Why People Believed Fake Bomb Detectors Worked

 

A British businessman who sold the Iraqi security forces more than 6,000 fake bomb detectors based on $20 golf ball finders bought from the United States was convicted of fraud on Tuesday in Britain’s central criminal court. The businessman, James McCormick, 56, was described in court as having made more than $75 million from sales of the fake device in Iraq and Georgia, among other places, claiming they could detect bombs, drugs, currency and ivory, and track objects up to 3,280 feet below ground.

Here's how and why he got away with it for so long

How and why,  this is also why we have entire professions doing much the same thing. Homeopaths, chiropractors, faith healers, acupuncturists, dowsers, fortune tellers, etc.......I could go on..........And I'm probably offending someone here, but at 65 now, I reserve the right to be opinionated. :-)

And the "golf ball finders" he used? McCormick's first model, the ADE-101, was a re-badged golf ball finder that was described by its US maker as "a great novelty item that you should have fun with".

The antenna was "no more a radio antenna than a nine-inch nail", one scientist told the jury.