Crude conduct: The long, dirty history of Elf Aquitaine

In the 1970s, pseudoscience and unproven technology led to France’s costly “sniffer planes” fraud, driven by economic desperation, secrecy and ignored expert warnings. Political pressure and institutional bias allowed Elf Aquitaine and government leaders to suspend due diligence, resulting in a $250 million hoax that normalized deeper corruption.

For thousands of years, people have tried “water dowsing,” or “water witching,” and “doodlebugging” as methods to locate underground water, oil, buried treasure and even buried bodies in a practice called “grave witching.” Despite the folklore surrounding these and similar practices, such pseudoscience is ripe with self-deception and high-stakes fraud, claiming governments, corporations, military organizations, the medical field and law enforcement among its victims.