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Dowsing

Do you believe dowsing for water works?

  • Total voters
    33
Researchers analyzed the successes and failures of dowsers in attempting to locate water at more than 2000 sites in arid regions of Sri Lanka, Zaire, Kenya, Namibia and Yemen over a 10-year period. To do this, researchers teamed geological experts with experienced dowsers and then set up a scientific study group to evaluate the results. Drill crews guided by dowsers didn't hit water every time, but their success rate was impressive. In Sri Lanka, for example, they drilled 691 holes and had an overall success rate of 96 percent.

"In hundreds of cases the dowsers were able to predict the depth of the water source and the yield of the well to within 10 percent or 20 percent," says Hans-Dieter Betz, a physicist at the University of Munich, who headed the research group.

"We carefully considered the statistics of these correlations, and they far exceeded lucky guesses," he says. What's more, virtually all of the sites in Sri Lanka were in regions where the odds of finding water by random drilling were extremely low. As for a USGS notion that dowsers get subtle clues from the landscape and geology, Betz points out that the underground sources were often more than 100 ft. deep and so narrow that misplacing the drill only a few feet would mean digging a dry hole.

As impressive as this success rate may seem, it doesn't do much to change the minds of skeptics. Their preference is to test dowsing under more controlled conditions. Back To The Lab

Anticipating this criticism, the German researchers matched their field work with laboratory experiments in which they had dowsers attempt to locate water-filled pipes inside a building. The tests were similar to those conducted by CSICOP and JREF, and similarly discouraging. Skeptics see the poor showing as evidence of failure. Betz sees the discrepancy as an important clue. He says that subtle electromagnetic gradients may result when natural fissures and water flows create changes in the electrical properties of rock and soil. Dowsers, he theorizes, somehow sense these gradients and unconsciously respond by wagging their forked sticks, pendulums or bent wires.

Low-Energy Sensor

There is ample evidence that humans can detect small amounts of energy. All creatures with eyes can detect extremely small amounts of electromagnetic energy at visible light wavelengths. Some researchers believe the dark-adapted human eye can detect a single photon, the smallest measurable quantity of energy. Biologists also have found nonvisual electric and magnetic sensing organs in creatures from bacteria to sharks, fish and birds. Physiologists, however, have yet to find comparable structures in humans.

Betz offers no theories of how dowsers come by their skill and prefers to confine his speculation to his data. "There are two things that I am certain of after 10 years of field research," he says. "A combination of dowsing and modern techniques can be both more successful, and far less expensive, than we had thought."
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Finding Water With A Forked Stick May Not Be A Hoax

Would you class this as pseudo science?
 
keybored said:
A few more names for The List.
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The need to divide the world into That Which Has Been Scientifically Proven and That Which Is Total Bollocks really smacks of a crypto-religious tendencies to me.

I have every reason to suppose that dowsing is bollocks. However, It think it is extremely foolish to deprive oneself of a framework for being comfortable with the fact that some real phenomena could still have escaped proper scientific observation.
 
PippinTook said:
For all who think we know everything about everything
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No one has claimed to know everything about everything. It isn't necessary to know everything to know whether dowsing works. All that's required is to test whether it works. That has been done and it doesn't work.
 
Signal 11 said:
No one has claimed to know everything about everything. It isn't necessary to know everything to know whether dowsing works. All that's required is to test whether it works. That has been done and it doesn't work.
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How many tests have been carried out?
Do you know? Or is it just an acceptance of results carried from a laboratory testing scenario.
How many dowsers have been tested?
Where were they tested?
Was the test carried out in an environment that replicated all controls?

Is observation of dowsing working inadmissible in your court of evidence?
And again...have you any personal experience of either proving or disproving anything?

To be honest....I would love to see a full "in the field" test done. As in, one that has dowsers out in a field dowsing...
 
George & Bill said:
The need to divide the world into That Which Has Been Scientifically Proven and That Which Is Total Bollocks really smacks of a crypto-religious tendencies to me.

I have every reason to suppose that dowsing is bollocks. However, It think it is extremely foolish to deprive oneself of a framework for being comfortable with the fact that some real phenomena could still have escaped proper scientific observation.
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100% correct. ...
 
PippinTook said:
100% correct. ...
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Look, I'm not trying to support your claim that because your grandad did it, and he was a sound bloke, it must be legit.

My dad pulled fags out his ears, and he was a sound bloke, but that was just a half-decent closeup magic trick.

The point is just that treating a lack of evidence as proof of a phenomenon's non-existence is not smart thinking.
 
G+B - I think that is all myself and Pippin are saying . Pointing to the fact that it may not be as ridiculous as it sounds.

Signal 11- They may be unaware of the mechanism at play themselves. And I have posted responses to what is contained in that article. I accept that article. The point is you don`t accept the evidence for dowsing from this article :

Finding Water With A Forked Stick May Not Be A Hoax

neither article disproves the other. There is evidence for and against. There has been no scientific consensus.
 
Signal 11 said:
They are tested under conditions that they agree to and in which they believe they will pass the test, like in this example
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But the conditions are not replicated to nature...so no matter what is "agreed to" there is no comparison between a lab and water running 20ft under ground surrounded by soil, gravel, stones, minerals and metals.
 
George & Bill said:
Look, I'm not trying to support your claim that because your grandad did it, and he was a sound bloke, it must be legit.

My dad pulled fags out his ears, and he was a sound bloke, but that was just a half-decent closeup magic trick.

The point is just that treating a lack of evidence as proof of a phenomenon's non-existence is not smart thinking.
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I know.

I just happened to agree with you..and I agree with your final paragraph too....

Not sure why the personal stuff though......you're embarrassed that I agreed with your fair point so you decide to make a feck of me or worse my grandad?

Weird...
 
Ralph Llama said:
I`m beginning to doubt Signal 11`s ability to read. Read the thread.
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Your only response to the article was that you thought the design of the test may be at fault. The test was designed by someone trying to prove that dowsing works and agreed to by the participants.

The article posted in response did not take issue with the design of the test. It demonstrated that the analysis of the results was faulty and that using correct statistical analysis they showed that dowsing does not work. You have offered no response to that.
 
Many reasons can be given as to why some tests produce strong positives or miss completely- due to the lack of understanding of the mechanism.

Example:

In one test - Debunking Dowsing | Science | Smithsonian
The flaw in this test is that Dowsing works with the movement of energy. I have been finding water, ect all my life (50 years). a Bottle of water is actually "at rest", where as liquid of any kind in movement is energy in motion. These people were set up to fail. This was an unfair test.
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