Iraq's Deadly Dowsing Scam

Dowsing is one particular species of woo-woo you just don't hear that much about here in the United States these days. Sure, it shows up every once in a while on a gee-whiz television program or two, but here in the States we've largely moved on to other sorts of gobbledy-gook like psychic detectives and ghost hunting. Alas, in some part of the world dowsing lives on, albeit in a different guise.

In war-torn Iraq, the pockets of British company ATSC have been lined to the tune of $85 million via the sale of an expensive bit of nonsense called the ADE 651 explosives detector. This technological marvel was meant to provide a fast and accurate way of sniffing out IEDs and other explosives, and all for the low price of $56,000 each, largely paid for by American taxpayers. Unfortunately, there was one minor problem with this otherwise fine piece of equipment: it didn't actually do anything. I don't mean to say that it didn't work, I mean it literally didn't do anything, as in no moving parts whatsoever. Check it out.

Your tax dollars at work. $56,000 of'em.

You see, as everyone from the bloggers at Gizmodo to James Randi quickly pointed out, the ADE 651 (along with its kissing cousins the Sniffex and the Quadro tracker) is pretty much just the handle of caulking gun with a straightened coat hanger stuck through it. Sure, it's tarted up just a little bit more than that, but for all intents and purposes that's all it is. They're nothing more than glorified dowsing rods. Keep in mind that these devices are being sold by the hundreds to the Iraqi military and police, as well as the Afghan military, with the promise that they can keep both soldiers and civilians safe from bombs planted by the terrorists currently waging war against the Iraqi and Afghan governments...and they don't really do a thing.

Regular dowsing rods. Just as useless, but cheaper.

Let that sink in for just a minute. Innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan have been dying because a pack of greedy hucksters is selling their gullible security forces dowsing rods for tens of thousands of dollars apiece, and all this nonsense has been subsidized unwittingly by U.S. taxpayers. How many people have these devices killed? As far as I'm concerned, anyone involved in the manufacture and sale of these devices has blood on their hands.

After investigations proved that the closest thing to a working part in the ADE 651 is an anti-theft RFID tag stuck to the inside of the handle, the United Kingdom banned the export of these deadly little booby traps (and ultimately, what else is a useless bomb detector but a trap in and of itself?) in 2010, and arrested ATSC head Jim McCormick. Alas, McCormick, the owner and sole shareholder of ATSC, has been free on extended bail for over a year now. In a perfect world he'd be given one of his own devices and told to navigate a minefield. If he makes it across, he goes free. If not, then the problem has solved itself.

Jim McCormick at a 2009 press conference shortly after 127 Iraqis
were killed by a bomb his device failed to detect.

Horrifyingly, the ADE 651 is still in use overseas and still has staunch defenders in the Iraqi military. Interestingly, despite claiming to have nigh-infinite confidence in the ADE 651, Iraqi Major General Jihad al-Jabiri declined James Randi's offer to allow him to put the ADE 651 to the test for the Million Dollar JREF prize. There's happy news, however: News reports coming out of Iraq this weekend stated that al-Jabiri has been arrested on corruption charges related to the ADE 651. Although the Iraqi government isn't being too specific about the circumstances of his arrest, I can't help but wonder if he was getting some kind of cut from the sale of the things.

In any event, it would seem that the wheels of justice are slowly turning at last, but it's a sad commentary that even in the 21st century people are being taken in by a scam as old as dowsing, and with such deadly results.

Mike Warnke's Still Selling Satan...

I'm reading Selling Satan by Mike Hertenstein and Jon Trott. It's an extension of the Cornerstone article debunking the claims of one Mike Warnke, a preacher/comedian currently skulking about Kentucky whose "hook" is that he's a reformed Satanist. Hertenstein and Trott took issue with some of Warnke's more bizarre claims, such as that he participated in rituals of child murder and cannibalism, and ultimately uncovered witnesses, records, and other evidence that indicate very strongly that most of the claims made his autobiography The Satan Seller were utter fictions. (Especially damning, and hilarious, is a picture of Warnke from 1966 that shows him to be a scrawny, button-downed, bespectacled everyman when his book claims he spent the 60s as a long-haired, wild-eyed, drug addicted Satanic priest with 6-inch fingernails "filed for fighting".*)

The debunking in and of itself is kind of interesting, but it's also old hat: Trott and Hertenstein published their original article in 1992. It got me wondering, however, what ol' Mike was doing these days. See, I have a theory that prominent preachers don't go away. Ever. No matter what kind of earth-shaking scandal or criminal convictions they may be faced with, famous evangelists virtually always retain enough of a following to make a living off of their preaching. Seriously, that sounds silly, but think about it: Peter Popoff was outed as a fraud by James Randi in 1983, but he's still on TV and people still send him money for "miracle spring water". Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were both caught in sex scandals (Plus Bakker was indicted for mail fraud), yet they still have active ministries with large followings. Fred Phelps is a slobbering lunatic and he still draws crowds.

Mike Warnke? All he did was lie about his entire past to create a preaching industry that allowed him to pay himself and two confidants a total of over $800,000 a year while simultaneously using his ill-gotten reputation as a Satanism expert to stoke the fires of the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare. Small potatoes! Surely he's still around, right?

Yep, he is. He runs the Celebrations of Hope Ministry out of Harrodsburg, KY. He also has a website with the phone number for his Product Sales Department on every single page. Despite his 17 year-old debunking Warnke still markets himself as an ex-Satanist, his current answer to the 1992 scandal being a 2006 report by a tribunal of "elders" in his own church saying that he's awesome. Apparently that's good enough for somebody, since he appears to have speaking engagements all over the country throughout the rest of 2009.

I can't say I'm surprised, but I'm a little let down.

*Warnke claims to have converted to Christianity after joining the Navy in 1966, but the photograph was taken in April of 1966 and Warnke didn't join the Navy until June of that year. (Source)

Freakin' Chiropractors

I saw this over on Pharyngula earlier. Apparently one of the prominent associations of chiropractors in the UK has put out a warning to its members to essentially remove any claims of what chiropractic is supposed to do from their websites for fear of possible fraud prosecution. The best part is the warning to be wary of any customers who ask about "the evidence base for your practice".

I'd be worried about standards of proof too if I made my living by telling folks that I could treat their allergies with the Scorpion Deathlock.

Bret Hart uses chiropractic to cure Shawn Michaels of gout, ezcema, and the plague.

A Better Idea...

In case you hadn't heard, everyone's favorite pseudo-psychic con artist Sylvia Browne is retiring soon. Soon, in the geological sense, anyway - she's got tours going on through next year and will in fact still be doing pretty much everything she's doing now except not doing as many stage shows. Actually I guess she's not really retiring at all... Regardless, you'll still be able to get one of her famous phone readings for a mere...$850?!

I'm serious. Check out the fees at the bottom of her readings page. Note that frugal dupes can get a reading that's just as effective from her son Chris for a mere $500.

Let me tell you something: If you've got $850 burning a hole in your pocket and you just can't stand to hold onto it anymore, check out Donors Choose and UNICEF. I guarantee you that money donated to either of these charities is going to much better use than money spent to line the pockets of that gravelly harpy and her henchmen.

Par for the Course...

Tattooed "faith-healer" and scam artist Todd Bentley has announced that he's temporarily suspending his ministry because...wait for it...he got busted cheating on his wife with one of his staff. That sounds familiar. Bentley's organization, Fresh Fire Ministries, announced today that "the enemy has found a way into our camp" and that Bentley will be stepping down from his position on the Board of Directors and will be canceling all of his ministry activities for at least the rest of "the season". (Not exactly sure what they mean by that, honestly.) Bentley's thralls have been assured that "there has been no sexual immorality"* but that Bentley "entered into an unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff". That peculiar choice of wording amuses me a little, because "unhealthy emotional relationships" don't generally result in terrible marital strife and the suspension of a lucrative ministry movement. I'm forced to wonder if they simply don't want to own up to Bentley engaging in extramarital humping.

Child molester Todd Bentley is taking a break from preaching.

The rest of the announcement basically boiled down to "stop asking questions and keep sending money." Weirdly, however, mention is also made of Fresh Fire Ministries' "Supernatural Training Centre". Apparently this is a program through which Bentley and his lieutenants teach other folks all of their magical powers. This is in reference to the "charismatic gifts", aka magical X-Men powers, that Pentecostals claim that Yahweh bestows on the most sycophantic of his followers, but according to the STC these gifts can brought out through spiritual "impartation" by Bentley and his goons for the lowly price of $3,600 tuition, $1,500 for a mission trip, and $450 a month as a dormitory fee. Oh, and a $50 application fee. Bentley claims to have raised almost two dozen people from the dead, so perhaps that's meant to be a bargain price, but considering the cost it should come as no surprise that the application fee includes a financial disclosure form. (Carrying the X-Men joke a little further, the SYC promotional material continually references one's DNA - Divine Nature Activated.)

Luckily for Bentley and disturbingly for the rest of the world, the faithful have tended to have short memories when it comes to this kind of scandal. Precedent indicates that we have every reason to expect Bentley to be back to his huckster ways in no time.

Thanks to reader Jak for bringing this to my attention.

*Except for that little boy Bentley molested when he was a teenager, of course. Jesus gave him a mulligan on that one.

Faith-Healing Fraud In My Hometown...

As I've mentioned before, it is a source of civic pride to many Louisville residents that a hospital in our city has performed, to my knowledge, every hand transplant ever in the United States. The current ongoing success story revolves around a fellow named Dave Armstrong, whose right hand was blown off when one of his guns misfired during target practice. As of Saturday, July 12th, Mr. Armstrong now has a functional, if slightly used, cadaver hand attached to his forearm. He's the forth person in the country to receive a hand transplant, and thus far Armstrong and all three of his fellow patients are doing well and still have their transplanted limbs. One of these transplant recipients, Matthew Scott, has had his transplanted limb for almost 9 years now. That's pretty freaking amazing.

I bring this up because I stumbled upon this front page article on Friday night after returning home from a showing of The Dark Knight, and my first thought, corny as it sounds, was something along the lines of "Doctors are real superheroes." (At that point a rainbow cut across the sky and a cartoon deer bounded through the foreground.) After reading through the article and then glancing through the rest of the national news, I made the foolish mistake of opening up the "Metro" section of the paper, which is normally reserved for glurge stories mixed incongruously with crime reports. In sharp contrast to the meaningful, dare I say uplifting, article about Dave Armstrong, the front page of the Metro proudly proclaimed that lunatic faith healer Todd Bentley had infiltrated my town, cleverly sneaking in under cover of Thursday while everyone was distracted by early reviews of Batman, and held a donation-fest revival before quickly moving on.

Bentley is a Canadian Pentecostal who, according to publications from his native country, has had some run-ins with the law for drug crimes and the sexual assault of a young boy, but now, of course, claims to be an utterly new person who has been endowed by the Creator of the Universe with magical X-Men powers that enable him to supernaturally heal anyone without an externally visible affliction. Bentley has been the subject of a recent Nightline report, which is embedded below, and has even run afoul of other religious oddballs, among them Intelligent Design advocate Bill Dembski, who currently "teaches" at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dembski has a personal ax to grind with Bentley - at one point he and his wife went to a Bentley service in the hopes of having their autistic son healed. According to Dembski their child wasn't even allowed to come near the stage to receive prayers. I wonder why...?

In any event, if there's a polar opposite of legitimate advances in medical science it's money-grubbing charlatan faith-healers. Hopefully this kind of lunacy will eventually be regulated with as much rigor as other false medical claims. (Which honestly aren't regulated with enough rigor themselves.) Some of my more cynical friends have claimed that the victims of these faith healers deserved what they get, but I disagree. Perpetrating this kind of fraud on innocent, trusting people is the very height of callousness. Even if they have been conditioned by their religions to believe bizarre claims with insufficient evidence, the responsibility for any specific act of fraud rests solely on the shoulders of the witch doctor who perpetrated it.

Here's the Nightline investigation:

Part 1:


Part 2:

Cashing In On Tragedy Yet Again...

"Psychic detective" seems to me to be a contradiction in terms on the level of "fuel efficient SUV" or "a wonderful film by Andreas Schnaas". When psychics pretend to help the police, all they do is spout off trite vagaries (which is what psychics do in all situations) while distracting the real investigators from doing their job. I mention this because Court TV (or whatever it calls itself these days) is running a dizzying number of advertisements for its show "Haunting Evidence", in which a team of psychics play pretend while talking about famous "cold cases". Apparently tonight the show will be making a mockery of the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, who vanished, and was presumably murdered, while vacationing in Aruba over 3 years ago.

The Court TV show follows a crew of three paranormalists, each one crazier than the last. The leader of the group is Patrick Burns, who is billed as a trained paranormal investigator despite having only a high school diploma. I suppose your level of education doesn't matter much when you're just making things up as you go along. Next up is Carla Baron, who claims to have been involved in a number of high profile cases, such as the JonBenet Ramsey case and the Nicole Brown Simpson investigation. Many of her claims are outright lies, while essentially all of the others are grossly exaggerated. The third musketeer on the show is a fellow named John J. Oliver, whose website not only details his magical psychic services AND sells audio tapes to help give you ESP (for a mere $20), but also refers visitors to a dojang where they can study Tae Kwon Do. (He claims that it is TKD that helped him "develop the mind necessary to work as a psychic detective".)

"Haunting Evidence" has thus far dealt with something in the area of 21 cases in the three years that it's been running. So far the psychics have a stellar record of exactly 0-21 for solving cases, though one case profiled on the show, the 2003 rape and murder of Katie Sepich, has since been solved through conventional means. One thing that has always puzzled me is that if I, as a private, non-psychic citizen, were to go to the police about an ongoing investigation and just start making things up, I'd be charged with obstruction of justice and probably spend the next few years of my life locked in an tiny cell with a man named Lucy, whereas psychics apparently lie to the cops with impunity. Now maybe some of these psychics really are just batshit and they actually do think that they have magical D&D powers, but surely most of them know that they're bullshitting. It must take a special kind of hubris of march up to law enforcement and deliberately start misleading investigators while smiling for the cameras and smugly proclaiming to the credulous public that you're just "using your gifts" to help.

So-called "psychic investigators" do little more than swoop in to prey upon the grief and confusion of people who have lost loved ones and bloat themselves on the publicity and cash that's showered on them by the "gee-whiz" media. That being said, I think a better term for "psychic detective" would be "vulture".

For more information on fraudulent psychic investigators being caught in the act, check out StopSylviaBrowne.com and also the CSICOP articles linked here and here.

Honor Among Thieves...?

Well, I happened to catch a segment with James Randi on Larry King Live Friday night. Alas and alack I missed the first part of the bit, but I did get the chance to see Randi spar around with “psychic” Rosemary Altea. Ms. Altea’s website claims that she’s an “internationally renowned spirit medium”, though I’m not personally familiar with her. Ms. Altea, naturally, has numerous books and audio recordings for sale on her site, all of which are co-authored by her spirit guide, Grey Eagle. There’s also a large section on her site about “spiritual healing”, though on these pages there is at least a disclaimer advising people to seek regular medical care as well.

For the most, however, Altea’s claims are neither here nor there. Aside from a bit of back-and-forth with Randi during which she repeatedly made the accusation that the JREF challenge was fraudulent, most of the night’s discussion focused instead on Randi’s nemesis Sylvia Browne.

As you’ll recall, a few weeks two young boys from Missouri were rescued by the police from a kidnapper. This is a joyous (but all too rare) occurrence made even more incredible because one of the youths, Shawn Hornbeck, was kidnapped in 2002. For the victim of a stranger abduction to be found alive after 5 years is almost unheard of. The case was resolved through a combination of police work and public vigilance, and everyone involved in the investigation is worthy of praise. So where, exactly does Sylvia Browne come in? Well, it seems she helped the police with case.

Naturally she used her incredible psychic powers to lead the cops straight to the apartment where the boys were being held, right? No; that was a tip from a concerned citizen. So what exactly did Browne do? She told Shawn’s parents, back in 2003 after they had already suffered through months of gut-wrenching torment and grief, that their son was dead. She further told them that his body had been dumped in a remote wooded area, and that his murderer was likely a Hispanic man. (Note that the kidnapper was, in fact, white.) James Van Praagh made similarly off the mark claims regarding the case.

Much has already been made of this, especially here at this excellent site, but what really struck me was Altea’s take on the situation. She basically admitted, maybe not in so many words, the Browne and Van Praagh might simply be faking it. Now keep in mind that she immediately took the mealy-mouthed position that psychics are never right all the time. (Not very psychic then, I suppose.) Now granted there are charlatans in every profession, but for a psychic engaged in distance (she calls it “absent”) healing to call someone else a fraud in the very same interview in which she refuses to have her own abilities tested is simply delicious. I suppose there really is no honor among thieves.