May 24, 2010: shoo!Tag testing human mosquito complete (2 videos)
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May 24, 2010
Hi again Darcie – I’ll be interested to see the results of this new test. For your information I have made a lengthy post of my investigations into ShooTag, its science, its technology and the credentials and beliefs of its creators in my post at Tetherdcow.com. I should warn you that, though my post itself is completely Safe For Work, some of the links, by necessity, are not. Click on links at your discretion (there are warnings). – Anaglyph from the Tetherdcow
Okay, the testing is completed.
shoo!Tag. Their contact info as it shows on their website at shootag.com
Energetic Solutions, LLC
11101 Hwy. 290 West
Austin, TX 78737
Phone 877.746.6512
Fax 888.871.1538
According to the Austin Business Journal article dated March 5, 2010, Energetic Solutions LLC received $375,000 from 12 investors for shoo!Tag. In 2003, Energetic Solutions LLC developed a homeopathic cream for stress reduction, that launched with $90,000 investments from friends and angel investors. According to the article, the company employed 8 workers April 2009.
If you’d like to know Anaglyph’s (comment above) real name, who he is, and see his work in debunking products and services that don’t work like maker’s claim they will, please go to his website, tetherdcow.com, it’s all there. I appreciate the time he’s put into the behind the “science” for this testing project of shoo!Tag. The information he shares about the scientist whose work led to the shoo!Tag is worth seeing. This scientist was named on the shoo!Tag website by the makers as the science behind the shoo!Tag, that info was removed from their website by the makers as Anaglyph will attest to. There is video of the scientist doing his many things.
And what’s in the strip on the back of the shoo!Tag? Anaglyph shows you that, too.
My human mosquito shoo!Tag testing was completed late last night, the mosquitoes didn’t show up on camera in the darkness, they did bite. I’m not one to give up before I can show proof perfect so I went back out again today and in full light of day, here’s your proof. I did not have a human control with me today. I did have plenty of company…biting mosquitoes…which showed up beautifully on camera.
I agree with Anaglyph that if the supporters of shoo!Tag who commented here at The Dish and wrote to me hadn’t been so adamant and rude, I probably would have dropped the testing after the tick Tag failed for the dog. I suspect that those particular supporters were not only the makers of the Tag but also investors in their company. When I asked the most adamant if he was an investor, he did not write to me again.
Too many of my Readers were interested in the mosquito Tag by then and a distributor wanted me to test it for him, too, so I went on to complete the testing.
My intention in this testing was to show that either mosquitoes would bite or would not bite while I was wearing the Tag. My intention was to show that either ticks would crawl on me or they would not, I did not let ticks attach to my skin. That intention turned to proof and the proof is positive.
We did use a human control for the first mosquito video. Normally in our lives mosquitoes will bother me more than they bother Kent and we saw that again during this testing…I think it’s because I’m sweeter. The testing was done on the first spring evening that mosquitoes were out around the house. We had plenty of mosquitoes for the video test. Our lighting was normal porch lights, it was nighttime. The June bugs were big enough to show up on the video, the mosquitoes don’t show. Anyone who has ever spent an evening outdoors knows that you don’t always get to see them before they bite and leave. Same thing happened here.
Today’s video in broad daylight shows happy mosquitoes, biting away on me.
I’m not highly allergic to mosquito bites. I’ll heal up in a few days. Kent is allergic to them so he’ll have about two weeks of itching and swelling.
So far no one who sells the shoo!Tag will offer any video proof that it works, not even the distributor who sent me the free samples and wanted me to test it for him. The interesting thing that I find about his asking me to test the new Tag is that he lives in an area with mosquitoes and says that the original shoo!Tag, the one that looks like a credit card, works for his customers. There can’t be a difference between me and those folks, can there? Why would it work for them and not for me? No reason I can think of. It would be simple to make this video proof for himself. I wonder if he’ll stop selling the shoo!Tag and distributing it now? The proof he wanted is right here.
The makers of shoo!Tag to this day have shown no video proof of the effectiveness of their shoo!tag. If they had the proof, they would show it on their website, wouldn’t they? That only makes sense from a marketing and advertising point of view.
I wonder if any of the retailers will stop selling the shoo!Tag now? I guess we’ll see. Good of them if they do, it means that your and your animal’s health means more to them than money. Shame on them if they don’t. Disease spread by ticks, fleas and mosquitoes is no laughing matter. People and animals all over the world get sick and die. No amount of money makes it okay to swindle you and your animals our of your health.
In my and my skin’s opinion during this past several weeks of shoo!Tag testing, the shoo!Tag has most definitely failed to protect me from biting mosquitoes and from ticks. I let the mosquitoes bite. I did not let the ticks attach.
Click here for tick test and video review for the dog shoo!Tag.
Click here for human tick testing video review of the shoo!Tag.
Fact: shoo!Tag was used to the letter of the maker’s instructions
Fact: no bug repellent has been applied to my skin, clothing, or property this year at all
Fact: Darcie did not change her diet or anything about her life during the testing period
Fact: Darcie wore this shoo!Tag continuously beginning May 21, 2010 through the final video
Fact: video proof taken on May 23, 2010
Fact: video of mosquitoes biting taken May 24, 2010
Fact: mosquitoes bit
SitStay will not carry the shoo!Tag. You and your dogs and cats mean too much to us. We don’t sell products that don’t work the way the makers claim.
OK, thanks Darcie, I appreciate all your work. The makers of ShooTag persistently call on people to ‘test the tag and make up your mind for yourself’. I think we can see clearly that you’ve given it a darn good go (and fair too – I don’t have your patience I’m afraid!) and shown that the tag is ineffective against both ticks and mosquitoes. Not a surprise for me – there’s no reason on earth that it should be.
I’m now curious to hear what the ShooTag people have to say about this. I imagine that they’ll use one of the many excuses in their FAQ – they say the tag can be affected by ‘fault lines, cell phone towers and large doses of pesticides to name a few possible challenges’. It doesn’t take a lot of insight to see that ‘possible challenges’ could include everything from the colour of your shirt to the phase of the moon.
Or, as we’ve seen in rants from ‘Gabe’, they may also accuse you of being in league with the chemical companies that make insect controls for animals.
For my own part, I trialled the cat ‘flea’ tag on my cat Glitch for over a week and the results were inconclusive. I saw no reduction in fleas or scratching and no evidence of ‘confused’ fleas. It’s pretty hard to make a judgement call in such a case, but to the best of my observation the tag was doing nothing (except annoying Glitch). Again, exactly what I would expect.
As much as we would all like to see some effective chemical-free insect controls for our animals (and for ourselves!) it is completely clear that ShooTag is not that solution. It is, as I have maintained from the very start, nothing more than an inert plastic card with a magnetic strip that is making its creators a heap of money by exploiting the good intentions of pet owners.
anaglyph
May 24, 2010 at 7:56 pm