Dowsing: Fact or Fiction?

me and a friend tried it not long ago.we got two lengths of tig welding rod,bent them at about a third of the length,then loosely hold them pointing forward.as we walked up his driveway the rods turned in your hand without fail when you walked over the underground drain.pretty cool.
 
We did the exavation yesterday and no spectators showed. I did locate the gas line we had to cross with our plumbing trench. It was 14" off to the side of the line the utility company marked and ten inches more shallow than they said. But we dug two and a half inches above it and didn't cut it. Had we dug using their depth and location, we would have cut the home natural gas service. I also located several drain lines which were in the way. Not a big deal as they only connected to the house rain gutters. We disconnected them and finished the excavation. The homeowner will have to reroute them himself.

As I have said more than once, the "prize money" offered by that guy is to prove some supernatural event, not to show how to locate water lines or gas lines or electric and telephone lines. There are several ways to do this, as I have also explained. One way is to use devices which electronicly enhance magnetism. Another is to bounce radio waves. Another is to use a pair of metal rods. There is no slight of hand or witchcraft involved, so the magician is not interested in giving anyone a million dollars to prove to him that it works. And out of curiosity, where do you think a stage magician came up with a million dollars to put up for the prize? Do you suppose it is one of his "gimmicks"?
 
I got too many people I know who can do this. Can't possibly not believe in it :)
 
I like Randi and Gillete Penn. They know the tricks of the trade. Its good to be a skeptic.People should question claims of super powers, magic...
 
Interesting grade-schoolish cartoon chart. Thousands of people in the building trades here in the U.S. use dowsing as I do... as a part of their construction practices. I have no idea of the dollar value of that, but I would imagine it is substantial given the cost of utility repairs and fines, and dangers of electrocution and explosions their crews face from unspotted utilities.
 
I honestly wish that I lived closer to Tennessee, I would have liked to see dowsing in action. I must admit, I'm a skeptic, but I'm willing to listen, watch, and form my own oppinion, and I am willing to modify my initial oppinion if observations merit. This is what science is. If I don't give people on both sides an equal oppertunity to make their case, I've closed my mind. And like the saying goes, minds are like parachutes. They only work when open.
 
CoyotePhysics said:
I honestly wish that I lived closer to Tennessee, I would have liked to see dowsing in action. I must admit, I'm a skeptic, but I'm willing to listen, watch, and form my own oppinion, and I am willing to modify my initial oppinion if observations merit. This is what science is. If I don't give people on both sides an equal oppertunity to make their case, I've closed my mind. And like the saying goes, minds are like parachutes. They only work when open.
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Good on you! Simply contact an excavator. A guy who runs a backhoe service and ask, "Do you use rods to find buried obstructions? Would you be willing to show me how it is done?". Or make yourself a pair of rods and try it yourself. the thin metal wires of surveyors flags work and do wire coathangers. I like using stiff copper wire. Use the method I have described and see if it works for you. Hold them in front of you about a foot apart and tilt them forward toward the ground by a few degrees so that they have to overcome gravity in order to move from that orientation. Hold them loosely in your closed fists so they can rotate without your fingers making them move. Cross an object with known magnitism like a radio speaker. Or a bucket of water, a running water hose, a water meter, a gas line, etc. IMHO, it doesn't depend on the experimenter's faith, belief, etc. Just an open mind and a willingness to try it.

As I have said, I don't know about the wild claims of map dowsing, finding water 300' down, finding lost people etc. I am limited in the range and type of obstructions I find. The closer the object, and the more conductive, the more reactive the rods. I still can't tell you what the obstruction is without following it to a source, and I can't tell the depth. But if any of you have experience with plot maps and platts, I can find a FIP or a NIP with the rods. I did it when doing architectural surveys of historic properties in Escambia, Florida.
 
Video or it didn't happen. Just kidding, kinda.

I believe in it but how about someone posting up a video or two as an example.
 
Bladerique,

You are right. Dowsing is fiction. There is no science behind it - which means it is not reproducible.

The idea that you can systematically find "something" of unspecified composition (by the sheer will of the dowser?) is, on its face, illogical.

Mark
 
Mark Schmitt said:
Bladerique,

You are right. Dowsing is fiction. There is no science behind it - which means it is not reproducible.

The idea that you can systematically find "something" of unspecified composition (by the sheer will of the dowser?) is, on its face, illogical.

Mark
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The same could be said of people starting a friction fire by rubbing two sticks together. Some people can do it. Some people never will. The strongest doubters are those who never tried it, or tried it, failed and gave up. Of course they didn't see the logic in it. So they set up a straw man and proceed to knock it down then claim victory.
 
Here's a good test for the practical dowser: if dowsing is identifying 'something' consistently (whether it be a variety of objects or fluids) and digging verifies this then digging elsewhere should find no such 'somethings'. If however digging in the negative results also finds objects or fluids that fall into this category then it would be clear that dowsing is merely finding random stuff irrespective of positive or negative results.

If you can dig in the negative results and 95% of the time find nothing and dig in the positive results and 95% of the time find something then it deserves further investigation.
 
I could make it more fun than that:

Take various plastic buckets and fill them with different things; sand, marbles, packing peanuts, pool balls, bog roll, length of old rope, those kind of things and one of them with water.

Use sensory deprivation apparatus to ensure the claimant is testing "dowsing" and not some other effect confounding stuff.

Run a few trials with the order of the buckets changed.

If the claimant can reliably pick out the water I'll strike off the tip of my little finger down to the first knuckle.

If the claimant is proved false I become landlord of a room in their home to rent to whomever I wish for one year.


....

bushidomosquito

Tres funny. Yup, if teapots really did fly someone would have exploited that.
 
HandofCod said:
Here's a good test for the practical dowser: if dowsing is identifying 'something' consistently (whether it be a variety of objects or fluids) and digging verifies this then digging elsewhere should find no such 'somethings'. If however digging in the negative results also finds objects or fluids that fall into this category then it would be clear that dowsing is merely finding random stuff irrespective of positive or negative results.

If you can dig in the negative results and 95% of the time find nothing and dig in the positive results and 95% of the time find something then it deserves further investigation.
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This is exactly what happens. When I detect "something" that might be a buried utility, I either move the excavation to an area where nothing is detected, or carefully unearth whatever is detected. Or have the utility service move the obstruction from the excavation area. In areas where nothing is detected, it is very rare that an obstuction is found. In areas where an obstruction is detected, an obstruction is almost always found.
 
baldtaco-II said:
I could make it more fun than that:

Take various plastic buckets and fill them with different things; sand, marbles, packing peanuts, pool balls, bog roll, length of old rope, those kind of things and one of them with water.

Use sensory deprivation apparatus to ensure the claimant is testing "dowsing" and not some other effect confounding stuff.

Run a few trials with the order of the buckets changed.

If the claimant can reliably pick out the water I'll strike off the tip of my little finger down to the first knuckle.

If the claimant is proved false I become landlord of a room in their home to rent to whomever I wish for one year.


....

bushidomosquito

Tres funny. Yup, if teapots really did fly someone would have exploited that.
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Lol! That sure of yourself? I'll set up the test of my choice. And if I win, I want your thumbs. Both of them. And your big toes. Both of those. And I get to lease your home to the vagrants of my choice for five years for $1 per year.
 
Codger_64 said:
The same could be said of people starting a friction fire by rubbing two sticks together. Some people can do it. Some people never will. The strongest doubters are those who never tried it, or tried it, failed and gave up. Of course they didn't see the logic in it. So they set up a straw man and proceed to knock it down then claim victory.
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Except that the means by which the fire is started, friction, is a proven and reproducible phenomenon. Anyone 'could' do it, if they know how. Successful dowsing HAS NOT been proven to repeatable. If it works for you then fine, you're magic, or have the special touch, or whatever. I suspect it has more to do with what you're looking for and how much you already know either subconsciously or otherwise where it is. The simple fact is, no matter how much you want to argue it, that if there is some force that can move metal rods that is non-magnetic since it is said to work fine on copper, there are specific ways to detect and exploit that force, and no one is doing that.
 
Yes amigo, I am certain of myself.Whilst I grasp the thin superficial face comparison in your response we would not be comparing like things and we have completely different agendas and thus our methods of testing would differ completely.If I wanted to test whether dowsing for water works my objective would be to test that and only that. The appropriate approach for that would be to take control of as many variables as possible. Failure to do that means one could never be truly sure that the effect [if any] is caused by what one thinks it is. It's about having credibility. On that, I would take up a test of your devising if it was as terse as mine. It wont be, it lacks credibility, so I will not.Let's spin this the other way round and borrow from your claim that some people "just know where north is". If I made the claim that I was such a person and you were testing me you'd be a fool to let me able to see star constellations, feel the wind direction on a terrain with which I am familiar, allow me to know the time and see the sun, get a good look a surrounding flora, and so on. If you wanted to test me you'd want to make damn sure you controlled all that because if I had access to it I'd make a mockery of your test. Hence earlier when I mentioned the pitch black featureless room and a measure of disorientation being appropriate to testing. Stick me in that environment and I couldn't reliably pick north even if $1000000 was a prize for doing so.The test I mentioned with the buckets above is equivalent in effort. It seems we are never going to agree on this because your tests just wouldn't be strict enough to illuminate anything I may have missed. :)
 
Then as I have suggested to others, try it yourself. Set simple tests for yourself. Try dowsing over a car battery. See if the rods react without input from you other than your holding them loosely in your hands as I have described, and passing them at varying distances from the battery. All you have to lose is a wire coathanger.
 
Was amused to find the following paragraph in my Physics text book earlier this week:

Psudoscience, like science, makes predictions. The predictions of a dowser, who locates underground water with a dowsing stick, have a very high rate of success - nearly 100%. Whenever the dowser goes through his or her ritual and points to a spot on the ground, the well digger is sure to find water. Dowsing works. Of course, the dowser can hardly miss, because there is groundwater within 100 meters of the surface at nearly every spot on earth. (The real test of a dowser would be finding a place where water wouldn't be found!)

-Conceptual Physics 11th edition. Paul G hewitt

Not really added in support of either side of the argument, mostly I just thought it was interesting that this popped up "during" this thread so to speak.
 
There are folk who have posted n the thread , offering to show whoever wishes what happens and how they do it .
No one took them up , despite repeated offers .

That speaks volumes in itself .
 
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