Dowsing

[Mary Fisher]

Owain mentioned dowsing on the Drain flies thread. I've never heard of drain flies!

But has anyone here done dowsing?

Mary

[Dave Fawthrop]

|Owain mentioned dowsing on the Drain flies thread. I've never heard of drain |flies! | |But has anyone here done dowsing?

Yes long ago, Very strange things happened, but I was unable to produce consistent and repeatable results :-(

[Bookworm]

Yes. Dead easy. Get two straight pieces of wire coat hanger and bend the ends down at right angles for about three inches. Hold the bent-down ends vertically in the centre of each hand that you 'make a fist'. do this losely so the rods are free to swing. ( you can cut two pieces of broomstick about 4" long and drill loose holes for the wires down the centre and hold these in your fists) With the straight ends of the wire pointing away from you and your arms fully extended start walking in the desired direction. When you cross a water pipe/drain etc the two rods will start swinging and will cross each other at the point of water.

The other week there were two guys in our street trying to trace an oil pipe with hi tech equipment. No deal. I got my rods out and showed them how to dowse. They got it bang on. They were a bit bemused and I had an enigmatic smile on my face.

[John White]

I've tried it with minor success. A friend of mine can do it consistently though.

I once got him to find a buried junction box for some streetlights. He uses two bent welding rods rather than a forked twig, and these crossed over at the exact spot. He even correctly told me how far down the box was.

I was deeply skeptical before I saw it done. I don't know HOW it works and neither does my friend, but it certainly does.

John

[Mary Fisher]

I know HOW it's done, just wondered if folk here had.

:-)

Mary

>

[Mary Fisher]

I did it on a map of daughter's farm with a pendulum to find a water course. It worked. Never tried it since though. Never need to and just don't think about it.

Mary

[Harry Bloomfield]

Mary Fisher expressed precisely :

No, but I know of a very convincing person who has done it.

[Geronimo W. Christ Esq]

This is 100% pure and total bunkum.

If you can do this and prove that it works, you are entitled to a $1m dollar prize from the James Randi foundation

The prize has been available for years, and still no dowsers have stepped up to claim it.

[the original poster mentioned this word, and I couldn't believe he was seriously thinking of the silly made-up charming bunkum, so I looked it up on dictionary.com. Apparently the word means to soak or saturate, so I assumed he had some other technical reason for mentioning it ..]

Then you should go for the $1m dollar prize from Randi. Post back and let us know how you get on. Can I have 10% for letting you know about it ?

[Geronimo W. Christ Esq]

It's nonsense. What's the explanation for dowsing in terms of the known laws of physics ?

[Geronimo W. Christ Esq]

[The Medway Handyman]

It doesn't.

your friend can demonstrate the alleged ability under scientific conditions he is up for $1,000,000.

If he cracks that I'll sell my house & add £200,000 myself.

[Geronimo W. Christ Esq]

Hey! I told him first ! :)

.. Wikipedia has an article detailing several large-scale experiments done over the past few decades attempting to prove dowsing. All of them were failures.

In Randi's tests in 1980 he put ten plastic pipes under the ground, ran water through one of them and asked the dowsers to say which pipe was carrying the water - they were only able to tell correctly 11% of the time (ie they guessed and hit the button a few times). The dowsers agreed the test conditions prior to the test.

[John White]

I'm not asking you to believe in dowsing. I'm not asking you to believe what I say. I'm not even asking you to believe that my friend and I exist.

You're quite free to believe whatever you want to, so don't worry about it.

Why would he want to do that? What makes you think he cares whether people believe in dowsing or not?

You seem to have a lot of faith that money will provide a solution. Personally I doubt it, but I'm honestly glad that you believe this, as it will make your life much more straightforward.

John

[The Natural Philosopher]

Dowsing works, but you can't prove you weren't cheating in a RANDI test.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There is none.

It seems to not have a problem working, despite that.

[John White]

Educational Foundation are coming at this from the right angle.

That may surprise you, but if you start off by believing that a thing is true, then the tendency is to do experiments which will prove your theory. If however you start on the basis that the claims are NOT true, then by definition the standard of proof has to be much higher.

On the other hand, as my history teacher used to say, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".

I do not know how it works, I have only seen it done as I described earlier in this thread. I would however like to know.

John

[meow2222]

and easy to observe. It is known to many dowsers just the same as non-dowsers. The critique of those that think dowsing is a direct object to pendulum force of some kind is a straw man argument.

Does dowsing work? I tried it once out of curiosity and was surprised to get results, but would be truly unhappy to see someone charging a client for it. Its at best way out there. If its your last chance, cant hurt to try it.

NT

[meow2222]

Lots of things have no yet known explanation. The workings of the human body are the prime example. There is genuine evidence against dowsing, but more often its invalid arguments that are offered.

NT

[John Rumm]

same goes for accupuncture, yet that even works on animals.

[owdman]

If dowsing worked it would be a very valuable skill - for ordinary purposes such as finding water pipes etc let alone the exotic such as finding gold, buried treasure and so on. So any dowser could earn a bomb. In which case they would advertise their services. There aren't any in the yellow pages. There aren't any (convincing) on the net. Where are they? The answer is that there aren't any - it doesn't work. However there many service industries who regularly need to search for pipes. cables etc etc. They don't use dowsers. They would if they were any good, but they aren't, it's a myth. The occasional anecdote is not enough to amount to evidence. The proof's in the pudding - those who really need them don't use them - cos they don't exist, or if they claim to have the ability can't demonstrate it.

cheers

Jacob