Tetherd Cow Ahead

If you answered wooooooooooooo… to the title question, then you were entirely correct! Yes that’s right – today’s post features woo and sound, two of my most favourite subjects.

Well, as we all know, it seems that for treatment of their medical ailments, more and more people are turning to ordinary water, coloured water, crystallized water, flower water, needles, colours, smells, lack of food, enemas and just about every other nutty thing under the sun except actual medicine.

It was only a matter of time before someone realised that there was a niche for an ‘alternative’ medical treatment based on sound. Today on The Cow, I will examine one such treatment⁽ⁱ⁾ – something named Human Bioacoustics, the amazing cure-all featured on a site called NutraSounds.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ Human Bioacoustics was created by a personage named Sharry Edwards™,⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ who claims that her process ‘has unlimited health and wellness potential.’ Unlimited! Human Bioacoustics can make you weller than well!

BioAcoustics Voice Spectral Analysis can detect hidden or underlying stresses in the body that are expressed as disease. The vocal print can identify toxins, pathogens and nutritional supplements that are too low or too high. In addition, vocal print can be used to match the most compatible treatment remedy to each client. The introduction of the proper^(iv) low frequency sound to the body, indicated through voice analysis, has been shown^(v) to control^(vi): pain, body temperature, heart rhythm and blood pressure. It has also been shown to regenerate body tissue^(vii) and alleviate^(viii) the symptoms of many diseases (in some cases, even those considered to be incurable).^(ix)

Oh yes, there it is! Gobbledigook piled on balderdash layered on crapola. I’ve given you a helping hand with the shifty language and vague promises. I wonder why the disclaimer that is hidden away at the bottom of the NutraSound pages in very small print isn’t placed in slightly closer proximity to the above paragraph?

Disclaimer: Human BioAcoustics, as originated by Sharry Edwards, M.Ed., does not diagnose or prescribe for medical or psychological conditions nor does it claim to prevent, treat, mitigate or cure such conditions. HBA researchers do not provide diagnosis, care, treatment or rehabilitation of individuals, nor apply medical, mental health or human development principles.

Hmm. On the one hand Human Bioacoustics cures everything and then, somehow, when it comes down to a real-world, write-your-name-here-in-blood guarantee, it doesn’t. Is Ms Edwards a little nervous about getting her ass sued off, one wonders? She certainly isn’t shy of making unsubstantiated claims though. In big bold print on her bio page:

Edwards was named scientist of the year in 2001 for her work in BioAcoustic Biology.

Really? Scientist of the Year! Very impressive! That’s not something you could just make up! Let’s see what teh internets have to say about that! Oh, right, here it is. The award was presented to her by a body called the International Association of New Science. Funny… all those links are either dead or seem to point back to organizations with which Sharry Edwards™ has affiliations. She was given the award by her pals!^(x) Elsewhere she claims that all her work is peer reviewed. I think she is (obviously purposely) conflating the concept of scientific peer review (which is a strenuous intellectual process designed to weed out errors and bad science) with the idea that you get a few of your ‘peers’ to peruse what you’re doing and give you the thumbs up.^(xi)

(By this logic, you, my Faithful Cowpokes, could all agree that I was Scientist of the Year and I could boast that on Tetherd Cow! In fact, what a good idea – I need a few endorsements so that I too can plaster it across my banner! Feel free to wax lyrical!)

The phenomenal power of Human Bioacoustics is completely free to all and sundry in the form of the nanoVoice™^(xii) program, software which is, sadly, only available for PC.^(xiii) Of course, you can only freely download the ‘micro’ version – you have to pay (surprise) for the real deal.^(xiv) nanoVoice ‘uses frequency-based biomarkers within the frequencies of your voice to allow you an enlightening peek into your Secret Self.’

I bet you didn’t even know you had ‘frequencey-based biomarkers’ hidden inside your voice. I certainly didn’t and I’ve been working as a professional sound person for thirty years.

This is how it works, as near as I can make out from reading about it: you load a recording of your voice into the program and it analyzes the ‘frequencies’^(xv) and spits out a bar graph in a rainbow of colours. Here’s what the colours supposedly mean (click to get the full chart):

Gee, now what do all those vague waffly non-specific phrases remind me of… oh, that’s it – the local paper’s astrology section! There are some classic howlers:

Yellow (E): ‘uses words first to convey messages and meaning’

Oh yeah, like that’s not going to apply to everyone except mute people.

Green/Blue (G): ‘likes to mix and manage the physical aspects of life’

What? That could mean just about ANYTHING.

Blue (G#): ‘wants to make a difference’

Oh please.

The colours are also arbitrarily tied to various kinds of organs and body parts. When I say ‘arbitrarily’ I mean that there is absolutely no scientific substantiation to say that, for example, the colour green has anything to do with your kidneys, or that the colour blue ‘retrieves nutrients from your bowel’. This is just utter, unmitigated hogwash. And Sharry Edwards™ knows it, or else she wouldn’t have put the comprehensive disclaimer on her site.^(xvi)

For an example of nanoVoice’s extraordinary powers of deduction, you can amuse yourself by visiting an analysis of Mr Mel Gibson’s phone ‘conversation’ with his estranged wife Oksana Grigoreiva, in which he uses bad language, racist terms and is generally an obnoxious prat. I want to say two thing here: first of all, the pages of unbelievable rubbish that you will find here could be attributed to just about anyone, viz:

You have an unusual sense of time. Not having all the information needed to make a decision stresses you. Your reputation is very important to you. You will go to great lengths to protect it. It is important to you that spirituality be a part of everyday life. You think that feeding the mind is just as important as feeding the body. You are aware of how painful thoughtless words can be. You push yourself and others to finish the job. You love new ideas that mean you can have a project to work on. A sense of belonging is important to you.

… and secondly, these ‘frequency’ analyses were made from a telephone recording. To someone like me who knows anything about sound, this constitutes the epitome of ridiculousness. Telephones severely restrict the frequencies of voices, in order to squeeze intelligibility down the lines. Ms Edwards is asking us to believe that her software uses inherent voice ‘frequencies’ to make its divinations, but is simultaneously independent of frequency restrictions. It is the utmost peak of buffoonery. Not only that, it demonstrates without any equivocation, that Sharry Edwards is completely ignorant about how sound works.^(xvii)

Like many similar pseudoscientific concepts, Human Bioacoustics uses as its basic modus operandi the general ignorance of most people in a specific field of expertise. Few people understand how sound works, but to someone like me who does, Human Bioacoustics, nanoVoice, ‘vocal profiling’ and the ‘Institute of Bioacoustic Biology’ look about as convincing as a pig in a tuxedo.

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Footnotes:

1. Oh yes, there are many more than just one. Perhaps I will cover Tama-Do at some later stage… [↩]
2. Oh dear. Already with the dumb. [↩]
3. Yes, that’s right, she’s trademarked her name. [↩]
4. If you don’t do it ‘properly’, it won’t work… [↩]
5. By whom? [↩]
6. ‘Control’? What does that mean? [↩]
7. Body tissue regenerates anyway. This means nothing. [↩]
8. Alleviate? In what way? [↩]
9. Note the equation of the symptoms with the disease itself – a common ploy of pseudoscentific medicine [↩]
10. Searching on International Association of New Science turns up some frightening crosslinks. The IANS appears to have been concocted by Dr Brian O’Leary a UFO ‘expert’ and Cleve Backster, who is quite famous for writing books about communicating with plants. The frightening part is that the IANS name also appears in conjunction with legitimate research into climate change. These people are being given government money for their idiotic beliefs… If you follow the links even further, it’s worse – there are ties to the whole anti-vaccination hoodoo and a whole other world of medical stupidity. [↩]
11. This is what really gets my goat with these kinds of people – they shamelessly trade on the credentials that genuine science affords, while simultaneously bashing all its accomplishments as worthless. If you adopt science, you adopt science. Play properly by its rules, not by some airy fairy ones that you make up yourself! Otherwise, stay off its turf and name yourselves as the magic peddlers that you really are. [↩]
12. Yep, Ms Edwards has her whole racket trademarked up the wazoo. [↩]
13. Well, technically it could be installed under Virtual PC on my Mac, apparently, but I ain’t running VPC just for this piece of crap. [↩]
14. Curious, when the organization that produces it boasts that it is ‘non profit’… [↩]
15. There are those goddamned frequencies again. Teh woo just loves the vibrations and the frequencies! [↩]
16. I’m sure she justifies the disclaimer by saying that she ‘was forced to do it’ by the ‘system’ which ‘persecutes her for her beliefs’. A song that we’ve heard many times before. [↩]
17. Oh, I’m sure she’d come up with some piece of silliness to ‘explain’ how she can get readings from a telephone conversation – I’d be disappointed if she couldn’t! [↩]

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Good morning Acowlytes! How are your livers this morning? Nice and squeaky clean? Not sure what I’m on about? Then allow me to introduce you to Tsetsinka, Goddess of Liver Cleansing. If you travel over to CureZone.com (‘Educating Instead of Medicating’), you can read Tsetsinka’s mind-boggling instructions on how to cleanse your liver without using oil or lemon juice! Incredible, I know! To you and me it sounds completely ridiculous, but it’s true! Instead of unpleasant oil and lemon juice concoctions, Tsetsinka has come up with a method that uses… oil and LIME juice! And egg yolks!

“But Reverend,” I hear you exclaim, “My liver isn’t even dirty!” Well, Tsetsinka begs to differ. According to her, your liver is a filthy steaming worm-infested putrid lump. You might want to read the entire text of her ‘method’ before we carry on (I was tempted to quote the whole damn thing here, but on reflection I decided you might just prefer to come back for the highlights).

OK. Has the urge to laugh (or vomit) subsided? Very well, let’s begin.

Have you asked yourself… why do i have to endure such unpleasant moments when flushing my liver of Gallstones and filth? I have!

Yes, but more importantly my dear Tsetsinka, have you asked yourself why you have gallstones in your liver?

You certainly don’t have feel unconfortably during the flush at all. there is a much easier and more pleasant way of cleaning your liver ducts and gall bladder, and even your intestants get cleaned from this procedure.

Intestants! Now there’s a word you don’t hear every day.⁽ⁱ⁾

I believe you will look at least 10 years younger and more beautiful! No need for oil and lemon juice, when you are using this method. it amazes me that this information is not posted here or anywhere else on the liver detox knowledge pages of this website.

Us it doesn’t amaze so much.

you will experience a perfectly pink tounge in just 3-4 days and your skin will begin to glow like a peach and you will get long, very shiny hair, your nails will grow rapidly and you will feel like you can lift a mountain.

I’m not entirely convinced I want to look like a hairy peach with long nails and a pink tounge. Or tongue, for that matter. Even if I was preternaturally strong.

Tsetsinka goes on to give us a step-by-step outline of her recipe, which consists solely of limes, egg yolks and sunflower oil. A cup of sugar and you could make a nice Key Lime pie, but I digress.

8. using a wooden utencil (any utencil except for metal), gently beat the mixture only a couple of times. simply a couple of stirs are sufficent to get the juice and yolks to mix.

Gee whiz – that’s so EASY! Almost as easy as being able to spell ‘utensil’ and ‘sufficient’ correctly!

11. you may feel the urge to sleep almost immediately after that, so you may want to drink this potion right before bedtime, instead of in the morning. most importantly, be sure that you have not eaten or drank anything in the last 3 hours.

12. when you wake up from your nap, after 2-3 hours have elapsed, you will feel like you have 10 horse powers instead of 1 human power. the energy you will aquire from this is instant and perminant.

Your horse powers come at a cost, however – a depletion of your spelling powers. It’s a small price to pay for having a mane and hooves.

13. your nose will feel clogged. this is because your liver has just purged an incredible amount of tixins and dirt into your intestine. even if there is nothing blocking your nose cavity, your nose will feel clogged. for those who have done Liver Flushes will know what i am talking about. this is the very feeling of stones and gunk leaving the liver and entering the entstine.

Ah, the ol’ enstsine! Just next to the intestants, if I remember my medical studies correctly. Of course I didn’t aquire my doctorate, but luckily I had sufficent utencils to deal with tixins and was confortably able set up my site at CureZone.com!

14. finally, if you have an enema kit, you need to use very warm water to clean out your intestines, and it is imperative that you use 2 full enemas with very warm water, in order to draw the gunk out from the top of the small upper instestine to the lower one and then out.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

I guess if you try every possible combination of letters, you’ll get it eventually.

15. unbelieveable things will come out of you, sometimes green stones, sometimes plaque, sometimes worms and parasites and sometimes just black, black, black filty water.

I…. er… well… BLEURRGGGHHHH. Oh. Sorry about that. Green stones? Plaque? Worms and parasites? Tsetsinka, my dear, you really might like to think about changing your diet.

you will be literally wowed at the results after the first day and double-wowed of the results after the 2, 3,4th day. by the end of the week, you will feel like you can take over the world! yes, the feeling is incredible!

Ehhhh. I dunno…. I’ve never been ‘double-wowed’ by anything Oh… yeah I guess there was that thing that Cindy Lawler could do with her tongue… but passing black black black filt(h)y water doesn’t sound like it would be double-wowing so much as just plain disgusting.

If you feel unconfortable using an enema, stones, gunk, mucouid plaque, worms, parasites and eggs can still come out, but not as full-capacity as when you flush with an enema

Oh, well, yes, with a sales pitch like that everybody definitely wants the full capacity enema. How could anyone possibly resist the allure of a comprehensive flushing sluice of worms, parasites, eggs and mucuoid plaque! My imagination is just going wild here – maybe Tsetsinka should consider whipping that sentence up into a screenplay and seeing if she can get some traction in Hollywood with an Alien sequel!

If you have any questions, email me at neprotivo@yahoo.com! i answer all emals.

There ya go Acowlytes. She answers all emails! Your mission, should you choose to accept it – ask Tsetsinka some questions and get back to us here with the answers!

And if your brain isn’t reeling after all that, then I suggest that for some further mucuoid plaque fun you might like to delve into the thread replies of Tsetse’s⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ post. Me, I’m having a hard time believing it’s not all some kind of elaborate practical joke. And yet….

Above all, remember : CureZone.com ‘Educating Instead of Medicating’!

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A big shout out to the redoubtable Ed for digging this one up.

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Footnotes:

1. It’s a word that imagine could be coined to describe the participants of a medical quiz show… [↩]
2. Does anyone else get the impression that Tsetsinka is rather… er… fond… of enemas? Just asking… [↩]
3. Oooops. I made a spelling mistake… [↩]

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Acowlyte Ed points me to this late breaking news from India which I just know you all need to know.

It appears that traffic police in Nagpur have decided that the best way to deal with road accident black spots is to install 30 centimeter tall pyramids by the roadside in order to disperse ‘negative energies’. Cos’ everyone knows that’s what causes car accidents right? Bad vibes.⁽ⁱ⁾

The brains behind this scheme is one Sushil Fatehpuria, an ‘expert’ in Vastu, a kind of Indian feng shui. “I will energise the pyramids,” he says,“I will transfer my positive thoughts into the pyramids.” Mr Fatehpuria has (quite surprisingly, considering) offered his services free of charge.

I can see the reasoning behind Mr Fatehpuria’s idea – how many car accidents did the Ancient Egyptians have? Yeah – find fault with that logic if you can!

Personally, though, I think that Mr Fatehpuria is not really making a big enough commitment. Why not campaign for the the introduction of pyramid-shaped cars such as the one above featured on Geekologie?⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ Surely these cars would be completely accident proof!!!! And why stop at piddly little 30cm pyramids? What about putting in some really big motherfuckers – that’s unquestionably going to have a much greater effect! I’m sure there are some statistics to show the dramatic reduction in car accidents in Cairo and Las Vegas!

Of course it is conceivable that pyramid power works on some kind of homeopathic principle, meaning that the smaller the pyramid is the more effective its powers. In which case, Mr Fatehpuria is wasting his money with those whopping huge 30cm behemoths.

Damn. This new-fangled science is SO confusing!

(Quite coincidentally, while I was writing this, a documentary came on the History channel about pyramids. The basic gist of it was that the Ancient Egyptians couldn’t possibly have built the pyramids with the technology they had to hand, and the purpose of these huge stone monoliths was to generate microwave power via hydrogen⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ to communicate with aliens. I have three observations to make:

1. This is not HISTORY.

2. I’m scared that because it’s on the HISTORY channel, some people think it is.

3. There is a lot of stuff on the HISTORY channel that is like this…)

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Footnotes:

1. It could have NOTHING to do with the huge number of untrained Indian drivers, the atrocious roads or the lax law enforcement – factors that contribute to the deaths of more than 114,000 people in India every year… [↩]
2. You should go visit Geekologie – they are cool dudes. [↩]
3. I didn’t quite follow that bit… [↩]

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A recenter Cow commenter, Nancy, from Sweden, tells us that ShooTag is now on sale in her country.⁽ⁱ⁾ A quick lookup verifies that yes, the ShooTaggers are making inroads into Europe with the same unfounded claims of efficacy for their product as they’ve used elsewhere. Clearly, the critical faculties of the world are in dire trouble. I even turned up this link which trumpets that the Finnish Olympic Team ‘is now using shoo!TAG products for protection against mosquitos !!!’ I fervently hope that this is an idle boast from the sales agent and that the Finnish Olympic Team is not so stupid as to endorse this silly item.

My friends over at the JREF have pointed out, though, that Europe might not be the virgin territory that the ShooTaggers perhaps expect. Yes folks, Europe has their own flavour of pet wootag and it’s called The Anibio Tic-Clip®.

Anibio appears to be a German company but handily, they do have a link to a pdf in English on their site which ‘explains’ how Tic-Clip works:

Ready-to-use tic-clip tags are carrying a specially charged layer of highly radiating, bioenergetic with a very high storage capacity. (Bioenergetic = dextropolarised electromagnetic energy). This creates a special oscillation-field around the tag and thus around the animal. Tics and fleas will not react to the animal anymore.

Whoa! Dextropolarised! Now there’s a word you don’t hear every day. You can look it up if you want – I did – but really, it’s one more instance of a new contextually-meaningless woo buzz word like ‘quantum’ or ‘magnetic’ and I won’t labour the point here. You can already tell that this ‘scientific’ explanation is just another load of baloney in the same vein as the ShooTag nonsense. And this one works without a clumsy magnetic strip! ShooTag! Your technology is so-o-o-o yesterday!

The pdf also urges the visitor to read this important information:⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

This product was developed after many years of research together with the Germany based company Hess & Volk GmbH and has archived spectacular success in tic and flea prevention all over Europe. Many successful breeders are using it. Similar to holistic approaches you are unable to see or feel⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ the Bioernergetic potential, but the positive results over the last couple of years are proving the strength of this toxin-free solution.

If you thought that the highlighted and underlined areas might prove to be a link to Messrs Hess & Volk’s ‘archive of spectacular success in tick and flea prevention’, I fear you will be bitterly disappointed. That would be altogether far too convenient. In fact, searching on Hess & Volk turns up lots of links pointing back to Anibio, but not much else. Now where oh where might we have seen that kind of behaviour before?

Elsewhere, an American distributor of Tic-Clip has some more enlightenment for us:

The mechanism of the Tic-Clip’s action is a bit abstract when compared with the traditional insect repellents, but this product is the result of many years of research and delivers results that dispel skepticism. Holistic products that work similarly with bioenergetic fields, like flower essences and homeopathic remedies, still lie outside the mainstream, but devoted users will tell you that the results can be truly amazing, even without their really understanding exactly how they work.

Hahahaha! The mechanism is a bit ‘abstract’? Judging by the rest of the paragraph, I think the phrase they’re looking for might be ‘The mechanism is a big steaming heap of claptrap’.

Still, maybe something’s being lost in interpretation here? Let’s go to the original German Anibio site with our friend the Babelfish and get it straight from the mund des pferdes.

Oooh. There’s a graph. That’s scientific. It’s supposed to be showing us how the Tic-Clip’s effectiveness works over time. With an efficacy of 2 years at a price of €24.90 (US$36.39) it’s MUCH better value than ShooTag’s measly 4 months for US$39.95! What does Babelfish tell us that the manufacturer is offering for that money:

Ready for use TIC tie-clip supporter contains an bioenergetic load, a special layer with high radiation potential and has a high storage capacity. In the surrounding field of the supporter, and thus in the environment of the animal (independent of its size and kind of skin), develops then a special oscillation field, which protects now dogs and cats against Zecken and fleas. The TIC tie-clip supporter is fastened with the attached rings to collar or table-ware (material plays thereby no role). On the time, on which a ring is drawn by the supporter, the TIC tie-clip up to 2 works years

OK… that’s making about as much sense as anything else we’ve read I guess. Once the Tic-Clip is properly fastened to the table-ware, it does seem to offer everything that ShooTag does at least. The Tic-Clip appears to be more robust too: the site has some caveats on effectiveness, but they don’t include the lengthy excuses that ShooTag provides for conditions under which their product might not work.

So the Tetherd Cow Ahead shoppers’ advice is: If you’re on the lookout for a completely useless product that does absolutely nothing in the way of keeping insect pests off your pets, there’s no contest – you get hugely better value for money by wasting your cash on Anibio Tic-Clip® than you do on Energetic Solutions Shoo!TAG™^(iv)

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Footnotes:

1. And TCA saved her some money! Like any good sensible person she did some research before she forked out. [↩]
2. We assume it’s important because the exhortation has lots of exclamation marks. [↩]
3. …or, in fact, determine any effect of… [↩]
4. I really wonder what the ShooTag people make of something like this. Do they scoff at the opposition: ‘That’s SO far-fetched! Look at the dumb claims they’re making! That will never work!’, or do they gaze on in envy: ‘How are they doing this without a magnetic stripe? How the hell are they achieving a 2 year efficacy? Can we steal their technology?’. My brain does little flip-flops when I try to imagine how these people think. [↩]

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As we have seen in numerous posts on The Cow, pseudoscience veritably thrives in all those places where complex processes have subjective outcomes. It does especially well if those outcomes promise big rewards of money, fame or health. One outcome that is primed for exploitation is vanity, and although we’ve covered quite a few areas of jiggery pokery, one that hasn’t made an appearance up till now is the multi billion dollar cosmetics industry. Since it deals with highly subjective issues of appearance, youth and beauty, you can bet your lash-lengthening mascara that we don’t have to look very far in this field before we stumble across hogwash.

A couple of nights ago on tv I saw an ad for a skincare product by Estée Lauder called ‘Advanced Night Repair – Synchronized Recovery Complex’⁽ⁱ⁾ that boasted that its wonderful skin revitalizing technology was ‘inspired by DNA research’. Hahahaha! ‘Inspired’ by DNA research! It was such a piece of waffle that it even had Violet Towne, Vermilion and Viridian hooting with derision.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ The crux here of course is that ‘inspiration’ means absolutely toss-all as a credential. I could claim that Tetherd Cow Ahead is ‘inspired’ by Shakespeare but that doesn’t mean that it’s:

•As good as Shakespeare
•Similar in content to Shakespeare or, in fact,
•That it has anything to do with Shakespeare whatsoever.

It could simply mean that I read some Shakespeare and thought: ‘That old Shakespeare was a clever geezer, wasn’t he? You know what? That’s inspired me to start up a blog!’ You could never prove one way or another that this wasn’t the case. The trick is that the makers of this product can happily tell you that they were ‘inspired’ by DNA research (which sounds like it could be impressive) while simultaneously telling you nothing at all.

With that in mind, I did a search for beauty products ‘inspired by DNA research’ and came upon a treasure trove of nonsense. The first stop was a product called PerfectSkin™. Of course the first thing I did was visit the PerfectSkin™ science page, because, as we all know, the science pages of people who are trying to sell you fantastical promises are always good value. I suggest you go to the Perfect Science Labs™ page now and take it in. There will be a quiz when you get back.

OK. Did the pictures of serious (but attractive) women in lab coats and masks convince you? No? How about the blurb:

Perfect Science Labs worked with world renowned chemist and skincare scientist Dr. Ron DiSalvo to incorporate the most recent groundbreaking discoveries in skincare, including patented ingredients to create PerfectSkin’s miracle breakthrough 3D BioRepair Complex. This revolutionary complex inspired by DNA research contains a blast of powerful vitamins, antioxidants, and a patented newly discovered exotic plant enzyme, OGG-1 (8-oxo-guanine DNA glycosylase), that kill harmful free radicals, which attack and damage your healthy skin.⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾

Jeepers creepers! That sounds like it’s the answer to all of humankinds’ most pressing problems, don’t it!

It appears that when you’ve run out of words like ‘quantum’, ‘magnetic’, ‘energy’ and ‘vibration’ to describe your new dubious product, the newest, hippest, most phantasmagorical epithet you can now add is that it’s ’3D’. Just excuse me while I fall on my corkscrew. Could there be any more meaningless a grab for credibility? Well, yes, I guess the quickly following ‘inspired by DNA research’ shows us that there can. And if you’re looking for enlightenment in the next bit where ‘OGG1 kills harmful free radicals’, well, let me save you the effort – there ain’t any.

OGG1 is an enzyme implicit in cell repair but evidence for its efficacy as a topical agent is dubious at best. It certainly doesn’t ‘kill’ free radicals. Being about as chemically simple as you can get, free radicals are not actually alive under any interpretation of the concept.^(iv) And anyway, there is much debate about the role of free radicals in respect to human health. The evidence that they cause the kind of aging damage that was once suspected is currently being challenged.

Elsewhere on the PerfectSkin™ site we find the ubiquitous testimonials page. As we have seen with other purveyors of pseudoscience like Shoo!TAG, testimonials are absolutely indispensable when you don’t have actual science on your side. I’d like to reproduce one of the ‘Before & After’ comparisons here for you, but intellectual property issues cause me to err on the side of not getting sued. Go there now and look at any one of the testimonials before reading on.

Without exception, every one of these ‘Before & After’ examples is deceitful.

•Before: Ambivalent expression; bad lighting; shiny face; no makeup.
•After: Happy expression; flattering lighting; professional makeup job; in some cases, digital retouching.

My personal feeling is that if someone is prepared to lie to me quite so badly that I can detect it in seconds, why would I trust anything else they have to say, especially when it invokes technical concepts that are complicated and leave acres of wiggle room?

This kind of deception is not only common in the cosmetic industry, it almost seems de rigueur. Searching further on our term ‘inspired by DNA research’ brings up all manner of doublespeak and flim flam. There is so much of it that I could probably start up a blog completely dedicated to the subject. You can venture on for yourself if you so desire. But before we finish, I’ll leave you with one more colourful example:

This is Morrocco Method Simply Pure Sea Essence Shampoo.

This synergistic blend of enlivened, charged botanicals and hand-picked herbs are mixed, blended, and bottled according to the moon cycles used by ancient farmers.

For the Morrocco Method Sea Essence Shampoo we go to the sea waters off the coast of Brittany, said to be among the cleanest waters on earth. We combine ocean water with living sea plants: algae, kelp and seaweed. Ocean water is practically identical to human blood plasma. Sea vegetables have a uniquely high level of DNA, RNA, and nucleic factors, the building blocks of life itself. As well, this shampoo is chock full of silicon which promotes healthy growth.

Bwahahahaha! What fun. Let’s deconstruct that, shall we:

•‘This synergistic blend of enlivened, charged botanicals…’

What the fuck does that even mean?

•‘…bottled according to the moon cycles used by ancient farmers.’

And that is efficacious… how?

•’…the sea waters off the coast of Brittany, said to be among the cleanest waters on earth’

‘Said’ by whom? Your mum?

•‘Ocean water is practically identical to human blood plasma.’

Well, yeah, depending on your definition of ‘practically identical’. As in ‘Tetherd Cow Ahead is practically identical to the combined works of Shakespeare.’

•’Sea vegetables have a uniquely high level of DNA, RNA, and nucleic factors, the building blocks of life itself.’

I don’t think they have a clue what they’re talking about here: ‘a uniquely high level of DNA’? What does that even mean? And anyway, by inference, WHAT, exactly?

•‘As well, this shampoo is chock full of silicon…’

If it was ‘chock full’ of silicon it would be a bottle of sand (and anyway – isn’t it already chock full of DNA?).^(v)

•‘…which promotes healthy growth.’

Silicon promotes healthy growth? Why? There’s no silicon in your hair! We’re carbon-based lifeforms you idiot.

Yes folks, no matter how many flavours of silliness you want, the cosmetics industry has them all!

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Footnotes:

1. You can almost feel the copywriters hammering that one out… [↩]
2. It has to be said that I’ve taught them well. [↩]
3. All emphases in the original [↩]
4. The terms ‘free radicals’ and ‘antioxidants’ have become buzzwords. If you ask most people about those things they will almost certainly have the view that they are things that are not good for you. But if you ask them why they think that, you’ll find without any shadow of a doubt that they have inherited the notion from the advertising of cosmetic and ‘health’ related products. Try it. You’ll see how right I am! [↩]
5. I have a suggestion for the makers of Morrocco Method – why not consider homeopathy? Then the product doesn’t have to be chock full of anything. In fact, the less chock full it is, the better! [↩]

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Anomalous Radar Activity Around Melbourne


I just love it when event transpire such that I can bring you two of my favourite subjects in one Tetherd Cow Ahead post. Today’s is such a post and it’s brought to you by the Melbourne Age which is carrying an article that combines the stupidity of the newspaper business with the beliefs of a loony. It runs under the headline ‘Weather has conspiracy theorists strung out’

INEXPLICABLY odd images⁽ⁱ⁾ on Bureau of Meteorology radar. Cyclones off the Australian coast and the most intense storm to hit Melbourne in living memory. A controversial US military facility in Alaska suspected of research into weather control … It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi conspiracy thriller.

Yes, there’s no quibbling there – that’s exactly what that hodge-podge of unrelated factoids sounds like (although I’d be inclined to add the word ‘bad’ just before ‘sci-fi’). So the implication here is that it’s going to turn out to be The Truth, right, as opposed to the fiction of a ‘sci-fi conspiracy thriller’? Well, you’d be totally wrong if you were thinking that.

The story goes on to detail the following points:

•The Bureau of Meteorology radar has been recording ‘a number of very strange patterns – rings, loops, starbursts’ around Melbourne.

•There have been some big storms here.

•The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility in Alaska has powerful transmitters and radars.

From this, the correspondent spins up a vacuous story that says in essence that websites ‘specializing in pseudoscience’ have ‘leapt on the notion’ that the three things above are connected and the ‘government’ is trying to control the weather.

Is anybody else feeling the need to stick their head in a bucket of ammonia?

To simplify: this is a story which is actually just a free plug for the nutty ideas of lunatics, while all the while pretending to ‘news’ by distancing itself from aforementioned lunatics. And, to put the icing on the cake, the story is embellished with an image of the recent SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, which has exactly NO relevance to anything at all.

As I’m reading this, I find myself thinking ‘Who the hell is responsible for this guff and how do they get to be working on a news desk?’ So I scroll up to the byline. It will probably come as no surprise to you at all to find that the literary genius behind this story is none other than reporter Stephen Cauchi, who has provided us with much mirth previously here on The Cow with his non-news style of journalism.

Which brings me to the second of my favourite Tetherd Cow subjects – insane people. Mr Cauchi’s main source for the above-mentioned conspiracy turns out to be someone who is very familiar to anyone who’s spent time around the pseudoscience traps – a fellow who goes by the name of Colin Andrews. Now, just to set you up, Mr Andrews has about ZERO credibility as any kind of authoritative source. In fact, if you were actually trying to find a less credible spokesperson (for anything except nutty ideas I guess) you’d have your work cut out for you.

Colin Andrews first came to prominence as an ‘expert’ on crop circles back in the 1980s, and contrary to all common sense, still believes that they are made by ‘aliens’. Since that time, he has advanced all manner of implausible conspiracies across numerous disciplines. In this case, Mr Andrews’ ‘government weather control’ paranoia centers on some ‘anomalous’ radar screen captures from earlier this year when the south coast of Australia suffered some unusually fierce storm activity. This is a couple of them:

Well, yeah, sure, these ones are from the Bureau of Meteorology radar in Broome in Western Australia, but close enough, right?

These are the ‘inexplicably’ odd radar images to which Mr Cauchi refers in his first paragraph. Rather than conclude (as might any rational person) that the radar images are simply quite explicable as imperfections in the way that a meteorological radar functions, Mr Andrews’ brain oscillates to the most wildly improbably alternative – that the images are some kind of government weather control experiment that has been cunningly contrived to appear like a radar imperfection.

Mr Andrews persists in this belief even when told as much from someone who works for the Bureau of Meteorology:

Re: The round radar prob in WA, it is a BOM Radar unit which has its lower rain level threshold setup too low, ie, too sensitive, which gives the noisy radar reading like that. Nothing to do with HAARP, which, as you know, is in Alaska. I see images like this a lot, as I work for the Bureau of Meteorology in QLD.

And you know what? You too can see images like this on Australian meteorological radars if you feel like clicking on every radar station that the BOM offers. If you think like Mr Andrews, you’re likely to find a LOT of government hanky panky. It’s a wonder the government has any time for actual governing.

After giving plenty of airing to Colin Andrews’ hair-brained ideas, the Age article goes on to seek opinions from authoritative skeptics, who quite reasonably call the idea ‘silly’. We could have started with that conclusion and made the whole story one sentence long, viz:

We asked a sensible person, Mr Tim Mendham (president of the Australian Skeptics), what he thought of noted loony Colin Andrews’ idea that the government is controlling the weather, and he said it was silly.

I guess that doesn’t make for ‘pizazz’ but the content is exactly the same as the story as it stands.

Anyhoo, after a lot of stupid waffle, the article rounds off with:

The Sunday Age tried to contact Mr Andrews, who is based in the US, but there was no reply. That could be because, according to his website, he was in Oregon for last weekend’s 11th annual UFO Festival.

Smirk smirk smirk. Well if that’s your attitude Mr ‘cynical’ Stephen Cauchi, why are you making this nitwit’s ideas out to have any credence at all?

It makes me feel quite nauseous to note that this was No. 1 on the ‘most read’ list of Top National Articles in The Age today.

Well done Melbourne Age! Another pin on the board for the Great De-Braining of the Human Race.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

UPDATE: At the time I wrote this yesterday, there were no comments on the article. Now there are 19. After reading them I actually feel like walking over to the train line near my house and throwing myself in front of the 10:15 to Flinders St Station. WHY WAS I BORN INTO A WORLD WITH THIS MUCH STUPID?!

The comments are now closed and the one I left was evidently deemed unsuitable for inclusion – evidently it made a little too much sense.

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Footnotes:

1. Why, why, why do reporters continue to use this kind of language? The images are ENTIRELY explicable in any number of ways. They are ONLY inexplicable in the mind of Colin Andrews. Stephen Cauchi, you are an IDIOT. [↩]
2. Or, one optimistically hopes, another nail in the coffin of the old news media. [↩]

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I’ve been asked by a couple of people if I could make a summary page for all the TCA links in the Shoo!TAG saga, so without further ado…

•And So Ad Infinitum… April 1, 2009: In which I discover ShooTag for the first time and completely fail to make a single joke about April Fool’s Day.

•WooTag™ April 14, 2009: In which Melissa Rogers from ShooTag takes me to task for not being ‘disaplined’ in quantum physics, calls me ignorant and uses terms like ‘fractal’, ‘crystals’ and ‘energy fields’, and promises that the world will get to see the ‘sceince’⁽ⁱ⁾ behind ‘all three’ ShooTag applications when they go from patent pending to full patent protection (yeah, like that’s ever going to happen).⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

•EXTRA: World’s Zombies Starving! April 17, 2009: In which Melissa Rogers uses her superior knowledge of quantum physics to rewrite Einstein’s famous mass/energy equivalence formula, but somehow fails to be nominated for a Nobel Prize.

•EMF – It’s Not What You Think! August 29, 2009: In which Kathy Heiney and Melissa Rogers ‘explain’ the workings of Shoo!TAG in their own baffling words. Don’t worry if you are more confused after you listen to them – everybody is.

•Shoo Polish? April 16, 2010: In which we learn that the ShooTag sisters started out by attempting to sell ‘homeopathic stress relieving creams’. Which, all things considered, comes as no surprise.

•Kookaburra or, perhaps… Galah? April 17, 2010: In which someone involved with ShooTag (even though he pretends not to be) attempts to pass himself off as an Australian to our substantial amusement. When we expose his shabby ruse, he turns nasty and calls me names.

•Another Science Experiment May 3, 2010: In which we learn a simple trick for making visible the encoded magnetic data on a credit card. We apply it to a ShooTag in an effort to see just what’s on that sucker.

•Shoo!TAG Unplugged May 19, 2010: In which we reveal, thanks to our intrepid readers, that the ShooTags are encoded with a handful of numbers and the words ‘tick’ and ‘flea’, thus illuminating the simplistic magical thinking of the ShooTag creators.⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾

•Shoo!TAG: Waterloo May 24, 2010: In which we disclose the full bona fides of the ShooTag creators, including the basis of their pseudoscientific beliefs and their links with the criminally indicted fraudster ‘Professor’ William Nelson.

•Shoo!TAG: Bitchfight June 27, 2010: In which we learn that The Finnish Olympic Team is allegedly endorsing ShooTag, and that the European rollout faces competition from a nemesis, Tic-Clip.

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And, as added extra value, here are a few other links of relevance on other sites:

•ShooTag review and testing on dog complete May 2, 2010: Darcie, from The Dish, videotapes a test of the ‘tick’ Shoo!TAG on her dog Oliver. Even though Darcie followed the manufacturer’s instructions to the letter, the results are less than impressive. Ticks are plainly not affected by the Shootag.

•Decoding magnetic strips May 17, 2010: Dewi Morgan’s detailed record of how he analysed the data on the Shootags.

•shoo!Tag testing human mosquito complete May 24, 2010: Darcie, from The Dish, tests the ‘human’ mosquito tag and videos the results. Again, the tag fails to have any effect.

•Shoo!TAG Entry at RationalWiki

•Small piece of plastic magnetic strip achieves what entire planet can’t! Great review of ShooTag at Amazon.

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Footnotes:

1. Maybe ‘sceince’ is something different to ‘science’? That would explain an awful lot. [↩]
2. There are no records for a US patent application for anything that resembles ShooTag. I propose that a patent has never been submitted. [↩]
3. Truly, using the same logic, if you hung a bit of cardboard around your pet’s neck with the words ‘Go away fleas!’ written on it, you’d see exactly the same results as you would with a ShooTag. [↩]

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Just over a year ago (April 1, 2009, as it happens) I made my first post in what was to become a bit of an ongoing series – the ShooTag saga. Had Melissa Rogers, one of the CEOs of ShooTag, refrained from calling me ignorant at that time, and had not attempted to air her preposterous faux scientific notions on my blog, my interest in the dubious ShooTag might have blown away in the wind like so many other tumbleweeds of pseudoscience that have rolled my way. That wrong step by the ShooTaggers was just the first of many that has kept them in the focus of my attention and led us to this moment, which I think you will agree when you get to the end of this post, is a defining one for the credibility of this product and its makers.

When I first visited the ShooTag site, my main attention was, of course, on the science that was claimed to be behind this remarkable gadget, and, to that end, one of my first stops was the ShooTag Science page. It was immediately obvious that the scientific sounding language that was used there was utter waffle (you can read the full text of what was on the original Science page in the footnotes to this post).^{(some lines of vague noncommittal nonsense.}

The page also featured a link to a report called ‘Subtle Magnetic Repulsion of Insect Pests’ by someone called Professor William Nelson, which allegedly appeared in a periodical called The Quantum Agriculture Journal. It took me a scant second to establish that The Quantum Agriculture Journal didn’t exist [Note: See update at the bottom of this post]. The linked paper was an incoherent ramble through Chaos Theory Lite, MRI mechanics, the electro-sensitivity of sharks and the effects of magnetism on cell cultures – much of it inaccurate, most of it contextually adrift and the sum of it an addled mess of gee-whiz pop-science ideas that would be at home in a bad science fiction movie. [See more about this, also, below.]

Unsurprisingly, this link was also rapidly removed from the ShooTag site after my post, along with all references to the Quantum Agriculture Journal and Professor William Nelson. You can still see the original full text here though, complete with reference to ‘The Quantum Agriculture Journal’ edited by Prof. William Nelson for IMUNE.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

At the time I thought that the reason for these excisions was simply that the ShooTaggers didn’t like being sprung for their silly science. Fair enough – it does make them look pretty incoherent. However. Our recent investigations into the magnetic strips on the ShooTags prompted me to re-examine some of the scientific claims made for the gadgets, in particular, the notion of the ‘trivector electromagnetic signature’ that seems to be of such importance in the ShooTag promotional literature.

So I plugged that phrase into Google. The very first result throws up a link to a pdf of a document called ‘QUANTUM ELECTRO DYNAMICS and The VOLT-AMMETRIC TRIVECTOR SIGNATURE For DUMMIES’ by William Nelson MD Prof of Medicine IMUNE.

The pdf is a disjointed mish-mash of misunderstood science and erroneous analogies all whirled up into ball of unfathomable conclusions. It sounds, in fact, not unlike the incomprehensible babblings of a certain Dr Werner.

And there he is again. That Professor William Nelson guy.

Now, we’ve had cause to mention him before here on The Cow, but only in passing reference to the ShooTag scam. I think it’s time we turned the magnifying glass onto Professor William Nelson himself.

Here is a clip of him ‘explaining the trivector’:

Whoa. That was even more incomprehensible than the pdf we just looked at.⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾

Researching Dr Nelson isn’t hard. There are literally thousands of references to him across the net. These are just some of the things that have been claimed of him (mostly by himself):^{(iv) (v) (vi) (vii)}

•He was childhood genius and accepted into Mensa at age 16^(viii)

•He is an accomplished golf, tennis and basketball player and was selected to compete in gymnastics in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

•He worked at NASA and was involved in the Apollo program, notably in the trajectory mathematics of the first moon landing^(ix) and the rescue mission of the astronauts on the aborted Apollo 13 flight.

•He is an accredited quantum physicist, medical doctor, mathematician, computer expert, naturopath, acupuncturist, and homeopath.

•He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine on numerous occasions.

•He has directed over 20 motion pictures^(x)

As well as the comprehensive reference links I’ve added above, you can read Professor William Nelson’s personal Curriculum Vitae here, courtesy of the Seattle Times. (Note that he tones down the more egregious exaggerations when writing in his own hand, and adds the caveat that ‘Whatever Dr Nelson says about himself can be relied on as true. Information that is not direct from Dr Nelson may be distorted’. O-k-a-y. Very convenient. And not that he bothers to correct any of this ‘distorted’ information anywhere, as far as I’m able to determine. To the contrary, as we shall see, he has a ‘friend’ who is very happy to take it one step further still…)

Depending how far you want to trawl and how much time you want to waste, you can find all kinds of other accomplishments for Dr/Prof Nelson. Needless to say, most of them can be established pretty quickly to be false. He (or anybody else) simply can’t know if he has ever been nominated for a Nobel Prize because Nobel Prize nominees aren’t advised they’ve been nominated and all nominations are kept secret for 50 years. So unless his Nobel Prize nomination was made when he was 10 or younger, that’s just plain rubbish.^(xi) NASA explicitly denies^(xii) having any involvement with a Professor William Nelson and it is possible that he is hoping to dupe people into mistaking him for Clarence William ‘Bill’ Nelson – a NASA mission payload specialist of some achievement.^(xiii) And, investigation into ‘Professor’ Nelson’s degrees reveals that they all come from dubious unaccredited institutions and mail-order or online courses. He is certainly not a quantum physicist.

There is no shadow of a doubt that Professor William Nelson is not the man he paints himself to be. Indeed, sometimes the man Professor William Nelson paints himself to be is actually a woman. A woman who goes by the name of Desiré Dubounet. It turns out that William Nelson is a gender switcher.

Now, I want to say right off the bat that when it comes to gender identification and sexual preferences and fantasies, I’m fairly open-minded. There’s a pretty big sliding scale with sexuality as far as I’m concerned, and as long people don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses, I really don’t care. William Nelson’s right to be Desiré Dubounet is unassailable in my book, but his right to cheat, lie and swindle people out of good medical care is what I have in my sights here. To that end, I present a clip of Desiré Dubounet that is as frightening for its dreadful taste as it is for its demonstration of William Nelson’s mental state (WARNING – this is NSFW. It contains torrents of venomous bad language and it is quite surprising that it is still up on YouTube):

That’s a deeply troubled person by any reckoning. And Desiré Dubounet is not at all shy about promoting her ‘accomplishments’, either, be it for herself or for William Nelson. This from the Desiré Dubounet website:

Desiré is by far the most colourful, interesting, intelligent and courageous person in the world today… Nobody has changed the world as much as Desiré. Desiré as a super intelligent child was the first to max several intelligence tests, she was able to save the Apollo 13 astronauts, and has developed several patents that have revolutionized life.^(xiv)

As we’ve seen in the video above, like a good many of the peddlers of pseudoscience, William Nelson/Desiré Dubounet portrays herself as being ‘persecuted’ for her beliefs. Claiming to have switched gender to ‘prevent the powers-that-be’ from killing her’ she makes her pseudoscience cause corporeal by dressing it up in a gender issue; that way, if her ideas are criticized she can make the accusation that it is her person that is being persecuted and that she is being witch-hunted by those who are intolerant of her human rights.^(xv)

The truth of the matter is that in 1996^(xvi) William Nelson fled his home in the USA to take up residence in Budapest because he has been indicted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on nine counts of felony fraud charges in relation to various ‘bioenergetic’ healing devices sold through his companies. These expensive (and needless to say completely bogus) devices, which are claimed to be effective for the treatment of all manner of ailments including debilitating diseases such as AIDS and cancer, have been implicated in the deaths of several severely ill people in the United States, and are responsible for the lengthening of the illnesses of numerous others. This is a monstrously repellent scam and William Nelson has made millions of dollars out of it. Consequently he lives extravagantly in a restored five story building in Budapest with his personal staff of about a dozen, including a cook, hairdresser, nanny, security guards and chauffeurs. He uses his money to make terrible movies,^(xvii) even worse music, and run his nightclub Bohemian Alibi, among other things.^(xviii)

William Nelson’s network for the sale of his machines (which go variously under the names EPFX, SCIO and QXCI) is widespread. He uses chiropractors, homeopaths, physicians, nurses and volunteers to sell the machines worldwide and there is no question that he knows that they do nothing at all (the disclaimer on the QXCI site says, in part ‘No claims are made of the system or of its results.’ which, in anybody’s language, is the ultimate ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card).

And the ‘scientific’ basis for these completely fraudulent, dangerous^(xix) devices is the ‘trivector electromagnetic’ principle that Nelson promotes.

Which brings us, I believe, right back to ShooTag. As we have seen, Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney were at first very happy to invoke Professor William Nelson’s name when it suited their purpose^(xx) and are still flaunting the ‘trivector electromagnetic’ principles behind their device. It seems to me very likely that Kathy Heiney, in her ‘training’ as a ‘Quantum Biofeedback Technician and Stress Management Specialist‘ could have come across the work of William Nelson. So, no real coincidence there. But now an obvious question arises: Is there any really tangible link between Professor William Nelson and ShooTag, Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney? Let’s see what a quick search brings up…

The link is protected with a login, but Google can see it, so it should be there… somewhere… Aha! Some further detective work from Dewi (who you will recall was our chief decoder of the data on the ShooTags a few posts back) reveals the complete schedule for the QX World Conference in Budapest, part of which features:

QX World Conference 2009. 8-11 October 2009. Budapest, Hungary.
Sunday, Oct. 11.
09.00, Prof. William C. Nelson/Desiré Dubounet. Introduce ShooTag – Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney.
09.15, Dr. Amanda Velloen. AIDS research.
12.00, Coffee Break.^(xxi)

And the pieces of the puzzle all fall resoundingly into place. The QX World Conference is an event that has, over the last few years, been held annually in Budapest by William Nelson/Desiré Dubounet. At this conference, Nelson assembles the faithful from his Quantum Bioenergetic flock, and here they presumably shore up each others’ belief systems, trade war stories and have an opportunity to touch the hem of the Master’s (Mistresses?) garment. From this snippet of information we can deduce that Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney were there, were sheduled to be there, or at the very least were represented there in some way.^(xxii) However you cut it, a visceral, and certainly not insubstantial link with the fraudulent, criminally culpable William Nelson is established.

Now, I will quickly add that the act of associating with a criminal does not make you yourself a criminal. It can in no way be construed that the Shoo!TAG sisters are involved with the felony fraud committed by William Nelson. But the inference is written plain – William Nelson is wanted for fraud by the FDA because the ideas behind his gadgets have no scientific substance and are, through their complete lack of efficacy, misleading and liable to cause harm. Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney, by all the available evidence, advocate those exact same pseudoscientific ideas for their Shoo!TAG products.

No wonder they were so quick to divest themselves of any relationship to Nelson. Once they realised that they simply didn’t need to have the endorsement of a nutty ‘professor’ like Nelson to get their product to sell, they ditched all reference to him quick smart.

The credentials of Shoo!TAG can no longer be in any doubt. With absolutely no scientific evidence to back up their claims, a product that is revealed to be nothing more than a stock-standard magnetic swipe card, some third party testing that demonstrates clearly the complete ineffectiveness of the tags, and an indisputable link to the unsubstantiated irrational beliefs of a person who is a fraud and a swindler wanted by the FDA, it is more than clear that Melissa Rogers and Kathy Heiney are ripping off pet owners wherever they have managed to get their silly product into a retail outlet. Worse, by encouraging the use of their product for humans, they are putting the lives of people at risk.

I consider that what we have here, then, on the matter of the Shoo!TAG’s bona fides, is an emphatic QED.

And I’m not talking quantum electrodynamics.

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[UPDATE] – Dewi points out that something calling itself the Quantum Agriculture Journal does indeed exist as a one-off document in exe format. I want to make it very clear that the Quantum Agriculture Journal did not have any web presence at the time I searched for it originally – and I was extremely thorough. All available references to it at the time pointed back to the ShooTag site. I did some further searching and turned up another online version of the ‘scientific’ paper (attributed to Professor William Nelson) that was purportedly carried by the QAJ (and originally linked to the ShooTag site). You can read the complete paper here.

This is what I said of it in my original ShooTag post:

The ’scientific’ document itself (if you can be bothered) is a hare-brained ramble through a whole mess of abracadabra, beginning with some descriptions of chaotic attractors, jumping through magnetic resonance imaging and the electrical sensitivity of sharks, and ending up with the conductivity of chemicals in cells. It’s the most meaningless agglomeration of waffle that I’ve attempted to read in a very long while. If you’ve ever even seen a scientific paper, you know this ain’t one of those.

In light of recent comments by the ShooTaggers, though, it does have some interesting points. The ‘paper’ says that:

‘This three dimensional or trivector signature has been imprinted onto the magnetic field of a three-field magnetic memory card. This card is then hung around the neck of an animal and the magnetic field can stimulate the biology of the animal to build up defense to invaders.This is completely safe and proficient. In our preliminary farm tests the researchers found 75% less infestation of the insect pests when using the pests than in control populations. Further testing is presently being done in Europe.’

These words have been spoken in larger or smaller part by promoters of ShooTag at various times over the last year. It establishes quite clearly that they are using the exact same pseudoscience which underpins William Nelson’s fraudulent medical devices.

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Footnotes:

1. This is the ‘scientific explanation’ originally offered on the ShooTag Science page:
   

   All things are composed of atoms that are mostly electrons and protons. In between the electrons and protons and in between the atoms is mostly empty space, filled with magnetic static, quantum and gravitational fields. The science of voltammetry tells us of the electrical principles of all biological entities. Our research has shown that subtle inductance/capacitance fields (magnetic and static) can have dramatic effects on biology.
   
   The only true measurement in electricity is the voltage and amperage, everything else is a mathematical variation of the two. These calculations are referred to as virtual or mathematical measures. Variations in flow of amperage and voltage give us a way to measure capacitance, inductance and frequency. These measurements reflect the static and magnetic effects of bio-electricity.

   This is straight out of the textbook of Professor William Nelson, without a shadow of a doubt.
   [↩]

2. A search for IMUNE shows it to be another of William Nelson’s projects; it features references to a course in ‘Quantum BioFeedback’ featuring instruction in EPFX, SCIO and QXCI devices. So this ‘reference’ is to a an article in a non-existent journal attached to a website belonging to the person who supposedly wrote the article. Do I need to point out the fraudulent nature of that circuitous process? [↩]
3. I could really rip this apart if I could be bothered, but honestly, it’s just one dumb concept warped into another dumb concept mashed into another dumb concept for its entire length. There’s no point even trying to attack all the daft pieces of it because the whole thing is just utter nonsense. [↩]
4. http://www.theqxci.com/qxci_nelson.html [↩]
5. http://www.stockscio.anolecms.com/the-inventor-dr-william-nelson/content/view/3/43/ [↩]
6. http://www.energetic-medicine.net/bill-nelson.html [↩]
7. http://qxcinrg.com/inventor.html [↩]
8. This really means nothing at all, even if it’s true – the Mensa tests don’t screen for lack of rational or logical thinking. You can still solve puzzles and be dissociated from a rational thought process [↩]
9. He would have been only 18, had that been the truth. [↩]
10. ‘Motion picture’ is a very floppy term, and could simply indicated the huge number of YouTube videos attributed to Professor Nelson/Desiré Dubounet. [↩]
11. Thanks Dewi! [↩]
12. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004020583_miracle18m2.html [↩]
13. Digging deeper we can find evidence that maybe William Nelson worked in a minor capacity for a company that worked for NASA. That’s not the same as ‘working for NASA’ and certainly not the same as ‘saving the lives of the Apollo 13 crew’. [↩]
14. Consider this symptom of Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
    

    Omniscience – The narcissist often pretends to know everything, in every field of human knowledge and endeavour. He lies and prevaricates to avoid the exposure of his ignorance. He resorts to numerous subterfuges to support his God-like omniscience. Where his knowledge fails him – he feigns authority, fakes superiority, quotes from non-existent sources, embeds threads of truth in a canvass of falsehoods. He transforms himself into an artist of intellectual prestidigitation. Many narcissists are avowed autodidacts, unwilling to subject their knowledge and insights to peer scrutiny, or, for that matter, to any scrutiny. The narcissist keeps re-inventing himself, adding new fields of knowledge as he goes. This creeping intellectual annexation is a round about way of reverting to his erstwhile image as the erudite ‘Renaissance man’.

    [↩]

15. And she does do this, there is no question about that. There are numerous instances of this tactic in her writings and in the many online videos. [↩]
16. Or 1998 – like everything about William Nelson, the actual facts seem variable [↩]
17. Hollywood is not interested in his movies because they have been ‘pressured by the drug companies’ to avoid dealing with him. It has nothing to do with them being so bad as to be laughable. [↩]
18. Just an aside: if you thought the trolling by the various ShooTag supporters was bad, you should see how the supporters of William Nelson behave. It is very interesting to me that the tone of the commentary that I’ve read across various sites that have criticized Nelson is eerily similar to the way the ShooTaggers express themselves. I fully expect we’ll get trolled by both camps for this post. [↩]
19. Dangerous because they are completely ineffective. [↩]
20. And ditch it mighty fast when it didn’t, I might point out. [↩]
21. Dewi was able to reconstruct the entire schedule for the conference, even though none of it was directly available. He’s a good man to have on your side! [↩]
22. For their literal 15 minutes of fame in bioenergetic circles, it seems. [↩]

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Recently on Tetherd Cow Ahead we did a simple science experiment that allowed us to reveal a visual representation of the magnetic data on the stripe of a standard swipe card. You will remember that one of the magnetic cards I examined in that post was the dubious Shoo!TAG, which according to its inventors, is a miraculous device that repels fleas and ticks (and other ‘targeted’ pests!) from you or your pets by using ‘the power of the bio-energetic field which surrounds all living thing to create a frequency barrier’.

It turns out that some pretty smart people read the Science Experiment post, including commenters MomentumV and the inimitable Dewi Morgan. To my great surprise, both MomentumV and Dewi were actually able to look at my images and read the card’s encoded data directly off them – something I had never anticipated as possible – and make some great initial headway in decoding the mysterious power of the Shoo!TAG.

The results were cryptic at first. Surprisingly, all of us missed the significance of the letters A E L F, which appeared on the card, along with a string of numbers. I threw up an image of the second ‘Cat’ tag I had (this one supposed to ward off ticks) and Dewi came up with a clever little javascript to auto-decode ShooTags. A number of things then dropped swiftly into focus. We were looking at the data backwards. You can experience the discovery as it happened in the Comments on that post – it makes for a wonderful scientific ‘Aha!’ moment.

This is what Dewi found when he ran the data through his script (all the technical details of how it was achieved are explained in detail on Dewi’s journal):⁽ⁱ⁾

I’ve arranged the characters to correspond with their equivalent position on the cards. Note that the words ‘FLEA’ and ‘TICK’ are actually encoded as letters in the magnetic data.

In the interests of science I decided to expand our dataset, and to this end I acquired a pair of the ‘Dog’ ShooTags from a nearby pet supply shop.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ Dewi was kind enough to decode them also:

There is some numerical symmetry and repetition apparent here, and the obvious conclusion is that the various numbers simply signify ‘Dog’ or ‘Cat’ and ‘Flea’ or ‘Tick’.⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾ Melissa Rogers, one of the CEOs of ShooTag claims, however, that the tags are ‘encoded with earth friendly frequencies’ in the form of a ‘three dimensional or tri-vector signature imprinted onto the magnetic field of the card’ and the ShooTag FAQ says that ‘we are only using the energy field that is already emitted from an animal and adding a few frequencies that we know that specific insects do not like’. The implication is, therefore, that the data on the cards is some kind of numerical representation of these supposedly effective frequencies. I think you will agree with me that it beggars belief to think that anyone would base a serious 21st century product on this concept. It makes wearing a ShooTag the modern equivalent of the old superstitious practice of warding off evil spirits by carrying around a piece of paper with numbers written on it.

Whatever the characters signify, there is no known scientific mechanism that would explain how a few lines of magnetic data in a common encoding format, written to a card that is designed to be swiped through a checkout terminal, could have any effect at all on fleas, ticks, mosquitoes or any other insect.

[NOTE: I think there is still probably some kind of screwy logic to the numbers on the cards - if there's anyone out there with some expertise in cryptography, or who feels like going on a treasure hunt, any extra information is welcomed. Places to start: Rife Frequencies, Quantum BioEnergetics and Quantum Energy Wellness (where you will see the term 'tri-vector' bandied about some more). Who knows whether any of these are relevant in the case of ShooTags, but it would be hugely satisfying to find out...]

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Footnotes:

1. It’s probably the best description of how mag stripes work anywhere on the net – trust me, before Dewi came along, I looked! [↩]
2. ‘Do you know how they work?’, the sales assistant asked. ‘No-one knows how they work. It’s bunk’, said I. She seemed nonplussed. [↩]
3. There are a number of ways the digits can be paired with the actual words in the code or with the animal on which the tag is supposed to be worn. [↩]

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I fear I have crossed some kind of invisible line. The Spawn is not happy. I swear when I put this on his collar there were sparks.

In all seriousness though, I have done exactly as recommended on the ShooTag packaging, and aim to report any results here on The Cow. In the interests of full disclosure, it has to be said that it’s turning cold here and flea activity is ramping down. However, the Spawn is still scratching on a regular basis and his chemical flea treatment is overdue. I aim to watch him carefully for the next two weeks or so and report on any change in his condition. If ShooTag is providing the 75% reduction in fleas promised on the product website, it should be very obvious.