Another Farce of New Age Technology Bites the Dust

When the January 19, 1998 issue of The Washington Post featured a glowing article extolling the effectiveness of a device called “The LifeGuard,” I had to rub my eyes a few times to believe what I’d read. As my readers will know, I have well-rubbed eyes. The reporter gushed that a “Cornell University Ph.D. and former research scientist at DuPont” was the “chief scientist” for “Laboratories” (DKL) of Washington, D.C., and had prepared the patent application for a pistol-like device mounted on a swivel, with a ten-inch rod antenna sticking out of the front. This thing, claimed the chief scientist for DKL, was being evaluated by the U.S. Border Patrol, the National Board of Prisons, the Coast Guard, the National Park Service, the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI. In fact, the former head of the Washington field office of the FBI told the Post reporter that the LifeGuard would “definitely give law enforcement officials an edge.”

So what “edge” would this thing provide? Hold on, because this is going to sound familiar. The LifeGuard is another dowsing rod, differing only from the “Quadro” machine that went down in flames, as reported in Skeptic V.4, #1, in that this new toy actually has two circuits in it, though the DKL chief scientist says the electronic circuits are “passive,” which means they are unpowered. A battery is not necessary, says this savant, because the unit “reacts to the non-uniformity of the field” generated by the pulse that triggers the human heartbeat, a 1.2-Hertz blip that actually—he says—turns the 1.5-pound unit on its swivel from as far away as 1,640 feet, through “barriers including concrete walls, heavy foliage, and rocks,” to point “within five degrees” at the location of the detected human heart. Yep, this is another “people finder.” 

Need I tell you that I could hardly wait to test this wonderful thing? I contacted the president of DKL, and the chief scientist, and found that their enthusiasm was only exceeded by their naivete. They were rather secretive about the inventor of the LifeGuard, who is a 50-year-old former building contractor, president of another company that makes “gold, silver, and water detection equipment,” as well as the Trackman, a gimmick that detects small game for hunters. Dowsing rods, all of them. However, though the literature published by DKL asked me to “call now to arrange for a demonstration,” and I assured them that I was quite ready for that, they told me that I lacked the proper attitude, and it would be better for me to wait a while. So, I began contacting those who might have been granted the privilege of seeing this miracle at work. 

A scientist had been named in the Washington Post article as a consultant to DKL, and it was said that he had seen the LifeGuard at work. I called him. Not so. He’d never seen it at work, and had not even seen the innards. He opined that “those Beltway people are long on words, but short on knowledge.” That was soon to become very evident. 

I discovered that an official of NASA out of Goddard had been given a demo by DKL, and I contacted him. He had been shown the thing performing in a hotel room, and had operated it himself. “It occurred to me that I was doing [moving] it,” he told me. He had also been told that it was “self-powered.” They got what he characterized as “inconclusive” results in the hotel room, “because of TV ‘low-frequency emission’ interference in the area.” In the basement of the hotel—now away from TV receivers—they tried locating persons through a wall, as the LifeGuard had been touted to do, but failed this time “because of automobiles in the area.” These were invalid reasons, since the DKL scientist had told me, when I inquired about such possible interference, that the unit was shielded against such effects. The NASA official told me, “I believe that what I saw was nothing real.” He added that the device was “a passive object that you could manipulate.” 

A few weeks later, the scientist quoted in the Post, and his wife, also a scientist, reported to me that they did a series of tests, and that the tests always worked when they were not “blind,” but failed as soon as they were blinded. They said they were scheduled to run another set of tests “at the facility” a week later. Those tests never took place. 

I got back to the chief scientist for DKL, the last time I was ever able to speak with him. I suggested to him that the LifeGuard was a dowsing rod, but he told me firmly that it was not. He also assured me that the patents for the device were in the “patent approved” stage, and would be issued patent numbers very shortly. 

It was time to make a firm statement. I had offered the “2000 Club” prize to DKL, and that had been ignored. I decided to throw down the gauntlet, to openly declare my opinion on the matter, and see if I might thereby enable the DKL folks to retire from their dilemma gracefully. This is an excerpt of what I wrote to the president of DKL: 

The LifeGuard device, as I’ve written you before, interests the JREF for two reasons: first, we feel that if the device can do what you says it does, it represents a radical advancement in technology. Second, if it works in the way claimed, it proposes a dramatic challenge to what we know about how the world around us functions. And, we understand that you feel the function of your device falls within the confines of science. 

It appears that all of you to whom this letter is being sent, honestly believe that the LifeGuard actually works as advertised. This letter is to tell you what is actually happening, as opposed to the notions you are entertaining. The description that follows is based upon my considerable expertise, earned over decades of investigating very similar claims. Please understand I imply no wrongdoing on your part (except for the few instances where you have somewhat misrepresented the situation, not unlike several other equally well-meaning persons have done in my past experience) and I do not in any way suggest that you are unintelligent, but merely the victims of your own enthusiasm and your insufficient experience of what is known as the “ideomotor” effect. 

The ideomotor effect is insidious. It can—and does—afflict most people, regardless of their educational preparation or intelligence. It is the psychological effect by which the victim is unaware that he is performing subtle movements in order to cause the direct movement (rotation, slope, oscillation) of a device, which often consists of an unbalanced physical system that reacts to a very slight impetus. In other words, gentlemen, you are the powering force behind the LifeGuard, not some esoteric electronically-initiated electromagnetic source. 

Experiments have shown, many times over, that the victim of an ideomotor effect cannot be dissuaded from the belief that he/she is not providing the motive force. Recently, a report appeared in the journal Psychological Science, Vol. 9, #1, January 1998, on a series of experiments designed to determine if those convinced of this delusion could be shown that it was not true. The ideomotor effect, which is what you are exhibiting, involved “automatic writing” (in which the victim is actually moving his hand, though he believes it is being moved by another force) and “facilitated communication” (a similar phenomenon in which the deluded person holds another person’s hand, and is unaware that he is actually providing the moving force). I quote from the summary of that paper: “Our attempt to introduce doubt about the validity of automatic writing did not succeed. Including information about the controversy surrounding facilitated communication did not affect self-efficacy ratings, nor did it affect the number of responses that were produced. In this sense, illusory facilitation appears to be a very robust phenomenon, not unlike illusory correlation, which is not reversed by warning participants about the phenomenon.” 

At this point, the argument will be made that the ideomotor effect is not present, as it might be in such devices as the “Quadro Detector,” exposed as a delusion and taken off the market last year as a result of our investigations, since there are electronics in your device, and there were none in the Quadro. It will be said that certain little-known and not-well-understood forces are responsible for the movement of the device. And you will refer me to the copious scientific references to certain established physical realities, none of which have anything whatsoever to do with the LifeGuard. I ask you, for the moment, to set aside the scientific theories and rationalities that you believe explain the device, and concentrate on a much more fundamental question: does the device work when tested under adequately double-blind testing? As I mentioned to you previously, if the answer to that question is “yes,” I am prepared to pay you the James Randi Educational Foundation prize of US$1.1 million. 

And where does [your inventor] get his expertise to design such complex circuitry as the LifeGuard is said to have? Has anyone else but [he] ever examined the actual circuitry to see if it functions? Holding the LifeGuard while it swivels in your hand is not the same thing, at all. I urge you to ask and answer that question. 

I was shocked to hear [your scientist] tell me, when I asked, that the device would “track” a target when clamped down to a tripod, but only if the operator held his hand on the handle! Since [he] told me that the unit was powered by the EM field of the target—a minuscule signal!—and that the operator held the handle only to be a part of the “antenna circuit,” I suggested that an extension antenna would certainly replace the operator, and the unit would track the target without being held. But not if the unit is merely a dowsing device, which it assuredly is, in spite of [his] firm declaration to me, “I can assure you that [the device] is not a dowsing rod!” 

[Your scientist] told me that he was convinced the device was legitimate, because he himself had operated it, many, many, times. I say to [him] that he has experienced the ideomotor effect, and only a truly double-blind test will determine whether that is true. 

There’s an obvious problem with the matter of a tuned antenna, as well. Even if you work with a tuned 1/4-wave system, the antenna would be 56,000 miles long; the antenna you are using appears to be about 10” long. The “working” circuits are passive—unpowered—and cannot possibly enter into the operation. In any case, the EM force exerted by the human heart is so infinitesimally small, even over a distance of only two feet, let alone the 500 meters claimed, that it cannot serve to rotate the body of the LifeGuard, no matter how smooth and well-lubricated the swivel may be. The energy simply is not there. 

A physicist friend of mine at the American Physical Society expressed his opinion that the LifeGuard would need to be attached to the dish antenna at Arecibo [Puerto Rico] in order to pick up enough energy to move the thing, and that opinion was reflected by another colleague (also a physicist) at the National Science Foundation. Incidentally, both these gentlemen—and Leon Jaroff, a science editor of Time magazine—are more than willing to witness a demonstration of the LifeGuard, on short notice, and both physicists are in the Washington, D.C., area, while Jaroff can be there within a few hours. 

At one point, [the DKL president] and I had an agreement to meet with Leon Jaroff to witness a demonstration. [The DKL chief scientist] was interested enough in this possibility that he checked up on my reference by calling Time magazine, and found that Jaroff was indeed interested. Then your offer suddenly evaporated, and I was informed that “expansion” of your operation was under way, and no tests would be possible. That was not true, because several tests were conducted, quite recently—tests that failed when they were double-blinded. 

I cannot believe that your scientific advisor, or anyone else with DKL, has actually examined and understood whatever circuitry is inside the LifeGuard. I believe that [the scientist] is convinced of its efficacy only because he has experienced the ideomotor effect while operating the device, and cannot accept that he has deceived himself, as all the others have who have had “success” with the device. It is a simple matter, though increasingly difficult after a certain point, to make excuses for the fact that every double-blind test of the device fails. And I cannot understand how you explain your refusal to collect my prize, if you are genuinely convinced that it works. Yes, the offer is a “stunt,” to a certain extent, but one that can cost me more than a million, if your claim is valid, and it was initiated because I was challenged to “put [my] money where [my] mouth is.” Well, the money’s there. Think about that. 

Gentlemen, the LifeGuard does not work. You are deluded. As with so many persons who have re-invented the dowsing rod, you are trying to apply the scientific nomenclature and cosmetics of physics to a purely psychological phenomenon that has deceived you. The effect of the ideomotor reaction is very strong, very persuasive, and almost impossible to defeat except by a proper experiment. 

I stand prepared to visit with you at my own cost and demonstrate to you convincingly that you have fallen victim to this phenomenon, but if my past experience is any indicator, you will ignore that offer and continue in your delusion. I have found that no amount of contrary evidence, no matter of how great quality it might be, will ever convince the believer that he or she has been self-deluded. The need to continue in the delusion is so strong, it’s almost unbelievable. I have written you this letter so that I go on record as having made you the offer that I make to all persons who re-invent this device. 

And no, your device is not different from all the others out there. This kind of thing is invented every few months, somewhere in the world. It is by far the most common and persistent crackpot invention we experience in my profession. No amount of scientific claptrap will validate the LifeGuard, only a proper test will. That is where the truth lies. If you persist in your delusion, you will have all the greater disappointment when, as will certainly happen, you are forced to admit that you were wrong. I sincerely advise you to stop and back out now, while knowing that you will not. Your financial losses and your deep dismay could be lessened if you were to act now, but I think you will not do so. You will continue to pour money into an ever larger money-pit of fallacy. That is a disappointment, indeed. But it is probably inevitable. The “inventors” of the Quadro Detector ignored my earnest and sincere attempts to warn them away from their folly, and even wrote me a sarcastic letter refusing my advice. A few weeks later, they were closed down by the FBI, and shortly after that they went on trial for fraud. This need not happen, if you will listen now. I sincerely urge you to do so. 

Now, you may choose to merely put this letter aside, or you may choose to summon your lawyer and have him issue a demand that I no longer try to contact you. That’s your choice, but I beg you to consider this well-intentioned letter carefully. There is no shame in being wrong, only in persisting in the error. 

There was never any response to this letter. We discovered that Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had agreed to test the LifeGuard, and the DKL folks had not shown up. Then we learned that the head of the Non-Proliferation & National Security (NN) agency of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), with a budget of $210 million/annum, had shown an interest in the LifeGuard device. And, a simple Internet reference showed that he lived just 700 yards away from the president of DKL! 

Something had to be done, and quickly. We showered faxes and e-mail on Sandia Labs, on the DOE, and on several other testing agencies that were becoming involved. We encountered resistance, in some cases, but got positive reactions in others. The upshot was that on March 20th, 1998, Sandia labs finally were able to run a definitive series of tests on the LifeGuard device, and concluded that: 

… the device performs no better than random chance. Although we only had time to evaluate the device with one Test Operator, that Test Operator was from the DKL organization, was selected by the manufacturer to perform the evaluation, and spent considerable time trying to use the device to the best of his ability. Thus we conclude that no other test operator would be able to establish a better performance of the instrument except by chance. 

Not to your surprise, I’m sure, I predict that this high-tech dowsing rod will be back, again, and again, and that no one will learn from the Quadro nor from the LifeGuard experiences. Even as we go to press, a preliminary test of the “Golf Ball Finder,” or “Gopher” dowsing rod, widely sold via the Internet, is under way. It, too, will fail, but will be re-invented. This Gopher is simply the remaining stock of the Quadro folks, purchased by a chap who is completely taken in by the ideomotor effect, as are his enthusiastic customers. It never ends …