Voodoo science?

June 6, 2000 7:28 PM

Voodoo science? I've been seeing these things at CompUSA lately: little gizmos that you stick on your home appliances, cell phones, monitors, etc. to protect you from all those eee-vil EMF's. The site appears to contain more marketese than convincing science. Does anybody out there know: 1) whether everyday Electro-Magnetic Fields are as dangerous as these guys are saying, and 2) if so, whether a little chunk of inert material is going to have any positive effect? The whole thing sounds kind of fishy to me.
posted by harmful (5 comments total)

This sounds like the basis for a long-term high school science project. The hard part is training the rats to dial the cell phone while they drive.
posted by goodhelp at 8:05 PM on June 6, 2000

When I learned the Beep function in Turbo C the manual warned about using a 7 Hertz frequency near a chicken farm, since this is the natual resonant frequency of a fowl's skull cavity, causing the brain to shake excessivily resulting in death. Is this a geek legend? and is the human skull resonance really 13Hz? (Third Post in Link)
posted by PaperCut at 10:18 PM on June 6, 2000

Well, I just started a 13Hz beep on my PC speaker. It's running now, and the only thing I notice is asdf87s89sa7fs jkasdfasd jnl .
posted by dhartung at 8:39 AM on June 7, 2000

Some people say they cause cancer, but there's other people out there who think magnetic fields actually can make you feel better. They promise you'll feel this good if you wear their bracelets. They'd probably agree to the idea that cellphones cause cancer though by slowly baking your brain. They're probably also telling their children not to get too close to the tv as it will make them go blind.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:11 AM on June 7, 2000

I use my troll doll collection on my monitor to diminish negative energy.
posted by rschram at 7:53 AM on June 9, 2000