Believe it or not, this is actually book-related: I have in mind to do a chapter at the end of the book about the use of misrepresentations of quantum physics to promise magical results. I’ve been writing the dialogue to go with that this morning (because it’s more fun than what I’m supposed to be doing), and it struck me that this might be a decent question for the audience. So,
What’s your favorite example of quantum chicanery?
By “quantum chicanery,” I mean somebody using the language of quantum theory to make wildly unrealistc promises of magical results. Examples abound– Bob Park got several months’ worth of “What’s New” out of some guys who claimed to be able to generate free energy by putting hydrogen in “a state lower than the ground state.” My personal favorite was a guy I heard on a talk show (I was stuck in an auto repair place) claiming that the secret to eternal life was to simply concentrate on measuring yourself to be healthy and happy, which would collapse your wavefunction into that state.
But I’m sure there are lots of novel versions of this sort of thing that I’ve never even seen. So, what’s your favorite example?