Silly season: The SCIO/QXCI

Ben Goldacre in Badscience, calls it the silly season - gullible journalists and others singing the praises of quack devices. Under discussion is a device I've recently blogged about, the Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface, or SCIO/QXCI (also known as the EPFX).

Goldacre and some of the commenters to his column, point out some significant facts about the originator of the QXCI, "Professor" Bill Nelson, aka Desiré Dubounet. Much of their information is from an exposé by The Seattle Times, entitled How one man's invention is part of a growing worldwide scam that snares the desperately ill. Other information comes from Bill Nelson's tranvestite alter ego's website Desiré Delicious Dubounet.

Here is what The Seattle Times had to say about Nelson:

"Nelson makes extraordinary claims about his life. He said he worked as a contractor for NASA, helping to save the troubled Apollo 13 mission as a teenager. He boasts that he was an alternate member of the 1968 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. He says he has eight doctorates, including degrees in medicine and law.

None of it checks out. NASA has no record of his employment; he was not an Olympic athlete. And his "degrees" came from unaccredited schools and mail-order businesses."

The Seattle Times related several cases where cancer patients were deceived by QXCI practitioners into substituting their medical treatments for QXCI treatment, with inevitable painful deaths resulting. They may of course have died in any case, but the cruel deceit by QXCI charlatans removed all hope of survival.

The husband of one of the QXCI victims was a former Microsoft manager. He analysed the device's software source code and found it to generate results randomly. He concluded that it was a complete fraud.

I find it inconceivable that anyone in their right mind can look at Nelson's history and have any confidence in his invention. His Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface is so obviously bogus, designed to fool those gullible souls who believe that wherever the word "quantum" appears, anything is possible, especially making a lot of money out of other gullible souls.

While one can excuse those from the "alternative" fraternity falling for Nelson's scheme (it fits their model well), I cannot see that the same leniency can apply to registered medical practitioners, psychologists and therapists who knowingly or unknowingly bullshit their patients with the QXCI. They were exposed sufficiently to critical thinking and the scientific method during their training that they should have been able to see through the pseudoscience. They should surely have considered both ethical (bullshitting and potentially harming their patients) and financial (the QXCI costs 14 000 Euros or R150 000,00) issues before they acquired and used it; or did the potential income from it cloud their judgement?

A previous post on the QXCI in South Africa can be found at Quackery in South Africa: The SCIO/QXCI.