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Sometimes, things just work out… A couple years ago, I wrote to several authorities in Iraq offering them the JREF million-dollar prize if they could produce evidence that the ADE561 dowsing-stick actually worked.  This is the device on which American taxpayers spent over $85 million just to supply it to Iraq to protect them. It was supposed to be an explosives-detector, but it just didn’t work, having no “innards” at all – just a swiveling rod that flopped to-and-fro. None of these authorities ever responded, and I suspected it was because they were already making their own profit from fluffing up the price…

Well, Iraqi police have just arrested Major General Jihad al-Jabiri, the commander of the bomb squad and one of those who received my letter! He’s a high-ranking police official who handled the business involved in buying the ADE561 toy, which was widely used by police and soldiers at security checkpoints and was meant to be a key weapon in the defense against insurgents. Sure.

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Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine.

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Many of you have already seen the Time Mazazine article about Raymond Kurzweil and his concept of the technological singularity, which mentioned that I spoke at the 2010 Singularity Summit. The “Singularity” concept is that we will be able to create an artificial system that will equal and then surpass the performance of a human mind – a robot, ambulatory or stationary, or more correctly, an android.  This was a favorite notion of the much-missed Isaac Asimov… I was perhaps the conference’s novelty invitée, I suspect. In any case, I was quite taken with the session, and here is the message I sent to Time's editors which I'd like to share with everyone who read the article:

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The announcement  that the Vatican accepted, as miracle of the late pope John Paul II, the alleged “cure” of a nun who may have had Parkinson’s Disease received a lot of media attention. Such attention, as is usually the case, was uncritical and did not address the many logical mistakes and blunders that are an inseparable part of the Catholic saint-making process.

It would be instructive, then, to look a little deeper into the affair.

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“it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.”

 ”Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

Four in ten Americans are creationists in the most literal sense, believing that humans were put here in their present form some time in a not-so-distant past. Many of the remaining 60% accept various contrived versions of evolution that have little to do with the one described by the scientific world. This cultural rejection of one of the great “showcases” of the scientific enterprise has severely undermined the intellectual and scientific legitimacy of our educational system. We have reliably out-maneuvered the enemies of education in both the courts and the legislative sessions time after time. Great appreciation is due to organizations like the National Center for Science Education and local Citizens for Science groups for their effective work there

  1. Last Week at Science-Based Medicine
  2. Why Do We So Devotedly Insist On Believing In Nonsense?
  3. Tell drug store chains to come clean about homeopathic products
  4. The Violet Ray: From Quackery To Sex And Back Again