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Why Mythbusters never debunked dowsing

Explorer said:
I read them first time around, but that was quite a while ago now. My point is a different one though, and its not really about the challenge, its more about the psychology and mindset of both the "professional" dowsers and their clients. Obviously there is an element of them who are happy to have their claims tested, but despite the background of that history of testing and the failures, the practice continues, dowsers are hired, and at least, if they are being paid for outcome only, they get paid for instant results, or they don't, presumably. This is rather different from say psychics, where their predictions and forecasts, the outcome is totally random, and if they get a hit, it is by chance only and at some indeterminate time in the future, and no better than my or your made up predictions, or cold readings.
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Nope, it's exactly the same. Same cognitive biases, same eagerness to believe, same reluctance to consider (or even look for) evidence against what you want to believe.

Explorer said:
If I set myself up as a professional dowser, I would probably very quickly get disheartened if my hit rate fell below a certain level, when I would say to myself, what the hell am I doing this for? I would probably soon give up, so why do these guys have a mindset that says otherwise. Why do they bother?
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Confirmation bias and willful ignorance is all they need to convince themselves that the belief in which they are heavily emotionally invested is correct.

Explorer said:
That of course is my personal psychological reasoning. I would speculate, that if they belong to a group of dowsers that meet regularly, they give themselves support if they are feeling low, and encourage the failed members to carry on regardless, and peer pressure takes over. Other than that, any delusions can only go so far before the pressure to give up is too great to resist. I wonder how many over the years have given up.
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There are still plenty of psychics, astrologers and homeopaths too, despite ample objective evidence that none of them work, and still plenty of customers for them.
 
JimOfAllTrades said:
If that link doesn't work for you, try this one. There is still some weirdness about the DNS settings.

Million Dollar Challenge

Have any thoughts about the JREF Million Dollar Challenge?
www1.internationalskeptics.com www1.internationalskeptics.com
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Ok, I was wrong about the weirdness in the DNS settings, it was weirdness in my computer. A few years ago when the registration for the domain expired for a few days I added an entry to my hosts files to lead to the IP address. Naturally I forgot all about it, and it took me until today to figure it out. So the DNS entries appear to be fine and it was just me.

Although I still don't know why my link opened in a new tab.

Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.
 
Darat said:
So what caused the dowsing device to twitch/move? It can't have been electromagnetic or gravity (we know how to test for these and how indeed to use them to find stuff underground) the only forces that can interact with the device are from the person holding the device, so if it isn't "ideometric" then it has to be a "conscious" decision of the dowser to use force to move the device. Do you hold that dowsers are knowingly moving their device?
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Any reason it wouldn't be? If someone handed me a dowsing stick you can bet it would be totally under conscious control.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Any reason it wouldn't be? If someone handed me a dowsing stick you can bet it would be totally under conscious control.
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If you were dowsing, you might be consciously controlling the stick, but a believer might be doing it subconsciously.
 
steenkh said:
If you were dowsing, you might be consciously controlling the stick, but a believer might be doing it subconsciously.
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Which is why, when they know where the water is in a controlled experiment, they are successful but when they do not, e.g., samples are blinded, they fail.
 
EHocking said:
Which is why, when they know where the water is in a controlled experiment, they are successful but when they do not, e.g., samples are blinded, they fail.
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Of course. The subconscious isn’t cleverer than the conscious, and draws most of its actions from the conscious. The point is that the person doesn’t know that she is doing it.
 
I demonstrate the ideomotor effect most effectively with a pendulum. I can change the direction of the swing by thinking about it, even if I'm trying not to move the hand that's holding it.
 
arthwollipot said:
I demonstrate the ideomotor effect most effectively with a pendulum. I can change the direction of the swing by thinking about it, even if I'm trying not to move the hand that's holding it.
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Me too. Back in the day I had a dowsing board game (I think it was branded as from "The Amazing Kreskin"). I tried hard as I could to hold the plumb bob still, but it would still swing the way I thought about. Then I steadied my hand by bracing it against a wall and the effect almost disappeared. Further restricting the movement of my fingers with tape reduced the effect to about zero. But just trying to hold my hand still was surprisingly ineffective. At least I was surprised. But I was only about 10 years old.
 
In the UK there is an old test for determining the sex of the unborn baby, you suspend a ring over the bump and which way it swings or circles tells you the sex of the unborn baby. Amazingly this has about a 50% chance of being right!
 
Darat said:
In the UK there is an old test for determining the sex of the unborn baby, you suspend a ring over the bump and which way it swings or circles tells you the sex of the unborn baby. Amazingly this has about a 50% chance of being right!
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Amazing!
I would also not be surprised if different people interpreted the same direction of swing in opposite ways.
 
arthwollipot said:
I demonstrate the ideomotor effect most effectively with a pendulum. I can change the direction of the swing by thinking about it, even if I'm trying not to move the hand that's holding it.
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Exactly. And people with minimal critical skills could easily believe they have these abilities without thinking they are committing fraud.
But of course, some arguments against a test seems to show that somewhere in the back of their head they know it is false.
 
steenkh said:
Exactly. And people with minimal critical skills could easily believe they have these abilities without thinking they are committing fraud.
But of course, some arguments against a test seems to show that somewhere in the back of their head they know it is false.
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Probably for some - but it seems something more is going on than straightforward fraud. If you look at any of the tests that there are videos of or good reports after failing, they are often confused and uncertain but then start to convince themselves again. I think it's tied into a need to be special, unique, and so on. It seems to me to be a fundamental behaviour of humans.
 
JimOfAllTrades said:
Me too. Back in the day I had a dowsing board game (I think it was branded as from "The Amazing Kreskin"). I tried hard as I could to hold the plumb bob still, but it would still swing the way I thought about. Then I steadied my hand by bracing it against a wall and the effect almost disappeared. Further restricting the movement of my fingers with tape reduced the effect to about zero. But just trying to hold my hand still was surprisingly ineffective. At least I was surprised. But I was only about 10 years old.
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A friend of mine had the same kit, with us at about 10 years old. I was intrigued by it but skeptical even then. That was the first thing I thought of when I heard recently that Kreskin died.
 
When I was about ten years old, somebody gave me an Ouija board. Now I know that it was supposed to work through the ideomotor effect, but it simply did not work for me, so in the end I gave it up.

ETA: I wonder what would have happened if I was given a pendulum instead. At the time my skepticism was only awakening. Maybe I would have become a believer?
 
steenkh said:
When I was about ten years old, somebody gave me an Ouija board. Now I know that it was supposed to work through the ideomotor effect, but it simply did not work for me, so in the end I gave it up.

ETA: I wonder what would have happened if I was given a pendulum instead. At the time my skepticism was only awakening. Maybe I would have become a believer?
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Apparently they work better when other people are holding the planchet at the same time. I suspect that thinking about the possibility that your friend is moving it makes it more likely that you will involuntarily move it.
 
I Am The Scum said:
Apparently they work better when other people are holding the planchet at the same time. I suspect that thinking about the possibility that your friend is moving it makes it more likely that you will involuntarily move it.
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My brother also participated, but it might not have helped because he was too little to read and write at the time :)
 
steenkh said:
My brother also participated, but it might not have helped because he was too little to read and write at the time :)
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But he wouldn't need to be able to read and write as long as the spirit could... It's quite ironic that a board game designed for people to push around a pointer has become the standard for so called spirit communication. Plus of course why doesn't the planchet move around without being touched if it is a spirit doing the moving....


(Yes I am aware of the many "reasons" given for why people have to have their fingers on the planchet, they all boil down to "people move the planchet" just as the board game was designed.)
 
Whereas the ideometer effect explains the outcome, I am fascinated by the creativity that can emanate from it on some of the occasions I have tried it during my own experimenting. I assume it is the subconscious part of the brain, perhaps the same part that is responsible for creating dreams is somehow transmitted by a dominant participant into physical movement of the pointer.
 
Most people assume that their brain is almost all devoted to producing their consciousness, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Your unconscious mind is capable of doing everything from keeping your heart pumping to driving a car without any intervention from your consciousness. It's certainly capable of twitching a rod at the place which all the information it has received and processed (most of which was never brought to the attention of your conscious awareness) suggests is the most likely place to find water. Be careful when giving it full rein to spell stuff out on a Ouija board, though. It doesn't have the filters and censors your conscious mind has.
 
Certainly there are no filters, but I found Ouija can be all things to all people. I am interested in local history, and that is what I got from experimentation. Think of it as something dark and evil, and you will get devils.
 
Does it bug anybody when they hear it called a "weejee" board? Technically it should be pronounced "Oui-yah", the words in French and German for "yes", but I've never heard it said that way. (It's most common with the sounded "j".)
 
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