No it's not. It's based on statistics. If there are 10 boxes and 5 of them have water under them and you can only find the ones with water half time you are doing no better then chance.
It's been tried. It doesn't work. If you think it does, go win a million dollars. Why are you afraid to try? What do you have to lose? Randi sets up the tests just like any proper double blind test whether it's for water dousing or testing a cancer drug.
of them have water under them and you can only find the ones with water half time you are doing no better "then" chance.
I'm sure you must be an educated person...the word is "than"!
That's not true. All the dowser needs to do to claim the prize is to have a success rate that is significantly higher than expected by chance alone.
I think you have that backwards: the proponents should show evidence that it works, before claiming that it does.
So you yourself haven't tried it either?
Harry K
Thanks for the admission that you haven't.
Harry K
Whether I've tried it or not is beside the point. The burden of proof is on those making the claim. So far, despite repeated attempts, *nobody* has *ever* been able to demonstrate, under controlled conditions, that dowsing works any better than simple guessing. If you think it does work, then all you need to to is demonstrate it to become an instant millionaire.
I'm not saying it works and I'm not saying it doesn't but the way it was explained to me by my witcher was that it does not actually find water, it finds the fissures underground that are likely to be carrying water. In this is correct then it would not work on boxes of water. My driller's attitude is basically that, given the choices, well witching is more reliable than any current scientific methods. I held by breath, paid the $150, and got a good well.
The really hilarious thing about this dowsing nonsense is that if people really believed that it worked, they'd mount their rods under sealed glass with precision bearings.... not HOLD THEM IN THEIR HANDS.
That's like having cork on sandpaper for a a bearing! Of course if they actually made such an instrument, it become blindingly obvious how useless it'd be in about one minute.
Ulysses wrote: ...
I have no idea whether that assertion is anything but that particular person's opinion (that is, is that a consensus amongst "those knowledgable in the field"?). Even if so, that assumption is dependent again on local hydrology characteristics--there are many places that don't have fissures as a feature of their aquifers just as there are places where the existence of a fissure doesn't mean there's any water to flow through it.
he's willing to pay for. There are certainly techniques that have pretty good chance of determining the presence of water but they tend to be expensive and instrumentation/equipment intensive so residential wells can rarely justify the expense.
OTOH, bring in Schlumberger or Halliburton and they can likely tell you what you want to know if you have deep enough pockets... :)
--
When my well witcher was here I tried the magic wands and got definate, strong movements of the wands in some areas and not others. I believe that I was not subsonsciously influenced by any outside factors. The terrain and bushes etc. all looked pretty much the same to me and, having no experience digging wells, would not recognize any of the above-ground signs anyway. I found that the results were very consistant. I even went back to my well, after the witcher was gone, to test my own wands because I didn't remember if they were supposed to swing apart or cross and was able to establish that by using my well as reference. Like I said elsewhere, my witcher said it finds fissures, not water. Maybe he's a little more advanced than some other witchers. I should mention that it got strong readings where I don't think a geologist would think there is a fissure underground. That could, of course, mean that either there is a fissure where one might expect it to be or it was a false reading.
When the well driller first suggested that I hire a witcher I was quite skeptical. But since I wanted a good well I was not about to argue with the most respected and successful driller in the county. After talking to the witcher and trying it myself I could see that there was something to it. Nobody told me that it is 100% reliable.
I'm late getting in on this thread, but here goes anyway. I recognize some of the names on this thread from other newsgroups and have a great deal of respect for them, Doug, Dan.. In any case I did not know there was so much controversy about water dowsing, or witching or whatever you like to call it until I read this. I read The Skeptical Inquirer several times as an undergrad when I worked in the library..don't recall any articles about this topic, but, if there were, I probably skipped over them for juicier stuff like bashing Uri Geller.
Anyway, wife & I buy a place in the "country" 10 years ago. A month after I moved there I had to find which way the water line came to our house. My boss, who was there one day, suggested he could find it with two bent coat hangers. I didn't believe him and thought him to be a dolt, but he did find it and he had never been there before. Skip ahead 2 years and I have my back yard torn up to put in a french drain. I needed to find where the underground power line ran to our house. I tried the bent hangers myself just for fun. I found the power line but I also kept coming across something separate from it, running from what seemed to be straight out from the house then angling off parallel, nearly exactly where I was going to dig the drain. I dug down slowly and found a septic line that came from a bathroom off the garage. Prior to this I thought (actually counted on) all the plumbing being in the house (we have a full basement) and I knew and could see in the basement where the main drain line went out from there to the septic tank. The garage bathroom was in an area I had to crawl under and just never looked to make sure about the line. Since the basement ceiling is covered with drywall, I had no idea the line did not go to the main line and was a separate line out from the house to the septic tank.
Flash forward to 1 month ago; we're having tremendous rainstorms. My gutters were continually overflowing, dumping water into the window wells of the basement, then into the basement. There was a drain in the basement that when this water finally reached it, would not drain. The drain was clogged somewhere. I knew where the gutters drained into a PVC pipe several dozen yards away from the house and always thought the gutters and the basement drain all went into the same 4" drain pipe that was visible coming out of the ground. With no flow coming out of it, I wondered if there was a second line (and what in the world this line went to!). I pulled out the bent wires again. Now there is a low spot in the yard I thought might have been a drain exit that always kept water in it. This is where it must be, and must be clogged up with a little dirt. I'd been meaning to dig it out for years, but never had a problem with the gutters before so I was lazy and didn't. I used the wires, criss-crossed and back and forth looking for the line that led to this low spot. Nothing. I was so convinced the line was there and the wires were wrong I dug down about
4' in a about a 5' length. Still nothing.I went back to the house and started using the wires again walking around the house in a circle. I kept coming across not one, but 3 separate "lines" from the house. Remember now the ground is saturated with several days of rain giving no clue to the location of the drain exits (and I only thought there was 1). I located the exit points of two of the three lines (the third being the one I thought was the one for all previously), covered with years of dirt. Turns out there was one drain line for the gutters, one drain line for the basement, and a third for a drain at the bottom of a basement stairwell. I never knew these lines existed up until then.
Now I don't claim anything at all, but I know it worked in these cases. I have degrees in math and computer science, was raised in the "city" and moved out to the country at the young age of 35 so I'm not a country boy that has lifelong tales of relatives like Aunt Lurleen or Cousin Booger doing this stuff. If you have a better explanation of how this worked in these cases, let me know. Why don't I write Mr. Randi? Well I might, but I'd prefer he or someone in his circle just come out to my place and explain how this works, and how it happens. For fun today and (mainly) because this whole thread made me question everything I had seen, I had my wife walk me around in the yard while it was hot as hell, blindfolded. Walked around & around and the wires did their thing again. Same place. The skeptics claim it "doesn't work", yet I know that it did in these cases. I didn't know where the lines were, I didn't even know the lines existed. I do not claim any super-powers or religious intervention. Nothing of the sort. It just is what it is. Sorry, Randi.
Cheers
Obviously if you were aware of any influence, it wouldn't be SUBconscious.
[snip long (and possibly tall) tale]
If you're convinced you can do it, just contact the James Randi Educational Foundation, and demonstrate your ability under controlled conditions. You'll become an instant millionaire.
Yes, Doug, I said it was a long post in the subject line.
So, having written such a long post, what would I gain from making it up (what you meant by "tall tale"), walking around in the 95 degree heat at noon today seeing if I was crazy? I'll ask again, what is the explanation for finding things I didn't know were there? I want to know for my own benefit, since I cannot find an explanation other than "it just is". Just like lots of other things science hasn't explained yet. Not "can't",..just "hasn't yet". And the invitation stands for anyone.
I'll exit here since this is already degenerating to what sounds like "I don't need to know or see you to know you're lying" and going back to the homebrewing and ww'ing groups.
Some things are just tradition and "just is". No need for an "explanation".
I can explain it: It's like drinking Pepsi and flipping a coin and having it come up heads 5 times in a row and concluding that Pepsi- drinking causes heads to come up more than pure chance.
The logical test of this would to do it a lot more and see if it holds. It has been tried with dowsing (the "best" dowsers) and it does _not_ hold. You are one of those people who have not done the testing yet beyond your initial hypothesis
The most obvious explanation is that -- by your own description -- you were out there _looking_for_something_. It's hardly surprising that you found something.
Again -- if you really believe in this stuff, just demonstrate it under controlled conditions, and you're an instant millionaire.
Obviouslyh you aren't bothering to _read_ what I wrote. Note the bit about being a 'semiskeptic'.
I guarantee you that if you try it and you are one for whom it works it will scare the hell out of you the first time. You will also spend a lot of time trying to figure out just how _you_ are making the rods move. I have never been able to do it.
Harry K
I vaguely recall reading some experiments way back when where people tried building them to remove any possibility of the operator influencing them. Don't recall any of the details or what the results were. Harry K
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.