Export ban for useless 'bomb detector'

[casebro]

But are we ignoring the placebo effect?

Border guards, and airport guards, prevent bombings through the 'image' of inspecting. Are you sure the x-ray machines in the airport are always working? I've never seen one 'closed for servicing' have you? As long as the belt is moving, the TSA is preventing bombings.

 

[r0ast_p0tat0es]

But are we ignoring the placebo effect?

Border guards, and airport guards, prevent bombings through the 'image' of inspecting. Are you sure the x-ray machines in the airport are always working? I've never seen one 'closed for servicing' have you? As long as the belt is moving, the TSA is preventing bombings.

Anyone who sells the placebo effect for $40 000 a pop should be shot.

 

[Architect]

I notice our Libertarians aren't wandering about talking about how great the private market is and why Governments should stay out of these things.....

 

[Beerina]

Nonsense. Fraud is just as far more possible in other systems.

Fixed. This includes the entire system itself, which fraudulently pretends, via hot air, to be just as productive as a free market system, even though, at best, it does not pull its own weight, per capita, in technological advancement, comparatively, and is thus a net detriment to their society, and the planet as a whole, since technology is more or less shared.

In other words, they are a net importer of technology, per capita, thus "keeping up appearances", so to speak, with the Joneses.

 

[HarryHenderson]

No. It's a statement of fact...

Oh okay cool, as long as it's a 'fact'.

I notice our Libertarians aren't wandering about talking about how great the private market is and why Governments should stay out of these things.....

Not wanting to play Captain Obvious™, but this story is precisely about 'Governments' being smack dab in the middle of 'these things' - unless I read it all wrong. Oh wait I got it, you were just railing against Libertarians huh...(mistakenly) thinking this was as good of an opportunity as any? Amazing.

 

[purplecharger]

I notice our Libertarians aren't wandering about talking about how great the private market is and why Governments should stay out of these things.....

There aren't any Libertarians that I know that don't think fraud is something that can and should be prosecuted. Are you sure you're not talking about Anarchists?

 

[ponderingturtle]

I know other posters have already addressed this, but let me just reiterate: that statement is a big chunk of stupid.

Except that in this case it does have something to do with it. If he needed to have evidence to make his claims, then he wouldn't have been able to make them and he would have been shut down and arrested years ago. But as the current system assumed that people are honnest in their claims it supports people like this and those magic healing bracelets.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Not wanting to play Captain Obvious™, but this story is precisely about 'Governments' being smack dab in the middle of 'these things' - unless I read it all wrong. Oh wait I got it, you were just railing against Libertarians huh...(mistakenly) thinking this was as good of an opportunity as any? Amazing.

The thing is that on this board the most common libertarian position argued with regard to this sort of responce is that it is the job of the consumer to do enough research to determine the effectiveness of the claims made by the manufacturer.

Govermental organisations like the FTC would be in the way of proper private rating agencies.

 

[Puppycow]

Randi has an update on this story:
Iraqi General Turns Down JREF Challenge, Gets Arrested for Bomb Detector Scam

Sometimes, things just work out… A couple years ago, I wrote to several authorities in Iraq offering them the JREF million-dollar prize if they could produce evidence that the ADE561 dowsing-stick actually worked. This is the device on which American taxpayers spent over $85 million just to supply it to Iraq to protect them. It was supposed to be an explosives-detector, but it just didn’t work, having no “innards” at all – just a swiveling rod that flopped to-and-fro. None of these authorities ever responded, and I suspected it was because they were already making their own profit from fluffing up the price…

Well, Iraqi police have just arrested Major General Jihad al-Jabiri, the commander of the bomb squad and one of those who received my letter! He’s a high-ranking police official who handled the business involved in buying the ADE561 toy, which was widely used by police and soldiers at security checkpoints and was meant to be a key weapon in the defense against insurgents. Sure.
. . .

He was probably getting kickbacks from McCormick.

I hope this means the Iraqis are no longer using these worthless things.

Iraqi lawmakers demanded security forces stop using them and that the government try to get its money back.

But some Iraqi officials have defended them, saying they have detected many bombs and munitions stockpiles.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/113...rged-in-bomb-device-scandal.htm#ixzz1EOmbkKow

Some people still don't get it apparently.

 

[Quad4_72]

Holy crap, that's what that thing is!? On patrol over here, whenever we would pass through Iraqi Police checkpoints we would see a few of them with those things in their hand and be like "WTF are those?" Now I understand why we still get rockets and mortars shot at us. They don't check the vehicles coming through for explosives, they just use that stupid little rod that doesn't do a damn thing.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...It is mind-boggling that so much money can be spent on something clearly so worthless; I'm not sure what that says about the people making the decisions...

It's not the economic system so much as it is stupidity or some combination of corruption and stupidity.

Corruption and greed are human nature for a minority of people. The culture, regardless of the system, can encourage or discourage those who would be cheaters. And I'm not talking about ethnic culture. I'm talking about the cultural influences for example, if everyone else is cheating, more people decide there's no reason they shouldn't also cheat.

Here are some more examples:

The approach we take to the free market which conflates free speech with the right to lie
Because we are reluctant ro regulate claims one's product is "better" or gets your whites whiter, your teeth brighter and so on, that has been translated into a reluctance to stop outright fraudulent claims like the fake bomb detector or Kevin Trudeau's, "Cures They Don't Want You to Know About". "Kills germs", "invented by a teacher" and "apply it to your forehead" or "your scar" are product promotions that are outright deception and clearly in a different class than whiter whites claims. We have to create an expectation that deception by misleading is qualitatively different than deception by inflated claims like whiter whites.

We don't value teaching critical thinking in our primary education system
This is a cultural value, but it is not bounded by country or ethnicity. The idea of revealing marketing schemes as mandatory curriculum in primary education will require a paradigm shift in what we expect primary education to include. And that is in addition to the obstacles to teaching critical thinking when it comes to logical assessment of evidence. That change will require getting over a huge barrier of resistance to debunking superstitious thinking processes. And the barrier is not just formal religion based opposition like Christianity might produce, but also parents' unsupportable beliefs of all kinds. Parents resist having their children learn things the parents don't believe.


The culture of corruption in market and political arenas is another important contributor, but if I add them to this discussion it will no doubt start a political discussion and we have enough of those threads already.

 

[Beerina]

Which is only possible because free markets exist.

Actually, command-and-control control markets do a much poorer job than the free market does, warts and all, in providing for the average quality and length of life of its citizens.

Secondly, command-and-control markets are susceptible to swindlers tweaking the ears of the leaders -- indeed, many of the leaders possess the same swindler capabilities, if not also the attitudes, of the swindlers you disdain.

The only difference is that, since the economic decisions are forced on everybody at the point of a gun, you cannot escape being forced to participate in the swindle. There's more to freedom than just freedom of speech, and in this difference lies the reasons capitalist economies are so much more powerful than anything else.

 

[Adolph]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm

Im appalled.
Reading this article was a jaw dropping experience, its incredible that these devices have been being sold with no scientific evidence that they even work.
I notice a reference to Randis million dollar challenge in the article, what is the story behind this?

You have got to be kidding me. I'd like to see the schematic for this thing. I'd also like to see how the purchase was made, was it someone's cousin in power who made the 'device' so there's a little kick back going?

How many people died relying on this woo?????

A friend of mine from 10 years ago said he could douse for water. Great, another friend had need of a well so I though I could actually see how this is supposed to 'work'. He never agreed to do it and my friend had a drilling company find the water and they didn't use two coat hangers, after all, they have to be gold plated during a full moon so they used those, after all, they were professionals.

 

[zooterkin]

The main discussion about the ADE 651 is taking place over here.

 

[Puppycow]

Holy crap, that's what that thing is!? On patrol over here, whenever we would pass through Iraqi Police checkpoints we would see a few of them with those things in their hand and be like "WTF are those?" Now I understand why we still get rockets and mortars shot at us. They don't check the vehicles coming through for explosives, they just use that stupid little rod that doesn't do a damn thing.

Are they still using those?

 

[Ladewig]

Anyone who sells the placebo effect for $40 000 a pop should be shot.

As far as I am concerned the price is irrelevant. If you sell a placebo device to someone who is going to use it to determine if a bomb is present, then upon the first death you are guilty of criminally negligent homicide (a specific U.S. crime (may not be relevant to U.K. or Iraq jurisdictions)).

 

[Quad4_72]

Are they still using those?

It may have been a couple months ago, but I swear I have seen guys with those things and wondered what the hell they were. I thought they might have been some sort of crazy ID scanner, but Iraqis don't have anything that sophisticated really.