Beyond Belief: When woo turns murderous November 7, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Science and Rationaltiy , trackbackMuch of the time woo cannot be directly attributed to any specific incidence of great harm, rather, superstitious and anti-science beliefs chip away at people’s ability to think straight, opens them up to exploitation to the unscrupulous who would sell them lies, and generally undermines democracy and freedom by slowly turning the population into a sludge-pool of half-wits. Sometimes however I come across examples of the perpetration of woo beliefs that just make me sick. The Ministry of Truth has a story detailing the insane practice of selling dowsing rods to Iraqi soldiers for the purpose of detecting explosives including landmines. Apparently, while the US military dismiss them as nothing more than “magic wands” the Iraqis swear by them.
But it doesn’t detect bombs and Iraqis are going to continue to die in attacks that might well have been prevented has their security forces invested in trained explosives sniffer dogs, which do work very well, while companies in the UK and Germany continue to rack up the profits from selling fancy-looking but utterly useless dowsing rods. This is not just fraud, its culpable involvement in negligent homicide
I cant help thinking though, without a touch of irony or humour, that maybe those who swear by dowsing for more benign effects- water etc- might be asked to test their faith with explosives. I wouldnt do this however; I’m afraid that some people I know would be happy to risk their lives trying.
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