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Dowsing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing

Interesting to see which area they include it in

Categories: Divination | Occult | Pseudoscience | Protoscience | Parapsychology | New Age

Unbelievably Southern water are currently using it as a cure for our current drought! That's your money they are spending on something that little more success than just choosing places to drill at random.

Why not email and let them know what idiots they are? I have.

Johndoe wrote:Dowsing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing

Interesting to see which area they include it in

Categories: Divination | Occult | Pseudoscience | Protoscience | Parapsychology | New Age

Unbelievably Southern water are currently using it as a cure for our current drought! That's your money they are spending on something that little more success than just choosing places to drill at random.

Why not email and let them know what idiots they are? I have.

Here's the problem with what you're saying JD... since biblical times if not before Dowsing has been the primary method for finding sweet water, minreals, lost ojects, etc. It's only been less than a century of time that mankind has become so filled with himself and his technology so as to take a dump on it and cast it to the wheyside. So I'd have say that it is a technique that has had some exceptionally long historic staying power for something that's as "fake" as some claim it to be.

I do understand the analytical position in this topic but I've also held those dowser's sticks and I know what happens when a true "sensitive" works them... I've yet to find an explanation on that side of the action. Yet, I've had the stick yanked straight out of my hands and jam into the ground just as I've had it pull me to locations. I can assure you, it's not just fantasy or old wives tales and science still don't have all the answers.

Of 500 people tested only six managed to show dowsing ability slightly above chance. Chance was 12% they achieved 16%. Rubbish results seen as all the dowsers predicted they could do it with more than 90% success.

and another

Kassel
More recently a scientific study[3] was undertaken in Kassel, Germany, under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) [Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences]. The three-day test of some thirty dowsers involved plastic pipes through which a large flow of water could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried 50 centimeters under a level field. On the surface, the position of each pipe was marked with a colored stripe, so all the dowsers had to do was tell whether there was water running through the pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100% success rate. However, the results were no better than what would have been expected by chance.

and another

The contestants agreed to all the procedures prior to the test. They were also allowed to dowse the field with no water running to determine whether there might be any interfering natural phenomena, and to dowse the field with water running in a known pipe to verify (subjectively) their sensitivity to it. Similar tests were designed for contestants who believed they could find brass or gold. In all, 111 trials were made. There were 15 successes, which is well within the range (around 11) expected by chance.

One of the reasons we know dowsing is bunkum is because it is so very easy to test using double blind methods.

I've offered you a free holiday to the UK to prove your claims before. If you would like to come over and do the bucket test or even the pipe test I'll refund all your expenses including spending money if your successful.

Until then all you have is anecdotal evidence and that shows nothing apart from the fact you find it easy to deceive yourself.

Science may not have all the answers but when it comes to dowsing they do. Its all bunkum.

So I'd have say that it is a technique that has had some exceptionally long historic staying power for something that's as "fake" as some claim it to be.

That is a very silly argument. Stars predicting the future, people being tortured because of witchcraft, throwing salt over shoulder, not passing on the stairs, walking under ladders breaks the holy trinity, history is full of stupid ideas that still persist today.

John... I'm not going to play this silly game. You already know that.

I have my beliefs and my positions based on what I've seen and experienced and you have your books and statistics... let's leave it at that.

Can I echo that? This thread is getting personal and that's not the way we do things at TM. Thread locked for the time being, may be re-opened at some future point.