Sometimes the news holds anomalies that aren't always apparent at first, and perhaps it pays to question a little more deeply what's going on, especially when it involves beliefs more deeply cherished than questioned by others. Shades of men who stare at goats!
Yesterday in the NYTimes there was an interesting bit entitled British Man Held For Fraud In Iraq Bomb Detectors. The British company ATSC Ltd. sold the government of Iraq some 800 ADE 651 bomb detectors for at least $85 million, paying between $40,000 to $60,000 each, even though the company is marketing them for $16,000, although ATSC's manufacturing costs from suppliers in Britain and Romania is $250 each. But, after all, the ADE 651s were capable of detecting "minute traces of explosives, drugs or even human remains at distances of up to 6 miles by air, or three-fifths of a mile by land", if one can believe the company brochure. It's decribed as "a hand-held wand with no batteries or internal electronic components, ostensibly powered by the static electricity of the user, who needs to walk in place to charge it. The only moving part is what looks like a radio antenna on a swivel, which swings to point toward the presence of weapons or explosives. "
Okay, so the anomaly is not the 24,000% markup being charged; such exorbitant gouging of governments is not unusual at all. The unusual part is what was being sold. An ATSC "associate" states that “Everyone at ATSC knew there was nothing inside the ADE 651.” Lab tests run by the BBC seem to bear this out, determining that "its bomb-detection component was an electronic merchandise tag of the sort used to prevent shoplifting."
Wait, so just what is this bomb detector after all? Well, the suspect, Jim McCormick, former Merseyside police officer and managing director of ATSC Ltd., who is being held by British police on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation, has spoken out on the subject. He describes the underlying principle as being similar to that used by dowsers for finding water, essentially a tricked out divining rod. The article quotes him as saying “We have been dealing with doubters for 10 years,” he said. “One of the problems we have is that the machine does look primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.”
Okay, so it seems that McCormick was able to dupe high goverment officials into accepting questionable remote detection principles that are accepted as somewhat fortean, but there are still critics who were not so willing to be open minded about capitalizing on far sightedness. “I didn’t believe in this device in the first place,” said a police officer at a checkpoint in central Baghdad, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. “I was forced to use it by my superiors and I am still forced to do so.” I guess that not everyone is quite so willing to put their life on the line for someone elses unquestioning beleif in anomalistic phenomena.
Or, as someone else has said, "Consider everything, believe nothing." And don't feel forced to use that which you don't beleive is working, just becauuse someone says it's so.
