Merged UK Utilities using magic instead of engineering/Water dowsing

It appears to not be the policy or protocol for these companies...

BBC News said:
In a statement issued later, Severn Trent said: "We don't issue divining rods but we believe some of our engineers use them."

All the companies emphasised they do not encourage the use of divining rods nor issue them to engineers, and said modern methods such as drones and listening devices were preferred.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-42070719
 
fishbob said:
Not just the UK.
In the US, dowsing for utility locates around construction sites happens quite often. A guy in a hard hat and utility company logo orange safety vest hops out of a truck and starts waving bent welding rods around and spray painting lines on the sidewalk.

I have seen or heard stories of power, water, electric, sewer, gas, communications, even fuel lines in a bulk tank farm dowsed, marked, and signed off.
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I've seen a guy dowse for an underground power cable and he was right on the money. Don't know what that means in the big picture, but I'm inclined to think that there may be something to it and don't reject it out of hand.
 
If he was dead and had been buried in a casket that had sufficient room, and he could be aware after death, and be able to manipulate the physical world Randi would be spinning in his grave!

Dowsing has been conclusively tested, it simply doesn't work.

What is very concerning is how it keeps cropping up in places where you think they'd be safe from this bunk.

This type of crap doesn't just cost people money it actually kills people. Because it keeps cropping up murderers like McCormick are able to make money by scamming people.
 
jakesteele said:
I've seen a guy dowse for an underground power cable and he was right on the money. Don't know what that means in the big picture, but I'm inclined to think that there may be something to it and don't reject it out of hand.
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Yet it fails every test.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Because "We don't encourage our workers to try and fix infrastructure problems with magic, we just let them" is so much better.
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This.

If I started casting runes in order to try and figure out why there was a bug in some code I would expect to get sacked.

jakesteele said:
I've seen a guy dowse for an underground power cable and he was right on the money. Don't know what that means in the big picture, but I'm inclined to think that there may be something to it and don't reject it out of hand.
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Ooh, look.
Anecdote!
 
Tolls said:
This.

If I started casting runes in order to try and figure out why there was a bug in some code I would expect to get sacked.

Ooh, look.
Anecdote!
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Oh I don't know I remember delving into someone elses' code to debug years after they'd left the company and it probably would have been as effective as anything else!
 
William Parcher said:
How could or would they continue this practice if they are consistently wrong or no better than chance?
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Confirmation bias could well be the whole explanation of perceived accuracy rates higher than chance, but I think it's possible some of them may essentially be letting their unconscious mind make its best guess, based on past experience and all the data entering their senses (which will be much more than is being brought to the attention of their conscious awareness). That might give a hit rate which is genuinely better than chance.
 
That and there are many places where (when drilling wells) it would be an achievement to miss water rather than hit it but that doesn't mean you can't claim that was the spot.

And, as the video I linked to above shows, if it's a miss there's always a 'reason' (but the reason is never "it doesn't work").
 
Shouted at the radio this morning. John Humphrys had a scientist in who was far too polite about it all, especially when Humphrys told his own anecdote - basically he had to find a source of water on his own farm as a well had run dry and a diviner found one which they then ran a pipe from. Scientist talks about coincidence and no known mechanism, ideomotor, unconscious clues etc.

Humphrys then ups the ante (yeah there's always more impressive detail to add) and states that sometime later they had a leak in that water supply and a diviner successfully located it. He went on and on about it being a 4 acre field so no way it was chance and all the scientist came back with was that divining failed controlled tests.

I was screaming at the radio that it wasn't a spot in a 4 acre field, it was a spot along a straight line, as they all knew where the source was (having 'miraculously' found and dug it out some time earlier) and the output and had laid the sodding pipe between them in the first place. Not only that but if it was a significant enough leak to have been noticed in the first place, there were probably visual cues!

Aaaarghh, come on Radio 4, you're supposed to be better than this!
 
Ethan Thane Athen said:
Shouted at the radio this morning. John Humphrys had a scientist in who was far too polite about it all, especially when Humphrys told his own anecdote - basically he had to find a source of water on his own farm as a well had run dry and a diviner found one which they then ran a pipe from. Scientist talks about coincidence and no known mechanism, ideomotor, unconscious clues etc.

Humphrys then ups the ante (yeah there's always more impressive detail to add) and states that sometime later they had a leak in that water supply and a diviner successfully located it. He went on and on about it being a 4 acre field so no way it was chance and all the scientist came back with was that divining failed controlled tests.

I was screaming at the radio that it wasn't a spot in a 4 acre field, it was a spot along a straight line, as they all knew where the source was (having 'miraculously' found and dug it out some time earlier) and the output and had laid the sodding pipe between them in the first place. Not only that but if it was a significant enough leak to have been noticed in the first place, there were probably visual cues!

Aaaarghh, come on Radio 4, you're supposed to be better than this!
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I sometimes download the Today program to listen to while walking the dog. I won't this evening, one gets funny looks walking the darkened streets yelling abuse at no-one.
 
When the water pressure reducer on the edge of my lot failed, the utility came out and told me I had to dig up the line between the reducer and the house. One of the men produced a divining rod which looked like a telescoping antenna with a hand grip then proceeded to wave it around and mark the location of the water line. I couldn't help but notice that he marked a direct path between the electric meter and the junction box and told him so. He then gave me the number for the utility people who would properly mark the water and power lines buried in my yard; which they did the next day.

I wrote to the utility and asked them if they allowed their employees to haphazardly mark out the locations of water services using such foolhardy methods. I told them I could have been killed had I dug where their man told me the water line was. They wrote back saying it was not their policy to use a dowsing rod. No ***** !
 
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Because of this thread, yesterday I asked one of my customers who is in the business of installing underground gasoline tanks and dispensers here in the U.S.A. if he ever saw anyone dowsing when they had to check for water mains, utility lines, etc. At first he said he did see it from time to time, and seemed to know what I was referring to. But after I expressed surprise and called the practice B.S., he claimed to misunderstand what I was talking about and said metal detectors and such were always used. Hmmm.
 
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