Tetherd Cow Ahead

Some ways back, I dipped my toe briefly into the sludgy pool of grandiose claims and unsupported hogwash that makes up the field of ‘ultrasonic’ or ‘electronic’ pest eradication. A few days ago Faithful Acowlyte Matthew reminded me that I’ve been meaning to revisit this daft corner of Wooville when he sent me this recent offering from Pest Control Peddlers Pestrol.

As if they’re still living in the ’60s, Pestrol seems to think that it’s impressive to point out that their product, Pestrol Rodent Free is ‘seen on TV’. In their FAQ they are equally eager to boast that it’s ‘advertised on talkback radio Australia wide’ which I gather is intended to imply something other than ‘we paid some irritating radio personality to advertise it’. Are people so stupid that these kinds of vapid endorsements get them reaching for their wallets? But silly me – I guess that anyone with a brain is not the main market for this product, as we shall see.

This ‘latest technology’ that the Pestrol seems so overjoyed to introduce is that of ultrasonics. Since ultrasonic devices have been round for decades, this seems rather a lot less impressive than if they’d said it used, oh, quantum tunneling or carbon nanotubes, two other technologies that would be just as effective at repelling rodents as ultrasonics (ie, not at all, if you haven’t guessed) and are a lot more current and cool sounding. I might even be tempted to buy a rodent repelling device that claimed to use quantum tunneling. At least it wouldn’t be quite as easy to completely ridicule as one using ultrasonics.

The Pestrol Rodent Free technique emits a disorienting pulse that startles and frightens away insects and rodents from your home or office.

O-k-a-a-a-y… and the science to support the idea that that rodents and insects don’t like those ‘disorienting’ ultrasonics pulses comes from… where… exactly? What’s that you say? You heard it from a friend of a friend?

The fact is, evidence for ultrasound being an effective deterrent against rodents is slim. It is vaguely possible that the noise irritates them somewhat, but since rats will repeatedly endure full electric shocks to get at human food, it is unlikely that a slightly bothersome noise is going to have much of an effect.

The Pestrol Rodent Free will need to be plugged into a power point approximately 0.2 metres from floor level in order for the ultrasonic to run along the ground, living rooms and hall ways.

Now, are you forming a picture in your minds, dear Acowlytes, of ultrasonics ‘running along the ground’ through your house? I know I am. Because everyone knows that sound (ultrasonics are nothing more than high frequency sound waves) behaves just like that – seeping along at floor level. Even if ultrasound did work, it would not matter one whit where in the room you put the device as long as it was relatively unobstructed.

But let’s be fair. Pestrol Rodent Free doesn’t rely solely on ultrasonics. No way José.

Pestrol Rodent Free combines electromagnetic, ultrasonic and ionic technologies to help free your home of rats, mice and aids with the control of cockroaches.

Yes friends, Pestrol Rodent Free deploys a veritable Holy Trinity of implausible techniques to keep your home pest-free. There’s our old friend ‘electromagnetism’ that well-known bane of pests of all kinds, and a new player in the game: ionic technology.

Animals are naturally sensitive to negative ions. ((Who says so? And in what way? This claim means absolutely NOTHING in this context.)) Long before a lightning storm, insects and rodents sense a change in the environment and look for protection away from the storm.

So let’s see – the negative ions are supposed to simulate a thunderstorm so the rodents go looking for shelter… in your house. Good one Pestrol!

This is a shining example of what I call ‘selective woo’. Elsewhere you will find gadgets being peddled under the claim that ‘negative ions’ are actually beneficial for the very reason that rats and cockroaches don’t like them. In other words, the arbitrary decision by humans to decide something is a pest is all it takes to turn the power of ions from desirable to repulsive. Amazing!

Selective woo comes into play with other aspects of the Pestrol Rodent Free, too. The makers claim that it is effective against rodents and insects and even possums (which in this country are marsupials), and yet will not effect your pets. How can this possibly be? Well:

Pestrol Rodent Free has been used for many years by thousands of satisfied customers in Australia and NZ. Will not affect dogs, cats, birds, or fish as they have a different genetic structure to rodents and cockroaches

Ah. It’s the genetic structure. Of course! Rodents, as any student of biology surely knows, are much more closely related to cockroaches than they are to cats and dogs or other mammals. Or marsupials. Or birds or fish.

This is, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, complete and utter claptrap. Elsewhere you will find that these kinds of devices are supposedly effective against deer, rabbits, skunks, squirrels, bats, foxes, raccoons, chipmunks and armadillos. And, paradoxically it would seem, cats and dogs as well, should you find them vexatious rather than cute and fluffy. In fact, the chief benefit of Pestrol Rodent Free-style devices seems to be that they will repel anything that you decide you don’t want hanging around, and won’t affect anything else! I wonder if it is effective against people selling pseudoscientific crap?

‘But Reverend,’ I hear you interrupting ‘there’s a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee! It says there in BIG WRITING. How could they possibly offer that if there wasn’t anything to it?!’

Aha, young Acowlyte, that’s another trick to get you to part with your hard-earned cash (All $119.00 frigging dollars of it in this case). You sure can get your money back if you return your Pestrol Rodent Free within the 30 days specified… but what’s this in the FAQ?

How do I know if my Pestrol Rodent Free is working?

You may see increased activity as rodents and cockroaches are forced from their hiding places. Often it can take up to 3 weeks to remove rodents. Cockroaches may take longer as eggs can lay dormant for many months before they hatch.

Right. So you may not see the desired effect from the device for 21 whole days. ((Indeed, you may see INCREASED rodent activity – the exact opposite of the desired outcome – in the first 3 weeks of use!)) Factor in a week or so for postage and there goes your money back guarantee. You’ll certainly have blown your cash if you wait around ‘for many months’ to see if the Pestrol works on cockroaches.

Lest there is any lingering hesitation in your minds, dear Cowmrades, that the Pestrol Rodent Free might still have some slim remaining shred of credibility, let me quote from a US Federal Trade Commission finding on similar devices:

Between 1985 and 1997, the FTC brought law enforcement actions against six companies that allegedly made false and unsubstantiated claims about the effectiveness of ultrasonic devices in controlling rodent and insect infestations. Each of those cases was resolved by consent order. In those prior actions, the FTC challenged the following types of claims:

• Eliminates rodent infestations;
• Repels insects;
• Serves as an effective alternative to conventional pest-control products;
• Increases or assists the effectiveness of other pest-control methods;
• Eliminates fleas on dogs or cats; and
• Scientific tests prove product effectiveness.

Prior FTC complaints alleged that any reaction by rodents to ultrasound would be temporary at best because rodents become accustomed to ultrasound and will return to their nesting or feeding areas even in the presence of an ultrasonic device. Furthermore, previous FTC complaints alleged that ultrasound devices do not control insects.

These findings were handed down over a decade ago and yet, performing a Searchâ„¢ for ‘ultrasonic pest repeller’ returns literally hundreds of thousands of hits, the first few umpteen thousand pages apparently for people selling the damned things.

Oh well. I do need some cash. What the hell.

You know what would be a lot more useful than this? A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Communicating with Complete Idiots.

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Thanks to Faithful Acowlyte Nathan for passing this one on.

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One of my favourite places on teh intertubes is the massive US Patent Database. You really could, if you were so inclined, spend an entire rainy afternoon traipsing down its digital corridors and uncovering all manner of bizarre, and sometimes clever ideas. Along with hundreds of thousands of approved patents, you can also find in these dim dark recesses, an enormous slush pile of hopeful patent applications – the wannabees and the has-beens of the entrepreneurial universe.

It has to be said, though, that whoever is in charge of the USPTO doesn’t make the traipsing easy. If you’re looking for something in particular the system seems to do its very best to evade any kind of sensible search procedure. If it was my job to sort it out, I’d approach the people who do the database programming for, oh, Amazon, for instance, and get them to look into a better system for the filing, archiving and retrieving of patents and applications. Because the USPTO sure needs one.

On the other hand, maybe the impenetrable and unfriendly process suits aspiring entrepreneurs quite well, if, let’s say, a punter like myself is in search of a… certain item of interest. It’s quite possible that secretive inventor types hope that the labyrinthine process will cause potential patent sleuths to give up before they can steal any precious ideas, or, as is my particular intention today, before they can bring them out of the musty digital recesses of patent database anonymity and into the bright light of rational public scrutiny. ((I want to point out that there is absolutely nothing illegal about doing this – US Patent Applications are publicly available to anyone who wants to see them.))

The item of interest I have in mind is this one: US Patent Application #20100243745 for an APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR REPELLING AN UNDESIRED SPECIES FROM A SUBJECT SPECIES. Its inventors are listed as: Heiney; Kathryn M.; (Wimberley, TX) ; Dubounet; Desire; (Budapest, HU); Rogers Melissa M.; (Austin, TX). The document was published on September 30, 2010.

Yes, that’s right. You have surely recognized it as the patent application for ShooTag. ((ShooTag is also now being promoted as ‘ShooBug‘. New name, same old woo.)) And just in case I need to draw a line under the name, the patent application for ShooTag is jointly owned by Melissa Rogers, Kathy Heiney, and Desiré Dubounet, aka ‘Professor’ William Nelson.

As you will recall, I have previously demonstrated indisputable links between Nelson and ShooTag, in my post ShooTag; Waterloo, despite Melissa Rogers’ & Kathy Heiney’s apparent efforts to erase any associations between themselves and Nelson and his crackpot notions. ((Nelson is nowhere mentioned on the ShooTag site at the time of this writing, although he featured very prominently on their ‘Science’ page when ShooTag first came to my attention. In addition, Google links to Heiney and Rogers’ attendance at one of Nelson’s QXCI conferences in Budapest have been rendered invalid and are only retrievable via Google’s cache.))

To recap, William Nelson was indicted in 1996 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on nine counts of felony fraud charges in relation to various ‘bioenergetic’ healing devices sold through his companies (these machines go variously under the names ‘QXCI’, ‘SCIO’, ‘EPFX’ and others, but they are all basically similar flavours of the same woo. They are implicated in the deaths of several people and the prolonged illnesses of many more). To evade prosecution, Nelson abandoned his home in the USA to take up residence in Budapest, Hungary, where he currently resides in the persona of Desiré Dubounet, and is still actively promoting his/her odd beliefs and his dangerous ‘medical’ machines. ((Where he claims, in the manner of so many charlatans of medical pseudoscience, to have fled because of persecution by ‘Big Pharma’. The reasoning presumably goes that his wonderful machines have solved all the medical problems known to humankind and if the word got out, the pharmaceutical companies would go bust, and they won’t let that happen by hook or by crook. Of course, when it comes down to concrete results, Nelson’s machines don’t deliver. They are at their most ‘effective’ on those maladies that have vague symptoms and subjective outcomes – just like all pseudoscientific medicine. The deaths attributed to these dangerous gadgets are mostly the result of critically ill people being hoodwinked into using them rather than seeking proper medical care. And, folks, in some cases you get so sick that you will die, no matter what anyone does. Modern medicine can’t cure everything, but it has a damn better chance than a silly box fuelled by ‘trivector frequencies’.))

The reason that Heiney & Rogers and their company, Energetic Solutions, don’t want any public association with him/her is, to most observers, pretty obvious I think. Nelson/Dubounet is a wanted criminal and an out-and-out fruitcake, and Energetic Solutions finds him/her and his flaky ideas a liability to the sales of its product. ((It’s probable that Heiney and Rogers aren’t able to determine that Nelson’s ideas are flaky, but I think that they, or perhaps their PR people, are keenly aware that a cross-dressing woo-spouting mad ‘scientist’ does tend to come across as a complete lunatic to most people. One has to assume that originally, in their addled ‘quantum-fractal-Schumann-Wave-bioenergetic-magnetic’ enthusiasm, Heiney and Rogers were all for Nelson’s mad ideas, but somewhere along the line they realised that maybe it was better that they just gave him his cut of the profits and kept him in the closet.))

Now I will emphasize strongly, as I have done before, that merely associating with a criminal does not make a person themselves a criminal. It is not William Nelson’s crimes that concern us here. We can, however, legitimately ask whether there is any link between Nelson/Dubounet’s pseudoscientific beliefs – beliefs that underpin her machines and the practices which have been found fraudulent by the FDA and the law – and the supposed basis for the working mechanism of ShooTag.

With that thought in mind, let’s take a look at some of the ShooTag patent application.

The first thing that probably doesn’t have to be said is that there is an encyclopaedic volume of utter crap in this document. It leaps, like a frog on LSD, from one crazy lilypad of gibberish to another. It is, in fact, a version of the ‘science’ that was originally expounded on the ShooTag website, and which has been subsequently removed (presumably because it made no sense to anyone who knew anything about science).

And we see immediately some of the trademark ideas of William Nelson: ‘cyclic voltammetry‘ and ‘trivector signatures‘. Nelson/Dubounet has expounded upon these ideas all over the web, and the ‘trivector’ concept is focal in the machines he sells. The patent application offers up a flow chart of how the inventors propose that ShooTag would work:

Already we are in pixie land. ‘Determine’ the trivector signature for the species concerned? Now how, exactly, should one go about doing that? Well, Fig. 4 throws some light on that question:

Aha! A network connection to a ‘trivector database‘. Now, I wonder where someone might find such a database? Plugging the term ‘william nelson trivector database‘ into a search engine returns hundreds of results related to Nelson’s QXCI/SCIO/EPFX machines just like this one:

What is the EPFX (Electro Physiological Feedback Xrroid) Quantum Biofeedback Device ?

It is the most accurate and sensitive technology of its kind for identifying stress reactions to over 10,000 trivector voltametric algorithmic signatures stored in it’s ((Ah yes, unsurprisingly, these sites are a tour de force of bad grammar, spelling and punctuation.)) database, such as those taken from nutritional items, emotional imponderable formulas, allersodes, toxins and more.

And elsewhere, on William Nelson’s very own ‘Imune’ website:

•Every substance has its own unique trivector (voltammetric) field signature, and it seems that when a substance with a voltammetric field signature is introduced to the body, it can provoke a change in the field of the body.

•This voltammetric field has a virtual photon effect, which also influences the body and changes its electrical readings. Thus, the trivector signature of an organism will change when the trivector of a stimulus is introduced electrically via device. With this, Nelson realizes an innovation in electrophysiological reactivity (EPR) testing.

• A system is developed for recording thousands of 3-Dimensional trivector “shapes” of individual substances, such as organs, toxins, allergens, nutrients, and others

I think we can very reasonably infer that the ‘trivector database’ specified in the ShooTag patent application is the very same ‘trivector database’ referred to in connection with Nelson/Dubounet’s fraudulent machines. How that database is determined is impossible to know. We can be quite certain there is no published science that explains what these ‘trivector substance signatures’ are. In my opinion, the patent should be refused on that basis alone; even nonsensical homeopathy ‘treatments’ are at least available for public perusal.

My assessment is that the QXCI/EPFX/SCSI/ShooTag ‘trivector database’ is nothing more than a big heap of spurious numbers that have no real meaning whatsoever. Of course, I can be proved entirely wrong about that with the offering up of some properly presented scientific evidence. I have no fear, however, that any such evidence will ever come my way.

The patent application goes rambling on over four dense pages of ‘explanation’, often repeating much of the same daft silliness in different wording. It comes from the school of ‘If-you-don’t-have-facts-throw-in-lots-of-baffling-sounding-terms’ thesis writing. The whole lot could be simply summed up in one brief paragraph:

‘We have a card with a magnetic strip upon which is encoded some numbers. Via some completely unspecified mechanism, some of those numbers refer to insects, and some of those numbers refer to pets. Via some other completely unspecified mechanism, the numbers working together cause the insects to avoid the pets.’ ((You can make it even shorter, in fact: ‘It’s a magic card that keeps bugs away.’))

That’s it.

Of course, the ShooTaggers know full well that they’d never have even the remotest chance of getting a patent if they said it like that, hence the mind-numbing verbage and circumlocutious gobbledygook. One hopes that the patent examiners are so used to seeing this kind of thing that the red pen comes out well before the end of the first paragraph.

Elsewhere on the patent application, we find other enlightening information. To set the scene: you will remember that a little while back we comprehensively decoded the ShooTag data and exposed the silly magical thinking inherent in the information encoded on the card. Not long after that, ShooTag added a question to the FAQ on their site in an obvious (if risible) attempt to deflect this exposure: ((Presumably their thought process was that people would search for ShooTag, find our deconstruction of the data, and then be mollified by the pat explanation in the FAQ. Nice try, folks.))

How do I know if my tag is still working?

This is a fun one. We encode shoo!TAG® tags with a frequency embedded in the magstripe located on the back of the tag. Customers can take their shoo!TAG® to any retailer that carries a magstripe (credit card) reader and swipe it through. The type of tag (i.e. fly, mosquito, tick) will show up when scanned. If there is no name, then the shoo!TAG® tag has lost its efficacy.

Yeah, that really is a fun one because we’ve caught you with your trousers down again. Let me quote you from your very own patent application (and it’s said not once, but three times, in different places):

…the trivector data stored on the three tracks is not readable by a conventional credit card reader.

Indeed. That statement tallies perfectly with my own experience: swiping a brand new ‘Tick’ card in a conventional card reader at my local shopping centre merely resulted in a ‘Card Read Error’. Maybe the ShooTaggers will want to amend that FAQ again, to erase this little untruth as well. Of course, this circumstance suits them down to the ground – if any ShooTag card is swiped, it will always come up as non-functioning (as it always literally is, I might point out). This is a ruse quite plainly intended to persuade unsuspecting customers to buy another one. Make no mistake, these people never miss a trick when money is involved.

So, what are we to make of this attempt by Energetic Solutions to obtain a patent? It’s not like they need it for any particular legitimate reason. The patent process exists in order to invest the intellectual property rights ownership of an invention with legal protection, so that someone else can’t take a good idea and just steal it. But here’s the thing – how do you protect an ‘invention’ that has no rational basis for doing what is claimed? ShooTag says their invention uses ‘trivector frequencies’ to achieve its stated purpose, so even if they had a proper patent, there would be nothing at all to stop me from creating a similar pet tag that uses a different method of operation to repel fleas, such as, oh, ‘overmodulated photonic recursion’ or something. When you just make shit up, holding a patent for it has no meaning.

But.

If your aim is to try and get authentic sounding endorsement for a product that can’t get any legitimacy via the path of factual evidence, then holding a patent is certainly a good PR tool. In other words, if you haven’t got any science to back up your claims, hoodwinking an official body into giving you an official seal of approval will undoubtedly buy you some mileage. ((It strikes me also that these people are prepared to put in a huge amount of time, effort, and, one assumes, money to try and establish their patent. Is it not a telling indication of how they view their product that they aren’t prepared to put the same kind of commitment into proper scientific trials? And wouldn’t you think you’d do the scientific investigation first? All legitimate product development happens that way round…))

I think most people trust that an organization such as the US Patent Office scrutinizes a document like the ShooTag application and files it where it belongs – under ‘N’ for ‘Nonsense’. Sadly, that trust would be misplaced. The USPTO rubber stamps some pretty stupid stuff. Take Patent #5,603,915 ‘Process for manufacturing homeopathic medicines’. Its inventors are listed as Carmel Kiely and a certain William Nelson. This ‘invention’ basically calls for the application of an electric current to a homeopathic medicine solution to ‘increase its efficacy’. Its rationale goes on for seven pages of ridiculous garbage.

And folks, the US Patent Office saw fit to award it a patent in 1997.

This enables William Nelson to boast, as he does whenever given the opportunity, about the many patents he holds. For people who don’t know better, it will undoubtedly sound impressive. This, I propose, is the sole reason that Energetic Solutions desires their patent for ShooTag. Not to protect its ‘clever technology’, but simply so they can use it as another advertisement. It’s exactly the same ploy that they’ve used with the ‘scientific experiment‘ that they tout on their website.

When you don’t have actual facts on your side, all you’ve got to play with is smoke and mirrors, and man, do these people know ALL the tricks.

Still, if they do get their patent approved, we will have something to look forward to. Melissa Rogers promised us that:

When we go from patent pending to full patent protection, then all of our sceince (all three applications) will be disclosed.

Well, Ms Rogers, such is my confidence of that ever happening that I’m applying for a patent to cover the event:

Hey looky! Steorn is now road-testing its prototype Orbo-powered car.

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Pic courtesy of Queen Willy

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You will remember that a few weeks back I wrote about the fabulous Trinfinity8, a-software-and-gadget combination that promises to fix just about everything that can possibly go wrong in your life by beaming the mighty power of fractals straight into your ears. You will also recall that, in the name of investigative reporting, I acquired, at vast personal expense, the Trinfinity8 iPhone app in order that I might give it a whirl. And, of course, so that I could get some customer service.

Here’s what I wrote to the Trinfinity8 Help Desk: ((Not using my real name, obviously…))

I purchased your app for my iPhone recently. I love the idea of math being at the heart of all nature and I am very interested in fractals also. I loaded it onto my phone, and listened to the music with earbuds as suggested. I think the fractals are nice, but none of the programs (Energy Balance/I Feel Good/Male Libido Boost) seem to have any effect on me. I tried them several times. Am I doing something wrong, or maybe I got a bad app?

Jake.

And this was the instant auto-reply:

Thank you for your interest, we will get back to you shortly. We wish you a wonderful day.

The Trinfinity8 Team

‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.’ — Nikola Tesla, Inventor ((I’m pretty sure Tesla never said this – at least not within anyone’s earshot. I’ve read many books about Tesla and I never once came across this quote. Searching for it only returns hundreds of sites of dubious credibility (usually quoting it in the context of ‘frequencies’ doing some damn thing or another to your ‘life energy’). If anyone can find a reliable source for it I’d be grateful.))

Ah yes. If there’s one other thing (aside from the usual crystals, magnets and quantum blah) that you can be sure is at the bottom of these kinds of nutty ideas, it’s the ghost of Nikola Tesla. Poor old Tesla. A genius of enormous magnitude now relegated to the status of a woo magnet. I’m sure he must be turning in his grave (undoubtedly generating some current by doing so). ((Any Trinfinity8 representatives reading: that is a technical joke. A magnet rotating in a field generates electrical current… geddit? Tesla (a woo magnet) rotating in a field… No, I guess not. You probably need to have some understanding of science to figure that one out.))

Anyhoo, a week later I did get a reply from a Trinfinity8 representative.

Dear Jake,

Thank you for the inquiry.  Subtle energy is cumulative over time, our suggestion is to keep trying the programs.  Many people take some time to notice any effect.  Even when using the full Trinfinity8 system, not everyone notices effects right away.  Make sure to keep using it with the earbuds, and keep it running for at least 3 minutes for any program.   

There is no such thing as a bad app, if it doesn’t install properly, it won’t work at all.

Best Wishes,

Tracy Andersen
Office Manager
Trinfinity8

No such thing as a bad app? I think you’re in error there Tracy. This app is not merely bad, it’s a complete crock of shit. Now to see if they’ll give me my money back…

Hello Tracy,

I’ve been using my Trinfinity8 iPod app for several weeks since I last wrote. I have to say, I am very disappointed. I notice absolutely no results at all, no matter how much time I use it for. I think either the app is somehow faulty or its not working at all. People who write reviews on you’re site say this should work but Im not getting a result. my sister Veronica is using it also and says she doens’t think it does much. I would like to get my money back for this app, as I think it is not effective,

Yours sincerely
Jake

I made sure, of course, to adopt the appropriate language construction so as to pass among ‘them’ undetected. Here’s what Tracy had to say:

Dear Jake,

You are the only person we’ve heard from that says the app doesn’t work. It absolutely works for me. You will have to contact iTunes, where you purchased the app, if you want to return it.

Best Wishes,

Tracy Andersen
Office Manager
Trinfinity8

Wow, that’s an amazing track record. I’m the only person who’s ever complained about this product? It’s not hard to see why these people get into business – a billion suckers out there for the taking. Money for jam. But under the circumstances of their enormous success (and concomitant profit), you’d think that even basic customer relations would dictate that the better part of valor when encountering a sole displeased customer would be to simply pony up the $5 purchase price with an apology. Taking the high moral ground seems a little snarky to me.

OK Tracy, I will get in touch with iTunes. Let’s see… OK, User Account -> Recent Purchases -> Report a Problem -> Choose a Problem -> This Application Doesn’t Function as Expected (It really should say ‘This Application Does not Function as Claimed’, wouldn’t you say, Apple?)… Let me just type something in the useless scrolling-infinitely-off-the-screen text field… ((I wonder quite often when I’m on the Apple iTunes site why it is so crummy and un-Apple-like. It feels like it’s been designed by some third-rate Microsoft team. It’s clumsy, unintuitive and full of borked UI functionality. Why can’t you search in just ‘Apps’ for instance, rather than having to wade through the entire catalogue of the iTunes store? Why are there text fields like this escapee from a Windows spreadsheet?))

OK. So, while I’m at it, I notice something else unusual:

Hang on… what does it say on the Trinfinity8 site? Oh, that’s right!

Trinfinity8 users have many wonderful and amazing stories to share. In order to stay in compliance with U.S. FDA regulations, we have chosen not to publish them on this website. Trinfinity8 is best described as a “Crystal Meditation Machine”. It is not a medical device (my emphasis).

Oh dear! Someone’s accidentally put it in the wrong iTunes App category. Better let Apple know about that too… Hit return and..

Great. Right back to Tracy. Thanks Steve, I hope you’re enjoying your billions this morning.

Very well, let’s see what happens…

Hi again Tracy

I went to iTunes and wrote on the iTunes form that my Trinfinity8 iphone app does not work and asked for my money back but they just had this – “We have taken note of your problem for our records. however we are not able to provide support for the features and functionilty of applications. Please contact developer for resolution: Trinfinity8: Energy on the go support” That just takes me back to your help form.

I am dissappointed that you or Apple iTunes does not care if or not your program works. You sell something, it should work!! I am into math and fractals + nature and I thought this would be great but I am begginning to think this is a ripoff program. I will ask one more time that you refund me my money.

Yours sincerly
Jake.

Notice how my agitation is really affecting my sentence construction! I’m riled!

OK, let’s see what Tracy has to say…

Alrighty. Four days on and not a peep from Tracy. Like I said: with all those happy customers, you’d think they might just have the magnanimity to refund a lone unhappy punter with a meagre $5. It’s not like I’m asking for the $8000.00 of the ‘proper’ Trinfiniy8 system back. ((It is, in my experience, a universal truth that peddlers of pseudoscience, when criticized, turn into the most unpleasant of people. So much for their supposed touchy-feely ‘we are all brothers and sisters’ mantras.))

Well Tracy, I guess you’ve forced me to exercise my other iTunes customer prerogative. A user review on the iTunes app store site. Viz:

This app is nothing more than a piece of pseudoscientific nonsense. The four included ‘programs’ simply play ambient tones and very ordinary fractal animation movies (such as those that can be created by dozens of cheap or free fractal apps). They are in no way ‘uniquely generated’ as described. The ‘mathematical algorithms’ that supposedly get transmitted to your ears are ‘sub-audible’ (yeah, right, of COURSE they are…) and therefore completely undetectable. Since there is no science that would explain how such a mechanism could work, there is no reason to suppose that it does.

This app is listed under the Medical category. That’s interesting, considering that the Trinfinity8 website holds this disclaimer: ‘Trinfinity8 is best described as a “Crystal Meditation Machine”. It is not a medical device.’

My advice is that if you’re really looking for an energy boost or a mood enhancer and have five bucks to spend, you’d be better off buying a chocolate bar.

Let’s see how long that stays there before we see a whole swag of ‘This-is-the-best-thing-since-sliced-bread’ ‘unsolicited’ user reviews. I give it, oh, two days (This app has had exactly ZERO reviews in the Australian shop since it’s been available. Mine is the first. If we start seeing positive reviews here suddenly, we can be TOTALLY sure that they have been solicited by the Trinfinity8 people and we’ve caught them with their hands in the cookie jar.)

You can be sure we will be visiting Trinfinty8 again in the not-too-distant future.

OMG! ACOWLYTES!! Mobile phones are KILLING OUR BEES! The FOOD CHAIN is going to COLLAPSE and we’re ALL GOING TO DIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

What’s that you say? That’s not news? You already heard it ages ago? Ah, yes, Faithful Acowlytes, the hoary old idea that bee Colony Collapse Disorder is caused by radiation from the cellphone network has, of course, been reported, sensationalized and thoroughly found to be wanting years ago, but that doesn’t stop it from rising once more like a zombie hopped up on homeopathy to chew on the brains of the stupid. Twice today I came upon this story, once in my local newspaper and once via a Facebook posting. Both times, the ‘accredited’ source was this credulous gaping by Inhabitat reporter Lori Zimmer.:

More Scientific Studies Indicate That Cell Phones are Harming Bees

Scientists may have found the cause of the world’s sudden dwindling population of bees – and cell phones may be to blame. Research conducted in Lausanne, Switzerland has shown that the signal from cell phones not only confuses bees, but also may lead to their death

The original title of this article was It’s Official – Cell Phones are Killing Our Bees (as you can still see in the story’s URL) but the editors have evidently been kicked soundly in the bollocks and told that it’s not actually official at all, at least unless your interpretation of the word ‘official’ is ‘I pulled it out of my ass’.

The Daily Mail carried the story as Mobile Phones ARE to Blame for Killing off the World’s Bee Populations as is nicely preserved in the digital amber that is the remnant Google search link: ((Ah, don’t we LOVE teh intertubes, where stupidity and duplicitousness is forever preserved!))

Presumably someone gave them a good swift kick in the testicles as well, since they have now amended it to: Why a mobile phone ring may make bees buzz off: Insects infuriated by handset signals.

So, what does the ‘research conducted in Lausanne, Switzerland’ actually show? Well, you can read the full text of researcher Daniel Favre’s findings here, if you’re so inclined, but, as is my wont, I have done the legwork for you.

M. Favre and colleagues have conducted an experiment that suggests that bees don’t really like active cell phones being close to them. That is THE SUM TOTAL of what they have found. To synopsize, M. Favre showed that when mobile phones were place directly underneath bee hives (that is, within mere centimeters of the bees living environment), and the phones were dialled, the bees acted strangely. Now, while this is very interesting, it is hardly surprising. It has been demonstrated that honeybees are at least aware of magnetic fields ((Daniel Favre says in his report: ‘It is known that honeybees possess magnetite crystals in their fat body cells and that they present magnetic remanence. These magnetite structures are active parts of the magnetoreception system in honey- bees. Importantly, it has been shown that honeybees can be trained to respond to very small changes in the constant local geomagnetic field intensity.’)) so there is a likelihood that they are also affected to some extent by electromagnetic radiation. We already know that cell phones emit electromagnetic radiation ((including microwave heat to some extent)) (that’s why almost all cell phone manufacturers advise you not to hold them close to your ears for long periods of time), so an educated speculation says that having a strong EM field radiating at them from centimeters away may well annoy them at least a little. M. Favre’s experiment tends to confirm this. THAT’S ALL.

What Daniel Favre’s trials explicitly don’t show is that the cell phone network in general (including its broadcast towers) has any effect on bees, or that, even if it did, that such an effect has anything at all to do with bee Colony Collapse Disorder. Journalists just made that shit up because their brains go like this: ‘Bees… oooh… cell phones… ooooh… sciency stuff… ooooh… COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER IS OFFICIAL!!!

I don’t know who teaches journalists to think like this, but it is plain that it must be part of their training because so many of them do it. Here is a very funny cartoon from Zach Weiner’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal that illustrates in pictures, a typical journalist-meets-science scenario: ((With thanks to Zach for generously allowing it to be linkable.))

But I digress. Back to the science…

Daniel Favre’s experiment is reasonably sound as far as I can tell – if the aim is to find out what bees do if you put a phone in their hive. His protocol seems reasonable, and his results appear to be methodically tabulated. Where he wanders a bit off track is his further hypothesizing, prompted, one has to speculate, by an already-formed agenda. In his own words (my emphasis):

“We should ask ourselves, whether the plethora of mobile phone masts also have an impact on the behaviour of the honeybees”

To which I reply: Sure, let’s ask away, and while we’re at it, let’s also ask whether they have an impact on kangaroos, pigeons and water buffalo. Questions don’t cost anything. But for the question to have any meaning at all in relation to the experiment at hand, M. Favre has first to show that what mobile phones do when they receive and transmit calls is in some way relevant to the kind of behaviour that cell phone transmitter masts exhibit. ((Speaking personally, I don’t have a clue. For all I know, cell phone towers work in an entirely different manner to the way my iPhone does when they send and receive signals. Daniel Favre cannot just make an assumption that the two things are equivalent. Furthermore, as a scientist it is irresponsible of him to allow that assumption to colour the experiment in question, especially when he is presenting it to untrained minds. If he intends to make a case for cell phone towers having an effect on bees, he must show that cell phone towers are having an effect on bees, not simply demonstrate that an affiliated piece of technology has an effect on bees. Science is like that – it has strict and unforgiving expectations of thoroughness.)) This being established, he would then need to demonstrate that the signals are actually strong enough to affect bees. ((It’s kind of curious that it seems that, given his expressed concerns, M. Favre has conducted his phone experiments in an environment that was not actually isolated from the cell phone towers (‘Beehives were located either in the beekeeping and apiary school of the city of Lausanne (altitude, 749 m) or in a second site used by beekeepers north of the city of Morges (altitude, 510 m; both locations in Switzerland’). If the nominal ground state for ‘normal’ bee activity is taken to be one in which cell towers are present, then, ipso facto, the cell towers are not having any significant effect…)) Having done that, his next step would be to show how such an effect is related to bee Colony Collapse Disorder, if at all.

Do you see how that works, Acowlytes? There is no reason at all to suspect that cell phone networks play any part in CCD. It is a speculation that was raised years ago as one of dozens of possibilities and has, for some reason, fired up the paranoid fantasies of the media and the brainless. For it to gain any ground at all, numerous pieces of a a puzzle must be locked together in such a way that they make sense. To put it another way, why cell phone radiation in particular? Why not rising C0² levels, increasing UV levels, increasing ambient noise, decreasing night-time sky visibility or any of a thousand other things?

Daniel Favre knows this. In his own words, again:

“Among other factors such as the varroa mite and pesticides, signals from mobile phones and masts could be contributing to the decline of honeybees around the world ; I am calling the international scientific community for more research in this field. ”

Once more, I’ve emphasized the points that you should attend. I think it’s pretty clear that M. Favre is in no way putting his conclusions forward as ‘official’. And what he doesn’t say, but should know if he’s doing research in this field, is, that among apiarists and scientists, pretty much every other speculated reason for CCD is considered more likely than cell phone signal radiation. In fact, it is beginning to appear that the number one contender for Colony Collapse Disorder is our love for convenience and the satisfaction of our cravings at a cheap price. In other words, the thing that is most likely killing off the bees is our creation of a vast honeybee monoculture. Hives are weakened by expedient farming practices and a lack of genetic diversity and so become highly susceptible to environmental stressors such as pathogens, pesticides and parasites. A recent USDA report says:

…based on an initial analysis of collected bee samples (CCD- and non-CCD affected), reports have noted the high number of viruses and other pathogens, pesticides, and parasites present in CCD colonies, and lower levels in non-CCD colonies. This work suggests that a combination of environmental stressors may set off a cascade of events and contribute to a colony where weakened worker bees are more susceptible to pests and pathogens.

So, while we may well be responsible for the collapse of the honeybee population (a population that we made unnaturally big in the first place) it’s not because we’re making phone calls. It’s just because we want something sweet and cheap for our toast at breakfast.

That, however, does not make for a much of a paranoia-inducing headline for the idiotic news media. And selling papers, is, after all, MUCH more important than giving people the facts.