On an April afternoon in 2009, in his home office outside Austin, Tex., John Bird was hunched over his computer trying to figure out if a Chinese company some 6,500 miles away was anything close to what it claimed to be. Silver-haired and retired, Bird, 62, likes to proj-ect an air of relaxed amusement. His personal philosophy is reflected in a sticker from The Big Lebowski over his office door: "The Dude abides..." Some things, however, Bird takes very seriously, including what he calls the "sanctity of math," which on that af-ternoon was being denied in his eyes by the claims of China Sky One Medical, a maker of products such as "magnetizing" hemorrhoid ointments and patches that would "dispel fat."
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