Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/11/study-demonstrates-that-anti-radiation-phone-stickers-do-nothing.html
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Whelp, guess it’s time to polish up the old tin foil hat.
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Something tells me this fresh evidence won’t dissuade the sort of person who would buy an energy dot.
That’s the most unsettling thing in all of this. Scientific evidence no longer matters to a large swath of people. What can be done in the face of that?
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Fleece them until they learn?
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It never did. Quack medicine and similar grifts have always existed.
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I agree, but what’s disconcerting is how mainstream it has all become.
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Anecdote spreads belief in woo. “My friend says this works, and I trust her.” And the age of social media means more ways to offer anecdotes.
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The nut jobs who buy into this quackery won’t be dissuaded. The rest of us just look and say “well duh.”
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Next week.
‘Worried about radiation? Try the amazing new smartDOT, 25% off in the BoingBoing Store!’
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What more evidence do you need? They said the scientists wouldn’t be able to detect it - and they couldn’t!!!11!! QED.
Nevermind the price - will they keep my razorblades sharp or not?
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I couldn’t resist visiting their website. As expected, it contains a lot of technical words strung together. They mean nothing to an engineer, of course. Here’s an example: " smartDOT® Radiation Protection by energydots® is a low-powered magnet packed with a high-powered punch. Programmed with an intelligent combination of harmonising frequencies, smartDOT is designed to retune EMFs emitted by your device to a safer level for your body to absorb."
I can start parsing this by saying that if it’s retuning the EMF emitted by your phone, then your phone won’t be able to communicate with the base station.
Also, the adjective ‘harmonising’ in front of the noun ‘frequencies’ has no sensible meaning in the world of physics or engineering. In music, yes.
So the fact that these gizmos do nothing is perfectly reasonable, given the advertising copy.
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Yeah, but the (former) high water mark of quack medicine was when “real” medicine was only marginally effective. So much of the quack medicine actually did something, although what it did was mostly reduce the symptoms or get you high so you didn’t feel so bad as the cancer ate you out from the inside.
So you had a lot of medicines that were at least somewhat useful, and they bolstered the confidence that some medicine would actually help, which let people also sell stuff that did nothing (or was actively harmful) or did indeed do something, but something that would help another ailment but since it is what they had in stock they sold it to you for whatever you had.
Quack medicine went on the decline for a long time as real medicine got more and more effective.
I don’t know why it is on the upswing. It possibly only looks like it is on the upswing because we can see it advertised more? Or maybe it really is on the upswing due to failures to educate, or because people who know they can’t afford the real thing set their sights lower? I dunno, but maybe sociology classes will start teaching the answer to undergrads in another 20 years?
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Oh, that’s an easy one. The Republican Party has waged a decades-long war on science, expertise, and institutions of knowledge, that’s why. It is in their best interest for people to be ignorant, fearful of everything, and unable to evaluate evidence. You can sell the people whatever wealth-unbalancing policies you want, then, because they won’t trust economists who tell them it will hurt them, nor will examples of how those policies have failed in the past sway them. The ignorance is deliberate and manufactured.
It’s real. Faith in institutions and science have been slowly falling since the 1960s. I can’t find the study where I saw that now, unfortunately. As I recall, it said that people still believe in “science” as an idea, but increasingly disbelieve scientists and other experts. Look at the public reaction to masks, for example.
Depending on what you mean by “educate”. The research is clear that belief is pseudoscience is not an information deficit. Look no further than Flat Earth for that evidence. It’s that we don’t train people how to evaluate evidence and recognize our own biases and flaws in how we think.
Quite the opposite. Pseudoscience is the realm of the financially comfortable. If you’re already healthy, you feel that your organic smoothie is “boosting your immune system”. If your only problems are emotional, you go looking for pyramid power and UFOs to pass the time. Poor people are standing in line for real doctors.
We know all these answers, but have thus far failed to teach them to people because conservatives pour billions into making sure we can’t. We have schools in America teaching creationism and abstinence sex-ed. We have to fix much more basic things before we can get to the subtleties of rational thinking.
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Insert stock photos of folks in lab coats, beakers and test tubes, clip boards, people nodding.
And don’t forget the machine that goes “Ping”.
Is that enough empirical data for you?
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Oh, for the sake of fuck; if the stickers actually work, your phone STOPS WORKING. Try throwing it it any Faraday cage – such as a closed microwave oven – and you can prevent it from working for free! The microwave will also actually do the job, unlike these silly stickers -.-’ .
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That’s it. I’m joining the dark side. My “RadBloker” stickers will be made of lead (not encapsulated), and will actually block that radiation. A lead sheet with sticky can’t cost much to produce (I’m sure pennies in China), and will only sell for the low price of $20.
Line up folks!
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also just grift them directly for their dollars
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How long do I turn it on?
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Kinda related, but this is a thing you can buy for your wifi router 
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Yeah, I follow LTT; that one was hilarious.
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