A series on pseudoscience engineering

[inspectormustard]

Hello all!

I'm in the process of gathering up material to investigate for a series I hope to do this year on pseudoscience. I know a couple of guys who will help me out with the materials I'll need to hack together free energy machines, anti-gravity generators, and other oxymorons, but while I've got my hands on a lot of material I don't know what would be interesting.

Is there anything you guys would really like to see taken apart, torn to shreds, or whatever?

The format, as I envision it now, will be adversarial. I will be upholding thermodynamics, the laws of gravity, etc., while a good friend of mine will be advocating whatever wacky invention we're examining at the time. It should be fun, and maybe even an interesting way to teach (and for me to learn; I'm a computer scientist, he's a computational bio-chemist) some electronic engineering.

 

[PBnFlash]

Foot bath detox (some nice bits about ions to make fun of)

ionic silver or ionic colloidal silver (drinks etc.)

any of the zero point energy or free energy

Crazy Nikola Tesla inventions (death ray PEW PEW)

Cellphones popping popcorn

Cellphones causing cancer

CRT causing cancer (they do kind, but it could be a good point to make about radiation risk)

most stuff with cancer could be good

magnotherapy (acupuncture etc.)

I'd be interested in further information on you're project, I do a little animation and editing, I might be interested in seeing if I could help.

 

[borrofburi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZr4mLwGxw4

This entire lecture is simply fantastic, he does a lot of pseudoscience debunking in it as well and communicates effectively how bad we as people are at statistics.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Yeah there are a crazy ammount of madscientist type of "inventors" out there. Magneto motors and HHO machines may be the new (old) stuff banging out there.
I'm an aerospace engineering student if you need some form of technical information give me a beep.

 

[inspectormustard]

Yeah there are a crazy ammount of madscientist type of "inventors" out there. Magneto motors and HHO machines may be the new (old) stuff banging out there.
I'm an aerospace engineering student if you need some form of technical information give me a beep.

I'd be interested in further information on you're project, I do a little animation and editing, I might be interested in seeing if I could help.

Ooh, that could help a lot. Thanks! Right now I'm just waiting to get paid so I can order a new firewire card, since my old one fried along with my last motherboard, and gathering information on things. I'm not familiar with the foot bath thing (is that the one with the fishes, or. . .?). Definitely Tesla and derivatives, cancer stuff maybe (kinda hard to test, though, I could only really go interview doctors), magnotherapy definitely. Some of those topics have been covered by Mythbusters/Penn&Teller, but I know of a few things in that range that haven't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZr4mLwGxw4

This entire lecture is simply fantastic, he does a lot of pseudoscience debunking in it as well and communicates effectively how bad we as people are at statistics

Yeah, Brian Brushwood's awesome. I'm kind of a magic hobbyist, in the sense that I study it but can't perform anything more complicated than your average card force, and I saw HealthyAddict's interview with him.

Anyone reading: If you haven't seen Brian Brushwood's scam school stuff on revision3, check it out at www.revision3.com/scamschool

 

[PBnFlash]

Ionic foot bath ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpuKOtFBztU&feature=PlayList&p=B14C181CB223871A&index=4
Almost funny.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LhvpC2lsCs
John Hutchison is so crazy he has an effect named after him

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyscSun3VkA&feature=fvw

Above video was made by mounting a camera to a box and shaking and dropping it from high up.


some quasicrystal stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvSALm7Ps2k


Roswell has some nice bits (Berkly physics class)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuhccACOd1U
not sure where it is in that

 

[borrofburi]

I remembered another one:
reflexology.

 

[inspectormustard]

Ionic foot bath ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpuKOtFBztU&feature=PlayList&p=B14C181CB223871A&index=4
Almost funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LhvpC2lsCs
John Hutchison is so crazy he has an effect named after him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyscSun3VkA&feature=fvw
Above video was made by mounting a camera to a box and shaking and dropping it from high up.
some quasicrystal stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvSALm7Ps2k
Roswell has some nice bits (Berkly physics class)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuhccACOd1U
not sure where it is in that

Some really good stuff there. I always kinda wondered how the Hutchinson special fx were accomplished, we'll definitely have to try that.

 

[PBnFlash]

Here is a less well made one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WyULc3jCgg&feature=PlayList&p=6E21BC6820E062A6&index=10

 

[borrofburi]

vaccines give your child autism... Or the general movement that we shouldn't vaccinate children for various reasons.

Also that the government created swine flu (this was listed as one of the reasons not to vaccinate children).

 

[Hanes]

A segment on those kits that you can buy for your car that electrolize water and inject the hydrogen into your engine and claim to increase your gas mileage would be good. Technically this would fall under the "free energy" section.

 

[inspectormustard]

A segment on those kits that you can buy for your car that electrolize water and inject the hydrogen into your engine and claim to increase your gas mileage would be good. Technically this would fall under the "free energy" section.

Oh, yeah, haha. That really is kinda funny, since both petrol and hydrogen require oxygen to burn.

It would kinda make sense if it was injecting oxygen, but you're still using energy from the engine for electrolysis. Sounds good, we'll have to try that!

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Ooh, that could help a lot. Thanks! Right now I'm just waiting to get paid so I can order a new firewire card, since my old one fried along with my last motherboard, and gathering information on things. I'm not familiar with the foot bath thing (is that the one with the fishes, or. . .?). Definitely Tesla and derivatives, cancer stuff maybe (kinda hard to test, though, I could only really go interview doctors), magnotherapy definitely. Some of those topics have been covered by Mythbusters/Penn&Teller, but I know of a few things in that range that haven't.

The ionic foot bath if you mean what the PBnFlash showed then there are allot of things to notice:
The machine they have can be an hydrolysis machine, but very soon mumbo jumbo arrises.
1. All electrical devices only work with a differential of electrical potential, which means that there must be at least 2 points with 2 different electrical potential, so there can never be one pole working, neither can it only be current adding to one pole.
2. The absolute value of electrical potential is meaningless, electrical potential suffers from a problem called lack of root, i.e. there is no reference to attribute a zero potential to, but what we do use of "difference" of potential as the power output is directly whit the energy that each individual charge give away as they fall in the potential field.
3. Ignoring the previous problems for a second and lets imagine that we lived in bizarro world, when the woman says that the current flows to the positive poles (giving out electrons) I cannot avoid to face palm. Current was a notion created before the discovery of the charge of the electron, at the time they had an idea that electricity was related to the particles that the atoms gave of but they conjectured that the electrons had positive charge (which turned out to be the opposite). So when we say that current flows to a certain point, it really means that electrons are coming out of it from your stand point, which amazingly they even got that in reverse.
4. The machine does nothing else then split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. So you are pretty much just sitting there with a particularly explosive gas in your feet.
5. Forgetting the previous for a moment and go back to bizarro world just to entertain the concept, a fluid with high concentration of h+ ions is acidic, it would basically chew your feet of.
6. How the hell removing ions from your body will help you in any way?

About the Tesla machines, there are plenty, you have to pick one to start debunking.

 

[PBnFlash]

@Master_Ghost_Knight:

I had a teacher in high school that loved those ionic foot bath things, and at the slightest provocation would preach how effective they where. She even brought in her "Natropath" into the classroom who spouted amazingly ignorant things like
"The ionic foot bath removes toxins from your body at the phenomenal speed of electricity".
That "phenomenal" speed is 0.00028 metres per second.
Along with her love for homeopathy, and my dowsing teacher... I came out a septic despite my schools best effort.


I still have that natropath's card perhaps I should post it on 4chan...

Seriously though, that natropath was a very nice (albeit very dumb) person. InspectorMustard you could probably get a interview (likely over the phone) with her fairly easy. Send me a message if you want her card.