Carn said:
Didn't read the paper, but i my statement refers to the above discussed test of dowsers and geologist trying to find natural water sources.
Fair enough not plowing through the paper, it's massive. But the reason I quote it is because it is directly related to the discussion, as it is a dowser's account of his participation in an extended (years) water drilling campaign run by professionals and geologists.
And the chance is there, because its something, which can be important for survival. And whenever something has been important for survival since millions of years, there is the chance that trained biological systems are superior to scientific approaches.
Take interpreting human faces, science is trying to get at that, but huamn brain is still far ahead.
I guess that's a fair jumping off point for your opinion, but the counter to it is - dysentary. 100s of thousands of people die from this because they
cannot find or maintain a clean water supply. Science, on the other hand can provide such things as water purifying tablets, rehydration tablets, antibacterials and water treatment systems. So I don't believe that your supposition necessarily holds water [groan].
I do not know how good a trained human is at finding water sources by just observing the landscape, but the best might still be better than science. Therefore i also suggested to compare dowsers to people, whose survival still relies on finding water in dry enviroment, because those are certainly among the best.
The paper I quoted does just this - unfortunately it is riddled with errors and misrepresentation as it is from a biased dowser's account. If you don't wish to plough through the paper itself Google counter discussions or GroupGoogle at sci.skeptic on the subject.
Of course the best might be among geologists, who i expect also have skill in just searching by their senses, then they would certainly win against dowsers.
Most geologists would refer to seismic and known artesian basin data, I think you'll find. An experienced Australian Aboriginal, for instance, would probably beat a geologist hands down. But this is more from local knowledge of the intermittent water courses in the area s/he lives in than anything else. This is bushcraft and not many geologists would be particularly experienced in such a thing.
In detecting water that does not cause any visible signs on the surface(e.g. pipes), i expect dowsers to fail always miserable, because then their subconcious has no useful information to interpret and then dowsers are down to chance, as it has been shown in numerous tests.
But dowsers also claim that it is not necessary to have experience in dowsing in order to be able to dowse. Most insist that the dowsing reaction is due to an unknown force and that anyone can do it. Furthermore, your expectations of their success at finding water is still not borne out in field tests, beyond anecdotal "evidence". I have spoken to a number of "good ole boys" who claim to have seen dowsers locate a water supply site for an oil drilling site - but frankly, the only reason you'd be setting up a wellsite in the first place is that you've already got a good idea of the geology of the area, and on land you're practically guaranteed to hit water anyway.
Thinking about it there is no reason the average dowser is good at finding naturally occuring water, but maybe among the thousands of dowsers around the world, there is one good and if chance gets this one into a test against science, then he might win with luck.
Yes he may get lucky. I believe that one dowser tested by JREF or the Australian Sceptics, while not beating random chance, was significantly success as to excite them enough to retest him. He failed at the repeat test. And that is the crux of it - repeatability.
Chance has nothing to do with demonstrating a phenomena.
By chance I might score a hole in one in golf, but unless I can repeatedly hole out on that fairway, this is all it is, chance. Nothing more extraordinary than that.
