Au contraire, Shiba Inu!
I’m not sure how this study out of MIT slipped our notice for so long, but I’ve instructed my executive assistant (Miss Betsy Whiskercuddlebunch, Esq.) to update our Google alerts so we’ll get news about tin foil hat studies even when they don’t fit the criteria of +cat OR +dog.
Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, and Noah Vawter at Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department and the Media Lab at MIT put together a thoroughly tongue-in-cheek study of the radio wave deflection capabilities of three different double-layered tin foil hat designs: “the Classical, the Fez, and the Centurion”. They tested frequencies from 10 Khz to 3 Ghz at three different spots of the skull in four subjects wearing the tin foil hat then not wearing it. They used a $250,000 network analyzer to plot the attenuation between the signals, which is obviously the most important thing to do with a $250,000 network analyzer.
Now get ready for some conspiracy stuff. Every helmet amplified the 2.6 Ghz band by 30 db and the 1.2 Ghz and 1.5 Ghz bands by 20 db regardless of the position of the antenna. Bands between 1.2 Ghz and 1.4 Ghz are allotted to the U.S. government, while the 2.6 Ghz band is reserved for mobile phones. The researchers conclude their tongue-in-cheek study with this statement:
It requires no stretch of the imagination to conclude that the current helmet craze is likely to have been propagated by the Government, possibly with the involvement of the FCC. We hope this report will encourage the paranoid community to develop improved helmet designs to avoid falling prey to these shortcomings. [Intel via ZGeek]
Their pictures of the test subjects are also worth a look.
And to anyone who found this post via a search engine while looking for improved tin foil hat designs, allow us to offer a suggestion. We’ve heard from a doctor (who lost his license FOR SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER so you know he’s legit) that the best way to deflect government radio frequencies is to wear a condom and take a birth control pill every day. Good luck!
[Pictures via JoanneCasey and Buzzfeed.]