We skeptics talk about many different things. Ghosts, psychics, intelligent design, cryptozoology, and dowsing are all frequent topics for our lectures and articles, but in most cases these are academic exercises. It's true that in some cases we might save someone pain and suffering, such as when people realize that the "psychic" who's been taking their $100 a week really can't talk to the dead, or when someone takes our advice and doesn't buy the $30,000 audio cables. For matters of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine," the stakes are higher and a skeptical viewpoint can actually save a life, as whatstheharm.net shows in some detail. But in the past year, we skeptics did something quite a bit more impressive. We literally saved hundreds if not thousands of lives, and it all started at a meeting at JREF headquarters.
But actually that's not true... as with many things skeptical, it begins with Randi, tirelessly dogging promoters of "woo-woo." A search of Google shows us nearly 1500 references to the word dowsing on randi.org, and that doesn't include the forum. Randi and the challenge have been responsible for demonstrating over and over again that dowsing does not work. It doesn't work with forked willow branches, pendulums, and it still doesn't work when batteries and ersatz electronic ciruits are added. We've seen this last form under the names "Quadrotracker," "Sniffex," and the later form of the Quadrotracker, "ADE 561." It's these "hi-tech" dowsers that turn a harmless delusion into a profitable and deadly deception.
At that staff meeting at the JREF, we learned that Randi had been invited to speak to a group of government and industry representatives at a major conference on IEDs, suicide bombers, and vehicle bomb detection. He was asked to address divining devices and give some evidence for his claim that they are useless and dangerous. Sadly, Randi was in the middle of an extensive course of chemotherapy and unable total travel. After a brief discussion, it was decided that long-time friend and adviser to the JREF, Hal Bidlack would be asked to speak in Randi's stead. Hal is a retired Lt. Colonel from the USAF who taught for years at the Air Force Academy. That, plus the addition of his strong science and military background (Hal was on the National Security Council as an environmental science adviser to President Clinton, as well as a military advisor in the State Department) made Hal the perfect choice for this event.
And indeed he was—the hosts of the conference (The Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and State) "promoted" him from speaker to keynote. After a talk at the conference, which featured a live demonstration of the Lectrasearch device that the JREF has in its cabinet of curiosities, Hal received a great response. Followup came fast and furious. The British Ministry of Defense contacted him for advice, and Hal put them in touch with Richard Wiseman. A New York Times reporter based in Iraq heard about the event, and called Hal for an in-depth interview, quoting Hal extensively in his article.
Rachael Maddow read the article, and then reads Hal's quotes on her show. Katie Couric had Hal as an expert guest on the CBS Evening News, and even went so far as to label him as an unofficial spokesperson for the entire U.S. Military. The Economist magazine will soon interview Hal for a future article.
You can see the progression here... once someone got the word out, the media ate it up. And the end result: the man responsible for the ADE 561 is arrested, export of the devices is prohibited, and militaries around the world stop using the device. Sadly, the cost of this scam is already hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars, and countless civilian and military lives.
Now, the makers of these devices are on the run, as this BBC article shows. It's too bad this headline didn't appear five years ago.
The point of me telling this story is that we, the skeptics, have the winning cards in our hand. But life is like poker in this regard... it's not having the winning cards that matter—it's how and when you play them. In the case of deadly dowsing rods, the JREF had the right background and people to get the issue in front of the media. This is important stuff, and there are times when we need to take it seriously.
P.S. I wish to also acknowledge Robert Park for his work on exposing these devices. As his June 11, 2010 missive shows, we haven't won the pot yet.