By Brian Carnell

Wednesday, April 24, 2002

Between January 2000 and July 2000, the Department of Energy spent more than $400,000 to investigate a procedure called Passive Magnetic Resonance Anomaly Mapping (PMRAM). Stripped of the jargon, PMRAM is nothing more than dowsing.

The DOE paid that moeny for a Ukrainian man to walk around fields with a device that he said allowed him to detect magnetic fields and thereby map the underground locations of groundwater, faults, fractures, buried objects, and chemicals (including pollutants).

The DOE was not supposed to spend this money on technologies without first having the technologies reviewed by the Office of Science and Technology. When the OST finally got a hold of the PMRAM results it noted that the technology "appeared to be implausible, did not allow for a scientifically-based evaluation, provided no useful information during three field evaluations, and appeared inadequate as a site characterization." The OST audit also noted that had the DOE followed established peer review procedures, it could have avoided wasting $400,000 worth of taxpayer's money on such patently bogus techniques.

The DOE has a history of getting scammed by these sorts of frauds. It spent a considerable amount of money testing the Quadro Tracker dowsing device -- the FBI later forced Quadro Tracker out of business for attempting to sell fraudulent franchises.

In 1998, the DOE also fell hook, line and sinker for the DKL LifeGuard which supposedly could spot people through 500 feet of concrete and steel. That device actually showed up as a plot point in Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six," but in fact it was little more than a dowsing rod that was no more likely to locate people behind concrete than was flipping a coin.

Source:

At the DOE, Dowsing for Dollars. Leon Jaroff, Time.Com, April 17, 2002.

Doe Voodoo: Inspector General Uncovers More High-Tech Dowsing. Bob Park, American Physical Society, January 25, 2002.

Audit Report: Passive Magnetic Resonance Anomaly Mapping at Environmental Management Sites. U.S. Department of Energy: Office of Inspector General, DOE/IG-0539, January 2002.

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