{"id":2220,"date":"2009-11-14T12:23:17","date_gmt":"2009-11-14T12:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2220"},"modified":"2025-10-09T10:34:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T09:34:01","slug":"iraq_police_suckered_by_fake_bomb_detector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2009\/11\/14\/iraq_police_suckered_by_fake_bomb_detector","title":{"rendered":"Iraq police suckered by fake bomb detector"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Goldacre on a hilarious, but tragic, example of obvious bogus science and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2009\/nov\/14\/bad-science-iraq-ben-goldacre\">how the Iraqi police were taken in<\/a>, to the tune of \u00a319m ($32m):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nA British company called ATSC is selling a device which can detect guns, ammunition, bombs, drugs, contraband ivory \u2013 and truffles. The ADE651 uses &quot;electrostatic magnetic ion attraction&quot; and can detect these things from a kilometre away, through walls, under the ground, under water or even from an aeroplane three miles overhead.<br \/>\nATSC&#39;s device is handheld. You simply take a piece of plastic-coated cardboard for your chosen target, which has been through &quot;the proprietary process of electrostatic matching of the ionic charge and structure of the substance&quot;, pop it into a holder connected to a wand and start detecting.<br \/>\nThere are no batteries and no power source: you hold the device to &quot;charge&quot; it with the energy of your body. Then you walk with the wand at right angles to your body.<br \/>\nIf there is a bomb on your left, the wand will drift to the left, and point at it. Like a dowsing rod.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Various investigators have taken to travelling round Iraq with weapons to see if the police, &quot;equipped&quot; with these magic bomb detectors, find them &#8212; and they never do.  Maj-Gen Jehad al-Jabiri from the country&#39;s interior ministry says, &quot;Whether it&#39;s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs&quot;.  When it failed to detect bombs which were in front of him, Jabiri said that the person handling it needed more training.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Goldacre on a hilarious, but tragic, example of obvious bogus science and how the Iraqi police were taken in, to the tune of \u00a319m ($32m): A British company called ATSC is selling a&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muslim_world","category-war_in_iraq_afghanistan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-zO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41611,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions\/41611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}