Tracing mains water pipe in ground ??

[Lobster]

Red herring - the term 'paranormal' is irrelevant. Randi will pay up to anybody who can prove dowsing works.

Why?

David

[dennis]

8<

No visual clues to use if I were to hazard a guess.

[Bruce]

I don't claim anything, and certainly not any specific abilities. You don't need any specific abilities to be able to use dowsing successfully. It is a simple technique that anyone can learn in a few minutes, even a sceptic like me.

I don't care why it works, or whether you (or anyone else) believes in it, or not. It works for me, and for an awful lot of other people. They probably don't care why it works any more than I do. It is simply enough for me, and them, that it works.

It's only the armchair critics like you who demand explanations. Tough, because I don't have any. But that doesn't mean that dowsing doesn't work, because it does.

[Bruce]

But who would want to?

Picking your nose works. Does that need to be proved to someone in some intricately contrived experiment with a carrot of money at the end?

[Martin Bonner]

Someone who wants a million dollars. That is actually quite a lot of people.

[Bruce]

I think you meant "someone who wants a million dollars to do an intricately contrived experiment that makes it impossible to prove anything".

Not surprisingly, the number of takers for that is vanishingly small.

But my point is, who cares? Here's a technique that works quite reliably, one that many people use successfully in their work. No-one knows how or why it works, just that it does.

Who cares? Only the armchair critics. Ironically, some of those critics might actually find it useful, but they let their prejudices get in the way instead. ;-)

[TheScullster]

"Bruce" wrote

Thanks Bruce, I might get out the old bent coat hangers at the weekend and see how sensitive my "feel" at this can become.

Phil

[Bruce]

No, you can't do that!

First, you have to prove it scientifically to several people sitting in armchairs, criticising. ;-)

[Timothy Murphy]

I take it that by "electromagnetic force" you mean the Lorentz force

F = q (E + v x B)

It is very easy to measure E and B.

[The Medway Handyman]

Its simply a scientifically controlled test that will prove a claim one way or another. It would conclusively prove or disprove a claim, not make it impossible.

Ferzacerly! Easy enough to claim you have certain abilities, very difficult to prove that you have.

It doesn't work reliably. The Kassel Dowsing Test showed conclusively that the results are no better than chance.

Give me a CAT scanner anyday thanks. We know how they work & can measure results.

[Bruce]

I make no such claim.

[The Medway Handyman]

"I have plotted the line of a 22mm alkathene water pipe that was buried to a greater depth - it varied from 450 to 600mm approximately. It wasn't too difficult except where it crossed other buried services.

My greatest successes were with buried live cables. They were relatively easy to find."

Sounds like a claim to me.

[Bruce]

It's a statement of fact, not a claim of any kind.

The only person making claims is you. From your armchair, you claim dowsing doesn't work.

Meanwhile, every day around Britain, people working for national agencies, local authorities, major PLCs such as water companies, consultants and contractors along with many smaller firms are routinely using dowsing as a technique to help them find buried services. They use other techniques too, but dowsing is a reliable and well established method that has been shown to work very well in a wide range of conditions.

Meanwhile, you claim it doesn't work. From an armchair!

You make me laugh. ;-)

[PCPaul]

Go ahead, go claim your $million. Should be easy.

Or at least say why you think the experiment isn't a valid test?

Here's the details

BTW, compared to all the ghosty-crap that my other half avidly watches, dowsing does seem to be the most plausible and least deliberate rip-off of all the varieties of unexplained phenomenon. I'd love it to work, I really would.

Show me a true double blind test, and I'll believe it. Anything less, and it didn't happen.

[Bruce]

Tell that to the thousands of people who do it, and to the major PLCs and public bodies that they work for, who benefit from the results.

From the comfort of your armchair, of course. ;-)

[Jules]

Maybe there's no water under his armchair ;)

[The Medway Handyman]

????? You are clearly claiming the ability to find water pipes & cables. If you can do that under controlled conditions you are in for a load of money. But you can't. That you chose to delude yourself doesn't provide any evidence that dowsing works.

Why would I use a PC from an armchair? I don't actually have an armchair.

Dowsing has been subjected to scientific studies where the dowsers themselves chose the conditions. They acheived results no better than chance. It does not work reliably.

I'd rather make you think.

[The Medway Handyman]

Evidence? Other that apocryphal stories?

Ad hominem attack on an armchair. Very good. Are you willing to be subjected to a double blind test or not?

The answer will be no, and you will justify that with weasel words about how it can't be tested.

I have the ability to fly around the room a foot above the floor. Done it loads of times. All my mates confirm I can do it. Do you believe me?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Jules saying something like:

Fresh incontinence bag.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Bruce saying something like:

Yada yada yada. Half the time the dowsers turn up and don't find what they're supposed to. You never mentioned that.