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10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wanna-buy-a-bridge dept.

The Byelorussian Strikes Again writes "Wired offers up 10 of the most awesome snake oil gadgets, from industrial cables sold as $200 ionized pain-relieving bracelets to a plastic chip that cures anything, improves gas mileage and cleans swimming pools. One truly sad development: the infamous $500 wooden volume knob is no longer on sale."

16 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. Not to mention... by Bananatree3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    multi thousand dollar EPFX machines that run off random number generators. Apparently this William Nelson fraud character lives in a multimillion dollar house in budapest because of it.

    1. Re:Not to mention... by garlicbready · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The link reminds me of an article I saw recently in the Fortean Times
      (couldn't find a link sorry)
      during the early days of X-Ray's they were often used as a method for hair removal
      (you'd place an exposed body part in front of a wooden box / machine and the hiar would drop out)

      it was only later on that they discovered the slight problem with cancer

    2. Re:Not to mention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Except that this is almost entirely an issue of education and upraising. The renaissance didn't happen because of some large evolutionary leap where everyone became a lot smarter. Critical thinking, skepticism and the scientific method can and should be taught to everyone, regardless of their perceived genetic worth. Just letting people hurt themselves in the belief that the problem will eventually go away is futile when you're mistaken about the root cause.
      So yeah, enough with the social darwinism already. You fail to grasp natural selection.

    3. Re:Not to mention... by WWWWolf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      during the early days of X-Ray's they were often used as a method for hair removal

      And my dad's "fun experiments for kids" kind of book had tons of fun experiments kids could do with X-ray tubes. Such experiments were strangely missing from the children's science books for my generation. =)

      Radiation was used really, really often recklessly back in the days. X-ray machines here, nuclear elements there... I recently saw one documentary that mentioned an X-ray-based shoe fitting machine (complete with eyepieces for the salesman, the customer, and the customer's kids!). There was a segment about a rather famous invention called Revigator; zaps the drinking water with a good healthy dose of alpha particles with truly magical effects all around...

    4. Re:Not to mention... by Lord+Ender · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Selling false hope is among the most profitable and longest operating businesses in human history.

      Face it, religious people: You won't be reincarnated. You won't go to heaven. When you die--when the electrical activity in your brain ceases--that's it. No more you. Quit burning money at the alter of false hope.

      There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that any sort of consciousness exists in any form after neural death. The only reason people believe it is because they want to believe.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  2. Dowsing by plover · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My father in law showed me how he uses dowsing rods. He takes hefty copper wire (about 8 gauge or so,) cuts it into two pieces each about half a meter long, bends a right angle in each roughly in the middle, and then walks around with one held very loosely in each hand with the wires pointing forward as he walks. When he crosses a water pipe, or electrical wire, or whatever he's looking for, the wires in his hands swing together.

    He believes this with all his heart.

    So one day I had him do it over a stretch of ground we both knew to have some old pipes buried under it. And then I had him repeat it, blindfolded. He couldn't hit the same spot twice. Not even close. (The pipes were indeed buried roughly where he said they were when his eyes were open.)

    I tried to explain to him that he was simply remembering where he had buried the pipes, and that it was his subconscious mind that was causing the wires to cross, but he really didn't want to hear that. He'd rather believe in dowsing.

    --
    John
    1. Re:Dowsing by Viraptor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Dowsing++
      I don't know why that works - read some stuff about it lately, but it was mostly written by some strange maniacs that really *"believed"* in that - not very convincing. Anyways - my dad used to do that service for friends for many years - never advertised or anything - it was hobby, not a job. People recommended him to other people and those to other people...
      I haven't heard about even one case when he was wrong - maybe he was couple of times, but the amount of people that were happy with what he did was so big, it couldn't be just luck. I've seen him looking for water - on a big field, with low grass, very even ground - no special signs of anything -> and the rod moved - and I've seen good wells in those places later. I've tried it myself in my room once - you'd expect some slight feeling, if anything probably... Try it yourself :) you'll be surprised how strong the movement of the rod is - you don't have to do anything, but walk and try to keep it horizontally. There are some places when you won't be able to hold it straight and after 2 steps it will get back to normal.
      I don't accept opinions about dowsing from people who didn't try it. And I haven't met anyone who tried it and still thinks it's BS.

    2. Re:Dowsing by plover · · Score: 4, Interesting
      There are plenty of reasons why dowsing might appear to work so often. The world is full of clues, to someone who knows how to read them. A dowser probably picks up on them subconsciously. And a scam artist may pick up on them consciously, but has no reason to be truthful to you as to how he knows.

      So how do you find a water pipe, when you don't "know" where the water pipe is? Well, if you've worked in construction all your life, you will learn things about house construction and plumbing. The sewer pipe usually exits near the front of the building facing the street, often in a line perpendicular to the street from the vent stack on the roof. You know that sewer pipes are built with as few bends as possible, as bends cause constrictions and blockage. And the water pipe will frequently parallel the sewer pipe, because you know that plumbers rarely want to dig two trenches when they only have to dig one. So you drive up to the place, your brain picks up on the vent stack on the roof (but doesn't tell your conscious self,) and you start witching for the pipes. Your subconscious does the rest.

      Or out in the middle of an open field. Digging a trench for a pipe disturbs the ground. When a trench is backfilled, a small hump of dirt remains, but gets flattened out over time as the dirt is compacted. Sometimes the hump remains high over time, and sometimes the dirt is washed away before it's settled, leaving a slight depression. Some humans can detect minuscule changes in slope with their feet, and again this could happen without the dowser realizing it. Or the ground cover can reveal the presence of a dug-and-refilled trench, with less mature plants over the trench, or a slight change in the density of plant growth because of the digging, or plants that grow slightly differently due to the change in soil makeup beneath. There could be a difference in that weeds may be more or less prevalent over the refilled trench. Your feet can feel all of these differences. Cuts in the treeline at a distance can give visual clues, too.

      A good friend is a pilot who has flown pipeline inspection flights, and he says they're easy to follow, even without the little yellow signs. Ground cover and erosion patterns give them away, even under a field that I personally know has been tilled annually for at least 27 years since the pipeline was buried. If you doubt me, go check a google satellite map of any local pipeline you're familiar with -- you will find an unnaturally straight line cutting through fields, passing under roads, disturbing trees, brush, and altering creekbeds. Yet if you were walking across that field, you'd likely miss all those clues.

      Dowsers may be attuned to the differences without being aware that they are. But there's no magic behind dowsing. Sensitivity, observational skills, and experience are the really simple explanations. There's not much reason to "dig around" for a paranormal answer when there are perfectly logical physical reasons.

      --
      John
  3. Welsh water use dowsing rods by The+Frogstar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When we had our main water line in Herefordshire replaced, Welsh Water had a great deal of trouble finding the original pipe valve in order to shut it off. Our house is an Edwardian Rectory about 500 metres off the road so after consulting the old maps of the area proceeded to dig a series of pits across our front field. This went on for a couple of weeks resulting in a fairly good recreation of a WWI battlefield.

    It was pretty odd, we knew where the pipe entered the house and where the junction was to the mains, but the earlier Brits had a special way of routing things. Anyhow, believe it or not Welsh Water employ a dowser who looked like someone from the mesolithic; low and behold he found the pipe after a couple of days.

    Pot luck? Maybe. Or perhaps Welsh Water have a strong desire to instill mystical beliefs in their customers. Either way that episode certainly changed my views on it.

  4. Re:Where are the HiFi Speaker Wires? by fishbowl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm with you on Hi-Fi cables, but I do have a couple of "devil's advocate" observations.

    1. One of my tech jobs involved wiring a TV station. I have never before or since seen any wiring scheme so complicated, or with so many genuinely mission-critical components. They long ago realized that it was more cost-effective in the long run to buy versus build for the wiring. So they paid top dollar for really well QC'd, precisely fitted wiring, with a very sophisticated numbering scheme. We are talking thousands of kilometers of cables here, hundreds of thousands of connections, millions of dollars of liability for downtime.

    2. Some "hi-fi" wiring actually makes sense in the originally intended application. Take for instance, "directional" cables. I have a theory on this. Once, somebody saw patch cables that were intended for use in a production environment where the signal path was labeled. That is, in a situation where you have so many cables that are "To Reverb" or "From Preamp" that you actually benefit from having arrows visibly stamped on the wire. Folks who own big modular synths will back me up here. So somebody saw these cables and decided they could sell them to people who don't understand that the *wire itself* is not directional. Since pro studios use them they must be good, eh?

    3. I love to see audiophile setups where the owner doesn't even bother to do a minimal amount of room treatment. No matter how good your sound system is, in a square room with a low flat ceiling and walls at 90 degrees to each other, you're going to have all kinds of reflections, phase interference, and standing waves. In a really good *room*, a clock radio can sound good.

    4. Spend hundreds of dollars per foot on a cable that you need to be ruggedized, say, for the permanent install of the line array that you've built into a concert hall. Just because there are people who need this product (FOH engineers doing sound design for a concert hall, for example), doesn't mean you will benefit from the same tech in the home theatre setup in your house. And here's a hint: FOH line arrays aren't wired with any product from "Monster".

    --
    -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
  5. Audio Cables and more.. A slight rant.. by h.ross.perot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wandered in to Radio Shack the other day for a TOSLINK cable. Young "not quite a geek" spys me and approaches. "How may I help you?" he says. "I need a few TOSLINK cables" says I.. and reach for the Radio Shack house brand.. "OH" he interrupts; "You don't want those; you want these" and reaches for a brand name that will remain nameless. I see a 59.00 dollar price tag on a 3 meter cable and look at the fellow. "So; what's the difference" I ask (Knowing he has not clue) "Well"; said the young not quite a geek; "these have better insulation". "Oh?" I counter; "Insulation from what; sunspots?" "No" he replies; "for all of the electronic gear around your house. The better insulation blocks hum and pops". Sad thing was the young lad had no idea why his argument was pointless. I remember the day when I could walk into a Radio Shank and hob-nod with my fellow wizards.. Now; I could probably go to 7-11 and get better advice. Rant mode off ..

    --
    ... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg ...
  6. Stock spam of lube additive treated as terrorism by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A few years ago, I received many stock spams for "XLPI.PK", or Xcel Plus, which sells fuel and lubricant additives. Such additives are referred to in the automotive industry as "mouse milk"; they usually don't do much, and may make things worse. That whole category of products is mostly bogus.

    Back then, their web site contained endorsements from the FAA and the US Army. The web site reproduced a a letter of endorsement appearing to be from an FAA representative. I thought this was a bit strange, so I sent off a note to the regional FAA office asking if it was legitimate.

    A few weeks later, I got a call from an anti-terrorism investigator at NCIS. Someone at the FAA had looked at the letter and the web site. They apparently didn't like what they saw, and referred the matter for investigation of the use of unapproved lubricants in military equipment. That comes under the "sabotaging the war effort" laws, which brings in military investigators.

    I'm not sure what happened thereafter, but the spamming stopped and "XLPI.PK" is now trading at $0.001.

  7. Re:Subtle distinction by Dmala · · Score: 2, Interesting

    True snake oil is completely useless. Monster Cable is good quality, well manufactured cable. For 1/3 to 1/2 of what they charge for it, it would actually be worth using in some situations.

  8. Re:Where are the HiFi Speaker Wires? by nominanuda · · Score: 2, Interesting

    never seen gold plated optical wires, but I did have to upgrade to nicely shielded optical wires, and they do serve an important purpose: it is more difficult for my cat to chew through the cable. My first optical cable did look pretty cool after my cat had worked on it for a week or so--little red lights peeking through along the whole length of the cord.

  9. Re:Audio gadgets by Deb-fanboy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Some high profile Hi-Fi retailers don't seem to be able to tell the difference between physics and magic.

    For example I once purchased a Rega RB300 pick up arm (for my turntable) from a retailer in a British Hi-Fi Magazine who also advertised large expensive speaker cables. Now I know because I have seen the results of tests on many of these cables in the old Electronic and Wireless World, that it is very difficult to differentiate between these cables using mere science.

    The RB300 came of course with cables terminated with phono plugs. Now it happens that I use a moving magnet cartridge, and one of the characteristics of such cartridges is that they have a lot of inductance. This is usually compensated for by the capacitance of the cable between the cartridge and the amplifier. The cartridge which I used specified that it should be loaded with 200pF, a typical figure for a moving magnet.

    Now being of the nerdy persuasion (no surprise, I'm posting on /.) I measured the capacitance of the connecting cables to find that they were 380pF and 630pF. The result of such a missload is unpredictable but theoretically could cause a large ripple through the frequency band.

    When I contacted the retailer he was flabbergasted, he couldn't understand a word of what I was telling him. He kept asking "but does it sound right", to which I replied that as it wasn't correctly engineered I wouldn't fit it. He later phoned back again and got my wife, who though not technical herself, tried to explain to him that I had a meter with which I could measure capacitance. I eventually got the unit shipped back to Rega who replaced the cables, and then gave me an accurate measurement of new capacitance, which was in spec.

    Interestingly not long after I noticed that there was an upgraded model for the pickup arm, and a little cottage industry which could upgrade your RB300 with better bearings and new cable

    I never fitted the pickup though. My little adventure made me into a Hi-Fi luddite, and I instead rebuilt old an valve kit hi-fi system and an old turntable, so that I knew everything in the signal path.

  10. Paranormal Urination by phonicsmonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are actually scanned letters from Randi showing how he totally loses his cool and calls people names when they approach him about his challenge. One fellow claimed that he could stop eating for a year and wanted to take the challenge, but rather than Randi positing tests or asking questions as any reasonable person might be expected to do given that his challenge is supposedly designed to test exactly these kinds of claims, he instead wrote back calling the man a liar and then proceeded to tell him where to go in rather colorful language.
    Randi will not make a test which can cause physical harm. Liability. If you claim you can survive a jump out of an airplane without a parachute, you will not be tested. Similar if you claim that you don't need food to live. Presumably the test would involve 24/7 supervision for a month to make sure the claimant doesn't eat. After they starve, Randi is held responsible. He reserves the colorful language for these so called Bretharians since some naive people who actually followed these diets (unlike the charlatans that preach them and have been caught in Wendys) have died of starvation.

    Randi will handle all kinds of weird claims without getting mad. Last week he tested a woman that claimed she can cause anyone to urinate against their will "through the power of Jesus". http://www.randi.org/joom/content/view/125/1/