Fake Bomb Detectors

[birdie1971]

A guy called James McCormick has been selling fake bomb detectors all over the world, knowing that they didn't work:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22266051

Clearly McCormick is a vile individual with absolutely no morals whatsoever but my question is: how could people fall for such an obvious fraud? Listening to his sales pitch was like listening to someone explaining how perpetual motion machines 'work'. Apart from the loss of life, is the other tragedy the chronic ignorance in the general population about even the most simple aspects of science and physics?

[LazyGun]

No idea where it was manufactured, Society. Point is, these "detectors" were taken apart, back in 2010 - I have included a link to a Newsmight piece where Sidney Alford, an explosives consultant to the military did just that, and showed it for what it was - bent bits of car antennae in a black plastic box, together with a card that had a kind of pre-printed circuit on it- a circuit that did nothing at all. No power source to the device, nothing at all.

It was all "quantum interference" and "digital signatures" and whatever other sciencey phrase de jour they could cobble together to explain how it allegedly worked.The claims made for these devices were incredible, staggering and beyond belief - which in itself should have been a clue..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8471187.stm

[ludwig]

What's incredible is that the people spending the money didn't do some kind of independent testing to verify that these things worked.

[bibblebub]

Sentenced to 10 years. Good.