Water Divining

[EdS]

from what I've been told dowzing does not find water but instead void under the surface. Usually caused by water ie spring line, drains or pipes.

 

[WhichDoctor]

from what I've been told dowzing does not find water but instead void under the surface. Usually caused by water ie spring line, drains or pipes.

Dowzing can find anything from water, underground cavities, oil, gold , car keys, your car in a car-park or anything .

 

[Spikey DaPikey]

I've done it a few times, using blue tack on a piece of cotton !!

Its good fun, if nothing else

 

[rich59]

I spent months as a teenager experimenting with pendulums and dowsing rods, I read books and tried it lots. I concluded I could not do it.

 

[Doc]

I have tried dowsing and it did not work.

It did not work for the 500 expert dowsers tested in a large scale trial at the University of Munich.

It did not work for the US Geological Survey, who, as far back as 1917, decided that any further testing of dowsing "would be a misuse of public funds."

I appreciate many people find it 'works for them' but when tested scientifically, under controlled conditions to eliminate bias, dowsing is spectacularly unsuccessful.

 

[WhichDoctor]

I have tried dowsing and it did not work.

It did not work for the 500 expert dowsers tested in a large scale trial at the University of Munich.

It did not work for the US Geological Survey, who, as far back as 1917, decided that any further testing of dowsing "would be a misuse of public funds."

I appreciate many people find it 'works for them' but when tested scientifically, under controlled conditions to eliminate bias, dowsing is spectacularly unsuccessful.

All very true but it still works .

 

[gregorach]

If you can demonstrate that under controlled conditions, James "The Amazing" Randi will give you one million dollars.

Glad I'm not the only sceptic here...

 

[WhichDoctor]

The fact that no-one can demonstrated under controlled conditions doesn't affect what I've seen. I am an open minded skeptic, I will give anything a try but I don't believe anything unless it can be proved to me. The thing is I don't need to believe in dowsing because it has been so comprehensively demonstrated to me by myself and others. When I was younger, for some reason I was much better at it than I am now, I remember once I was given a list of 20 questions with yes/no answers that I couldn't know, I got a 100% success rate (I could barely believe it). I completely understand your point of view, I would be exactly the same if I hadn't seen it.

 

[swyn]

The local water company men usually have divining rods in their vans as back up. I have seen it work and have found lost pipe runs with their help using this method.
To me it is still magic!
Swyn

 

[Jodie]

... am also a sceptic
http://skepdic.com/ideomotor.html

 

[Grooveski]

Glad I'm not the only sceptic here...

Far from it. We were left undecided as we suspected it was telling us what we already knew, and wanted to hear.

My dad and I knew there was a drain running under the garden, we hadn't put much thought into where it was but even though the field cover was out of sight we may easily have been subconciously thinking about it.
As for the well, we knew plenty of places where it wasn't. It wasn't under any of the areas that had been trench dug and it was unlikely to be in the orchard, If we'd just picked up a couple of spades and said "let's go find a well" the clearing down the bottom would have been one of the first places we'd have tried.

 

[Doc]

One of the nice things about BCUK is the civilised nature of this sort of discussion. If this was the homeopath versus sceptic discussion on Doctors Net, it would have reached the pistols-at-dawn stage by now...

 

[Goose]

One of the nice things about BCUK is the civilised nature of this sort of discussion. If this was the homeopath versus sceptic discussion on Doctors Net, it would have reached the pistols-at-dawn stage by now...

At least you would be able to fix each other up afterwards!

I appreciate many people find it 'works for them' but when tested scientifically, under controlled conditions to eliminate bias, dowsing is spectacularly unsuccessful.

I heard a theory about strange "phenomenon", dowsing,esp and such like, compared to your night vision.
At night you spot something on the edge of your vision, you look at it and it disappears, the central part of your vision is designed to look at stuff in detail but isn't so good in the dark. Around your central spot your vision isn't so good at detail but is really good in the dark. All to do with rods and cones, most people already know this.
The comparison was made along the lines of the brain does some strange stuff, until you really concentrate on it (scientific conditions) and the phenomena stops,because the brain works slightly differently.
I am open minded about stuff like this, I would like to try dowsing(maybe at the next meet?), but this theory sort of explains(yes I know it isnt exactly scientific!!) why dowsing doesnt pass a lot of scrutiny when so many people have stories of it working.
It is similar (in my mind)to accupuncture, all sorts of different explainations but none make"scientific" sense, but it does seem to work, if it works why try to explain it?

 

[Emma]

if it works why try to explain it?

Because if you can explain it you can understand at least a bit of it, and if you can understand it you might be able to improve it and make it work better, perhaps?

 

[Goose]

Because if you can explain it you can understand at least a bit of it, and if you can understand it you might be able to improve it and make it work better, perhaps?

Completely agree with you, got distracted and finished the post sooner than I thought!!!
What I meant to say was more "use it even though it can't be explained"
Accupuncture and other medicines were shunned by doctors for years because they couldn't be explained, still most chinese medicine doesn't seem explainable but it is being accepted now, which is as it should be.
I think dowsing is used by big companies and institutions "on the quiet" because it can't be explained or proved, but it does seem to work.

 

[Ketchup]

Another sceptic here!

We tested "offical" and self declared dowsers in Ostend some ten years back. They all failed miserably (and got mad at themselves, because they honestly believed they could do it).

Then again, finding water in my country is not particularly difficult. I wonder if there's a spot in the low countries where there is NO water to be found

dowsing
skeptic organisations

 

[WhichDoctor]

... am also a sceptic
http://skepdic.com/ideomotor.html

I believe that is the explanation I gave earlier in the thread .

Essentially dowzing of any kind is just a way of amplifying small unconscious movements whether it is the tiny movements of your hand as you hold a pendulum which makes it swing side to side or in a circle, or the way you hold the dowzing rods which make them cross or not. Which suggests that a part of you knows the answer already and dowzing is just a way of tapping into that knowledge.

It may be that we are all plugged into a grate universal subconscious thingy, its more lightly that your mind picks up small bits of information that your conscious mind is to busy to notice. It doesn't stop being useful just because it can be explained away.

That is how I treat a lot of alternative stuff, they are often simply very useful mental tools. If they work I use them if they don't I don't.

 

[Doc]

Here I think we agree. It's quite possible that some people are skilled at looking for subtle visible signs of underground water (this would have an evolutionary advantage after all), which only register subconciously, and this plus the ideomotor affect triggers the dowsing rods.

In controlled conditions there are no such signs, and dowsing fails.

 

[gregorach]

Yeah, that would certainly make a lot of sense to me.

 

[WhichDoctor]

Wow consensus! amazing . Thats the best explanation I can come up with anyway, there are still things it cant explain, but then that is always the case .