How to Spot a Psychopath

I know you were all perched on the edge of your seats about that Moletech, or possibly MTECH, Fuel Saver thing.

Well, The Western Australian Department of Consumer and Employment Protection, or NAMBLA DOCEP, has reached an "undertaking" with the two companies responsible for The MoleWhatever Fuel Saver, in which those companies agree to stop selling their useless gadget in Western Australia and DOCEP agree to not kick their miserable scamming arses into the Indian Ocean.

(I paraphrase lightly. Here's the DOCEP page about this. I've also got a copy of the official PDF press release here.)

I don't know whether the Federal Government has reached an opinion about Moletech, but it didn't look good for them in January.

The Western Australian developments were brought to my attention by the proprietor of the Thinkingisreal blog, who saw a story about the "undertaking" on the WA edition of of the sterling tabloid-TV current affairs program Today Tonight.

Today Tonight and their cousins at A Current Affair appear to decide whether to run an approving or a scathing story about nonsense diets, umpteen useless fuel savers, and psychics, by flipping a coin. Actually, I think dice may be involved, with a roll of 24 or higher needed to get a critical story.

But TT are really solidly committed to this story. Just look at their Consumer Protection page!

In case you're coming to this post a while after I wrote it and that page now actually has some content, be advised that at the time of writing, and since TT ran the story, the sum total of the non-navigation content on that page - which is presumably meant to provide background information for every consumer-protection story the show has ever run - is:

Fuel Saver Ban
Consumer Protection
1300 30 40 54

Seriously, that's it.

They don't even say what Fuel Saver they're talking about.

Awesome work, guys. Bonuses all round.

(I searched for other pages on the 7perth.com.au site that mentioned this, and found the same "Fuel Saver Ban" snippet on this page, which contains what looks like a nose-to-tail site-content dump. The title of that page is - again, if the page isn't there by the time you read this, be advised that I am not making this up - "Alzheimers Cure". And the page-content below the "Fuel Saver Ban" snippet is about a spray-on cure for arthritis pain that uses "Herbal Synergism". Two pages-worth up from the Fuel Saver snippet is... a miracle diet, this time based around milk protein. Magnificent.)

Thinkingisreal had a blog post up about this, but pulled it because there wasn't yet any solid info about the ban on the Today Tonight or DOCEP sites (the press release was mentioned on this DOCEP page, but the link to it was broken. Now the official statement is up. Here's DOCEPs list of current media statements).

Anyway, apparently Today Tonight did a previous story on the Moletech gadget, in which they found "promising results" in their entirely science-free investigation. That story is still proudly mentioned on the home page of moletech.us.

(I originally thought TT had, being at least slightly honest, mentioned this previous story in the most recent one. Thinkingisreal says he doesn't actually remember them doing so.)

But now, wouldn't you know it, TT have changed their minds, and decided that this zillionth example of a fuel conditioner that's supposed to work by some sort of molecular balderdash ("nano negative ions!") is just as useless as all the rest.

That quote from Band of Brothers springs to mind, yet again.