Scam artists

Oren Zarif (at picture) recently appeared at Yaron London and Moti Kirshenbaum's excellent TV show (Hebrew). As it turns out, Zarif runs a multi-million dollar business from 'helping' people with his 'psychokinetics' method. He recently asked all his employees to change their family names to Zarif since this name has a strong power of some sort. In the interview he uses such terms as frequency, energy and heat mixed with other terms such as stream of consciousness, the third eye (located at the center of our foreheads if you must ask)... At some point Yaron London asks Zarif to define the terms that he used, that's where the fun begun. Zarif couldn't give a good answer and Yaron called him a scam artist. That was a lot of fun to watch. A day later, Yaron London got some phone threats by Zrif's followers. Zarif's Internet site is filled with success stories of his 'work', but a quick Google search revealed the following facts:

1. He was interrogated several times under suspicion of fraud
2. He predicted a catastrophic earth quake in Israel which never occurred
3. He sent the prime minister a letter in which he describes a meeting with Stephen Hawking, saying that he affected Hawking's mind and improved his opinion of Israel's actions. He then demands to meet with any important figure that arrives to Israel. And asks that the PM give him a three day notice before any such meetings.

This reminds me of a funny story I heared from Eyal (a lab mate). He attended a meeting with some scammer which sold magnetic bracelets. The bracelets have positive healing powers blah blah blah... Eyal asked her what is the difference between the positive effect of the bracelets' magnetic field, and the negative effect of electromagnetic radiation from cellphones? She replied:" Don't you get it? the difference is in the 'electro'". Case closed.