[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.
UPDATE 10 OCTOBER 2008: Support the initiative to stop Danie Krugel.
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