Science & Society

Science and Society and how they get along.

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Location: Santa Barbara, California, United States

I'm a physicist and science consultant specialized in optics, lasers and optical engineering. This blog, StarkFX, looks at what applications physics is finding today. Or, if you are looking at my StarkEffects blog, it displays my views about and interest in the interface between society and science.

Monday, June 14, 2010

MOJO in a Wristband

I was walking through a mall this weekend and saw a cute little kiosk with a pretty little sales clerk. Of course, I had to read the sign. I assumed it was a simple jewelry kiosk, some fasion trend I hadn't seen before. But, no. This kiosk claimed the ability to immediately improve my balance, strength and energy just by putting a wristband on my arm. Being "just a little skeptical" I walked up to the kiosk to get the pitch. She explained that the wristbands had a special hologram embedded into them that "worked with my body's natural frequencies" to improve blood flow, my energy, balance and strength. Wow! Who could possibly believe such nonsense. Oh wait, maybe the people that just wouldn't believe in the magical powers of magnets will fall for this instead (more likely the same people would fall for both).

This tendency for people to simply accept that something they don't really understand, like holograms, will have some power that borders on magical is mind boggling to me. I would be better off just accepting that people will believe magical claims to any or all of the "mysteries" I studied in quantum physics classes, electro-optics courses or even just religious history courses and I could make a fortune selling all this magic.... if only I had no conscience.

T. Troy Stark
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com