There is little industry of companies that like to sell devices and remedies to protect you from the evils of mobile phones and Wifi. Given that there is no compelling evidence that there is a significant and meaningful threat from such technologies, the major challenge of these outfits is to convince the public that they need their services.
This problem will no doubt be helped by last week’s decision by the Council of Europe into accepting the conclusions of a small bunch of pseudoscientists and the discredited and unbalanced Bioinitiative Report that we must protect children from the threat of electromagnetic radiation.
One company that will hope to thrive from such nonsense is called Phoneshield. It sells little buttons containing magic crystals that you stick on your phone or Wifi to protect you from the evil rays.
Phoneshield make many outrageous claims,
With so much electromagnetism at home and the office from computers, monitors, laptops, cordless phones and every other electrical device it’s no wonder we feel so drained and headachy, can’t concentrate, feel confused and generally under the weather.
We need natural quartz wi-fi Shields to reduce our exposure to electromagnetism – that’s better
Even if it is discovered that mobile phones and Wifi do pose meaningful risks, the idea that a quartz crystal stuck to your phone can reduce your risk is simply absurd.
However, I have a feeling that after writing this article, Phoneshield will suffer a thorough fishbarrelling from multiple sources that may make their ability to trade much harder.
But while they exist, let’s enjoy them a little further.
The company say they make ‘no outrageous claims’. But they do claim that it is a FACT that the magic crystal buttons can “reduce fatigue, poor concentration and headaches’. If, let’s say, Phoneshield did have to provide evidence to substantiate their claims to some authority, how would they do it?
On their web site they provide several ways. The first is to use the authority of ‘eminent scientist’ Mr Roger Coghill. You may remember Coghill from a few years back when he hit the headlines proclaiming that suicide rates were in high in Bridgend due to the presence of phone masts. This quickly proved to be nonsense and Roger Coghill’s qualifications were not as ‘eminent’ as we were led to believe. In fact, it turns out that Coghill was also in the business of selling questionable ‘solutions’ to the ‘problems’ caused by radio waves.
However the best evidence for Phoneshield would appear to come from the diagnostic technique of Kinesiology.
You have to watch this evidence for yourself. Here it is. But be warned, do not watch with hot liquids in your mouth as you may ruin your expensive electronic equipment.
You may not be surprised to learn that Applied Kinesiology was invented by a chiropractor. It is a technique where customer and practitioner get locked into the mutual delusion that muscle strength can be altered in the presence of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ substances. It is widely used to diagnose allergies and other health problems, and then on the back of a fake diagnosis, sell lots of vitamin pills, diets and dubious devices. It is an unconscious fraud caused by suggestion and the ideomotor effect.
The beauty of applied kinesiology is that it can be used to diagnose anything – even non existent problems – and then be used as a justification to sell anything –including nonsense quartz crystal sticky buttons. It lies at the heart of much quackery and I hope that the Nightingale Collaboration will be making it a Focus of the Month in future, as this nonsense really needs to be challenged.
Good post… Applied Kinesiology certainly deserves some skeptic attention.
These people must just make it up as they go along.
These claims are not limited to kinesiology and crystals.
This week saw my informally resolved ASA complaint against ‘Magnetic Health Care’ and they are currently updating their website. One of the products that should change is the ‘Morning Sound Phone Guard’ a copper & nickel cover to protect against EM waves.
Their sales pitch is nothing short of scaremongering “we may be exposed to harmful electromagnetic waves that threaten the lives of human beings” – how fortunate the woo-sellers are there to save us all!
http://www.magnetichealthcare.com/proddetail.asp?prod=PG
I will be revisiting them again soon ….. and taking fishbarrel with me!
There really is plenty of mobile phone radiation quackery around. I promptly fishbarreled this one when I ran into it: http://www.21stcenturyhealth.co.uk/radiation-protection.htm
Does this apply to the recent (22 Feb) publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association?
Electromagnetic radiation includes sunshine and the light from ordinary lightbulbs. Just thought I’d point that out.
That this nonsense can be promulgated by apparently normal people with middle class accents and believed by others who buy the things suggests a serious lack in our education system.
Ask people in the Southern Hemisphere about melanomas caused by too much sunshine!
Well – I see it as a Good Thing.
These little badges that folk will deploy about their person can be seen as a badge of idiocy or gullibility. They will mark the wearer as one to be approached in the street and targeted with yet more money-making scam schemes.
It will effectively be an “I believe in woo” badge; and we’ll know who to avoid talking to at parties.
It could even be a conspiracy or trick perpetrated by skeptics to mark out the True Believers.
Wish I’d thought of it.
K
This amazing discovery will be a boon for homeopaths, it will surely protect their incredibly powerful yet ineffably fragile remedies from the evils of televisions and microwaves: http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/blahg/2011/03/protect-homeopathic-remedies-from-televisions-microwaves-and-computer-monitors-2/
Maybe that’s why homeopathy doesn’t work. All that ‘law of similars’ and clathrates stuff might be true, but the pills don’t actually work cause of electromagnetic radiation from too many TVs, lightbulbs, microwaves, nearby stars (such as the sun) etc.
That might expalain it.
Jonathan
I never realised the brain was sensitive enough to detect fruit held next to the jaw. Does the apple emit helpful ‘fruit-rays’?
I also like how that video nicely proves that it’s pure psychosomatics; the phone doesn’t seem to be turned on, so there’s no radiation to begin with – he’s only being asked to ‘pretend he’s talking on a phone’. If that isn’t proof that AK is only in the mind I don’t know what is!
I found some good information and many more links about Kinesiology some info on associations etc and therapists and courses
This is obviously some strange usage of the word “good” that I wasn’t previously aware of.
An Applied Kinesiology practitioner sold one of these buttons to my mother, for me to take home and place on my child’s computer. It’s just a silver plastic disc with a blue rubbery button in the centre. It’s such outrageous nonsense! The package says the disc does not affect the reception or transmission of the device it is attached to – therefore it has no effect on the outgoing radiation. It has various claims of efficacy on the packet, but with an asterisk at the end of the paragraph. At the bottom of the label in fine print, the asterisk appears again : *anecdotal. Pfft.