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Doubtful News roundup  - 03 October 2014

10/3/2014

 
Doubtful News website posts evidence-based critiques of news of the paranormal, pseudoscience, health claims, and anomalies.

Here is a selection of the most important "doubtful" news stories of the past week.
Bogus bomb detector dealer jailed. A UK couple was sentenced for manufacturing and selling the Alpha 6 devices touted to spot explosives but really just a glorified dowsing rods. Samuel Tree, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail and his wife Joan was assigned 300 hours of community work. This follows the conviction of Gary Bolton, sentenced to seven years in jail for producing the GT-200 and Jim McCormick, sentenced to ten years in prison for producing the ADE-651. The products had no reasonable means of detecting explosives and netted the fraudsters millions of dollars. These scams also cost many lives.

Fear of underground invasion from North Korea is unfounded The ever present dark cloud of invasion from the North prompts some South Koreans to diligently search for underground tunnels. Dowsers say they have located several but for many years there has been no evidence that such tunnels exist.

Pseudoscientific technology for Australian rugby team An Australian sports team is in the news sporting supposedly "banned" futuristic technology including "energizing blood chips". In a case of extremely sloppy and ridiculous reporting, we wonder if this was just a ploy to psych out other teams. The chip is reminiscent of Power Balance bands.

Ebola is a curse: Exorcism recommended by Liberian preacher A Liberian preacher believes that God's word tells him Ebola is a "Satanic mission" to destroy humanity. Oh, I don't know. Our own ignorance might be plenty enough to do that without involving the hand of Satan. He has proposed to the government to use soda pop to exorcise the cursed presidential palace. 
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    SWIFT is named after Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels. In the book, Gulliver encounters among other things a floating island inhabited by spaced-out scientists and philosophers who hardly deal with reality. Swift was among the first to launch well-designed critiques against the flummery - political, philosophical, and scientific - of his time, a tradition that we hope to maintain at The James Randi Foundation.

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