@DrunkenCat:
Now look what you’ve all done. Now we’ll never get our hands on to the VANN FORMULA
I’m not terribly disappointed at the prospect of never getting my hands on something that’s nonexistent. The formula that applies in these kinds of cases is…
1/T = (H x S)
…which means that the likelihood that a fantastic claim is true (T) is inversely proportional to the amount of hype (H) that surrounds it multiplied by the amount of secrecy (S) that surrounds it. The greater the hype and the greater the secrecy, the less chance that there’s any truth to the claim. Frankly, the case we’re discussing reminds me an awful lot of the “nameless force” hoax perpetrated in the 19th-century by a certain James C. Wingard, both in tone and content:
“In February 1876, “Professor” James C. Wingard of New Orleans announced he had invented a powerful new weapon that would utterly destroy any naval vessel, iron or otherwise, “so as to leave no trace of them in their former shape.” Wingard was coy about the exact means by which his weapon operated. He would only say that it projected a “nameless force,” which somehow involved the use of electricity, applied without any direct connection between the machine and the object to be destroyed — and it supposedly worked at a distance of up to five miles, far beyond the range of any other gun or cannon. In other words, this was a nineteenth-century version of a death ray. Wingard claimed that a few ships outfitted with his weapon would be able to dominate all the other navies in the world combined. In fact, he anticipated that his weapon would mean the end of naval warfare altogether, since the first navy to acquire it would become invincible and reign supreme.”
If you read the following article about the Wingard case…
http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/professor_wingards_nameless_force
…you’ll find that Wingard staged a “demonstration” of his death ray, which involved him destroying a target ship anchored a mile away. The demonstration looked convincing enough, and Wingard was able to raise money for further research on the basis of its “success”. A subsequent second demonstration, however, suffered a technical mishap and let the cat out of the bag: the “nameless force” which Wingard was using to destroy his target ships was actually a remote-detonated dynamite charge.
