Slashdot Mirror
Iraq Swears By Dowsing Rod Bomb Detector
jggimi writes "According to the New York Times, more than fifteen hundred remote sensing devices have been sold to Iraq's Ministry of the Interior, at prices ranging from $16,500 to $60,000 each. The devices are used for bomb and weapon detection at checkpoints, and have no battery or other power source. Sounds great, but according to a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, they work on the same principle as a Ouija board — the power of suggestion. He described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod. Even though the device has been debunked by the US Military, the US Department of Justice, and even Sandia National Laboratories, the Iraqis are thrilled with the devices. 'Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,' said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives."
where those billions and billions of dollars went.
they shouldn't be allowed to have the bomb. On the plus side, there an easier target.
Maybe I should sell them my ballistic missile protection rock. Only 10 million dollars, and if you are hit by an ICBM contact me for a full refund.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What a hilarious quote. See? They're not so different from us after all.
Why should our good men and (and a few women) have to die to 'help' these people?
I am interested in purchasing your bomb-repelling rock.
With people like that Iraq is doomed to remain the well of ignorance, superstition and tribal violence that it is, and that it has been for hundred of years.
... is alive and well. And it takes critical thinking with the possible addition of someone qualified and able to conduct statistical analysis to show someone there is no magic.
Sure, it finds bombs, but youre spending hours wandering around and forgetting about the time you didnt find a bomb.
But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board”
So in effect, this device will justify my search of anyone that I feel has a bomb. Even if I know it's bogus (and I'd not be surprised if the Iraqis do know this), it permits me to search anyone I want just because I feel they may have a bomb. I'd not be surprised if there was some correlation between suspicious-looking-folks and folks-with-bombs, so the power of unbounded searching is probably (somewhat) effective.
On the other hand, if they really do believe that these devices work, then the bombers may share those beliefs. That, also, could deter bombings.
Either way, it's a win for Iraq ... well, if you don't care about human rights and the millions of dollars.
Even a stopped clock's minute hand is right 24 times a day.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
It works on a very simple principle, that is used in many devices sold today: the company that makes them probably kicks half the price back to the official who authorized the purchase.
IMO, this is just the placebo effect.
From what I understand, detecting bombs is based on looking for something out-of-place, something that shouldn't be there. Give somebody one of these things, and they start trusting their instincts more and voila, more bombs are being detecting because of the magic stick.
nothingtoseeheremovealong
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
It may still have a benefit if the terrorists also have such a blind belief in the technology. If they know there are bomb detectors at the gate, they will be less likely to try to sneak a bomb through.
Qxe4
Anyone see the Bugs Bunny cartoon (@6:40) where he was working on an assembly line during WW2? He had a little hammer that he would tap bombs with to see if they were good or not. Of course one after another was a dud, until finally...
I guess if your divining rod detects a suicide bomber... then what? They detonate? I guess it is 100% effective in that case. Bomb detected.
Better known as 318230.
In fairness, it might be possible that these wands are actually functioning as a *mild* deterrent, if some of the terrorists have been fooled into thinking that the wands will detect their bombs. This is not enough to justify their cost or the foolishness of relying on them alone to detect bombs, but at least it might mean that the wands aren't contributing entirely negative value to those who are using them.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Here in the U.S., a great many of our police departments and even federal agencies spend millions on a technology that is equally ridiculous and unprovable in any sort of peer-reviewed scientific study: Lie detectors. If we can have our lie detectors, then surely the Iraqis are entitled to their bomb sniffing dowsing rods.
The proponents of these devices, when confronted with the undeniable technical worthlessness of them, inevitably retreat to the claim that the actual benefits come from the psychology of having people being "investigated" by the devices believe that they are actually capable of something, and then watching their reactions.
They also double as tiger repellent rocks. Since use of the rocks, nation building is way up and tiger maulings are way down. With less than 2 tiger maulings a day in the green zone.
Dear General Jehad al-Jabiri,
You may be surprised to hear from me. I am Mrs. John Mutube, former wife of the late general in charge of Nigerian counterterrorism forces. Upon his death I was amazed to discover 15000 (FIFTEEN THOUSAND) special BOMB DETECTION RODS. As my party has fallen out of favor, I find myself destitute. So I am offering you full possession of these BOMB DETECTION RODS for only the cost of shipping. Since the devices are heavy, I must ask that you pay for postage so I can deliver you the rods. Send either money order or credit card particulars to
Mrs. John Mutube
123 Mutube Street
Benin, Nigeria
I look forward to your successful counterterrorism endeavor.
I am, yours truly,
Mrs. John Mutube
#DeleteChrome
All that use of this device shows is that bombs are rare enough in practice that strict security is unwarranted. It's certainly cheaper security theater than the TSA's sniffers and X-Ray machines. It works because the population believes it works. It'd never go over in the more-educated United States.
Sure, my local politicians are incompetent and corrupt.
But I see now that it could be much worse!
They also clean your fuel injectors and turn your enemies into newts!
It isn't like anyone in the US uses dousing rods to find water. Oh wait? What's that they do. Well, at least they don't construct electronic devices which they claim do things which they don't? Oh wait, what's that about all sorts of alternative medicine devices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgone? I suppose I don't even need to bother to list all the other fun beliefs, like astrology, ghosts, electronic voice phenomena. Oh and doesn't the federal government still use lie detector tests despite the scientific consensus that they don't work? Yeah, despite all that, let's make a big deal about what the people in Iraq are doing. After all, they are primitive foreigners. There's no way good, right-thinking Americans would act that way.
True, but lie detectors do actually measure things. Heart rate, etc. They're not accurate, but they're not magical either.
This is completely retarded, instead of the lie detector's mostly retarded.
Something I learned from P&T:B.... Clench your ass muscle to fool lie detectors.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
When I was living in NY, I worked with a fellow who had his well pointed out by a local Dowser. It cost him $300 in 1990.
And for $300, he would tell you exactly where you should dig, precisely how far you should dig, how much water you were going to get (GPM), how long it would last, whether it was subject to drought or could be relied upon during dry spells. He could also eliminate sources with salt, sulfur, iron, calcium and anything else you don't want in your water. He'd take a wire flag and write the instructions for the driller on the flag, then stick it precisely where they were supposed to drill.
The catch?
The Dowser gave his guarantee in writing, with a quadruple your money back if anything was less than what he promised. Goes dry? Not enough flow? Muddy, salty, iron, sulfur? He'll pay you $1200.
When I heard the story from my co-worker, the old fellow hadn't needed to pay anyone back in the 20 years he'd been doing it. Dunno if he's still alive now, though.
And I'm not sure he'd want to try this out with explosives if he still is.
[End Of Line]
" 'Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,' said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives."
Did GWB personally appoint these people?
Vietnam is going to look like a walk in the park...
I got better...
In all fairness to the Iraqis, much of modern forensics "science" is in a similar state in this country. Do you really believe they can match a smudged fingerprint to a single person with 100% accuracy? Then can't match DNA with that accuracy. Of course with DNA they have statistical controls, so they actually have a clue what their accuracy is.
Here's how it really works, the investigators interview everyone they think may have had something to do with it, they decided who they think is guilty and then they look for the evidence to match what they already think is true. This is the same basic principle the Iraqi bomb-detecting dousing rod works on.
So until we are in a place where everyone has a basic understanding of scientific principles, and everyone has a mind inquisitive enough to ask "does this really make sense" we will always be in a place where someone can hold up some scientific sounding technojaron and people will believe him as long as they want it to be true.
Otherwise, they'd start complaining about all of the false-positives from the devices.
Not for using known-bogus props as an excuse to conduct searches, which would be clever, but for deliberately paying $60,000 for each of them!
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The dowser explodes, thereby simultaneously indicating where the bomb was and disposing it.
What? Too soon?
I don't know how much a real bomb detector cost, but it'll probably be more expensive than these bogus wands.
The people who bought this probably knew it doesn't work but they use it anyway to give whoever they are protecting a (false) sense of security.
No post about polygraphy is complete without a link to antipolygraph.
For anyone interested, the site has a lot of great information, including a free book that goes into intimate details regarding how polygraphs are operated and how their results are interpreted to mean either "truth" or "lies". They even have the operator's handbooks and interpretation guides for giving an examination and information on how to "beat the box".
Very interesting stuff -- doubly so for anyone who might sometime be in a position where taking a polygraph is required for a job or security clearance.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
A quick search suggests that polygraphs normally outperform random chance. By how much seems to be highly variable.
It appears the scientific evidence is that polygraphy is not sufficiently sensitive or specific to be useful as legal evidence, but there's a big difference between a functional but inaccurate technique (i.e. one that outperforms guessing) and one that doesn't.
So... let's get this right...you give the guy a divining rod and then tell them to them to wander around a suspected mine field holding this thing. When it dips (or crosses, you found a mine). Yup, that'll work. Hard to believe we can't seem to win this war.
Michael Shermer, famous Skeptic, gave a TED speech on "why people believe strange things." He actually brought one of those detectors out on stage, and said that US public schools were buying it as a marijuana detector, and paying hundreds of dollars for it. Looking at the image in the article, it appears to be the same device.
There is likely to be something similar to a placebo effect (in addition to confirmation bias and other psychological pitfalls) that will reinforce the idea that this works for officials there. If they believe it works, it is likely at least some bombers will, too. So it has a deterrent effect that is likely measurable. Therefore if they do some correlation studies later, they are likely to find places that do use these will have lower rates of incident (as long as you don't compare to places with actual bomb detection).
'Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,' said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives.
I'd be interested to see some numbers on this. It's all fun and games until the other guy turns out to be right, you know.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Are we colonizing? I hope not! That would be an impossible task!
Are we raping and pillaging? Nope!
What the hell are we doing there, other than spending money?
What a WASTE.
Obama's demonstrating that he's powerless to take command of the military.
Sounds great, but according to a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack they work on the same principle as a Ouija board -- the power of suggestion.
Guaranteed to find bombs or your money back!
I have to suggest this to some of those Does It Work? shows...the ones I don't like.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I would have modded your comment Insightful instead of Funny, we really do have a short memory :(
On a lighter note, there is a old saying where I came from,
"Smart/Cunning folks will never go hungry as long as fools live"
Isn't it obvious that this guy is getting a kickback from the sales of these B.S. rods? Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, Esquire, is getting a percentage of every rod sold to the Iraqi government. This is why he has to endorse them! $10 bucks says he OKs every procurement of these rods personally.
His grandiose statements ("I know more about bombs than anyone in the world"), his reliance on personal opinion ("I don't care what Sandia, et al, say"), his inability to accept the facts in front of him ("you need more training"), and his position within the government make this an obvious conclusion. Which is why he is being investigated. I hope the Washington Post writes a follow-up when he bails out of Iraq with his immoral gains.
Just as you don't attribute to negligence what stupidity can easily explain, you don't attribute to stupidity was GREED can easily explain.
~Sticky
//DUH!
I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them,” General Jabiri said. “I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.
The Lebanese Army (Beirut), the Chinese Police (Bejing) , The Thailand Police (Bangkok) also acquired this equipment to detect all types of forbidden substances. This eas done to increase job results and to reach from now on a new level in terms of security and detection of threats.
I can't say I'm surprised, but I am DEEPLY disturbed.
I was wondering if any of their psychic bomb testers stared at goats but odds are the staring had nothing to do making them pass out but had more to do with Saturday night.
I used to be skeptical. My old uncle used to hold a modified coat-hanger in one hand and float a pen over a map with the other. He found many many many oil and gas well locations this way and was never plagued by dry holes. Loads of dowsing stories he had. He would vacation and come back with gold nuggets. He astounded a freshly retired naval officer friend by globe dowsing the secret location of his submarine. He showed me articles with pictures of grunts in Viet Nam finding Charlies tunnel entrances with modified bucket handles.
We had several discussions about what was really happening here. From what we and others could figure , the dowsing rod, pendulum or whatever is used is only and indicator of intuition. The trick, my uncle said was to enter an alpha state of mind or it wouldn't work. This we tested with a biofeedback machine and it seemed to be so. Other untested thoughts we had were; perhaps the magnetic sensing nerves in your nose work in conjunction with your brain and any ferric or bioelectric signature of the sought item. This wasn't disproved, but , he also would think of yes/no answer questions and get 95% + accuracy upon investigation.
I never attained his accuracy, but, I still find lost items around the house pretty well.
When science can quantify intuition, then I believe we will be able to experiment more. Till then, if it works for you use it, others have for centuries. If you don't have any faith it it, you won't be able to do it for sure. It doesn't have anything to do with anything supernatural , only biological as far as I have seen. No debunking necessary. It remains an obscure talent among those who can control their own alpha.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
C'mon, at least buy them from the Chinese for a $100 or less a piece.
Maybe they'll finally find some of the WMDs!
Then again, maybe these are surplus US Army units. It's good to see the Army recoup some of its investment by pawning them off on the Iraqis after we realized they weren't capable of finding hidden explosive devices. Hoo-ah!
Eh ... it's no real loss to society when idiots like that have a defective dowsing rod. For some fun reading, check out OmniNerd's experiment with Ouija Boards - http://www.omninerd.com/articles/Do_Ouija_Boards_Work_The_Fact_and_Fiction
The modifying factor you are looking for is the operator listening to test subjects speaking and picking the obvious lies. I think that you would get exactly the same success rate if the lie detector wasn't even plugged in.
Also consider the history of the lie detector - it was adopted at a time when the FBI was infamous for being corrupt and taking kickbacks. Also consider the inventor, not an expert in any feild at all related to it but simply the guy that wrote the "Wonder Woman" comics.
It is a scam, one in the long history of snake oil scams where the trick is that the mark does not understand the principles of how the thing is supposed to work.
I really truly believe that at least *part* of the explanation of this also goes to the old "Security Theater" idea - maybe you can't actually *make* the public safer, but the Iraqi military can say "we spent 1 Million on bomb-detecting equipment" (or whatever the value is). Who cares that the bomb detecting equipment is useless? People, most of whom (in any society - even the the "First World" nations) are more than willing to believe flim-flam claims (or feel inadequate to question the claims of others, at least, and so accept the word of those others), will then feel 'safer' knowing that the military is using 'bomb detectors' to stop bombs.
Of course, as the recent car-bombings in Iraq have shown, these 'bomb detectors' aren't getting the job done. Hopefully, as people keep dieing from bomb blasts, someone in the government will look for *real* solutions instead of quackery.
"I don't care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them," General Jabiri said. "I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world."
Sound pretty defensive about the devices. As if they paid a fortune that could have been spent on just about anything else, and found out that they're worthless, but doesn't want to let on.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
http://www.ade651.com/ade651in.html
Making "data" more plural by adding an "s" means it's more scientific! (not)
Substances Recognition:
Black Powder, Used Weapons, Fireworks, all types of Ammunition, ...), Dynamite, RDX, TNT, Nitroglycerine, Tetryl, Grenades, Mines, Amphetamine, Cocaine, Crack, Heroine, Marijuana, Cannabis, Morphine, Ivory, Human research, Bank notes,
Ammonium Nitrate (ANFO-ANNIE), Chinese Czech and Russian Semtex, Plastic (C4, C1,
It detects marijuana AND cannabis, this is a wonder device, people!
This is great. We now have a large pool of people who qualify to win the JREF million dollar prise. If just one of them can prove in a double blind test then they can win the money and get out of Iraq. Science be praised.
Ascii artist &
Ok I actually read this today (sorry but im calling out a great deal of this discussion as being just based on reaction the the summary and prior comments) and found it absurd myself, but not something I could instantly write off.
From TFA:
"During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman."
Well.... Shit. What does 'detect' mean here? This last unfinished thought could (stated differently) totally skew the article in the opposite direction. Im not saying it is anything more that a divining rod - because I dont know - but the level of technical depth in the article / argument is as nonexistant as it purports the devices to be. There isnt a single mention of 'what works' and 'how stuff works' on the US side other than 'large and expensive.'
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
One guy takes the dowsing rod, or whatever you want to call it and walks ahead of the convoy. When he steps on a mine, it goes off. You've found the mine. Better yet, if these things are made of relatively strong steel, you can generally find them. Usually several hundred yards away. Pound it back into shape, hand it to the next guy and you're back in business.
Lets see you do that with any of the newfangled electronic devices our troops use.
Have gnu, will travel.
My Grandfather made a living finding water wells using a Dowsing rod. For him, it worked every time.
I use survey of watershed areas, and known Geological formations to make an estimated guess as to underground water movement.
While both are guesses, it makes sense that an uneducated or more superstitiously natured person would simply choose what makes sense to them. Sure, mine is an educated guess, but my Grandfather did find hundreds of wells in his time. You can't really argue with results. Even if those results are based of your subconscious hunch rather than your conscious facts.
But what I remember was how that inanimate branch turned into a straining, curving, living thing as it dived toward the ground. In my mind there was simply no way you could hold a branch and make it do that -- the branch itself wanted to do it, and did it.
Yes, you can. Ever so slightly - those old guys got the trick down - twists both sides of the 'Y' that they're holding. The end will point down just as you said.
It's an easy trick. Try it! With practice you can do it with just a slight twist with the fingers and no one will notice.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
The proponents of these devices, when confronted with the undeniable technical worthlessness of them, inevitably retreat to the claim that the actual benefits come from the psychology of having people being "investigated" by the devices believe that they are actually capable of something, and then watching their reactions.
There is some truth to that. A criminal, when confronted by an authority figure with a pseudo-scientific device that claims to know when they are lying, will sometimes confess.
After all, most criminals aren't that bright (well, the ones that get caught), and don't know that the polygraph is a sham.
You think. The few reasonable controlled studies that have been done tend to disagree with you. Polygraphs perform fairly poorly, and probably perform better under laboratory conditions than they do in the wild, but they do appear to do better than chance, under controlled conditions.
Sorry, the ad hominem attack on the inventor doesn't really carry any weight, being a logical fallacy and all.
We may use lie detectors, but lie detector results aren't admissible evidence in court (which brings up why we even have them, but anyway).
These guys are using "technology" that doesn't actually do *anything* as a basis for stops and searches.
I think there's a difference.
1) Point the rod at the nearest bystander.
2) Shoot and kill the bystander with a rifle.
3) Search the body of the dead bystander. If said body is wrapped in explosives - Congratulations! Your bomb detector rod has worked successfully. Otherwise if the body lacked explosives, this means your bomb detector rod is not properly calibrated. Return to step 1 and repeat instructions until your rod is calibrated.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
2. They use their fingers and twist the rods to cross - it's a really easy trick. Easier than the "Y" branch mentioned above.
3. If they're so good, then why don't they go for: oil, gold, uranium, diamonds, etc...
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I can't believe anyone could be sick enough to come up with this. As if scammers arent bad enough on their own, now we have homicidal scammers. I hope these sick bastards enjoy their blood money.
Oh really? Are you entirely sure about that from a peer reviewed research situtuation and not a "roll up and buy the magical snake oil" situation? Also why does this research disagree with more than sixty years worth of work from others that debunked it on occasion?
Also don't mistake a statement of who purchased it and who invented it as an attack instead of a way to put it in context. The situation where the FBI was highly corrupt at the time is relevant and the inexperience of the inventor is also relevant.
This company from the UK is defrauding consumers.
And in doing so is potentially responsible for hundreds of deaths.
And people wonder why skeptics have to take things so seriously...
I stole this Sig
I've seen it done to locate metal pipes many times and tried it myself at home. It works. Get two metal rods about 2 feet long, bend the ends to hold in your hand and walk slowly, when over a metal object they ends will come together. Watched a guy locate an entire septic system using this on TV once.
Also consider the inventor, not an expert in any feild at all related to it but simply the guy that wrote the "Wonder Woman" comics.
I'd say that makes him an expert in drawing hot, tall, brunettes. That's enough qualification for me on any endeavor.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
My rod can detect sexy bombshells too.
Table-ized A.I.
You and I know these devices do nothing, the guys waving them around at the checkpoints know they do nothing but the would-be bombers aren't quite as confident. All it takes is one nervous twitch and WHAM! They are detained, searched and questioned. Find one needle in the haystack this way and soon the word gets around. This is quite a fine bit of social engineering, IMHO. Too bad about the exorbitant price tag.
Expensive placebos are more effective.
A good old fashioned oil purge. Then the Middle Eastern nations will have no money coming in. It's pretty hard to create suicide bombers when you have no money to buy supplies or send them out and you main interest in life is killing, not furthering your people.
Considering that the FBI reviewed the case for the polygraph's validity (back when it was first made), and concluded that it was a sham, you are wrong.
It is not an ad-hominem to point out that a non-expert suddenly invented a seemingly miraculous device that is eerily similar to a magical device used by a comic book heroine he also invented.
Polygraphs are faith-based devices. They serve no scientific purpose.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
They call these things mysteries for a reason.
If you travel through the Middle East, you see these things everywhere. Especially Lebanon. Every parking garage and big building uses these. When you ask anyone about those, 9 out 10 people say they work, and the other one is merely skeptical. If you look at one closely, it's just a plastic piece of crap with a metal rod. "There's a sucker born every minute".
Shit, you should have stole the magic Y-shaped branch and sold it for $16,000!!!1!
Are you saying we can use a dowsing rod to find my car? SWEET!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They do actually have something other than a person's arm arbitrarily controlling it.
It doesn't matter if it actually, scientifically works -- all that matters is if the person being scanned THINKS it might work. The security person would be looking at the reaction of the person being scanned to find out if there is something to be worried about in the front left jacket pocket.
"True, but lie detectors do actually measure things. Heart rate, etc. "
They measure lots of things. However there is no basis for how those things predict a lie.
But in place like where it is done, the water table is usually very high. So you cab dig ANYWHERE and get the same freaking result. Heck dowser pretend there are underground river where you dig. No there aren't. Basically go to randi.,org and look on dowser testing. They do no better than blind luck. The guy never had to give back money in 20 years, not because he is efficacious, but because you litterally live over huge amount of water. Look at the video where they had dowser search for pipe with running water. And laugh.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Whether dowser are fooling themselves or not into thinking bthis works, this is the ideomotor effect which make the Y shaped branch move wiki on ideomotor effect when properly tested dowsing DO NOT WORK.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A sklightily longer search would demonstrate you that with people wanting to beat the polygraph, they work as good as blind chance. Withpeople UNAWARE that polygraph are snake opil which only mneasure a few physiological parameter which are not always correlated to lie, but also to other stuff, in other word in you use it as a magic truth wand , they can impress and LEAD THE PERP to admit the truth. In fact it has been demonstrated that most if not all operator use posychological trick during AND MOST importantly AFTER the test to gather info. Fact is, it only works if you are 1) unaware 2) do not believe in your lie. Even in such case , look at antipolygraph.org you reach MAYBE a 60% rate barely above chance. It is useful to coerce some unknowing perp, but to c atch spy or good liar a useless piece of woo.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I hope Scientology doesn't find out about this. Within a year, the Iraqi military would be at Operathing Thetan Level 3 in order to detect bomb enturbulation.
Lie detectors ARE completely retarded. An honest person who is nervous about the detector will fare badly, while a sociopath can lie away all day and never get noticed.
The only thing they are useful for is a as a physiological tool to put the person being interrogated at a disadvantage.
Nobody seems to have noticed the name that should be remembered. Jim McCormick, the leader of ATSC (UK) Ltd., the London-based company that has sold hundreds of the devices to Iraq’s Interior Ministry.
The money he got is stained with blood of the bomb victims, but a scum like him wouldn't even care. Why does Earth carry miscreants of his kind? He deserves to be a bomb victim himself, nothing else.
Man is very good in detecting suspicious behaviour. So one only needs to make them confident to use this capability. It's like placebo.
cb
Right, because we're so much smarter than the Iraqis. We have never had dumb/superstitious people in charge of our military.
The company selling these rods has paid some big money to high up officials for this deal. It should be extremely obvious.
They are paying millions of dollars for something that has no proven effect and is much cheaper to manufacture and was abandoned by the USA army. No, superstition won't do the trick.
I believe that the company first tried to sell these to USA army. Didn't work. Nobody was foolish enough to sign the papers and those people corrupt enough were able to get their 'donations' from other sources with more believable product. So, the company decided to sell these to Iraqs, handed out a bit money to a few officials and... profit.
Don't ask me how it works - those witching sticks are just dead wooden sticks in my hands. But, I've seen it work, so I have to believe in it.
No, you don't. As Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
We use the scientific process precisely because we can't just trust ourselves. A few weeks ago, I climbed on a mountain, sat in the grass, and watched the clouds. Suddenly, the clouds started to move backwards and forwards. It's a miracle! I've seen it with my own eyes! Well, no. It's an optical illusion that some people get when staring into a bright light for too long.
Likewise, since all experiments have shown that dowsing rods work exactly as well as random chance, the most likely explanation for your father in law's ability is that he's able to subconsciously deduce where pipes go and where they are broken based on the effects these things have on the environment. That also explains why it doesn't work for you.
".....more than fifteen hundred remote sensing devices have been sold to Iraq's Ministry of the Interior, at prices ranging from $16,500 to $60,000 each."
-Guess who's money they used. No, really, go on and guess!
"The devices are used for bomb and weapon detection at checkpoints"
-The only time these things detect bombs is after the bomb detonates, the force of which moves the 'antenna' when the device is suddenly sent flying through the air, along with the unfortunate officers manning the now former checkpoint.
"...they work on the same principle as a Ouija board"
-It's called the Bullshit Effect, which is part of the 'Bullshit Paradox', i.e. "You can't bullshit a Bullshitter". Like real bullshit, it keeps accumulating until someone shoots the offending bull, or in this case, the officer that keeps touting the effectiveness of the devices. As long as those officers are still alive, this kind of bullshit will only keep accumulating.
"Even though the device has been debunked by the US Military, the US Department of Justice, and even Sandia National Laboratories, the Iraqis are thrilled with the devices."
-You expect anything less from people who think they will get 72 virgins in heaven if they kill an infidel?
"Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,' said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior's General Directorate for Combating Explosives."
-I think Baghdad Bob changed his name, because this sounds exactly like something he'd say.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
After all We found bodies, lots, lots of bodies, established they were killed by Saddam's WMD, and then we failed to find WMD.
The conclusion of democrats : "there are no WMDs". I don't know what to say.
Perhaps you'd like to buy a few bomb detectors ? They're not cheap but very accurate.
....but isn't it illegal to sell stuff from the UK that has been proved not to do what you claim?
The cosmetics industry has had to be very careful for years to avoid guaranteeing youthful looks....
Also consider the inventor, not an expert in any feild at all related to it but simply the guy that wrote the "Wonder Woman" comics.
The man you're referring to is William Marston, and to be fair, he did get his Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard.
When the dousing rod flies 300 feet into the air, you've found the bomb.
Is the device the black pistol-looking thing in the hand of the guy in the foreground, or the wooden broom handle being held by the background guard?
I feel that under scientific analysis, both would have the same detection rate.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Of course. Someone with a little power finds someone who supports the opposing political party, voila, they can "find" a bomb.
So in effect, this device will justify my search of anyone that I feel has a bomb. Even if I know it's bogus (and I'd not be surprised if the Iraqis do know this), it permits me to search anyone I want just because I feel they may have a bomb.
You know, I really don't think they need to bother much about permission to search anyway.
Lemon curry???
-1 Your Falling Isn't Intelligent Enough
-1 FSM Hates You
-1 It's Not Censorship, You Stupid Fuckstick.
Go for it.
Crusading invaders begone already! Oil thieving raping and murdering flag waving puppy tossing wastes of life. . .
P.S.
Begone with a flag draped over your personal first class compartment you American piece of shit.
"No boom?"
"No boom."
"No boom TODAY. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow."
(you know where it's from)
If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.
Polygraphs perform better than random chance, certainly.
Interrorgations do not use random chance when there isn't a polygraph available; they use trained professionals.
There was only one time that Dousing worked: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-05-14/
As a side note, I've long said that I could have been rich had I not had any morals and had become a spammer. Now, I guess I can add selling dousing equipment to the list. Curse my parents for raising me the right way! I could have been a millionaire were it not for these pesky morals!
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
But surely somebody wandering around with a dowsing rod is an excellent way of clearing a minefield. As long as there's a steady queue of volunteers.
And I thought that democracy works when the oligarchy can create false dichotomies and get people to squabble over trivial differences to distract them from the real issues. Unfortunately it does not work as well in places where the real issues are such that the populace cannot be easily distracted from them (e.g., "will my kids have anything to eat tomorrow?" or even "will they still have a father by next week?").
If the rods go flying off in different directions at high speed, there are explosives nearby. Well I guess WERE explosives nearby, technically. (yes I read the article and realise they're not using ACTUAL dowsing rods)
I didn't know that, but that still doesn't change the experimental evidence that makes every police force that uses it a laughing stock that may as well be reading tea leaves.
It can of course be a useful tool for corrupt police that want to have some sort of evidence when there is none, but corrupt police forces in the third world manage quite nicely in that area without an expensive bit of scam machinery.
It's posts like these that make me realize that the Iraqis aren't overly superstitious and ignorant. They are perfectly normal, relative to my fellow Americans.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
My guess is that because the user has to walk very slowly to use these things, they notice stuff on the ground that they wouldn't normally see.
Since you can pretty much hit a landmine by walking into a random patch of Iraqi desert and throwing a rock, I don't find it surprising that any land mine sensing divining rod would have at least some random chance of success. I think that past research has shown that any tool that is picking arbitrary points on a grid will find positive results for "hidden" items (explosive or not) with a frequency of occurrence that matches the normal distribution. I encourage you to read The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow for a better description than I can give.
Anyone else have visions of that one nation who sent mine-clearing teams to Kuwait following the first Gulf War... complete with 20 foot bamboo poles to probe the ground in front of them?
The needle is stuck on "ITS A BOMB!"
Which works for me as the solution is to blow it up remotely. Just means that everything gets blown up remotely. Works for me, better safe than sorry! :)
Puppy tossing?!! Now THAT'S over the line, mister.
Apparently, Iraq excels at producing superstitious wackjobs even more than we do.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Let's see : Who has easy access to explosives and could do some scientific testing on said devices, apply a little critical thinking and discredit the whole concept to a relatively large audience... I wonder?
My left arm is all scars and I consider that a valid excuse...
Here's a simple test that they can do to prove it's effectiveness. Place 9 empty boxes, and one with a bomb in it. Place their payroll in with the bomb. They've got one chance to pick the box with the bomb, or their paychecks are toast.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
If anyone bothered to think about how the machine works, it is clearly a nervousness detector, not a "lie" detector. If someone becomes nervous when they answer a question, the examiner marks it as a "lie."
For example, if you take a person from a sexually repressed society, and the examiner asks them if they had sex today, the machine would probably detect it as a "lie." If someone has an anxiety disorder or just have high stakes in the test, most, if not all, of the questions will probably be flagged as "lies."
The main problem (besides the fact they are used in the first place) is that apparently, most "lie" detector examiners are incompetent idiotic (or possibly deceptive) bastards. That, and half the idiots on the planet think those machines actually detect lies.
If used properly, I suppose in some cases it may help steer an investigation in the correct direction. But, more likely it would just paint a target on anyone who has certain types of psychological problems. (and possibly physical ones too)
STFU that's a secret!!! >8-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't know what else one could expect from a bunch of tribal wackos?
polygraphs normally outperform random chance. By how much seems to be highly variable.
The polygraph is only a prop. It's the person asking the questions and watching the responses that's deciding whether truth is being told or not. That's why it's highly variable.
I can't find an FBI report on the polygraph, but this report seems very close to what you're referring to. It was written by the US Office of Technology Assessment in 1983, in response to a house of representatives request.
The report basically concludes that the polygraph's utility can't really be estimated because of high variability in the results of published studies and that regardless, polygraph screening is a really bad idea because, even in the optimistic case, the sensitivity and specificity of the technique isn't anywhere near what you'd need for a screening system.
The report also summarizes several review and primary studies:
(bold face mine)
The OTA report is old, but widely cited, including by anti-polygraph organizations. The report does indeed conclude that polygraph-based lie detection is not a viable technique.
Now read carefully. Nowhere have I said that using a polygraph to try to detect lying is a good idea, should be admissible as evidence, is reasonably accurate or performs (at all) under all circumstances.
However, as poor a technique as it is, the polygraph is a) based on reasonable mechanisms (they don't violate the laws of physics), b) can be assessed scientifically and c) appears to per
I fully agree, a polygraph is a poor choice to use as a lie detector, but the technique is not actually pseudoscience. The uses it is put to may be based on pseudoscience, but the device itself is not. There is no good reason why your pulse, breathing, etc. cannot change when you are lying, and it appears that, at least in some people, some of the time, they do.
Dowsing, on the other hand, violates the known laws of physics. There is good scientific reason to believe that the devices described in the article not only do not work but cannot work.
?
Just exactly how retarded do you have to be to see that the above steaming pile of third grade level "I got caught lying and now will make a stupid excuse" imbecility was worth a mod point?
We are. Demonstrably. Save the cultural relativism, we're as bad as they are bullshit for a country where it might actually work, in this case you chose poorly.
So, you'd argue a policy that to this point, has worked flawlessly, is inferior to something that has been repeatedly scientifically disproven, and is therefore a total fraud and danger to troops and think that makes sense?
You think a KNOWN, PROVEN LIE is better than a policy that has irrefutably worked?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
The last eight words of what you quoted are the most important in the entire report.
The New York Times has been scammed in the past. They probably sent a reporter to find out what was being done to eliminate IEDs. Since the truth would involve letting the bombers know what technology the US has been working on, the reporter was told that they were using divining rods.
Let's see what happens when the NYT figures out that their plan to reveal top secret information has been sabotaged.
I'm a sucker for empirical data. If dowsing rods are getting the job done, then hooray for dowsing rods. If they're not, then boo for dowsing rods. It would be even poorer science than, oh, say, 'belief in dowsing rods' to draw conclusions without objective data. Either those things are working, or they're not. But in either case, the answer ought to be clear from the numbers, so there's no reason to get belief involved. _If_ they seem to be getting the job done, then maybe the thingies are acting as placebos for the people using them. Sort of like people who are natural lie-detectors just thought they were responding to gut feelings until micro expressions were discovered. Maybe what's being detected isn't the explosives, but that the owner of the suspect item is acting like someone with a bomb, which starts the dowser's brain working on likely hiding places for the packet of suck, which in turn triggers an ideomotor effect in the 'dowser'. How much of this would be conscious, and how much subconscious would vary widely from person to person, with those not aware of the process thinking, "Holy Shit! This thing is amazing!"
Thing is, they were the first to tell you they had no clue how or why they could dowse out water, but they could.
Sorry, until you've got a controlled study showing your little "witches" perform better than random chance, I'm gonna remain skeptical. Meanwhile, you should send one over to JREF... if her "powers" are real, she could win a million bucks!
Randi is (was?) an entertainer, not a scientist. His public "debunkings" have included such science as "if I can duplicate the effect through trickery it's fake" regardless of zero evidence that any such trickery was originally used. That's not a "controlled study," he starts with a known result.
I knew Delbert Merrill socially, he was an inventor and engineer who had a long career in industry. He tried dowsing when water couldn't be found on a property, and was successful. He developed a method swinging a pendulum over a map, and it seemed to work for him.
One night we were visiting him, and he showed us his rod. Two nylon rods, about two feet long and 0.1 inch diameter, similar to the nylon rods used to bind computer listings in those days. The business end was bound with non-metalic material, I think fishing line, and the hand grips were 1/4 inch bakelite (or similar) rigid non-conducting tubing, and the ends of the nylon had just been kinked 90 degrees to keep the handles from falling off. There was no way someone holding those bakelite handles could apply bend or torsion to those rods.
He walked across the property, saying that there was a stream in the area, and as he walked along the rods visibly bent. He offered to let us try it, and two of three people felt the tug, including me. The other person who had success was blind, could not have seen where the rods bent, and also got a strong bend at the same spot.
I never tried dowsing again, but Delbert Merrill did locate water on some property I was trying to buy, after three dry wells had been drilled. He predicted slight sulpher in the water, in an area not known for that, and predicted the depth within five feet and the flow within three gal/min.
I see that in upstate NY National Grid finds gas lines by dowsing as well as their little meters, the meters have false positives on any metal, not just gas lines. The sum of these experiences strongly suggests that there is an effect, sensible people like gas companies and engineers seem to find it usefully reliable, I wouldn't discard their experience casually.
Finally, Randi is an entertainer, some of the televised "debunkings" are far from scientific method:
- everyone can't reproduce the effect
- it doesn't work every time
- the effect can be created as an illusion by a professional
If those are valid criteria, they prove that pitchers can't throw a curve. Personally I'll put it in the "there's something there" category, since the people I have met who have produced measureable success make no money at it, don't care if people believe in it, and don't publicize the ability, I find profit, zeal, or fame to be unlikely motivation for trickery.