The Bomb-Detecting Device That Didn't Work, Except to Make Money | Hacker News Reader

The Bomb-Detecting Device That Didn't Work, Except to Make Money

businessweek.com

123 pointsdanso49 comments

There's a special place in hell for people who do things like this.

And a special place in the corner of the room and Dunce hat for people who didn't convict them and who paid good money to buy crap when lives were at stake.

Edit: Some links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GT200

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniffex

And some food for thought by Stephen Fry

  The use of the GT200 as a means of tracking smuggled 
  ivory in Kenya has also been questioned. Stephen Fry, 
  who saw the GT200 being used by Kenyan rangers in an 
  attempt to catch poachers, described the misinformation 
  which accompanied the devices as "cynical, cruel and 
  monstrous." He told the BBC's Newsnight programme: "I 
  was horrified. They had spent a vast sum of money on a 
  modern equivalent of a hazel twig divining rod. There 
  was no possibility that such a thing could work."

Likely that beyond whatever punishment he receives under the judicial system, there will be little other consequence to him for his actions.

People do bad things, and get away with it all the time.

EDIT:

Interesting aside: Just world fallacy [1]

[1] http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallac...

Sadly, I fear you're right. At the most they'll probably get a slap on the wrist and those who were complicit in buying the Snake Oil (knowing they were bunk or not) will get scarcely above a stern word or two.

Rather depressing to think about.

As long as the process (of evaluating and purchasing the items in question) did its job, no one has to be accountable.

Something that isn't mentioned in the article but probably plays some role in the desire to believe that these things work in parts of the world where Islam is prevalent is the low stature of dogs in the religion. Since dogs are the typical go to bomb and contraband detecting technology in the world it's easy to see why a police department in a Muslim area might find a device that can detect bombs w/o the use of a dog attractive.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1029887/Muslims-sear...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_animals#Muslims_and_s...

Pigs could probably do the job as well, but I think they are held in similar esteem. Maybe they should train black bears or something. Do Muslims like bears?

Pigs poop a lot. They don't really handle getting in and out of cars or going up stairs well either. Their hooves tear up lawns.

Ever tried to get a 150 pound pig into a minivan?....

(it's not fun, alcohol helps)

Fairly ignorant comment you've got there. What you wrote is akin to saying Jewish men won't touch unrelated women or their own adopted children because you once met an Orthodox Jew who told you about negiah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negiah). Also the daily mail is full of shit.

Here's some Muslims getting along just fine with their bomb sniffing dogs: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/as-soldiers-leave-...

What happened here was a man committing outright fraud and the fact you're blaming it on the religion out of your own ignorance is pretty sad.

  > the fact you're blaming it on the religion

However misguided, the parent's comment amounts to 'Muslims are more gullible.' While that may not be true, it doesn't excuse a conman from defrauding someone just because they were more gullible than someone else, and I don't believe that the parent is trying to claim this either.

I would not be surprised to hear that conmen believe that someone who takes the more fantastical parts of scripture literally is an easy mark.

I don't think he is even trying to claim Muslims are more gullible, in general. He just claims this may be a weak spot for Muslims. In other areas, they may not have weak spots that others have.

It doesn't explain why Americans spent so much money buying these devices.

Or why a Lebanese general (that country is roughly 60:40 muslim:christian) believed it. Or why the non-muslim American inventor believed he had created a working detector.

It might be connected to Muslim dislike of dogs. Or maybe it's just that conmen are conmen and can persuade people to buy junk regardless of religion.

> Or why the non-muslim American inventor believed he had created a working detector.

Did he?

It's possible. That's what someone quoted by the article suggests.

People can be stupid without being malicious.

> Although Kelly is unequivocal about the Quadro principals’ fraudulent intent—“They were con artists,” he says—Murray feels that Quattlebaum, at least, genuinely had faith in it. “I think he did believe in it—it was his invention,” he says. Quattlebaum could have fallen victim to the ideomotor effect, the same psychological phenomenon that convinces users of dowsing rods and Ouija boards that they are witnessing the results of a powerful yet inexplicable force. In response to suggestion or expectation, the body can produce unconscious movements, causing a sensitive, free-swinging mechanism to respond in sympathy. “It’s very compelling, if you’re not aware of what’s causing it,” Murray says.

Some of the people peddling homeopathy really do believe it works, and that's just as clearly nonsense.

Thanks, I didn't know that there was an incarnation that was not based off a novelty toy golf ball finder.

James McCormick himself clearly knew that the tool didn't work.

> Some of the people peddling homeopathy really do believe it works, and that's just as clearly nonsense.

And yet, if believing in homeopathy cures the ailments that homeopathy claims to cure, doesn't that in itself mean homeopathy works? Perhaps not in the way it's advertised, but still.

No it isn't. It's a kin to saying that many Jewish people prefer to eat Kosher meals so when the government goes to buy emergency rations it looks for ones that are Kosher.

I don't see why it's "ignorant" to think a government institution wouldn't take into consideration the local cultural sensitivities when making decisions.

It has nothing to do with "blaming" it on religion. It's just that individual preferences might have made this scam more attractive in some parts of the world. I'm not sure what your point is, have you ever lived outside the US you seem to lack a nuanced understanding of foreign culture.

I think this is slightly misguided, dogs don't have a low stature in the religion, but sadly, many ignorant Muslim mistreat them or will make claims based on those ignorant views (as relayed by those articles).

Muslims are required to wash what part of their body or clothing enter in contact with the dog saliva, but this likely a hygiene measure. It doesn't mean they are forbidden to touch the dog or its saliva in the first place.

Eating dog meat is forbidden, but that doesn't mean the animal has a low stature. I haven't done research on this, but I suspect the same could be said of pigs.

And using bears -- which meat is also forbidden to Muslims -- won't make people less ignorant :)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/15/islam-on-dogs-can-y... http://www.islamicconcern.com/dogs.asp

Americans also bought these devices and those people were not Muslim and had no particular opinion about dogs.

Why people wants to believe it works ? Well, it has nothing to do with religion. Reason is same as using robots for manufacturing : It's cheap, fast and could be 7/24 on duty.

Why these devices haven't tested properly ? Easy, corruption (, which is not condoned by any religion)

It doesn't necessarily need to be corruption. If the device just makes random beeps or something then it's easy enough to be convinced that it's correlated with how close it is to explosives.

People do not automatically think of doing a blind test and measuring the results and seeing how well it correlates with actual bombs.

One has to wonder when law enforcement will treat polygraphs with the same disdain, they're effectively the same thing as these 'Quadro' devices. Unfortunately polygraphs are convenient low-impact torture devices, and they're also useful for measuring someone's tenacity.

That's an interesting perspective.

I've never considered polygraphs to be beyond anything more than a fancy stress meter (cause be damned), but now that I think about it, it does function quite well as such an instrument.

Goes so well as a corollary too: "If you've got nothing to hide, you wouldn't mind some mild torture to verify that fact".

I'm quite serious when I say torture, it's as much punitive as it is deterrence, both of which are irrelevant to conducting an investigation and gathering evidence of wrong-doing. It's not practical because it's impossible to deny polygraph test results, so law enforcement officers have no incentive to be truthful about the results.

I am 78% sure polygraph tests are no longer admissible as evidence in court.

They are nothing alike. The polygraph is a useful interrogation device. These bomb "detectors" are an outright scam.

Edit: For the downvoters, I'm well aware that polygraphs are much more art than science which is why they're inadmissible in court (in the US). They're not that useful for detecting lies. As I said, they're a useful tool in the interrogation toolbox.

In what way would the polygraph be superior to the Quadro device in the article? The polygraph's effectiveness is limited to the technician's ability to instill fear and doubt in the subject, which can just as easily be accomplished by the Quadro device.

Polygraph test results may be inadmissible in court but confessions collected as a result of the polygraph examination process are perfectly admissible, despite test process being as intimidating and hostile as possible.

Seems like this story pops up every year or so with little new information. It popped up first in 2009 it seems in the NYTimes. This article doesn't even mention that he was found guilty ~1-2 months ago.

It does on page six.

Ah well I stand corrected. Other than that it's still just mostly the old information repeated yet again.

A device that actually works for most explosives, the Syft (1) Voice 200, is the size of a fridge, weighs significantly more and retails at several hundred thousand dollars. It will detect volatile organic compounds in air, and in microscopic amounts, but as far as I know does not seem to have been used for bomb detection. It seems that you need to be better at selling snake oil than at actually solving the problem to win in this space. They do operate out of the back of vans, and I can imagine them at checkpoints constantly scanning the air around cars. But I guess they are focussing on other markets.

(1): Http://syft.com/ I am a small shareholder

Here is the fulltext[0] - there were 6 pages to click through!

[0] http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/133612-in-iraq-...

I don't know why everyone is skipping over the obviousness of this device; it works by psychology, not by technology.

It's not a bomb detection device; it's a nervousness alerting device.

I can kinda of see a use for this IF the operator knows it's fake, but the target doesn't.

Use the device and watch the person, see if they display signs of nervousness.

You can do this with any $2 trinket from anywhere.

Of course. But it works much better if you hold a huge press conference and make a big deal out of it.

When I first read the title I assumed it would be about the body scanners in airports.

Apparently US airports and police departments also bought them. However an article about white people being dumb probably wouldn't get as many page views.

While I agree with your premise, do you have a reference to the US authorities purchasing these.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker

It's in the article?

> By the end of 1995, distributors across the U.S. had sold about 1,000 Quadro Trackers to customers including police departments in Georgia and Illinois and school districts in Kansas and Florida. When Ronald Kelly, the agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s office in Beaumont, Tex., learned that a local narcotics task force had bought one, he attended a demonstration in which a Tracker was used to find a brick of cocaine. He wasn’t impressed. “I paid reasonable attention in eighth grade science,” Kelly says now. “I pronounced this bulls—.”

In 2001 the new device was almost sold in Denver, except someone conducted a double blind test which the device obviously failed.

Why white people? Do you think members of other races are incapable of wasting taxpayer money?

The Kenya Police was also duped by the same guy http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22306632. And the most embarassing thing is the Kenyan Police actually believed that the science-defying gadgets actually work.

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6040089

There's no value in linking to a previous submission with no discussion to read.

There's value in seeing what URLs are and why they didn't get picked up by a dupe filter.

Well, I'd be a bit skeptical: "the device could effectively and accurately, from long range, detect the presence and location of various types of explosives, drugs, ivory, and other substances"

The first thing I thought when reading this was "man, these people should DEFINITELY be running healthcare"

This is probably just a prototype for the model that will detect terrorism in Wi-Fi networks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com