• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Dowsing by a Skeptic

SaskMick said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kocsJpsgl-A
Click to expand...


SaskMick - I watched your video. Do you understand that it shows the exact opposite of a controlled experiment?

First, you walk around the yard and find a spot. The audio is poor, but I think you claim you're standing over a pipe of some sort. You do no digging and you expose nothing. There's no reason for anyone to believe you've found anything whatsoever. (Even if you did dig up something, I think this is your yard and it would be natural for you to have a pretty good idea where all your own underground lines are.)

Second, you ask a woman (I think it's your wife) to walk back and forth by the spot. She does so twice at a reasonable pace while you watch. You then turn your back and she walks the same path she just walked at the same pace. Since you've already seen how long it takes her, there is no way to rule out that you are just remembering and not sensing anything.

Here's a simple test you can do for yourself. This isn't sufficient to convince an observer but maybe it will help you: Divide your lawn into six equal segments and assign each a number. Take a small something you think you can detect - a coin perhaps. Blindfold yourself as well as you can. Have your wife roll a die and then plant the coin in the segment she rolled. Then, blindfolded, let yourself loose on the lawn. See if you can find the segment the coin is in. Do that 6 times in a row. See how many you get right.

Last, please don't smoke. It's very, very bad for you.
 
SaskMick said:
This is my last post tonight.


I will try to explain again. The rods are only a visual indicator. It is the dowser that does the dowsing, not the rods. I have discovered that dowsing does not work when I have just woken up, or when I am tired. It also does not work when I am not relaxed. I doubt I would feel relaxed when being subjected to controlled conditions.

That's just the way it is. But I can show you !

Good night:)
Click to expand...

This suggests that your talent will never be useful. Anytime the outcome of your dowsing is important, you will be nervous. When it doesn't matter, you're perfect. When something's at stake, you're useless. How is this even a thing?

Ward
 
Well, I watched the video. (Beats workin'.) I wasn't able to watch in very high quality, being limited to my phone, so I may have missed something important. The video did make me want to visit him, to pet his dog. Nice looking dog. A basset or basset mix, I think. It didn't even bite SaskMick when he told it to bugger off. :D

I'll summarize for those who don't want to, or can't, watch it:

First, SaskMick finds a pipe (I think he says a plastic pipe covering a wire) in his yard with the dowsing rods (I assume he knew where it was; we never see the pipe), and marks it with a jar. He then asks Leslie (his wife?) to try to find it (remember, it's obviously marked), and she apparently fails.

He then turns his back and has Leslie walk until he tells her to stop, which he does when the rods move. (The camera remains with his POV; we don't see Leslie walking now, but we see the rods.) Both times, when he turns back she has stopped at the jar.

It should be noted that there is a quite strong wind, which SaskMick comments on during the video.

Each time the rods move, they do so dramatically, almost as if there were some invisible force moving the air swiftly. :) (Actually it appears that the left rod does most of the moving.)

So, in sum, nothing new here. You can skip the video, unless you like dogs.

Edit: Daggone it, Loss Leader beat me to it while I was watching/posting.
 
Last edited:
I believe I'm correct in saying that doswers are by far the largest category of applicants for Randi's million dollar challenge. Of all those tested over many decades, not a single one has shown that dowsing works. I also believe that of all those tested over many decades, not a single one has not come up with an excuse afterwards about why they failed.
 
Reno said:
I also believe that of all those tested over many decades, not a single one has not come up with an excuse afterwards about why they failed.
Click to expand...
It was my impression that most of them find an excuse for why they failed. This ranged from "Skeptics send negative vibes", over "I was not feeling at the top of my abilities" to "I can only find flowing water, not water in a bottle". Some even claim they have been tricked.

It is very hard to divest oneself of a strong belief.
 
I've only found him on another forum about spirituality. He seems sincere there and here. I have no reason to doubt him. He seems like a run of the mill dowser who truly believes (or wants to believe) that he can dowse. He's new to it and if he can grow accustomed to doing it, he might be willing to take a real test and maybe win a million dollars. Time will tell. Right now, he can't dectect anything unless he already knows it's there.

Ward
 
I think dowsing can be dangerous. Several years ago I called the local water utility about a low water pressure problem. They said the reducer off of the main line was working properly and I needed to dig up and replace the water line between the reducer and the house. One of the men proceeded to whip out a collapsible rod with a handle (his dowsing rod), wave it around, then painted a line between the reducer and what he claimed was the water inlet to the house. It also traced a straight line between the electrical meter and the junction box to my garage.

I pointed this out and let him know I wasn't going to kill myself digging where there was probably a wire with 220 volts. I called the utility company and the next day I had properly positioned lines painted identifying water, cable and power. The water line painted on the ground lead directly from the reducer to the shutoff valve under the house. The power line to the garage was right next to the "water line" the dowser painted.

Had I dug where the dower indicated, I might have been injured or killed. I wrote to the utility asking if they allowed their employees to endanger their customers by identifying power lines by dubious methods such as dowsing. I never did get a suitable reply. No one should just dowsing to keep them alive.

Ranb
 
Last edited:
Actually if it "can't be tested scientifically" then it simply doesn't exist in practice. Tested scientifically means that it is reproducible and can be shown to others if they ask. Magic only works sometimes, in a way indistinguishable from chance when tested. Science tries to change the conditions so the result will repeat a statistically significant number of times; magic can't seem to do this. In fact, it need not happen every singe time to be scientifically proven. Top basketball players don't always sink a free throw every time they shoot. But one can show that they can do it much more often than chance.

If it can't be shown to be indistinguishable from change, it is not scientifically proven. Even more so, it is useless, because you can't count on it if you need it. Dowsing has a long history of people who think that they can dowse, but when tested, they can do no better than random chance in a double blind test. That should tell you something.
 
Last edited:
Reno said:
I believe I'm correct in saying that doswers are by far the largest category of applicants for Randi's million dollar challenge. Of all those tested over many decades, not a single one has shown that dowsing works. I also believe that of all those tested over many decades, not a single one has not come up with an excuse afterwards about why they failed.
Click to expand...
That's not at all true. There was that one who was definitely genuine, and whose test only failed because he was misled by the gold leaf lettering on the spine of a nearby book. How can you explain that?
 
freedy said:
I can dowse for telephone cables.
When I know where the cables are located the rods react with close to 100% accuracy. When I don’t know where the cables are located, the rods, unfortunately, are very vague.
Click to expand...
freeedy, your post is getting lost in the discussion of SaskMick's claim. Please start a separate thread and describe your own capabilities.
 
Rat said:
That's not at all true. There was that one who was definitely genuine, and whose test only failed because he was misled by the gold leaf lettering on the spine of a nearby book. How can you explain that?
Click to expand...

Even better, it wasn't gold leaf, it was gold colored leaf. Talk about sensitivity!
 
dowsing
ˈdaʊzɪŋ/
noun
The act of being dowsed, usually by rods.

The rods are sentient parasites which wander around and eventually latch onto foolish mortals who are then led by the hands to lurch about the landscape looking for loot.
 
Donn said:
dowsing
ˈdaʊzɪŋ/
noun
The act of being dowsed, usually by rods.

The rods are sentient parasites which wander around and eventually latch onto foolish mortals who are then led by the hands to lurch about the landscape looking for loot.
Click to expand...

Nope. The rods are kinetic missiles launched from orbit. COD tells us so.
 
SezMe said:
freeedy, your post is getting lost in the discussion of SaskMick's claim. Please start a separate thread and describe your own capabilities.
Click to expand...
I thought he was joking, but now you have me doubting. Close to 100% accuracy when he already knew the answer ... I thought that was a tip-off it was a joke. Sort of like: I can psychically sense lost jewelry nearly 100% of the time as long as I already know where it is.
 
Last edited:
Innocuous said:
I thought he was joking, but now you have me doubting. Close to 100% accuracy when he already knew the answer ... I thought that was a tip-off it was a joke. Sort of like: I can psychically sense lost jewelry nearly 100% of the time as long as I already know where it is.
Click to expand...
I am absolutely certain that it was a joke, and I have trouble interpreting it otherwise.
 
And what is the proposed mechanism for this "dowsing"? Do aerosolized water particles interact with the dowsing field generated by the handheld rod emitters? How does the dowsing field discern between airborne water vapor readily available and water under the ground that is not? Where's the toggle switch hidden that switches the dowsing field generators from water to gold to power line to bunyips? Where's the power source? I can't see anywhere to plug in the AAA batteries. Is there an adapter for European metric batteries?
 
Slowvehicle said:
You are "far from the first" to believe you can dowse. Others, many, many,many others, have shred your belief in their own abilities to dowse.
Click to expand...

I believe Slowvehicle meant to post "Others, many, many,many others, have shared your belief in their own abilities to dowse.

The only one who can shred his belief is the dowser himself.
 
Mister Earl said:
And what is the proposed mechanism for this "dowsing"? Do aerosolized water particles interact with the dowsing field generated by the handheld rod emitters? How does the dowsing field discern between airborne water vapor readily available and water under the ground that is not? Where's the toggle switch hidden that switches the dowsing field generators from water to gold to power line to bunyips? Where's the power source? I can't see anywhere to plug in the AAA batteries. Is there an adapter for European metric batteries?
Click to expand...


I think he indicated that the rods were just indicators and that the power resided elsewhere (in him, I guess). So, he's just tapping into his psychic power using the rods.

... Not that one such thing makes any more sense than the other.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom