Dowsing will never go away

[Lanzy]

Dowsing works, if you mean the rods cross, the twig dips etc. If you mean you or anyone else can pass a controlled test, no it doesn't. I'm teaching my grandchild to juggle, much more useful skill to have.

And what about churches and ley lines? Pretty sure no church I've been in even had someone that knew what a ley line is.

 

[Einzig]

Dowsing will disappear when there is no crowd to be found for magicians and illusionist performances either.
The only real difference is that a dowser believes, or makes others believe, it is real divine knowledge where magicians admit it is a trick.
Many magic tricks have a dowsing element.

 

[EHocking]

Depends what you mean by "work". I have no doubt that dowsers occasionally find the things they are dowsing for, and more often than would be expected simply by chance, so in that sense it can be said that dowsing "works".

Yet this has never been demonstrated, so I'm throwing in my M3 too on, dowsing doesn't work - no inverted commas.

I do doubt they are "tapping into ley lines", or whatever woo they attribute their success to.

Again, they have yet to demonstrate a "success" beyond personal anecdotes. I seriously doubt it works, so ignore any purported mechanism.

There is nothing paranormal or supernatural about the ideomotor effect, which is why dowsing never "works" when the clues which it needs to produce better than chance results are carefully and methodically eliminated.

This, to me, is in direct conflict with your first sentence (hence my mini rant).

 

[Pixel42]

Yet this has never been demonstrated, so I'm throwing in my M3 too on, dowsing doesn't work - no inverted commas.

It's been demonstrated that dowsing doesn't work in controlled conditions, but these conditions by their very nature eliminate visual clues which might be "feeding" the ideomotor effect in uncontrolled conditions. What has not been demonstrated is whether or not a dowser's hit rate is better than chance when such visual clues are not eliminated. As far as I'm aware no attempt to determine this has even been made.

All I'm saying is that I find it plausible that someone who has learned how to read a landscape, consciously or unconsciously, could find water more often that someone who just makes random guesses as to where it might be. And that maybe this is why dowsers are so convinced that dowsing "works", and so surprised when it fails to work when they have no landscape to read.

ETA: Of course you could be right, it could just be confirmation bias. Lord knows there's enough precedent for false conclusions being drawn from anecdotal evidence solely because of confirmation bias. I just think that, in the case of dowsing, the involvement of the ideomotor effect does at least allow the possibility that something a little bit more interesting is going on.

 

[biomorph]

Most of your assertions are 3rd hand campfire stories, the details of which you usually misrember anyway.

Ouch!

 

[paiute]

Bob! Help me please!

Not in least interested, I have all I want. But happy to pass on the bit I know. Teaching one of my grandkids and she can do it.

Bob, there are children down at the Dana Farber being treated for cancers. A million dollars would allow some of them to survive who might otherwise not. Will you please win the Challenge and donate the money to them?

Or do you hate the dying children, Bob?

 

[ugot2bekidding]

Not in least interested, I have all I want. But happy to pass on the bit I know. Teaching one of my grandkids and she can do it.

Well, if you don't need the money, and you don't feel like donating it to a charity, you could always do it for the sake of enlightening the rest of us. Obviously, you care enough about the subject to post in this thread. Now's your chance to put this 'mystery' to rest once and for all.

 

[Big Les]

Thank you for this, thread-starter. I have a blog post (more of an article really) in progress and this is of great relevance!

 

[EHocking]

Bob, there are children down at the Dana Farber being treated for cancers. A million dollars would allow some of them to survive who might otherwise not. Will you please win the Challenge and donate the money to them?

Or do you hate the dying children, Bob?

Bob already has cures for cancer:
Here, and Here.

It is of the same veracity as his claims of dowsing success, though...

 

[EHocking]

It's been demonstrated that dowsing doesn't work in controlled conditions, but these conditions by their very nature eliminate visual clues which might be "feeding" the ideomotor effect in uncontrolled conditions. What has not been demonstrated is whether or not a dowser's hit rate is better than chance when such visual clues are not eliminated. As far as I'm aware no attempt to determine this has even been made.

What really hasn't been determined is if dowsers actually HAVE a hit rate outside of their own anecdotes. They all *claim* great degrees of accuracy on depth, flow, purity etc etc - but none have actual, factual evidence supporting these boasts. Or at least, none that I have ever seen.
Here's a thread (2 pages) on the only documented case of field "dowsing" that I'm aware of. Unfortunately a tissue of lies, IMO.

All I'm saying is that I find it plausible that someone who has learned how to read a landscape, consciously or unconsciously, could find water more often that someone who just makes random guesses as to where it might be.

We're in disagreement. It's just that I would not call this a demonstration of dowsing, regardless of what the "dowser" happens to hold in their hand, nor how much the "dowser" may protest.

And that maybe this is why dowsers are so convinced that dowsing "works", and so surprised when it fails to work when they have no landscape to read.

It is most certainly the case in the majority.

ETA: Of course you could be right, it could just be confirmation bias.

IMO, what you describe above is just that. Confirmation bias.

Lord knows there's enough precedent for false conclusions being drawn from anecdotal evidence solely because of confirmation bias. I just think that, in the case of dowsing, the involvement of the ideomotor effect does at least allow the possibility that something a little bit more interesting is going on.

In this I must, respectively disagree with you. I've had an interest in claims of dowsing for quite some time now because of the industry I'm in, you'll see my name all over the threads at JREF. The more I've seen, the less convinced that anything is going on, beyond wishful thinking.

 

[George 152]

Not in least interested, I have all I want. But happy to pass on the bit I know. Teaching one of my grandkids and she can do it.

And your -evidence- of that is ?????
So far every dowser tested under controlled conditions has not been able to produce the results they claim to be able to...
So if you are able to actually locate named items using this 'system' but refuse to demonstrate this ability I have a name for you.
However on the JREF we are not permitted to use such language

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

"I think you should "believe" a thing first and then discover if it works, rather than initially taking a negative approach."

This statement sums up woo exactly. It states the mentality of almost all of the believers I have seen. They also believe that negative evidence will be overcome, when we find out how it works. It may take hundreds of years to find out. Science doesn't know everything and eventually science will prove them right.

Ah, yes. Believe guilty before not guilty. Believe the red ball is green, blue, orange, purple, black, white, yellow, before believing that the red ball is red.

I'll fix it up for y'all:

"You should question a thing first, and then discover if it works, rather than initially making any assumtion."

 

[Pixel42]

We're in disagreement. It's just that I would not call this a demonstration of dowsing, regardless of what the "dowser" happens to hold in their hand, nor how much the "dowser" may protest.

Well I certainly wouldn't call it dowsing either, by the usual definition of "the ability to find water and other things by some kind of paranormal ability". I'd call it "a perfectly natural explanation for why dowsers sometimes appear to find water and other things slightly more often than would be expected by chance, should it ever be demonstrated that they do".

In this I must, respectively disagree with you. I've had an interest in claims of dowsing for quite some time now because of the industry I'm in, you'll see my name all over the threads at JREF. The more I've seen, the less convinced that anything is going on, beyond wishful thinking.

Fair enough.

 

[EHocking]

Well I certainly wouldn't call it dowsing either, by the usual definition of "the ability to find water and other things by some kind of paranormal ability". I'd call it "a perfectly natural explanation for why dowsers sometimes appear to find water and other things slightly more often than would be expected by chance, should it ever be demonstrated that they do".

I was about to post a "Whoa back up"-type of post to rein myself in so that I didn't start into a prolonged semantic discussion on what is dowsing - but I see that you've managed to understand my stance and so headed of that slow spiral into thread insanity!

Fair enough.

Fortunately you've managed to stop us violently agreeing with each other before I got out of hand!

 

[Old Bob]

After reading the posts I feel most are verging on hostile just because of what I do. I post in the hope I may teach or learn as we exchange methods, but not to be. The dowsers that take up the million $ bit would be very lucky to overcome the distraction of a disbelieving crowds thoughts, plus one has to be careful not to show off. The only way I can prove that it works would be to have a bore drilled and the loser pay. As for donate and "save the poor children" haven't I heard that before. And my grand daughter? yes she can dowse and a smart kid too along with my wife. Many can be trained and what gets me is how neg. this group is. George152 I could think of a good name for you too. Cancer is foisted on us through our own lack of knowledge and when break throughs happen the hero gets treated like a dowser. Anyone for flu shots?

 

[catbasket]

After reading the posts I feel most are verging on hostile just because of what I do.

You're posting tales of woo on a skeptics site. Go figure.

I post in the hope I may teach or learn as we exchange methods, but not to be.

You show no interest in learning.

The dowsers that take up the million $ bit would be very lucky to overcome the distraction of a disbelieving crowds thoughts, plus one has to be careful not to show off.

The bad skeptics psychic vibes excuse. Yawn.

The only way I can prove that it works would be to have a bore drilled and the loser pay.

But you've already done this ... how else do you know dowsing works

As for donate and "save the poor children" haven't I heard that before.

... and haven't we all heard the 'don't need the money' excuse before? Why do you hate the poor little children? Look at their cute little faces all sad ... sorry, what was the reason you can't save them again? Oh yeah, having to pay to have a bore drilled.

And my grand daughter? yes she can dowse and a smart kid too along with my wife.

Did your grand daughter and wife both have bores drilled to confirm their dowsing abilities? Wow! It's no expense spared with you when it comes to proving dowsing works. Except when it comes to the MDC. And saving the poor little children.

Many can be trained and what gets me is how neg. this group is.

You're posting tales of woo on a skeptics site. Go figure. (Deja vu!)

Cancer is foisted on us through our own lack of knowledge and when break throughs happen the hero gets treated like a dowser.

Cancer woo.

Anyone for flu shots?

Flu woo.

House! We have a winner in BS Bingo!


* catbasket wonders why Old Bob wants all the ill, sad little children to die*

 

[Ocelot]

Strictly speaking, no that's not the only way to prove that dowsing has a supernatural element, it's not even a way to prove that dowsing has a supernatural element.

 

[shuttlt]

After reading the posts I feel most are verging on hostile just because of what I do. I post in the hope I may teach or learn as we exchange methods, but not to be. The dowsers that take up the million $ bit would be very lucky to overcome the distraction of a disbelieving crowds thoughts, plus one has to be careful not to show off. The only way I can prove that it works would be to have a bore drilled and the loser pay.

Wouldn't the distraction, risk of showing off, doubters etc... mean that it wouldn't be a fair test and you'd end up paying?

George152 I could think of a good name for you too. Cancer is foisted on us through our own lack of knowledge and when break throughs happen the hero gets treated like a dowser.

Do these treatments also not work in the presence of doubters, or if the discoverer is tempted to show off? If these heroes are able to demonstrate their discovery is more than placebo, regression to the mean etc... and this has been replicated by other researchers then you are right that they have been unfairly treated.

 

[Pixel42]

The only way I can prove that it works would be to have a bore drilled

Two things wrong with this:

1. Having a bore drilled would not prove that dowsing works, even if the bore found water. In the majority of places you would be very likely to hit water eventually if you had a bore drilled, whether dowsing had indicated there was water there or not.

2. There are in fact numerous far less expensive ways of proving that dowsing works. The JREF way, for example, is AIUI to bury a dozen containers in a field, fill half with water and half with sand, have one of each open so that the dowser can check his ability is working (i.e. that his pendulum or whatever he's using reacts to the one that is visibily water and not to the one that is visibily sand) and the nasty sceptic vibes aren't putting him off, and then ask him to dowse the other ten closed containers and say which contain water and which sand. It's trivial to calculate how many would be expected to be found by chance, so a hit rate significantly higher than that can be set as the success criteria before the test is run. Such a test has been run dozens of times; not even the most experienced dowser can pass it.

 

[Marcus]

After reading the posts I feel most are verging on hostile just because of what I do. I post in the hope I may teach or learn as we exchange methods, but not to be. The dowsers that take up the million $ bit would be very lucky to overcome the distraction of a disbelieving crowds thoughts, plus one has to be careful not to show off. The only way I can prove that it works would be to have a bore drilled and the loser pay. As for donate and "save the poor children" haven't I heard that before. And my grand daughter? yes she can dowse and a smart kid too along with my wife. Many can be trained and what gets me is how neg. this group is. George152 I could think of a good name for you too. Cancer is foisted on us through our own lack of knowledge and when break throughs happen the hero gets treated like a dowser. Anyone for flu shots?

The problem is dowsing never works in a controled test, even without the doubters. There are no crowds at a JREF test, just a few people, none close to the dowser while he is testing. If your claim is that dowsing can't work under these conditons, remember that it works perfectly well when clues are still present(the open test).

If you are honest with yourself, you will realize that you have never tried dowsing without any clues that can trigger the ideomotor effect.

Edited to add: There was a crowd at Connie Sonne's test, but what she did was not dowsing, I don't know why she called it that.