This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 21, Issue 1, from 2011.
It always happens. Your least favourite child bought you a pair of novelty socks for Christmas when in fact you really wanted a pendant, an electronic gadget or a secret elixir to prolong and preserve your health. Your disappointment on squeezing those socks through the wrapping was almost visible to the little one.
Thankfully Q-Link, a Bristol based company, has the product for you. It’s a pendant, an electronic gadget and a secret elixir to prolong and preserve your health. Q-Link, who obviously take great pride in their highly scientific approach to their products which work “at the deepest or quantum level”, produce a range of pendants which protect the wearer from terrifyingly harmful electromagnetic radiation.
Endorsed by, among others, the Times, the Mail and television’s London Today programme, few could fail to be convinced by the sculpted casing which hides a shiny, symmetrical circuit board. The manufacturer claims that:
The Q-Link acts as a tuning fork that resonates with the ideal frequency at which the body’s own energy system should vibrate.
To me, the method through which this is achieved still seems a little fuzzy, however. The Q-Link Classic, for instance, contains a circuit board with etched pads as expected, in addition to a single component: a zero-ohm resistor. In essence, the pendant contains some metal and a bit of wire, all of which doesn’t actually connect to anything. The product requires no batteries, has a lifetime guarantee, and for up to £119.95, promises to literally do something.
Thankfully, with an order for the Q-Link Polished Silver Pendant, we will never again have to be concerned about the horrific nature of EMF radiation (such as light?). You’re protected. That said, the possibilities to play practical jokes on radiographers who to fail take one visible x-ray while you’re wearing the pendant are limitless.
