Engineer-Poet : "When things get tough, people get desperate. Desperate people will grasp at straws for solutions to their problems. Consider the worthless remedies obtained (sometimes at ruinous cost) by people with cancer. Laetrile and 'psychic surgery' just begin the list. The money spent on these nostrums has made some of the scammers wealthy.
When the problem is lack or excessive cost of energy, the list isn't constrained by regulators preventing the unlicensed practice of medicine. People still sell 'fuel-line magnets', and apparently have buyers. Even the legend of the 200 MPG carburetor appears to have new life in it." Nice post by Engineer-Poet