Pharma firm admits it goofed on âE-Wavesâ phone chip
SLEEVES rolled up, Feedback reaches into the piling system where we meticulously store the emails you send us â and we pull out a message from Stephen Freeman about the âE-Waves Phone Chipâ.
Readers with an advanced interest in pseudoscience will already be thinking of the claims that might be made for a âchipâ that aims to suppress âdangerous radiationâ from cellphones. According to Stephen, âa quantum physical information waveâ is said to be involved. But we canât enlighten you in detail. Visiting we find instead a message that we translate as: âOmega Pharma has decided to suspend sale of the E-Waves Phone Chip⊠After the launch⊠a storm of protest broke out, casting doubt on the scientific proofs by doctors and professors that we gave.â They even offer a refund. Respect!
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Feedback looks forward to more reports of absurd products being repudiated. But not with too much hope, since so few of them come from companies with reputations to protect: Omega was in its announcement of the productâs launch as selling ânon-prescription products such as wart treatments, pregnancy tests and sun tan lotions to pharmacistsâ. Weâd very much like to see the correspondence between Omega and its supplier.
âMicrosoftâs Internet Explorer refused to show Theo McCaie a web page, complaining that ââundefinedâ is undefinedâ: the meaning of which is now, erâŠâ
Itâs just like swallowing your mobile
STILL they come: a spam arrives addressed to letters@newscientist.com from , promoting the benefits of âthe safest, anti-radiation mobile phone hands-free available today!â And why might this be needed? Because, apparently, â70-80 per cent of the energy emitted from the antenna of your cellphone is absorbed in your headâ.
Feedback cannot claim to be an antenna engineer, but weâd have thought that youâd have to half-swallow your phone to achieve that level of signal attenuation.
The offer is based, of course, on the supposition that ârecent clinical and laboratory studies have shown that the EMFâs emitted from your cellphone can cause dangerous health conditionsâ. Leaving aside the question âthe EMFâs what?â, more startling is the claim that by buying this product â an old-fashioned stethoscope-style earpiece that they call the âRF3 AirTube Technologyâ â you âmay save your life and your loved onesâ.
Surely moving the phone away from your head puts it closer to your loved ones, and indeed to your precious gonads.
WHAT really puzzles Feedback is the quantity of chutzpah exhibited by those who, albeit perhaps thoughtlessly, send such pseudoscience-babble spam direct to 51¶ŻÂț. (The standard exemplar of âchutzpahâ is the apocryphal son who, on being convicted for murdering his parents, pleads in mitigation that he is an orphan.)
Indeed, looking through our junk archive we find more spam from promoting the âDe-Tox Foot Spaâ. This looks suspiciously like the Aqua Detox device about which we were slightly sceptical (19 June 2004) and which was tested and debunked by a reader (10 July 2004, p 28). Except now itâs less than a quarter of the price, at $250, and says itâs âapproved as a medical device under the European Medical Device Directive 93/42EEâ ().
Is it a double-bluff, on the basis that no publicity is bad publicity and even a write-up as sceptical as the one you are now reading is better than none? Feedback hopes that pointing this out neutralises the publicity we give here, and calls the bluff called.
Wrong kind of carbon emissions
IN WHAT he describes as âa romantic momentâ, Graham Nash recently bought a hand-held Dyson vacuum cleaner as a wedding anniversary present. He got his comeuppance when he read the box blurb â also available at â which proudly says of its âdigital motorâ that âno carbon brushes means no carbon emissionsâ.
Thatâs not, as Graham says, what we usually mean by carbon emissions these days. It is true that in some other motors âas the carbon brushes wear down, they emit carbon particlesâ, as the site says, but exactly how bad for the environment could this be? Feedback would have thought that, if anything, such vacuum-cleaner emissions would have a slight â probably very, very slight â cooling effect on the worldâs climate.
The bigger effect will be sooting up houses. Does that suggest a threat from runaway vacuum cleaner use? Do we mind?
Iron that shrinks water molecules
FINALLY, Philips has made a radical breakthrough in designing a new super-duper steam iron â the GC4630 â which produces â50 per cent smaller steam particlesâ, according to . Steve Cassidy observes that since the particles of steam are molecules of H2O, this implies a noteworthy advance with implications far beyond the ironing board. Will some sort of fission be occurring inside this iron?
