It's always interesting when people take pseudoscience out of its natural habitat – north London's Islington – and off into a place where the stakes are quite high. Like the polio vaccine scare in Nigeria. Or Aids denial in South Africa. Or, in this particular case, detecting bombs in Iraq, where the New York Times and the magician James Randi have uncovered a nonsense of truly epic proportions.

A British company called ATSC is selling a device which can detect guns, ammunition, bombs, drugs, contraband ivory – and truffles. The ADE651 uses "electrostatic magnetic ion attraction" and can detect these things from a kilometre away, through walls, under the ground, under water or even from an aeroplane three miles overhead.

ATSC's device is handheld. You simply take a piece of plastic-coated cardboard for your chosen target, which has been through "the proprietary process of electrostatic matching of the ionic charge and structure of the substance", pop it into a holder connected to a wand and start detecting.

There are no batteries and no power source: you hold the device to "charge" it with the energy of your body. Then you walk with the wand at right angles to your body.

If there is a bomb on your left, the wand will drift to the left, and point at it. Like a dowsing rod.

Similar devices have been tested repeatedly and shown to perform no better than chance. No police force or security service anywhere in the developed world uses them. But, in 2008, the Iraqi interior ministry bought 800 ADE651s for $32m (£19m) and they've ordered a further shipment at $53m. These devices are being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq to look for bombs.

Last week two people working for the New York Times went through nine Iraqi police checkpoints which were using the device, and none found the rifles and ammunition they were carrying (with licences).

Major General Jehad al-Jabiri, of the Iraqi interior ministry, said: "Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs."

How would you know? There are no independent tests of the ADE651 that I could find. The simplest explanation is that nobody could really be bothered. The magician James Randi can.

For many years, in an admirably expensive act of passive aggression, he has offered a $1m cheque to anyone who can provide proof of supernatural phenomena.

Last year he invited the manufacturers of the ADE651 to come forward to see if the device works better than chance. They have not. I guess if you've trousered $85m, you don't care about The Amazing Randi's puny cheque.

General Jabiri challenged a New York Times reporter to test the ADE651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Every time a policeman used it, the wand pointed at the explosives. Every time the reporter used the device, it failed to detect anything.

"You need more training," said the general.