Tetherd Cow Ahead

It appears that, no matter how many times perpetual motion (or ‘free’ energy) machines are wheeled out, exposed and taken back in shame to the sheds where they were nailed together, there will always be another one waiting in the wings. And usually, another one that claims to use exactly the same discredited working principles of every one that’s come before it – invariably involving magnets. Here on The Cow, we’ve waited several years for those Irish spruikers over at Steorn to show us their wonderful machine, which, in the grand vision of their marketing manager, will mean that you need never put your phone on charge again. ((There’s nothing quite like thinking big.))

We’re still waiting.

In the meantime, this morning I bring you a website that offers to sell you plans to build your own free energy machine which its purveyors say will provide you with limitless free energy! It wasn’t easy for them but they…

…finally succeeded in creating a website which offers the Do-It-Yourself instructions for building such a device

God, tell me about it. Creating a website is such a fucking bitch!

Anyway, the site that they finally succeeded in creating is called Magniwork. The Magniwork logo, subtitled The Energy of Tomorrow in Your Home Today!, features, as the ‘i’ in Magniwork, an energy-efficient light globe.

Yeah, now see, the absolute irony of this is that if you have a machine that produces endless clean energy as the website claims, you don’t need to worry about energy-efficient appliances. It surely doesn’t matter. In fact, what your logo should really be offering is the kind of electrical abundance favoured by vendors of electricity at the fin de siecle ((The 19th C fin, that is.))

That’s better! The promise of SQUILLIONS of volts carelessly squandered.

OK. Tell me about how I can have my own free energy machine Magniwork! I’m eager to cast off the shackles of dirty coal and even dirtier uranium!

Using our easy-to-follow guide, you will be able create a Magnetic Power Generator which creates absolutely free energy, and doesn’t require any resource like wind or solar energy to function. The magniwork generator creates energy by itself and powers your home for free. The generator works fully off the grid. ((An ambiguously worded claim if ever I read one. Works fully off the grid? As in, it works fully powered by the grid? No? Oh, you meant it works independently of the grid! I see!)) Take a look at the following diagram to get an idea of how it works:

Whoa. That’s a little technical, so for the laypeople, let me just try and give you an easy-to-understand explanation of what’s going on.

First, the Power Source (1) feeds into the thingamabob (2). This in turn is fed to the gadget with numbers (3) and the battery (4). Of course this requires a whoosamacallit (5) to transfer back and forth between the doodah (6), the whatsit (7) and the gismo (9), with additional input from the red doohickey (8). COMPLETELY FREE ENERGY is thereby delivered to your house (10). So, did that give you an idea of how it works? Yes! That’s right, it is completely powered by FLIM-FLAM! Genius.

This method has been researched for a long time, but due to suppression of this idea from the big corporations, the plans for building a free energy generator which could change the world have never been out on the open.

Ah. The ‘big corporations’. Yes, I can see how the ‘big corporation’s would be quaking in their boots after seeing ‘the method’ laid so daringly bare in that diagram. ((The ‘big corporations are hiding it from us’ plea is a sure marker of pseudoscientific thinking. People: big corporations can be greedy and self-serving, sure. Evil, even. But one thing they are not is stupid. Any ‘big corporation’ in the world would give their metaphorical first child for this kind of technology if it worked. Think about it, Mr Free Energy Machine Inventor: a ‘big corporation’ could take your machine, make vast powerplants with it, and sell the power to consumers at ridiculously under-cutting prices, thereby doing the one thing that all ‘big corporations’ love to do most – put all the other ‘big corporations’ out of business. The assertion that they would take this idea and suppress it is nonsense of the highest order.))

The Magniwork website offers, as an endorsement of its wares, a Sky News video featuring Queensland free-energy proponents John Christie and Lou Brits, who are known in this arena for their Lutec 1000 generator, a device that has, in the manner of the Steorn ‘Orbo’, consistently failed for over a decade to live up to the hyperbole of its inventors (the failure for the Lutec 1000 to gain traction is, of course, due to the Machiavellian influence of the ‘big corporations’, rather than because of the small technicality that it doesn’t actually work).

Magniwork trots out the same misguided claims that we encounter with Messrs Christie and Brits and all ‘free’ energy technology advocates:

You can eliminate your power bill by 50% or even completely, depending on how you implement the magniwork generator.

Eliminate it by 50%? Um. I think the word ‘eliminate’ is kind of absolute. You can’t partially eliminate something. You’re probably searching for the word ‘reduce’, here. Even so, the 50% saving that Magniwork boasts involves accepting a fatal logical non-sequitur based on the concept of ‘overunity’ energy generation. As a special service to Tetherd Cow Ahead readers (and all people everywhere who like things explained in diagrams) I have created a page here that outlines, in simple terms, the logical flaw inherent in overunity. You don’t even need to understand physics to see how such a scheme must always fail.

The free energy devices have been suppressed by the corporate world because such devices, would allow people to create their own energy for free, which would ultimately shut down the big energy corporations, because people won’t need to pay anymore for electricity to fill their pockets.

It’s an intriguing image, people walking around with pockets full of electricity.

Our easy-to-follow guide will show you how to construct the Magniwork free energy generator, which will run infinitely and create free electric energy. This method has been thoroughly researched, and is currently considered as a possible mean of completely solving the energy crisis.

Only by idiots.

The magniwork free energy generator, can be efficiently used to power your home with almost zero costs on your side. Furthermore, the generator is eco-friendly and doesn’t produce any harmful byproducts.

Well, that’s probably true. Because it doesn’t produce ANYTHING.

We predict that the technology will rapidly spread, and some industry-insiders even predict that the magniwork free energy generators will be the energy in the future. These experts estimate, that by 2020 energy companies will start implementing this technology in order to create cheaper and more environment friendly energy.

OK, well I predict that in 2020 you’ll still be wheeling out the same old crap about your ‘invention’ being suppressed by the ‘big corporations’. Let’s see who’s the better predictor.

The Magniwork free energy generator is safe to use and operate. It doesn’t produce any harmful byproducts or gases, and there isn’t any hazard concerning the generator itself. Even if you have little children, they may freely walk in the close vicinity of the generator.

Although that might not be entirely safe, because they might point out that you’re violating the laws of thermodynamics and thus expose you as a nitwit.

Anyway, it goes on and on like this for a bit, with some testimonials that hold about as much credibility as a Shoo!TAG science experiment, before signing off with another convincing video about the evil plan by ‘the big companies’ to hide this amazing technology from us dumb suckers.

Hahahahaha! Dear Acowlytes! This is where the Magniwork site becomes very special and dear to my heart. The snippets of video featured in this ‘report’ are from a spoof documentary called ‘Conspiracy’ for which I wrote the music! In a fantastic metaphorical echo of the preposterousness of the overunity feedback loop, this ‘meta’ documentary, which was designed as an agglomeration of as many absurd free energy claims as we could stack together in one place (coupled with great Cold War-style black and white propaganda footage) has now come back to life as an endorsement of the the things it was sending up!

Just as overunity energy production pulls itself up with its own bootstraps, it seems that the free energy community is boosting its credentials with parodies of its own credentials! It is to laugh.

⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗∴—∴⊗

Well, that turned out rather more long-winded than I expected. What happened, you see, is that I connected a Magniwork generator to my computer, and before I knew it, I was producing unlimited free energy fuelled postings. In much the same way as the unbelievable claims of the free energy movement, they just go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and ….

Infinitely.

♫ Everybody’s talks about a new world in the morning… new world in the morning so they say-ee-ay-ay… ♫ I myself don’t talk about a new world… Hey! WTF! What are you all doing here? Weren’t you killed by the earthquakes and the volcanoes and the asteroids? Goddamnit! Do you mean to say that I spent all that money on a Vivos Underground Fallout Shelter for nothing? You’re not going to tell me that noted astrologer Richard Nolle, who predicted apocalyptic events as the FULL moon approached perigee, and who was quoted on Space.com, ((Who, I hope, are still sitting in the corner with their dunce cap on…)) was wrong? Son of a bitch!

Yes loyal Cowpokes, it’s true. Once again, the unhinged blathering of a woo personage turns out to be categorically and unequivocally wrong. I’ll just say that again:



WRONG.

You can read about Space.com’s embarrassing article (which tries to pretend it’s not really quoting an astrologer), here, but for the real meat of this sandwich you need to read what Mr Nolle said, in his own waffly words:

Of course you can expect the usual: a surge in extreme tides along the coasts, a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions), and most especially in this case a dramatic spike in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, damaging winds and extreme electrical activity. Floods are a big part of the picture in this case, although some of these will be dry electrical storms that spark fast-spreading wildfires. ((Gee, care to add anything else to that, Mr Nolle? Just in case that wide net misses something?))

No doubt Mr Nolle will do what all purveyors of this kind of nonsense do when they are shown to be WRONG, and start claiming everything in the vicinity as an endorsement of his prediction, including the recent tragic Japanese tsunami.

That makes this [the date of the ‘extreme supermoon’] a major geophysical stress window, centered on the actual alignment date but in effect from the 16th through the 22nd.

Geez. Even when he hedges his bets with the dates, he’s WRONG. ((I’m posting this on March 20, Australian time, so there are are still three more fudge days to go, but you know what? I’m saying here and now that in those three days nothing at all of any geophysical significance will happen. I’m sure Mr Nolle is well on his way, though, to claiming that what he REALLY meant by his predictions was that the UN would endorse military strikes on Libya. That’s the way this stuff invariably works…)) The Japanese tsunami occurred on March 11. Of course, that won’t stop him!

The March 19 SuperMoon is by far the most significant storm and seismic indicator this month, but it’s not the only one. Lesser geocosmic shock windows also up the ante for unusually strong storms ((‘Unusually strong’ could mean anything more than a bit of blustery wind.)) and moderate to severe seismic activity ((Moderate to severe? That’s really narrowing it down.)) (including ((Including??? There’s a weasel term if ever I heard one – the addition of ‘including’ actually means that this sentence says in effect: “Any earth movements of any kind”)) magnitude 5+ earthquakes, subsequent tsunami, and volcanic eruptions). These lesser windows include March 1-7 (surrounding the new moon on the 4th), March 23-26 (bracketing the lunar south declination peak on the 25th), and from late on the 31st on into early April. ((Into early April…? When’s ‘early’? April 5th? April 10th? Fuck me.))

Hahaha. Look at all that risible equivocating (I’ve enumerated all the hedging for you in the footnotes). That covers just about every possible day in March and every possible earthquake above a magnitude 5. Since the planet experiences more than 1500 earthquakes of magnitude 5 and above every year (divide that by 12 months and you get over 125 magnitude 5+ earthquakes somewhere in the world every month) Nolle can make a prediction like this with complete impunity. When you include his dates for the Super Moon, Nolle has every day in March covered except March 8 – 15 and March 27 – 30! That’s predicting 20 whole days of March might possibly have an earthquake of magnitude 5+ somewhere in the world! And he still missed March 11! Whoopsy. I guess a fucking ginormous earthquake that causes massive tidal surges and kills thousands of people is easy to overlook with that extreme spike in electrical storms and amongst all the floods and volcanic eruptions. Oh wait. None of those happened on March 19 either. ((I’ll just note here for the sake of amusement, the introduction to Mr Nolle’s pages which says in part “If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world, not some mystical mumbo-jumbo word salad.” Got that? No mumbo-jumbo in this town, no way!))

So, let’s just see what scientists predicted for the approach of the Super Moon. John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey:

Practically speaking, you’ll never see any effect of lunar perigee. It’s somewhere between ‘It has no effect’ and ‘It’s so small you don’t see any effect.’

Oh, lookit that. Once again, science is…



RIGHT.

___________________________________________________________________________

Earthquake chart purloined from IRIS with thanks. I’m pretty sure that, in the interests of proper science, they will be OK with it.

Space.com is carrying a story about how, on March 19, we are all going to be thrashed to within an inch of our lives here on little planet Earth, due to what they are calling a ‘super moon’:

Huge storms, earthquakes, volcanoes and other natural disasters can be expected to wreak havoc on Earth.

… they claim, quoting astrologer Richard Nolle, who goes on to say that… WHAT THE FUCK? Let me read that again… Yup, I wasn’t hallucinating: ‘noted astrologer Richard Nolle’. Space.com is taking an astrologer as an authority on what’s going to happen in the realms of science. That would have to be an all-time-low. Oh, wait, there is a qualifier:

It should be noted that astrology is not a real science, but merely makes connections between astronomical and mystical events.

You’re darn tootin’ that it should be ‘noted’ that it’s not a real science. If you had an ounce of grey matter, Mr Space.com editor, it should be noted instead that it’s a daft concoction of primitive magical thinking promoted by badly-educated people who don’t know their astronomical asses from their celestial elbows. So why the hell are you endorsing it on a website that’s supposedly about astronomy!? Furthermore, why are you carrying it as a scaremongering ‘we’re all gonna die!’ tabloid tract?

But do we really need to start stocking survival shelters in preparation for the supermoon?

No we don’t. You’re basing this entire story on the daft lunatic ((I use the word completely mindful of its roots.)) ravings of an astrologer you halfwits.

The question is not actually so crazy

Yes it IS. It’s entirely and utterly shit-crazy. You’re quoting an astrologer. ((You could visit Richard Nolle’s website, if you were to be so wild and crazy. It is one of the most annoying and badly designed sites I have encountered on the web in recent times.))

Natalie Wolchover, the writer of this nutty piece of handwringing has added an additional embellishment which she may or may not have received from the wisdom of astrologer Richard Nolle:

On March 19, the moon will swing around Earth more closely than it has in the past 18 years, lighting up the night sky from just 221,567 miles (356,577 kilometers) away. On top of that, it will be full.

On top of that, it will be full. And that, Natalie, makes a difference HOW? Just because it has more light shining on it doesn’t mean it’s heavier or something… ((There is the VERY faint chance that Natalie does know enough about science to understand that when the moon is full it means that the sun is directly behind the Earth, creating slight amplification in the tides due to the effect of gravity on wave dynamics, but somehow, given the fact that she can’t tell the difference between and astronomer and an astrologer, I figure that’s fairly unlikely.))

Predictably enough, some people are already puffing and waving their hands around and pointing at yesterday’s huge Japanese earthquake as ‘proof’ that this is happening. And yet the moon is nowhere near its closest point at the moment. That happens on March 19 you simplistic under-educated nitwits. At which time, I predict, NOTHING of any consequence will happen anyway, except maybe some good surf at Bondi. (If you should bother to read the entire article on Space.com, you will find that as it goes on, all the scientists – as opposed to astrologers – who are interviewed for this piece say things such as: “The moon’s gravitational pull at lunar perigee is not different enough from its pull at other times to significantly change the height of the tides and thus the likelihood of natural disasters” and “Practically speaking, you’ll never see any effect of lunar perigee. It’s somewhere between ‘It has no effect’ and ‘It’s so small you don’t see any effect.” Quite obviously, a bunch of sensible people saying ‘Don’t panic, nothing happened 18 years ago in 1993 ((March 8, as it happens. Go look it up. Earthquakes? Volcanoes? Plagues of locust? Not so much.)) when the same alignment took place, and nothing’s going to happen this time’ doesn’t make for as a good a headline as ‘We’re all going to die horribly in earthquakes and volcanic lava flows!!!’)

I have two suggestions. The first is for Space.com: sack Natalie Wolchover and find another writer who actually knows the difference between science and fairy tales.

The second suggestion is for you, Faithful Cowpokes. Be back here on March 19 for another End Times review. I’m going to bet my entire whisky collection that my predictions are better than Richard Nolle’s.

___________________________________________________________________________

Story found by Atlas. It really does look like I may have to get out my shelf building tools again…

You know what they say, Faithful Cowpokes: ‘Better late than robots!’ Well, maybe only I say that. But you know what I’m getting at! I know some of you can barely keep your pants on in anticipation of this year’s Annual Rasputin Competition. Well, here it is. For the newcomers, rules, as always, can be found here (I suggest the veterans revisit them too). Obviously the opening and closing dates are not relevant this year, so I’ll keep it running until I stop laughing. It would be nice if we could get some new players too, so spread the word. It’s always more fun with more people.

And lastly, do try to keep it clean.

HAHAHA! Just kidding. Hit me.

Why are journalists so stupid? Or is that a question that I’ve asked so many times now that it seems rhetorical? The Melbourne Age this morning carries a story (in the Technology section, no less) that has been doing the rounds for the last few days about a ‘UFO’ that supposedly appeared over Temple Mount in Jerusalem on January 28. Here is the YouTube video of that event that is causing all the conniptions. Be sure to ooh and aah like the people on the soundtrack won’t you? ((We’ve see ’em in Mississippi like this, but never like that!, drawls one of the voices who I’m sure I recognize as one of the intellectual geniuses from the Paulding Light video.))

Now I’d like to contemplate the following image that anyone can freely download from Wikipedia Commons, and which took me, oh, all of ten seconds to locate.

Pay particular attention to the star shapes on the streetlights, the position of lighted windows and the haze in the air. Seem familiar? Here, let me crop it for you…

And blur it up a little bit…

And stick a blob of ‘light’ in it…

And add some lens flare…

What’s that you say? A bit too ‘Close Encounters’ with the lens flare…? You think?

Well, I doubt even that would have put Mr Tom Kendrick, from wherever-the-fuck, off the scent of this ‘elaborate hoax’ that he apparently thinks is going to ‘fuel debate for many a year.’ Seriously, I’m going to start campaigning for a minimal intelligence test before we let people, especially journalists, use the internet.

Now I know that these are only still images, but it would have been no more difficult, had I wished to waste the time, for me to have made an animated video that exactly matched the one posted on YouTube. THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, Mr Newspaper Pillock! We all have computers with pretty good video and image editing software!

If you read the article in the Age (and seriously, I really don’t blame you if you’d decided to stick your tongue in the electrical socket instead) you would have also discovered that this is the second of two videos of this mysterious UFO. Here’s the other one:

This time we hear a couple of guys talking (I don’t recognize the language) and the ‘mysterious light’ drops from high in the sky down into the scene (it’s hard to tell if it’s ‘hovering over the Temple’, but hey, if they say so…). Then there are a couple of flashes of light and the UFO zips skywards, to the surprise of the onlookers. Needless to say, this would also have been a trivial thing to whip up in After Effects. Quite obviously, the first video was made by someone who thought it would be a hoot to give the second one some corroboration. Anyone with an ounce of brain matter can figure all this out in about three keystrokes.

It’s not really so surprising to me that people indulge in pranks of this kind. It’s fun and amusing. It’s not so surprising either, that when they post it up on YouTube we get all kinds of idiots debating its authenticity. What is surprising is the complete and utter incredulity of people like reporter Tom Kendrick, his employers and all the ‘news’papers who carry these brainless stories. ((Not to mention the dribbling sub-moronic attempt to draw a religious connection:

Sunni Muslims believe it was from the mount that Muhammad ascended to heaven, and it also represents one of the most important sites in the Jewish faith.

And that’s supposed to tie in with space aliens… how? Or is it an angel maybe? Or the Hand of God? Who the fuck left the Stupid Tap running?))

For Christ’s sake people – you look like drooling hillbillies with grass up your asses when you run things like this.

Hyuck hyuck… lookie Bobby Joe… there’n anutha one of them thar UFOs… go get pappy’s shotgun an’ we’ll see if we ken bag us a alyen!

Do you have your tin foil beanies on this morning Acowlytes? Have you supped well on your goji drinks, rubbed your ShooTag and cleansed your bowels thoroughly with colloidal silver? No? Well you might want to get used doing all those things and more, because that is certainly the future which awaits us if the current trend by some science magazines plays out to its inevitable conclusion.

The latest issue of New Scientist runs a cover article headlined ‘Ghost DNA; Nobelist claims he can ‘quantum teleport’ genes’. I can’t begin to convey to you how much this kind of half-baked pap passing as ‘science’ journalism pisses me off. ((This is the second of two New Scientist articles that have really gotten up my nose in recent months. The first was their uncritical reporting of the so-called statistical evidence for existence of precognition revealed in experiments conducted by ‘psi’ researcher Daryl Bem. The Bem work is so filled with problems as to be laughable, and has been subsequently comprehensively picked apart by scientists and statisticians alike. Experiments replicating those carried out by Bem have, predictably, not shown the same results he claimed to have found. But where is the New Scientist followup revealing all this? Not as headline-grabbing as ‘Evidence we can see the Future?’, I suppose.))

The story, in a nutshell, is that Luc Montagnier, a scientist previously awarded the Nobel prize for his work with AIDS, has published results of an experiment that he says shows that DNA can be remotely ‘imprinted’ in water. He further contests that the imprint can then be reconstituted into actual DNA via polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Writing it down like that makes it seem so patently stupid, that I had to go back and check that this was, in fact, what Montagnier claims. And yes, it is.

You can read the full process of Montagnier’s experiment here, if you can make sense of it. Essentially, Montagnier contests that when an electromagnetic field is applied to a flask of DNA, that field somehow picks up something from the DNA that can be somehow transmitted to an adjacent but isolated flask of purified water, somehow transferring something into the water. PCR is somehow able to amplify this something which results in actual real DNA being created in the previously-pristine flask. ((My initial response as a person with zero training in genetic chemistry was to want complete assurance that Montagnier’s experimental protocol had completely excluded the possibility of contamination. PCR experiments are notoriously prone to contamination problems. Occam’s Razor dictates here that, in the face of one experiment by one scientist who already holds partisan homeopathic views, the most likely explanation for Montagnier’s results is the actual explanation: that his ‘pristine’ flask was contaminated.)) As you can see, that’s more somehows and somethings than your average episode of Ghost Hunters.

Montagnier offers no mechanism that might allow DNA to be able to be recorded or transmitted electromagnetically in this manner, nor any method by which water might be able to receive this transmission and retain it. He also fails to offer any explanation of a process via which this ‘ghostly’ DNA could become corporeal DNA. Instead, his notes make reference to discredited homeopathy researcher Dr. Jacques Benveniste, and calls on the concept of ‘water memory’, a flimsy pseudoscientific notion that has resisted numerous attempts to give it any credence. All in all, there are so many hallmarks of fruit-loopery throughout Montagnier’s proposition that you really have to ask yourself why ANYONE is giving this ridiculous fluff the time of day. Well, of course, it is Montagnier’s Nobel credentials that are the angle here. He’s a Nobel laureate, so he has to be an all-round genius, right? Wrong. Having a Nobel prize doesn’t prevent you from being an idiot in some other area. New Scientist is indulging in a favourite tactic of woo-mongers: an appeal to authority. Montagnier’s controversial Nobel prize relates to work he did on HIV/AIDS. This does not make him an expert on everything. ((The New Scientist editorial attempts to evoke fairness by pointing this out. It’s a journalistic trick that truly annoys the crap out of me – stick in a bunch of reasonable objections to ‘show’ that you can see the logical flaws in your argument, but then go ahead and ignore what you just did by plastering ‘Nobel Prize Winner’ in the headline of your article. Scumbags.))

New Scientist’s editorial in defense of their decision to publish this information is the real killer, though. It is disingenuous and unctuous. They open with this:

As the old saying goes, it’s good to have an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out. This week we report claims about the way that DNA behaves that are so astonishing that many minds have already snapped shut.

Did you spot it? Yep, there’s New Scientist, a magazine that is supposedly offering proper science journalism, jumping on another defense beloved of practitioners of pseudoscience: ‘If you don’t immediately give credence to some outrageous claim, you have a closed mind’. New Scientist editors, double shame on you. ((And, I might add, making this statement in this context is a damn good illustration of exactly what you’re purporting to be declaiming with it – your ‘open’ mind is quite publicly leaking your brains all over the carpet.))

After a meandering attempt to appear like they’ve given the decision some thought, they arrive at their compelling reason for carrying the story:

We decided to go ahead because any bona fide experimental result is worthy of scrutiny, and the claims are nothing if not interesting.

No, let’s just have some honesty here. You decided to go ahead because this is the kind of thing that sells copies of your magazine. If you are pretending to any level of scientific credibility at all, you don’t just up and publish any old crap on the pretext that it has ‘interesting’ claims. If you were truly sincere about informing people of the science behind this story, you would have waited for some of the additional results from third party researchers that you admit are necessary for this experiment to have any validity. Of course, when that happens it will be a non-story (as I submit you are fully aware) and the headline ‘Scientists prove AGAIN that the concept of water memory is a crock of shit’ will not be nearly as lucrative on the news stand as some spurious one-liner involving ghosts, teleportation and ‘quantum’ magic. I further contest that if science was really your priority, you would have offered a little more depth on Luc Montagnier’s bona fides, including his predisposition towards believing in homeopathy (something you, yourselves have – quite hypocritically we must conclude – denounced previously as pseudoscience when it suited your headline).

I suggest that this quote from Luc Montagnier taken from an interview with Science magazine last month, might have added some context to his experiment:

I can’t say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules.

This shows us one thing very clearly: Luc Montagnier didn’t get his Nobel Prize for logical thinking. As is trivially easy to demonstrate, the high dilutions offered by homeopathy ARE, in many cases, nothing. After a certain level of dilution, a homeopathic substance is likely to contain not even one molecule of the original substance. What Montagnier wants us to believe, though, is that, by a mechanism that is pure speculation at best and has no basis in reality whatsoever, it’s not the molecules themselves that matter, but ‘something’ they leave behind. It’s crucial to understand that Montagnier is not building on any previous science ((All good science comes riding on the coattails of other science. In the 21st Century it is rare to the point of extraordinary for a major scientific discovery to pop out of nowhere.)) to assert this. It’s merely a magical belief. ((And it’s a belief that seems so simplistic and the counter-arguments so self-evident that I won’t even bother to tread that ground again. I’ll just point out once more that every glass of water you drink has ultra-diluted something in it. Pick anything: cyanide; sugar; apple juice; cow piss; snake venom. Whatever it is, its effects will be in operation in that water according to homeopathic ‘reasoning’. If you want to follow the ultimate absurdity of Montagnier’s experiment, you’re buying into a notion where you don’t have to even dilute the water in the first place – things can get ‘transmitted’ into the water from elsewhere! With all that dilution and transmission going on, there’s so much stuff in water that it’s a miracle it’s drinkable!))

All that being as it may, what Luc Montagnier is claiming to demonstrate with his experiment does not equate with claims of homeopathy anyway. ((Well, not with anything that homeopathy has claimed so far – I’m sure they’ll find a way to incorporate this new wonderful mechanism.)) Let me clarify: homeopaths contend that, by dissolving substances (whose efficacy is determined by nothing more than superstition) into extreme dilution in water they can achieve advantageous human health outcomes. The mechanism by which this is supposed to happen has no rational basis and can’t be scientifically shown to have any effect. But Montagnier’s experiment is (supposedly) demonstrating something else entirely: that he can transmit, via a process for which he has no explanation, something into water that wasn’t there in the first place and then reconstitute a biological product from it. He’s conflating a bizarre idea with an outlandish idea and then asserting that this makes BOTH ideas reasonable! What extraordinary nonsense.

New Scientist also neglects to mention that Montagnier’s Nobel Prize was the subject of prolonged antagonism, that (while Montagnier certainly contributed to the effort) the scientist who is actually now credited with demonstrating that the HIV virus causes AIDS was not Montagnier but Robert Gallo, and that one of the biggest issues in the controversy surrounding the Prize was sample contamination inside Montagnier’s lab – all factors that have bearing on the article at hand.

The magazine further tarnishes its image by including this spurious quote, as, geez, I dunno, some kind of ‘food for thought’ or something:

‘If the results are correct,’ says theoretical chemist Jeff Reimers of the University of Sydney, Australia, ‘these would be the most significant experiments performed in the past 90 years, demanding re-evaluation of the whole conceptual framework of modern chemistry.’

This kind of cheap sensationalism is breathtaking in its banality and has no place in a science journal. It’s a quote that means FUCK ALL. It’s a speculation that’s logically equivalent to saying ‘If pixies exist, we may never have to do the dishes ever again!’ It’s a NON quote. It’s vacuous journalism at its most pathetic.

Acowlytes. I’m sure you can feel my anger about this fairly radiating out of your computer screen. When a magazine like New Scientist runs an article lending plausibility to half-baked pseudoscientific concepts, they have an enormous detrimental effect on the already depressingly slow progress of critical thinking. We don’t need ‘scientists’ giving credence to every stupid idea that comes down the pike under the pretext of ‘it’s a valid experiment until the results prove otherwise’. The fact is that some ideas start out plain stupid, and never do anything more than traipse downhill into the vast bog land of Suck. It is the responsibility of periodicals like New Scientist, as purveyors of science news, to make decisions about framing a scientific world-view for their readers, not to encourage the flimsy philosophies and elliptical thought processes of those who espouse magical thinking by giving their silly ideas ‘scientific’ credibility.

What happens after an article like this appears is predictable and depressing. Searching the web for ‘luc montagnier’ in conjunction with ‘homeopathy’ delivers a flood of links to sites claiming that science has at last ((Or ‘again’, depending on how you look at it – homeopaths claim scientific endorsement of the stupid idea at the drop of a hat, and neglect ever to mention all those times when science has shown it to be a pile of horseshit.)) endorsed homeopathy. From the predictable brainless spew of Dana Ullman in the Huffington Post gushing that Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner, Takes Homeopathy Seriously, to the slack-jawed critical-thinking-free crowing of the various homeopathy advocates that Luc Montagnier Foundation Proves Homeopathy Works the woo-web is awash with brains-on-the-floor excitement.

For the sake of a salacious news stand headline, one dumb misstep by the Science press has all but undone the great work of skeptics over the last few years in demonstrating to the public just what a bunch of hokum homeopathy is.

Great work guys. And every year you run whiney op-ed pieces about how science funding is being slashed. In case you haven’t managed to figure it out, that’s the logical outcome of dumbing down the world.

UPDATE: More fuming! Because I’ve been away, I’m working my way through back issues of New Scientist that have accumulated in my absence. This used to be a pleasurable pursuit, but it’s turning out this time to be a lolly-grab of stupidity. Last night I read this editorial, in which we find NS criticizing NASA for hyping up the science behind the search for extraterrestrial life.

IT’S life, but not as we know it,” trumpeted one headline. “Alien life may have been discovered – right here on Earth,” gasped another. Even The New York Times declared “Microbe Finds Arsenic Tasty; Redefines Life”.

The breathless write-ups followed NASA’s teasing announcement of a news conference “that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life”. And although the discovery of alien life, if it ever happens, would be one of the biggest stories imaginable, this was light years from that.

Oooh. They wouldn’t be anything like headlines that scream ‘Ghost DNA; Nobelist claims he can ‘quantum teleport’ genes’ or ‘Evidence we can see the Future?’, would they now you fucking hypocrites?

The editorial concludes:

Perhaps it (NASA) thinks that all publicity is good publicity, but one day the appetite for sensationalist alien life stories may be sated.

At which point I suggest that New Scientist might like to start fishing around for the log in their own eye rather than looking for the mote in their neighbour’s.