Robert Todd Carroll
SkepDic.com
The Skeptic's
Refuge
About Too Good to Be True
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DielectroKinetic
Laboratories LifeGuard
A reader of the Skeptic's Dictionary, recently wrote:
It seems that the Quadro Tracker, which
you have included in your Dictionary, has reincarnated (if not, then we have proof here
that great minds think alike). A company named
DielectroKinetic Laboratories has manufactured 3 versions of a remote heartbeat
detector, the DKL Lifeguard, and is trying to sell them to various government agencies for
the purpose of detecting the presence of humans up to 500 yards away. The cheapest model,
at $6000, doesn't even require batteries or any power source! [Note: the most expensive
model costs $14,000.]
I saw and tested their products first hand at a government-sponsored exhibition last
September, where hundreds of vendors came to demonstrate equipment that the government
could buy for force protection. I immediately recognized their equipment as the
"high-tech" version of the dowsing stick. Each has a box which swivels on a
pistol grip and has an antenna pointing out the front. You swing the antenna back and
forth, and the device is supposed to generate a tug on your hand whenever the antenna is
pointing toward a person. The answers they supplied to our questions were typical of scam
artists' talk, and would have been very entertaining if not for the fact that a lot of
people there actually believed them.
My supervisor, who is a world-reknowned expert on sensor technologies, pointed out
to them that the antenna was an omni-directional antenna, and they are pointing the null
(its weakest direction) at the target. And their answer was: "Well, yeah, the antenna
IS omni-directional, but the ELECTRONICS are directional." Total nonsense to an
electronics engineer.
The scientific gobbledygook used by DKL is overwhelming and could easily dupe the
untrained with their talk of electrostatics,
electrodynamics, electromagnetics, dielectrokinetics, and dielectrophoresis. But the focus here will be on what they claim their product can do,
not how it does it. According to DKL,
DKL's new line of LifeGuard instruments can locate and track any living human being
more than 500 yards away in the open and at shorter distances through concrete walls,
steel bulkheads, heavy foliage, earthworks, or up to 10 feet of water. All three LifeGuard
models can detect and lock onto a person in three to five seconds, and they can
distinguish a human from any other animal, even a gorilla or an orangutan.
One wonders, however, how this amazing device tells the difference between the person
who is operating it and any other person. If this thing really works as specified it
should be useless because the person using it would always set it off. After all, DKL
claims that
DKL's detectors locate and point toward a small irregular electric field generated
by a human heart. And because the heart generates its electric signals at ultra-low
frequencies, less than 30 cycles per second, they travel right through barriers that
absorb or reflect higher frequency energy.
Why would anyone want such a device? It could be used to find lost children in the
forest or who wander into the gorilla or orangutan area of a zoo. It could be used to
locate criminals who are trying to hide from you (assuming no one else is around and you
can somehow turn off your own heartbeat while you use the LifeGuard). It should be a big
seller with the same crowd who bought the Quadro Tracker: local, state and federal police
agencies with lots of taxpayer money and little accountability.
note: the DKL LifeGuard was tested by Sandia Labs in
April1998. The device failed to perform any better than expected by chance. In October
1998 Sandia took a DKL LifeGuard
apart and found that the
electronic components could not possibly function as advertised.
Whether in response to the Sandia tests or in response to increased criticism of their
claims, I don't know, but DKL has changed its claims on its Internet site. It no longer
features a collapsed building with the message that a DKL product would save the lives of
those trapped inside. The featured come-on now is that the LifeGuard can detect stowaways
on a truck. Also, the ads now say that the products can detect people, rather
than heartbeats. It has removed some of its so-called scientific tests and
replaced them with others, including one regarding the detection of stowaways on trucks.
Is this a major problem in your neighborhood?
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