A few months ago Phil Plait did a blog post on the use of dowsing rods to detect bombs in Iraq.  Any simple moron could tell you that this would not work and cannot work.  Sadly, some people in the US military aren’t that smart.   The original story was in the New York Times. 

Well… Jim McCormick The managing director of ATSC has been arrested on suspicion of fraud.  Suspicion?  Really?  Ya think?

It appears that he sold hundreds of dowsing rods (a little piece of metal with a plastic handle) to the military for millions of dollars.  Sadly, no one thought it was a problem to use dowsing rods and there was little concern about paying millions for little pieces of plastic.    Now it appears that the worst has happened.  In recent months many have died in Baghdad after people were able to get past check points that used the dowsing rod detectors.

This is why we must make sure more people can think critically.  Just one good skeptic could have saved many lives.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 9:43 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.