey you're supposed to be the UK-Skeptics aren't you?
All we did with the help of Dr Markus Kuhn, Professor Bruce Hood, Sidney Alford and one particular hero who wishes to remain anonymous was prove that the ADE651 specifically could not detect bombs and give the UK government that evidence.
I think everyone who has campaigned against these products deserves credit. Incidentally we quietly contacted UK-Skeptics, James Randi etc once we had the evidence a few days before broadcast and quietly told them that we would be in a position to do something. We still have further evidence on the GT200 if that continues to be used in Thailand (the unnamed dowser "black box" that we opened in the film which was empty was in fact a GT200 - and we also have film of what's in their detector cards) We are also aware that the ban does not apply to the ADE651 in Pakistan where we have film of it being used. There's also the matter of all those other countries and other products such as Alpha 6, Sniffex etc and we will follow up if nothing is done about that.
I hope that makes things clear.
Meirion
Last edited by Admin; 24th January 2010 at 02:42 PM. Reason: Corrected our name to: UK-Skeptics
Well, I'd like to say a big thank you to Meirion and the Newsnight team for running with this and exposing it nationally. And, of course, embarrassing the government to take this seriously and act.
It's just a crying shame that it takes the embarrassment of exposure to make the government act rather than taking concerns over such bogus devices seriously in the first place.
We can point out that these devices are merely glorified dowsing rods that (appear to) work by the ideomotor effect but we don't have enough clout to force anyone to listen. So thanks again to Newsnight for their decision. An action that will undoubtedly save lives (because the use of these bogus devices has clearly cost lives).
.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
My reading is that the issue only became worth pursuing when it was evident that there was a potential for legal action. This is depressing! Given that there was clear evidence that the devices didn't work, were being sold to the gullible and were being used in the field - yet this was not enough of a scandal.
I assume it follows that unless British lives are proven to be at risk from the GT200, Alpha 6 & Sniffex then no legal proceedings are possible, hence there is insufficient to justify Newsnight making a program on them?
If I am being too pessimistic, then given that DD, Techno & Lumpy are obviously very committed perhaps clarity on the evidence that would work for you might provide a way forward.
I guess one small consolation of a long lead-in is that it makes it harder for someone to pretend they thought the devices worked when they've clearly known for ages that many people didn't believe they did.
Especially when someone responds to criticism by claiming the devices work by specific scientific effects, as McCormick has clearly done in public, they don't have much chance of later on pretending they're some innocent soul who just managed to fool themselves.
New report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/mid...st/8477601.stm"Some Iraqi officials are insisting that a controversial bomb detection device works, despite a BBC inquiry in which experts said the item was ineffective."
I wonder how many of the protesting officials were actually on the take, and are just trying to save their skins.
Sounds like another person who should be happy to prove their 100% confidence in the middle of a mess of booby-traps."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," the general was quoted as saying. "I have tested it in practice and it works effectively and 100% reliably.
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks