by Greg Mayer
Although they’re a little bit off the usual topics here, two items in today’s New York Times caught my attention. First, there’s an article by Rod Norland on the use of dowsing rods (!!!!) by Iraqi police and military to detect explosives. The Iraqis have spent tens of millions of dollars on these dowsing rods, called the ADE 651.
Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”
The Justice Department has warned against buying a variety of products that claim to detect explosives at a distance with a portable device. Normal remote explosives detection machinery, often employed in airports, weighs tons and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ADE 651’s clients are mostly in developing countries; no major country’s military or police force is a customer, according to the manufacturer.
Dowsing is a well known and well debunked form of pseudoscience, so it was going the extra mile for the Sandia Lab to test more such devices, yet, the Iraqis still swear by them. James “The Amazing” Randi offered a million dollars to the English manufacturer of the device if it passed a fair experimental test, but with the money they are making off the Iraqis, they have no monetary incentive to have the device tested. The Times reporter even ran a couple of small tests on the device (bringing licensed weapons past a checkpoint; trying the device himself), and of course it didn’t work, but this did not shake the Iraqi general’s faith. It’s often claimed that pseudoscientific beliefs are harmless, but here’s a case where, according to the Times, suicide bombers were able to get past a dowsing checkpoint and kill 155 people in an attack last month.
In another example of how pseudoscience hurts real people, a second article in the Times, by John Schwartz, records how a deputy sheriff in Texas is using “dog-scent lineups” to put people in jail. As is well known, eyewitness testimony is a very problematic source of evidence (see also the work of Elizabeth Loftus), and lineups have their own particular problems (as the Times has noticed before [summary– full article no longer online]). But “nosewitness testimony”, by a dog, presents further complications.
The police told Mr. Bickham they had tied him to a triple homicide through a dog-scent lineup, in which dogs choose a suspect’s smell out of a group. The dogs are exposed to the scent from items found at crime scene, and are then walked by a series of containers with samples swabbed from a suspect and from others not involved in the crime. If the dog finds a can with a matching scent, it signals — stiffening, barking or giving some other alert its handler recognizes….
Mr. Bickham spent eight months in jail after being identified in a scent lineup by Deputy Pikett’s dogs, until another man confessed to the killings.
The Times article records other such cases, including one in which the dog-scent lineup evidence was contradicted by DNA evidence. A British canine police unit expert who watched video of the dog-scent lineups, stated
“If it was not for the fact that this is a serious matter, I could have been watching a comedy.”
Both these stories remind me of previous pseudoscientific fads that have swept over small (or in the Iraqi case, large but not very knowledgeable) police departments in the past: “fuel stabilizers” and other alleged devices that “align the fuel molecules” to save gas, and satanic ritual abuse.
Not much one can do about it, though, as the point of self-rule is that they can make their own mistakes and, unfortunately, effect injustices.
Dowsing isn’t directly a problem with religion, but I rather suspect that god-soaked societies are far more susceptible to such folderol (and a host of religiously-based frauds). Maybe if you don’t believe that magic made humans, you won’t believe that magic cures them or finds their bombs.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
An interviewer once asked the members of Ghosthunters why they don’t opt for James Randi’s prize money. They said they don’t do what they do for monetary gain.
I don’t understand why people don’t see through these excuses. Dogs vs. Science. I used to think this was obvious, but now I’m not so sure.
I thought there was some science behind the dog ID, but either I was deceived by the telly (or whatever it was), or else these fellows aren’t following protocol.
The ‘Sniffex’ or whatever wands are disgusting. Sad sad sad.
Dogs, of course, do have a very good sense of smell, and can be quite useful in some legal contexts. Just as, of course, people can see with their eyes, and give accurate reports of what they have seen. The devil, though, is in the details: it is the circumstances of a particular eyewitness or “nosewitness” identification or report that determine its reliability as evidence.
GCM
In line with that, I believe that evidence of a cadaver dog signaling that it had picked up the smell of a dead body was allowed in as evidence in the Scott Peterson trial.
I think that has a rather better case for it, though, because the dogs are trained to signal a whole set of scents that are specific to essentially all dead bodies, rather than to a specific individual. Maybe the dog smelled pizza on both, or some such thing.
So it’s not like dog’s scenting something necessarily has to be disregarded as poor evidence, you just have to know what kind of scent evidence counts, and which does not.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Off-topic tech comment:
Is there any reason Jerry can’t just make you guys separate admins with your own distinct user names? I know that WordPress has that function. It just gets confusing to see the handle I associate with Jerry, sometimes not noticing it’s Greg.
Also, would Jerry consider making these comments UN-threaded? I don’t know about other readers, but I like to check back through the day and see how the conversation has grown. Threaded comments make it really hard to find what’s new (Please, pro-threaded people, don’t flay me alive, I’m just making a suggestion:)
I love the blog; it’s daily reading, which is the only reason I ask.
Cheers!
Wow. In the battle of faith-based violence, it appears that the bad guys have the upper hand in that they depend on proven technology (electronics and high explosives) and the “good” guys have chosen expensive, New Age woo-woo.
Two very successful experiments were done!
1. Iraqi generals CAN be completely stupid in spite of evidence.
2. A Texas deputy sheriff makes up his own experiment rules and is proven to be an idiot.
Start up a fund to help the families of victims sue the crap out of the english manufacturer. Perhaps countries need laws to prevent the export of bullshit? Trade treatises often have provisions to make prosecution a bit easier but I think countries should have laws making it easier for foreign victims to prosecute people who pass off rubbish like those dowsing rods. I wonder what percentage of the cost of each dowsing rod goes to those Iraqi military commanders who speak so highly of the nonsense.
The explosives detection units which do work really do weigh a few tons; they’re mass spectrometers and they search for a number of chemical fragments including nitrates and (just in case someone had acquired explosives from a reputable commercial source) various low-reactivity tracer chemicals.
I recently came across a letter to the editor espousing some pseudoscience about naturopathic “medicine”. I have written a strong response.
Homeopathy is similarly sworn by. Even highly educated (and western) professionals seem to disregard the lack of evidence for a purported cure.
Also consider Deepak Chopra-esque bullshit about the nature of the soul and everlasting spirit and the rest of the crap. Consider the number of appearances this shaman has on highly reputed platforms like PBS and you will see that Iraqi Police Chiefs can be excused for their relative disregard for evidence.
I literally can’t believe this. I thought things were bad when I read about Christian Scientists charging for “prayer healing” (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/the_law_loves_american_christi.php), but “dowsing rods” are a new frontier in ignorance. (!!!!) indeed, Greg.
It makes me wonder what other insanity is going on in the world that no one is blogging about and I, with my feeble imagination, am unable even to fathom. Truth is stranger than fiction!
I’m sure there’s too much depressing stuff. In countries where ignorance abounds I’ve seen things such as boiled babies – a child is sick or cries a lot and won’t stop and the local witch doctor declares that it must be due to an evil spirit and that pouring boiling water over the child will drive away the spirit. In most of those cases the children never cried again and never got sick again – which would have been fantastic if it weren’t for the fact that it was due to the children dying of shock or of an uncontrolled infection due to the prescription of boiling water. Then again those children may have been spared a lifetime of anguish at the hands of imbecile parents.
Likely those dowsing rods were previously used to detect Weapons of Mass Destruction…
Given that the previous U.S. administration based its policies — from Iraq to Global Warming to Stem Cell Research — on scarcely a more rational foundation than dowsing rods, my sense of outrage is kept in proportion.
As for the Texas deputy sheriff, the people of the United States have elected (well, the Supreme Court decided they have…), supported, and re-elected (unquestionably, and against evidence and better judgment) a chap who, by rights, shouldn’t have cut it even as a deputy sheriff in Rattlesnake County, Texas.
And, after a brief flirtation with Reason (hardly a honeymoon), it looks like it could happen again any time soon.
Perhaps situations like these rediculous dowsing tools can be used in places like Iraq to shake blind faith and help to bring a populous around to recognise a more rational scientific approach in their decision making.
I don’t think that these sort of situations could destroy religious belief in such pious regions but they could certainly be used as a tool to break free some some of the superstitious dogma in the country.
For my sins (not necessarily in a previous existence) I spent around 30 years as a Police officer, in the UK.
I was minded of a incident when 3 cars thieves were pursued across the spoil heaps of a local colliery at night. The dog handler in attendance released the dog which was only 50 yards from one of the suspects but never found him.
6 months later a man arrested for a burglary admitted that he had been involved in the chase above, and when asked how he had escaped said that he had hidden in a bush and kept still, and all the Police officers had been standing about 8 feet away whilst the Police dog pissed all over him. But he kept still; the dog just sniffed at him, he didn’t respond and every one moved away.
The dog, it transpired, was trained to chase suspects down and not to respond to prone bodies!!
Just another tail from the annals of crime.
Apparently nobody thought to check the bush for hiding villains.
In case you’re wondering I wasn’t there!!
Glen Davidson said: “In line with that, I believe that evidence of a cadaver dog signaling that it had picked up the smell of a dead body was allowed in as evidence in the Scott Peterson trial.”
Actually no dog ever found a cadaver scent anywhere in this case – an impossibility the state and the jury ignored. The judge did allow testimony that a dog was ‘interested’ in ‘something’ at the dock – but that could have been Snausages as far as we know.
Latest news on th efake detector scam from BBC Newsnight:
See Clever Hans for why dog ‘evidence’ is valueless unless the dog finds something.
Oops, screwed up the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans