Added 23rd April 2013
News report that James McCormick, some sort of 'businessman', was found guilty of selling fake bomb, gas, and people detectors. His company was called ATSC. At the time of writing, no information was made available by the journalistic hacks as to how these devices were supposed to work, or even what their size and positioning when in use was. However, they were supposedly sold to many governments and official organisations. It's not clear from the badly-worded journalistic reports whether types of radiation were supposed to be detected.
There may have been bribery, fraud, collaboration so that bombs would remain undetected, and so on; but the lesson here must be that there is secrecy around the whole subject of metrology.
'Radiation' has been a public issue since about 1900 (radio waves, and X-rays) and more so since I suppose about 1920 (radium etc); there's been a further post-1945 boost with the use of microwaves, the discovery of such things as 'cosmic rays', and of course the 'nuclear weapons' and 'nuclear power' fallout mythology. The use of chemical warfare (Vietnam and Iraq etc) has added another layer of deception - the authorities prefer to allow blame for chemical damage to fall on radiation.
. It's as live a propaganda issue as it has ever been, and there's no sign of sanity being introduced. Just a comment suggested by this blog - typical of thousands---
Confirmed: EPA Rigged RADNET Japan Nuclear Radiation Monitoring Equipment To Report Lower Levels Of Fukushima Fallout
https://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/05/19/confirmed-epa-rigged-radnet-japan-nuclear-radiation-monitoring-equipment-report-levels-nuclear-fallout-22823/
The public are encouraged to think of 'tests' as something off-stage and invariably correct, as in 'AIDS test'. They are encouraged to accept the most ridiculous journalistic assertions. There's a good analogy with temperature: arguments rage over the 'temperature' of the earth, often with well-meaning participants, and yet, obviously when you think about it, it's impossible to measure the entire earth's temperature - quite apart from the effects of shadows, winds, air currents, seas, heating effects below ground, and all the rest of it. All quite apart from the accuracy of the equipment. Similarly with all the types of radiation...
At the present time, there seems to be no chance that the groups responsible for metrology will get together and present honest and accurate information on such issues. They are too politically and economically sensitive. But wouldn't it be nice if someone posted here or elsewhere reliable information on how, if at all, things like 'fallout' can be measured?
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A reminder, posted by NUKELIES 24 March 2011:
From Is Japan Really Irradiated? japan-fukushima-was-radiation-a-lie.htmlYukio Edano, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, admits that they are not actually measuring radiation levels at Fukushima’s nuclear power plant (and cannot accurately do so), but are instead only “estimating” the radiation via the use of a computer simulation model.
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Another comment:
The James Randi 'skeptics' have a link to https://www.world-nuclear-news.org which they describe with delightful naivete as an outlet put together by nuclear engineering professionals and science journalists to get accurate information out to the public.
The 'skeptics' also link, apparently seriously, to a site called 'boing boing' https://boingboing.net/2011/03/12/nuclear-energy-insid.html with a short piece consisting entirely of second-hand material.
See our site's comment on Randi and his pathetic band of pseudo-skeptics randi-JREF-revisionism-pseudo-skeptic.html