Comment autopsy: Russ on fundamental Christianity

Received the following comment from Russ on my previous post.

Hey,

Just for fun, what do you think the odds are that this verse, written about, oh, about 3000 years ago, would still be true in our scientific would of today?

Thus says the LORD: “If heaven above can be measured, And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel For all that they have done, says the LORD. [Jer 31:37]

Only God could have known that the universe would still be without measure today and the that earth could never be fathomed to its core by mankind.

Here is your great oppertunity to prove the Bible wrong. All you have to do is meause the heavens and drill to the center of the earth. Go for it!

OK. Lab coat, check. Goggles, check. Rubber gloves, check. Better make that two pairs, I don’t want to catch anything. Scalpel, check.

Cursory examination shows relatively sound grammar and spelling. Sensible paragraph splits, complete sentences, correct use of punctuation marks. No closed quotation marks for the Bible verse, world spelled ‘would’, opportunity spelled with an ‘e’, measure mistyped. Not bad at all, actually.

We proceed with an incision to the organs of relevancy, and immediately notice some serious infection: The original post was a humorous list of signs to expose the absurdity and closed-mindedness of fundamentalist Christian claims and beliefs, but the comment tries to simultaneously ‘prove’ the omnipotence of the Christian God, as well as challenge the author to try and disprove the correctness of the Bible. Thus only incidental relevance to the post.

We now proceed with an incision to the quivering, bloated and purple logic center, where we discover several large and well-developed fallacy tumors: The two largest ones seem to have become entwined into some kind of super-tumor, combining the stupefying effects of Ad Ignorantum and Straw Man fallacies into something Kent Hovind would be proud of. Russ simplifies a rather vague and obscure metaphorical Bible verse into ‘physically measure the heavens and drill to the center of the Earth’, creating a Straw Man that is easy to burn, since even a mentally retarded six-year old will be able to tell you that this is impossible. Russ somehow seems to think that because the Christian God is also quoted with stating the impossibility of these actions, He must therefore exist and be omnipotent. WTF? Never mind that physical measurement and drill-bits do not appear in any of the Bibles on my bookshelf, or that the original Bible verse does not say “you will not have measured the heavens and earth by 2008″, as Russ seems to think and base his entire argument on. He seems to be blind to the fact that it only says “if you measure the heavens and earth, I will abandon Israel”, which could have happened any time in the past 2000 years. I doubt anyone would have noticed, the way things are going over there. But Russ then goes one step further, and misplaces the burden of proof by stating that if scientists are unable to ‘drill to the center of the Earth’, their failure will somehow prove the existence and omnipotence of the Christian God. How can someone smart enough to use a computer and type an English sentence be so stupid as to miss the stupendous idiocy of those two arguments? Perhaps we will be better able to answer this when we open the belief lobe later on. There are several smaller tumors in the logic center, blocking the flow of common sense to the rest of the comment, but they hardly seem as important as the super-tumor above.

Spent some time trying to find the scientific knowledge lobe, as it is shriveled and atrophied due to a lack of common sense, but also because the grotesquely overgrown belief lobe has been pressing against it for several years, perhaps even since early childhood. Through the stretched outer lining of the belief node I could see a Bible quote, two all-caps ‘LORD’s and an overpowering belief that the Bible is correct for no other reason than because the Bible claims to be correct. Didn’t want to open that up, in case some of it splashed up into my face.

In the science lobe I had to use microscope, but could detect no discernible evidence of knowledge about astrophysics and radio telescopes, or the current body of scientific knowledge regarding the age and size of the universe. Also, knowledge about plate tectonics, the temperatures, pressures, chemical properties, magnetic field effects or even depth of the layers of the Earth seems to be completely missing.

To conclude, the comment was not only infected with non-relevance, but fatally riddled with logical fallacies, brought about by an excess of belief and a serious deficiency in common sense and scientific knowledge. As is often the case, these factors acted as multipliers of the symptoms of stupidity, resulting in the death of the comment. Some things are just too pathetically weak to survive in the light of reason, and this poor thing hopefully died without too much suffering.

Now, somebody should come and clean this mess up, because I need a shower and a stiff drink. Signing out.

Top 10 signs you are a fundamentalist Christian

Because I’m bored, homesick and too tired to do anything original, I include a few warning signs of one of the worst types of voodoo out there: fundamentalist Christianity. I (like others) can write volumes about the evils of this particular type of voodoo, but they mostly get my blood pressure up by actively, loudly and publicly subverting all kinds of beautiful and awe-inspiring science. I’ve just spent a few days in beautiful, Enlightened, tolerant Edinburgh, and then came to Dublin with crucifixes and other Christian symbols in waaaayyy too many places for comfort, which probably goes some way to explain my state of mind. Add the ever-present semi-religious media circus of Amercian politics at this time in the nomination race, and it’s the perfect time to poke a little fun at the holy molies. (originally (as far as I can tell), from www.evilbible.com/Top_Ten_List.htm) :

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” including women, children, and trees!

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs — though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”

3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in “tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.

And then, sign number 0, count 11,  courtesy of The Monkeysphere: You get hit by a lot of tornadoes.

Hello from sunny Scotland. No really.

Stepping off the plane for my sixth visit to the lovely city of Edinburgh, I was greeted with a beautiful billboard showing the castle and the Scott monument, with the following line: “Welcome to Edinburgh, the birthplace of the Enlightenment.”

And even though I absolutely love the city with its truly unique blend of ancient and modern, I had never really thought of it in that sense. Sure, I have looked at the statues of Hume and Scott, and visited the grave of Napier but only learnt the following today: (From wiki):

The Scottish Enlightenment was a remarkable period in 18th century Scotland characterized by a great outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments rivalling that of any other nation at any time in history. What made it even more remarkable was that it took place in a country which was among the poorest and was thought to be among the most backward in western Europe prior to that time, in addition to having a substantially smaller population base and infrastructure than many other major western European nations.

Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority which could not be justified by reason. They held to an optimistic belief in the ability of man to effect changes for the better in society and nature, guided only by reason.

It was this latter feature which gave the Scottish Enlightenment its special flavour, distinguishing it from its continental European counterpart. In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief virtues were held to be improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for both the individual and society as a whole.

Perhpas this is why I feel so at home here. And yes, in all my visits to Scotland and Edinburgh, I have never had such good weather as this past week. Sunshine and temperatures in the 20s. Maybe I’ll climb Arthur’s Seat again.

Real science in the White House?

Yesterday I bought the book Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology and Politics in Science, by John Grant. In it, he makes the statement that

when looking around for regimes that have systematically corrupted science within the past century or so, three stand out quite distinctly, head and shoulders above the rest of the herd: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Bush’s America.

This gave me an idea for my first ‘real science’ post on this blog. So, without further ado, a little treat for those (very, very, very) few who are simultaneously interested in mathematics and political history: A proof of the Pythagorean theorem, attributed to none other than the 20th president of the United States of America, James Garfield, from a time when US presidents did not corrupt science (too much).

With regards to the Pythagorean theorem, he is quoted with:

“we think it something on which the members of both houses can unite without distinction of the party.”

This makes him a US president who understood that at least mathematical (if not empirical) proof is not subject to political or religious opinion. It is also said that he was fully ambidextrous, and could answer a question by writing the answer in Latin and ancient Greek simultaneously, one hand to a language. Judging from his speeches, I doubt Bush can do it in English with one hand, but that’s just me.

Yes, I know what you are thinking. An American president who knows the concept of mathematical proof? An American president who knows geometry? An American president who can count? An American president smart enough to breathe on his own? And a Republican, as well. Not to mention a member of the clergy! No, pigs are not swooping through the icy air of Hell. Contrary to current evidence, there used to be a time when being ‘leader of the free world’ (and later having control of the nookelear arsenal) meant that you had to be able to use reason, logic and rational thinking, and not just have a great Evangelical Christian media campaign with dad’s oil-money.

But I digress. The proof:

Rapport fails science journalism. Again.

So, if you’re a major Sunday newspaper read by hundreds of thousands, and you happen to stick your entire leg in your mouth by running a glowing report about the discovery of perpetual motion, what do you do next week? Admit your monumental stupidity and humbly beg forgiveness? Get a real scientist to explain why perpetual motion is like carrying water in a sieve? Use the opportunity to educate thousands about one of the most fundamental laws of nature? Let the journalist write “I will always at least Google unbelievable-sounding science before writing an article about it” a thousand times?

No. You publish two rather short skeptical letters from readers, and make no further reference to the matter. Two (well written) letters, with no official backing by Rapport or mention of scientific credentials. Those two letters will simply be seen by the woo brigade as another example of closed-minded skeptics who reject a possibly great invention, suppressing the little guy who can change the world. Two letters that will do very little or nothing to discourage naïve investors or poor Mr De Beer from chasing this pipe dream any further.

Shame on you, Rapport. Shame.

BTW, if anyone would like to share this sentiment with the appropriate editor at Rapport, send him a little mail (like I have) by clicking here.

Perpetual motion, but give me a month…

Let it be known that Rapport has finally hit absolute rock bottom with regards to voodoo science reporting on Sunday 20 April 2008. Yes, you guessed it: Free energy / perpetual motion. If you can read Afrikaans, the article is here.

Under the heading of “End in sight for power crisis - and it’s free!”, one Marthinus Koekemoer writes about a Mr André de Beer and his free energy machine. The first part of the article describes how de Beer, an ‘irrigation engineer’ came up with the idea of building a hydro-electric generator that uses water from a reservoir to generate electricity, using some of it to pump the water back into the reservoir. According to the article, about 5kW is ‘left over’ after the water has been pumped back, allowing the machine to be self-sustaining. It is essentially a modern version of Rober Fludd’s 1618 idea for a waterwheel that pumps its own water in addition to running a mill.

For those of you who don’t know the laws of thermodynamics, I can spell them out very bluntly: You can’t survive by eating your own sh…, er, excrement. Nor can an energy machine keep going by connecting the output to the input. Any movement, sound or heat produced means energy losses that can never be regained. It’s one of the most fundamental laws of the universe - total entropy increases, heat does not flow spontaneously from colder to warmer bodies, rubber balls don’t bounce as high or higher than where they were dropped from. It is, in some sense, the law that points the arrow of time forward: There is more entropy now than then. Why is it that everyone knows this, except journalists?

Now, I won’t jump to the conclusion that de Beer is a fraud right away, but only that he came under the spell of free energy, like thousands before him. What is a little worrisome is the last part of the article, which hints at de Beer’s next project, aimed at generating electricity from running water directly out of household taps. This would of course work (in theory), but result in a massive waste of water, not to mention a water bill to make up for the electricity bill. As with all self-deluded inventors of this nature, de Beer estimates his machine will be ready for sale in about a month, for between R15,000 and R20,000, with another R5,000 for the reservoir. The month is probably there because he has so far got the machine to generate electricity, but not enough to pump all the water back up (as per the well-established laws of thermodynamics). He is probably convinced that about another month of tweaking and fine-tuning will bring the efficiency up to the point where it will actually be self-sustaining, with a leftover 5kW.

Apparently neither ‘irrigation engineering’ nor science journalism requires knowledge of any of the laws of thermodynamics, or of the long and colourful history of the failure of perpetual motion machines. Or of the use of the internet or libraries, for that matter. Or common sense. Or the ability to question the feeling that your idea is so simple that thousands must have had it before, and then wondering why they failed where you will surely succeed. Ignorance 1, fundamental physical laws of the universe, 0.

My main problem with all this is Rapport’s blatant foolishness and plain science stupidity. In a country where science and math education leaves much to be desired and where people are desperate for solutions to a looming energy crisis, running an article like this borders on criminally irresponsible. Rapport is of course mostly a rugby tabloid with a little Afrikaans entertainment gossip and some political bitching and moaning thrown in, so I suppose it can only be expected. They’ve proven their poor level of scientific understanding before, by reporting on Danie Krugel, but this really is a new low.

Stay tuned for next week, when Marthinus will no doubt tell us about a local astronomer who discovered that the Sun orbits the Earth. The truly sad thing is that the journalists and editors at Rapport seem genuinely unable and/or unwilling to go to even the slightest trouble to separate science truth from science fiction.

Update: I have just spoken to Mr de Beer (Rapport provided a phone number), and I must admit that he sounds sincere. He seems to have never heard of the laws of thermodynamics, or of the English term ‘perpetual motion’. He is, however, very friendly and obviously passionate about what he sees as a device that can help millions. I tried to explain that he should not spend any of his money or more time on a project that is doomed to failure from the start, and he listened patiently. I inquired about the current state of the project, and my initial suspicions were confirmed: The current design is not efficient enough to run a small pump for long enough to pump all the water back to the reservoir. Mr de Beer seems genuinely convinced that some small design changes in the diameter of the pipes and the axle of the turbine will make all the difference.

He guarantees me that he will never dream of selling the machine without a final, fully working prototype, so hopefully no danger of fraud. What does worry me is his mention of ‘two other mechanical engineers’ working with him on the project. I ended the conversation by spelling out ‘perpetual motion’ and telling him to Google it. We can only hope.

Danie Krugel: Foolishness or Fraud?

[For a summary page about all my Danie Krugel posts, click here]

I suppose that, in all fairness, I have to consider the possibility that Danie Krugel is not a fraud, but a victim of what Nobel-prize winner Irving Langmuir called “pathological science” :

Pathological science is the process in science in which “people are tricked into false results … by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions”.

Let’s start at the very beginning, at least as far back as we can deduce from the available reports. According to the Passi magazine article:

He becomes involved with a group of developers researching mineral mining, using existing technology and developing it further to locate gold, diamonds, iron ore and even oil below ground. Danie is almost exclusively responsible for all the research, the group, the funding.

And from the Carte Blanche transcript:

Finding missing people was the last thing Danie had in mind when a group of businessmen approached him four years ago to develop equipment that could locate minerals.

Danie: ‘We started by getting stuff from overseas. A lot of people who said they could develop the stuff for us [was] just a hoax. Then we started with diamonds. The small diamonds, the sugar diamonds gave me a lot of heartache because you pick up on every small piece of diamond. Now what we do is work to get the bigger diamonds from a carat upwards.’

Danie and his partners are now reworking this old dig, but they only focus on dumps where the equipment shows they will find real big ones.

They have reason to smile. Their register shows they’ve found almost 300 carats in just three months.

If we assume that Danie slapped together a few pieces of internet-ordered mineral-detecting junk electronics, it is quite easy to imagine him being fooled by something that he does not understand. As an exercise in creative speculation, I can imagine some kind of device with a container for his ’samples’, and a receiver for, oh let’s say radio waves. Remember that we are bathed in this type of radiation from literally hundreds or sources, coming from all directions. He can then point the receiver in a direction, turn a dial and cause a light to blink or a needle to move to indicate signal strength at that frequency. Presto! Matter Orientation System. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he does not know that he is detecting radio waves. He is, after all, an ex-policeman with no known technical or scientific training. So he points it at a mine dump, and they start digging, but only find small diamonds. He then fiddles a bit with the dial and frequencies, and points it at a random other dump, where he gets a stronger reaction to existing radio signals. They dig, and find bigger than average diamonds, because that dump is from a time when the mine used less advanced technology to recover diamonds. No magic, no quantum physics, no GPS, just sheer luck and wishful thinking. It is a classic case of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy: Empty your gun into the side of a barn, then walk up to the wall and draw a target over the place with the most holes.

Then he hits on the idea of using the machine to locate missing people. By his own account, he loads some of his son’s hair into the device, points it at him and gets a positive reading. But just to be sure, he moves to some other point further away, and repeats the process. He must now turn the dial to some other frequency, but again, he can make a light blink with the device pointed at his son. In this way, he can tackle cases of missing persons: Use common sense and insider police knowledge to deduce the most likely location, point the device toward it, turn the dial until you hit any strong radio signal, and convince yourself that this means the machine works. His apparent unwavering conviction regarding the locations of the Van Rooyen victims and Madeleine McCann could be indicative of this type of delusion. In both cases his ‘device’ points at locations that seem very plausible, but can be arrived at with nothing more than ordinary logic and detective skills.

I can even see him fooling others, and in turn being fooled by their belief in him. At least one report indicates that a renowned cell phone tracking specialist called on Danie to help him find some robbery suspects. It’s not too hard to imagine him telling Danie that his cell phone tracking pointed to a certain location, and Danie then telling him that his machine points to the same place. If the suspects are found there (or even near there), both Danie and the detective can be fooled into believing the machine works. And as soon as his successes start appearing in the media, more and more people will become convinced of his abilities, and less likely to question the efficacy of the machine when he gets involved with their cases. I also doubt that the media will ever report (or even be made aware of) failures by Danie. I strongly suspect that he has been involved in many cases that were never solved, and therefore never reached the media. I also suspect that if we could add up all the failures and successes, the results would point to nothing more than an average hit rate for investigators working on their own.

OK, so I will grant that this might have been the way things started, but I am pretty sure that it cannot stay like that for long. As Dr Park so eloquently explains in his book, what starts off as foolishness often leads to fraud, especially when the media gets involved. Inventors eventually realize that they have been fooling themselves, but many lack the courage and integrity to admit it to the thousands who will read about it in the papers. At this point, you get two types of voodoo scientists: Those who just fade into the background, never to be heard of again, and those who start inventing elaborate schemes of intentional fraud to maintain the media attention that they have fallen in love with, or to convince all the potential buyers who contacted them since the invention appeared in the media.

To wrap up, there are two cases that convince me that Danie is now on the path of intentional fraud, whether he started off on it or not: The missing cameraman, and the Van Rooyen case. Danie was able to tell journalists that the cameraman was hiding in some shrubs in the Jewish section of the local cemetery, which is just too specific for self-deluded guesswork. Going out from the absolute conviction that the machine cannot possibly work, the only explanation is collaboration between Danie and the cameraman, or a third party that followed or traced the man to his hiding place and informed Danie. In the Van Rooyen case, Danie claimed that he got strong signals from some hair samples. Hair that had been cut off, with no roots and therefore no nucleic DNA, which is the type used to identify individual humans. Hair shafts consist mostly of keratin, with only a little mitochondrial DNA, which even advanced forensics labs find difficult and time-consuming to extract. Keratin is identical between all humans on the planet, while the mitochondrial DNA will be identical to that of the girl’s mother, grandmother and all their female siblings. But Danie claims to have gotten a strong signal directly from the abandoned field, 400km away. Even if the signal is just some random thing he detects when pointing the device in the direction he knows Van Rooyen’s house to be, I cannot believe that Danie never realized this in all the years that he as been doing this.  The number of impossible factors in the Van Rooyen case alone should be enough to convince anyone that Danie must be deluded or a fraud, while the cameraman-case leaves no alternative but fraud.

So yes, it might have started off as foolishness, but the evidence suggests very strongly that it is now fraud.

Danie Krugel: The sins of the media

[For a summary page about all my Danie Krugel posts, click here]

Part of my motivation for creating this blog, was to do my little bit as a scientific skeptic to expose and highlight the poor standards of scientific reporting in the public media. As my very first example, consider the following extract from the original Carte Blanche episode regarding Danie Krugel. It is the opening of the piece, designed explicitly to capture audience attention and make them more receptive to the hugely entertaining pseudoscientific hogwash that was to follow:

Ruda Landman (Carte Blanche presenter): ‘Can you remember when the fax machines first became part of the office set-up? When the computer replaced the typewriter? The first time you used an auto teller, the first cell phone call you made? It wasn’t all that long ago, yet at the time it was mind boggling.’

Today it is the most common thing to do. You probably don’t even think twice about it.

Ruda: ‘Now imagine this: A person disappears, you find a few strands of hair left on a brush, you put those hairs into a gadget and that points out on a map where in the world that person may be.’

That’s exactly what a group of Bloemfontein businessmen claim they are able to do.

Steering the project is Danie Krugel, former police superintendent and current Director of Health and Safety at the Central University of Technology of the Free State.

I will try to suppress the urge to call this intentionally misleading, poorly researched and sensationalist, but I guess I just failed to do so. What I will do, is point out a few things that lead me making the above accusations.

First, consider the carefully laid foundations for Ruda’s techno-scientific pedestal to place Danie Krugel on: The fax machine, computer, auto teller and cell phone.

The fax machine is the combined end result of more than a century’s efforts and contributions by Alexander Bain, Frederick Bakewell, Richard H. Ranger, Herbert Ives, Rudolf Hell and Dr Hank Magnuski, to name only a few. All of them technicians, scientists and engineers with years of relevant experience and training, many working full-time in advanced and well-equipped electronic laboratories or research facilities.

The computer. Go read an article like this one, and note the lack of ex-cops and campus security in the long list of accomplished mathematicians, physicists and engineers who contributed centuries of expertise and research to our quest for machine-based computation.

The ATM is the invention of one John Shepherd-Barron, a university-educated engineer, but also based on computer and telecommunication technology.

And finally, the cell phone. Again, we can’t seem to be able to get rid of words like laboratory, engineer, scientist and research.

The obvious fact is that amazing, world-changing inventions like these are almost all the result of years of intense, purpose-driven effort by appropriately trained and educated individuals, most often working in teams. The fact that Ruda could not get an equally powerful opening by saying “Remember world-changing devices X, Y and Z, invented by receptionist Sally, garbage collector Bill and lawyer Harry”, is because there are no such devices. Apologies to those professions (except maybe the lawyers), but I do not claim that non-scientists cannot come up with novel and brilliant inventions and ideas. Anyone can, and many have. But they did not come up with the complete underlying science end technology of computers, fax machines and cell phones. Try to forget everything Hollywood has ever shown us about fictional basement inventors, and really think about it. Also look up the word fictional, just to be sure.

The entire introduction sets the stage for portraying Danie as the real thing, while smartly diverting attention away from the glaring scientific impossibility of his claims. Shamefully blatant bias from a show like Carte Blanche. Especially if you consider the fact that promoting Danie could lead to his getting involved in more child disappearance cases, where he can hamper an investigation to the point where investigators fail to save a life. Dangerous and irresponsible, to say the least. I sincerely hope that this is the kind of thing that lead to Ruda Landman leaving the show.

Danie Krugel: Why go to the media?

[For a summary page about all my Danie Krugel posts, click here]

The thing that galls me most about all the claims made by Danie Krugel and his loyal followers, is the following quote by Danie from the original Carte Blanche episode:

“I’m a Christian and I put it clearly… this is science, science, science! That is what is so fantastic about it. It is tied to the science we hear but people didn’t realise it… it’s just science. That’s it.

Why then, if the machine is so scientific, does he refuse to have it scientifically tested? Note that this type of testing says nothing about the actual science involved; it only confirms that there is a genuine non-human, physical process at work that cannot be explained by human bias, fraud or chance. Thus Danie cannot argue that he is afraid the scientists will steal his ideas, because they will merely be testing the truth of the claimed efficacy, and not the internal workings of the machine. In a well-designed double blind test he need not let it out of his sight for a single second. The fact that he sprouts “science, science, science!”, but quietly and deliberately avoids science departments, scientists and the testing methods of science, should be a warning that all is probably not what it is claimed to be. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, Carte Blanche.

Danie plays on the Christian humanitarian angle quite a lot, and claims to just want to help people. Now, official scientific confirmation of his machine’s efficacy would give him an unparalleled platform and resources from which to help thousands! But instead of going to a science department across the road, spending a week to verify his claims beyond any reasonable doubt and therefore shutting up all his possible critics before they can even take a first breath, Danie went to the media. If a reputable university can confirm his claims, he will end up on the front page of the New York Times, and have the Nobel Prize Committee scrambling for the dialing code for Bloemfontein. Instead he somehow bypassed all the universities in Bloemfontein, including the one he works for, and ended up in the popular print media and Carte Blanche. By going to the media first, he set himself up for justified scientific criticism that can only harm his reputation, and prevent him from being given the chance to help more people. It is a classic sign of voodoo science, seen countless times before in hundreds of frauds and charlatans, but somehow not once with regards to a true scientific discovery.

According to newspaper reports here and here, the South African Police force even offered to work with Danie and his machine, but decided not to because he refused to have it tested by their standards. So, even when given the official opportunity to help thousands of people, his unwillingness to have his claims scientifically tested somehow outweighed his desire to ‘help people’ like a good Christian.

Now, does all this seem like the actions of someone who has a world-changing idea, nothing to hide, and a desire to help? I don’t see how it can. Instead it seems like the actions of a fraud who cunningly avoids exposure, while still maintaining public trust with involvement in highly emotional cases, all the while hoping that some scientifically naive investor will offer to buy the product for millions. If anyone can come up with a better idea, I would love to hear it.

Danie Krugel: A critical look at media claims

[For a summary page about all my Danie Krugel posts, click here]

Since Danie won’t let the machine be tested independently, the best we can do is to critically examine each reported success (and failure), using all the information available and some plain, old-fashioned common sense.

Please feel free to let me know of cases I have missed, or about any detail that could cast further light on these matters. I’m especially interested to hear from people who were actually involved in these cases.

The cases

With the exception of his own unconfirmed claims like locating his own son while working on the device, or the implied higher-than-average hit rate for finding diamonds in old mine dumps, I have been able to find the following reports regarding people or things that Danie tracked:

1. The body of an apparent suicide victim in the Pelonomi hospital morgue. Reported in the original Carte Blanche episode here. This is the first mention by Carte Blanche of Leon Rossouw, the renowned Bloemfontein cell phone tracker/private investigator. The very interesting bit is the fact that Carte Blanche lists Leon as the contact person with regards to the Danie Krugel episode, which implies more than occasional contact with Danie. I can’t help but wonder if Leon is a member of the mysterious anonymous ‘group of Bloemfontein businessmen’ behind the whole thing. Apparently these businessmen approached Danie (an ex-cop working as head of campus security at CUT), to develop a quantum physics-GPS-secret-power-source device to find minerals. Makes perfect sense to me
2. The cameraman from the original Carte Blanche episode. They fail to mention that the cameraman is an old acquaintance/friend of Danie’s. See my post regarding that case here.
3. Some oil hidden near a conspicuous dolomite hill, only a few minutes’ drive from where Danie waited in his car. Again, the same cameraman was probably present, and Danie had the cell phone details of the people hiding the oil. Remember his friend the renowned cell phone tracker? See my post regarding the oil here.
4. The daughter of a certain Dr Chadinha. This case in particular has reported elements that make cell phone tracking seem very probable. See my discussion here.
5. A murder suspect in the Navalsig area. Very vague information here, and in the original Carte Blanche episode here. Again, Danie’s contribution can very easily be explained by means of cell phone tracking or the use of informants and non-quantum physics detective skills.
6. A Ms van Zyl and her baby, who eloped with her boyfriend, as reported here. Careful reading will show that no-one was actually found in this case. Danie simply pointed the private investigator in the direction of Port Shepstone, where further investigation seems to confirm the presence of the trio. Again, cell phone tracking or normal, run-of-the mill detective skills are just so much more likely than advanced quantum physics.
7. Rayno Gouws, as reported here, and VERY importantly, here. The first is a neutral-leaning-to-positive description of how Danie supposedly tracked the missing person, from what seems to be a Danie Krugel fan site. See how it ends quite abruptly with no closure? That’s because the entire operation was a miserable failure on the part of Danie. The second is an interview with the mother of the missing man, who gives us the real story: How Danie sent her and her husband on an 8-month wild goose chase, while their son’s dead body was very much stationary in the Knysna forest. When confronted with the truth, Danie apparently became quite angry, and told the mother that forensic evidence regarding the time of death was a lie, and that it is impossible to tell when someone had died. It seems that Danie provided locations that closely follow those that the detective on the case found in his investigations by interviewing witnesses.
   
8. Madeleine McCann. Just Google it to see the incredible amount of attention this got. And the result: Absolutely nothing. Danie spent a lot of time, interfered with the local search, upset the parents, and eventually caused the media to have to apologise for sheer bad reporting. Piece together the parts of the fiasco here, here and here.
9. The last part of that article mentions another failure on Danie’s part, this time while working with the South African police to find the body of a missing police constable. His unwillingness to have the machine scientifically tested is also mentioned.
10. The Gert van Rooyen victims, as reported here. Do yourself a favour and read the entire thing. It is one of the best examples of bad science reporting, intentional misleading and the ability of a desperate reporter to make an hour of quackery and hot air sound like cutting-edge investigative journalism. If you don’t want to, then read Moonflake’s eloquently critical summary here (look for the bullet list). A stain on the Carte Blanche reputation, as pointed out here. Also, some of Danie’s most extraordinary claims to date: Tracking the ‘DNA’ molecules in almost 20-year old buried bones from 400km away. All this by using an equally old hair sample, with no roots and therefore no DNA other than mitochondrial, which would point to each and all female blood-relatives of the girl, all over South Africa. And don’t forget the helpful psychic that was called in. Would make for great comedy, until you see the interviews with the mothers of the missing girls. Also, am I the only one to think that
    1. you don’t need a magic quantum box to point to a deserted, semi-secluded field within easy driving distance from the killer’s house as a possible burial site, and
    2. you are almost guaranteed to find some bone fragments when digging in a deserted dumping ground that used to be a farm decades ago?

    Common sense people, common sense! The bone fragments turned out to not match the parents of the missing girls in any way. Thus, another resounding failure, but hailed by Carte Blanche as the biggest success story of all. More here.

11. The De Deur murder case. Very sketchy, leaves open cell phone tracking and normal detective skills as probable techniques.
12. Anisha van Niekerk, as reported here. Danie apparently gave two readings, but it still took a member of the public answering the call of nature to stumble upon the body. Another failure, but notice the lack of media coverage.
13. The body of Naledi Ntbele, as reported here. The body was found in a field crisscrossed with footpaths, only 800m from where the girl was last seen. Again, there’s no way to completely rule out plain old common sense and detective work.
14. Another failure: The search for missing pilot Dirk Booysen, as reported here. Danie’s coordinates were nowhere near the actual wreckage site. I cannot find the link to substantiate it, but a colleague who followed the entire thing says Danie at one point claimed the man was moving around and therefore alive. Imagine the emotional effect and eventual disappointment for family members.
15. The ability to detect cancer, as reported here, translated here. A Google search for Dr Frieda Pienaar will lead you here, where it is claimed loud and clear that she is also a firm believer in the healing power of prayer. So miracle believers endorsing miracle machines as science. And exactly how does Danie ‘load’ the machine with samples of cancer? More here, as always.

In each of the so-called successes reported above, cell phone tracking, fraud, normal detective work and just the willingness of worried people to want to see results where none exist, are far more plausible than a quantum-physics-GPS-DNA-finding box.

The conclusion from critical analysis is that Danie Krugel is very probably fraud. If that is true, it will be only a matter of time before he swindles someone out of a lot of money, or prevents a life from being saved by interfering with otherwise normal police investigations.