Merged [Ed] Get involved detecting the ade 651 detector / Jim McCormick arrested

[zooterkin]

Now we just have to hope that the outcomes of the trials are the correct ones! Shame we have to wait till next year, but since we started the UK campaign back in 2008, and thought it would be all over quickly, guess a few more Months on tenterhooks is just about bearable.

Well done, keep up the good work!

Both McCormick and Bolton have hired heavy hitting Q.C. Barristers at what will be considerable cost estimated at potentially between £500 000 and £1 million each. If they are convicted, raises interesting questions regarding lawyers profiting from the proceeds of crimes!

I don't think that's anything new.

 

[Dubious Dick]

Do you have any legislation about seizing the proceeds of crime? If so how much money did they make and do they have enough assets to pay the lawyers?

Yes, but innocent until proven guilty of course! We do not have the full details of the bail conditions which may well include some restrictions on their accounts, but assume that since not convicted (and may of course not be!), they are allowed to use funds for defences.

As to how much money they made, well certainly more than enough to be paying the lawyers. These Q.C. guys wouldn't take the cases if there was any doubt over payment!

PLEASE CAN WE BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO MAKE ANY COMMENTS THAT MAY BE PRESENTED BY THE DEFENDANTS AS PREJUDICIAL!

 

[Ladewig]

Yes, but innocent until proven guilty of course! We do not have the full details of the bail conditions which may well include some restrictions on their accounts, but assume that since not convicted (and may of course not be!), they are allowed to use funds for defences.

As to how much money they made, well certainly more than enough to be paying the lawyers. These Q.C. guys wouldn't take the cases if there was any doubt over payment!

PLEASE CAN WE BE VERY CAREFUL NOT TO MAKE ANY COMMENTS THAT MAY BE PRESENTED BY THE DEFENDANTS AS PREJUDICIAL!

I have no law degree, but I am guessing that such comments have to be available to the jury pool. I cannot imagine that very many potential jurors would be reading this thread.

But I will follow your advice and withhold my opinions. On the other hand, that particular horse may have left the barn several pages ago.

 

[Dubious Dick]

I have no law degree, but I am guessing that such comments have to be available to the jury pool. I cannot imagine that very many potential jurors would be reading this thread.

But I will follow your advice and withhold my opinions. On the other hand, that particular horse may have left the barn several pages ago.

Just to reassure you, we have some expert advice on the legal issues related to potential prejudicing of the trials. That advice suggests that we should be safe as long as we make no prejudicial comment from the point at which charges were actually laid i.e. July this year. As you say, this forum would not necessarily present a problem. The real problem would be if any mainstream media reported anything that may be considered prejudicial. However, we have given assurances that we will be cautious and only report the basic facts of the progress of the legal cases. Hence, it is unlikely that we will be saying much more before the outcomes of the trials next year.

There may well be news from other parts of the World regarding ongoing use of the various devices in places such as Mexico, Thailand and elsewhere. We have high hopes that news of the legal cases in the U.K. will help to bring an end to their use!

All best, DD

 

[Ladewig]

Just to reassure you, we have some expert advice on the legal issues related to potential prejudicing of the trials. That advice suggests that we should be safe as long as we make no prejudicial comment from the point at which charges were actually laid i.e. July this year. As you say, this forum would not necessarily present a problem. The real problem would be if any mainstream media reported anything that may be considered prejudicial. However, we have given assurances that we will be cautious and only report the basic facts of the progress of the legal cases. Hence, it is unlikely that we will be saying much more before the outcomes of the trials next year.

There may well be news from other parts of the World regarding ongoing use of the various devices in places such as Mexico, Thailand and elsewhere. We have high hopes that news of the legal cases in the U.K. will help to bring an end to their use!

All best, DD

Thank you.

I will follow the trial and hope that swift and sure justice is served.

 

[Biff Starbuck]

DD,

Thank you for the update! You and Techowiz have done outstanding work at encouraging the government of the UK to look into the sale of these devices.

 

[Dubious Dick]

While we await the commencement of trials in March, Techowiz has been detecting again and has discovered that Mira Telecom in Romania have found it difficult to give up dodgy dowsing rod detectors.

For those not familiar with the full story, Mira Telecom, headed up by Stelian Ilie, were in close partnership with James McCormick. Seems he invested some of his money from the Iraq sales of the ADE651 in Mira, and for a time he was a Director of a subsidiary of Mira.

Mira were active in selling the ADE651, including units to Constanza Airport in Romania. We tried alerting Stelian Ilie to the fact that the ADE651 was bogus, but instead of taking a responsible attitude like the respectable company he claimed they were and maybe checking out what we had to say, he defended the ADE651 and made various legal threats to Techowiz and me. Not that any came to fruition.

However, when the pressure got too much they ended their formal ties with McCormick and the ADE651, but never came clean and admitted they had been wrong to deal with it.

After all that you would think they would leave dodgy dowsing products alone. But no. Techowiz recently discovered a photograph of someone from MIra giving a presentation of the DKL Lifeguard which is a variant of the same bogus dowsing family that claims to be able to find people at distance and in, for example, collapsed buildings. The photograph is dated June 2012.

As Techowiz recalled, Dale Murray at Sandia Labs had de-bunked the DKL Lifeguard some time before Mira were clearly happily trying to sell it.

Do they never learn.

For more information on this see Techos Blog

HERE

One reason for spreading this news is that Stelian Ilie and Mira have done a good job of sterilising searches so that their involvement with these bogus products is buried deep. Hence we want to try to make sure that future searches will give anyone dealing with them the knowledge that they are not so squeaky clean. Not least because it seems Mira have managed to access European funding for various projects.

On a separate note it appears that the efforts of Carl have paid off and that Chuckie 'Chuckles' Christensen has shut down H3Tec and is no longer selling his wonder detecting and prospecting devices. A visit to his website shows a landscape where he claims he is now mining. Of course, we wait with baited breath for news that he has hit the mother lode!

Congrats to Carl and we are pleased to have played a small part in spreading the word about Chuckie and his didgy claims for the capabilities of H3tec. Sadly there are still many LRLs (Long Range Locators) on the market, mainly aimed at desperate prospectors, but at least Chuckie and his claims to be working with the military are now toast. Yee Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

 

[Biff Starbuck]

Physicists show bomb detecting dowsing rods still useless.

The MIT Technology Review covered the findings, or lack thereof, from physicists in Mexico who found the $20,000 GT200 explosives, drug, and weapon detectors sold to militaries and police around the world to be useless.

"Physicists Prove “Dowsing” Bomb Detectors Useless in Double Blind Trial - A widely used detector that relies on dowsing to find explosives and drugs has finally been proven ineffectual by physicists in Mexico" http://www.technologyreview.com/vie...bomb-detectors-useless-in-double-blind-trial/

Frankly, I would have thought the scientists at MIT would know better than to say this proves a negative, but it certainly does add to the stack of evidence showing that when dowsing rods are used in double-blind tests, the only work at a rate consistent with random guessing.

The full report of the study can be found here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3971v1.pdf

 

[Reno]

Aye, but will this make any difference to the sales of this dowsing rod, considering the very nice 'back-handers' I have no doubt are given to certain officials for allowing the contract for the sale of this dowsing rod to continue?

And no, I have no evidence to back up my assertation, other than worldly knowledge and Occam's razor.

 

[Dancing David]

Wow you have to wonder who actually buys them.

 

[Cuddles]

Frankly, I would have thought the scientists at MIT would know better than to say this proves a negative

Why? There's nothing wrong with saying you can prove a negative, since you can. You often can't prove a general negative, but there are plenty of more specific negatives that can be easily proved. For example, while I can't prove that there are no socks anywhere in the universe, I could very easily prove that there is not a sock in my drawer.

In this case, there is a very specific claim being made - that this device will detect certain things under certain conditions with a certain reliability. While the study doesn't prove that dowsing does not ever work under any circumstances, it does prove that this specific device does not do what it is claimed to do, and so proves a negative.

 

[Garrette]

Why? There's nothing wrong with saying you can prove a negative, since you can. You often can't prove a general negative, but there are plenty of more specific negatives that can be easily proved. For example, while I can't prove that there are no socks anywhere in the universe, I could very easily prove that there is not a sock in my drawer.

In this case, there is a very specific claim being made - that this device will detect certain things under certain conditions with a certain reliability. While the study doesn't prove that dowsing does not ever work under any circumstances, it does prove that this specific device does not do what it is claimed to do, and so proves a negative.

Thank you. I have attempted to make exactly the same point many times. I usually fail, but this says it well.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Why? There's nothing wrong with saying you can prove a negative, since you can. You often can't prove a general negative, but there are plenty of more specific negatives that can be easily proved. For example, while I can't prove that there are no socks anywhere in the universe, I could very easily prove that there is not a sock in my drawer.

In this case, there is a very specific claim being made - that this device will detect certain things under certain conditions with a certain reliability. While the study doesn't prove that dowsing does not ever work under any circumstances, it does prove that this specific device does not do what it is claimed to do, and so proves a negative.

Of course, we can count on the dowsers moving the goal posts and claim that such studies are not valid unless they test whether dowsing is possible under uncontrolled conditions. Which, of course, is not a test of anything except maybe gullibility.

 

[Hellbound]

Of course, we can count on the dowsers moving the goal posts and claim that such studies are not valid unless they test whether dowsing is possible under uncontrolled conditions. Which, of course, is not a test of anything except maybe gullibility.

Oh, let me try!

*ahem*

Well, you see, dowsing is not about the device, per se, but the interaction of the device with the latent extrasensory danger perception in the brain. In these tests there is no actual danger, therefore the sense is never triggerred, so of course these tests will fail.

TO properly test this, you need to use real bombs set to go off, to provide an actual danger that will trigger the brain's latent ESP to interact with the dowsing device. OF course, we cannot in good conscioence condone such dangerous testing, and you skeptics shoudl feel ashamed of demanding that people be put in harm's way just because of your closed-mindedness!


So, is that pretty close?

 

[Tolls]

Why are they doing these tests?
Hasn't the bloke been done for fraud recently over the fact they these things do not do what he said they did?
I could have sworn that was on the news not that long ago...

 

[CynicalSkeptic]

Oh, let me try!

*ahem*

Well, you see, dowsing is not about the device, per se, but the interaction of the device with the latent extrasensory danger perception in the brain. In these tests there is no actual danger, therefore the sense is never triggerred, so of course these tests will fail.

TO properly test this, you need to use real bombs set to go off, to provide an actual danger that will trigger the brain's latent ESP to interact with the dowsing device. OF course, we cannot in good conscioence condone such dangerous testing, and you skeptics shoudl feel ashamed of demanding that people be put in harm's way just because of your closed-mindedness!


So, is that pretty close?

Does the device maker claim that it uses a form of dowsing? I thought they claimed that the electronics were detecting the bomb and swinging the antennae, however Randi (and others) showed that it wasn't doing that, but was really ideomotor effect therefore dowsing/woo.

 

[Biff Starbuck]

Why? There's nothing wrong with saying you can prove a negative, since you can. You often can't prove a general negative, but there are plenty of more specific negatives that can be easily proved. For example, while I can't prove that there are no socks anywhere in the universe, I could very easily prove that there is not a sock in my drawer.

In this case, there is a very specific claim being made - that this device will detect certain things under certain conditions with a certain reliability. While the study doesn't prove that dowsing does not ever work under any circumstances, it does prove that this specific device does not do what it is claimed to do, and so proves a negative.

Good point. Since the salesmen have already claimed a level of reliability, that can be shown as false. Thanks!

 

[Biff Starbuck]

Why are they doing these tests?
Hasn't the bloke been done for fraud recently over the fact they these things do not do what he said they did?
I could have sworn that was on the news not that long ago...

I do not believe any of the recent sellers who were arrested in the UK have been convicted, just arrested and charged. When the Sniffex bunch were arrested in the US a few years ago, the convictions were for stock market violations rather than selling a dangerously fraudulent product.

In the text of the study, the authors describe the Mexican judicial system trying to evaluate the reliability of the devices since the government has been using them as the basis for searches and arrests for drugs and weapons. While the police and military had claimed the purchase agreements they signed prohibited them from letting the GT200 from be tested, fortunately the judge did not care about the contracts and ordered them to participate in testing to see if the products worked as claimed.

 

[Ladewig]

TO properly test this, you need to use real bombs set to go off, to provide an actual danger that will trigger the brain's latent ESP to interact with the dowsing device. OF course, we cannot in good conscience condone such dangerous testing, and you skeptics should feel ashamed of demanding that people be put in harm's way just because of your closed-mindedness!


So, is that pretty close?

First off, if I ever go to the dark side, I'll hire you as a copy writer.

Unfortunately the con-artist salesman often demonstrates the miraculous power of the device by telling police officers to hide some bullets in the conference room before he walks in and "electrically dowses" the location of the ammo. No danger there, but remarkable success.

 

[Mudcat]

Forgive me for what's bound to be a silly question, but by what process are dousing rods supposed to work? I know that they don't actually work, but I fail to see how what appear to be two simple sticks of what is apparently unremarkable metal is supposed to enable one to find water or anything else for that mater.