Sharon Weinberger is the author of "Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld," and frequent contributor to the Washington Post Magazine and Slate. She is the editor of Defense Technology International. This is the first of many posts for DANGER ROOM.
Penny stock schemes are a dime a dozen, but you gotta love ones that involve far-fetched military technology. A few months ago, I received in the mail information on Sniffex, a company touting a dream technology in the age of terror: a hand-held explosive sniffer. The company's claims about its uses -- sniffing through concrete and at great distances, sounded a bit too wonderful. I tossed the brochure -- labeled "hot stocks on the street"-- in my pile of possibly stupid weapons, and promptly forgot about it.
Others didn't. Famed magician and uber-Skeptic James Randi unearthed a Navy report evaluating Sniffex, and from the snippets he published online, it's rather damning:
How does Sniffex work? According to this website, the company touting Sniffex claims that it "detects the interference between the magnetic field of the earth, the explosive, the device itself, and the human body which allows the device to penetrate and locate even small amounts of explosives through concrete, soil, and metal barriers." Sadly, Sniffex's main site appears to be down (although their Middle East site is up and running).
Schemes involving mysterious ways to detect hidden objects are sometimes called dowsing rods, as Randi notes on his site. Of course, there are a number of ways to detect explosives--but all have limitations--and this is the first time
I've heard of "magnetic interference" being used to spot bombs.
Where did Sniffex come from? This website notes that a product called SniffEx was developed by the well-respected Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
But SniffEx, which sensibly detects chemical vapors, appear to have nothing to do with Sniffex, which detect interference in magnetic fields.
Actually, more damning than the Navy report are the various web commentators
-- with no experience in defense technology -- who grew suspicious about Sniffex's stock. What Randi doesn't mention, and is the crux of the Sniffex stink-bomb, is that the company, according to savvy web critics, used spam mail and reams of press releases to drive up the price of its over-the-counter stock. At some point, the company was reborn as Homeland Safety International, and amusingly, has expanded its product line.
Sniffex isn't the first company to try to ride the public's fascination with wonder weapons to stock market highs, though accusations of outright fraud may make this firm unique. Other makers of wonder-weapons include Ionatron, which is marketing lightning weapons, and Australian-based Metal Storm, which produces the "million-rounds-a-minute"
gun. Yet those two companies have at least demonstrated prototypes.
Sniffex, by the look of things, is in a league all of its own.
How do you judge a weapons scam? It certainly helps to understand the technology being touted. But sometimes it just takes a bit of research, like this website on stock lemons, which dug up the best stuff on the interconnected ludicrousness of Sniffex, whose principals appear to have a history of such antics. They sum up the situation better than I ever could:
