talkmagic.co.uk

http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2009/11/05/british-company-sells-60000-dowsing-rods-to-iraq-as-explosives-detectors/

You can't make this sh*te up. People are dying because of it.

That's rather sickening.

Update: http://tinyurl.com/kro7n5 Challenge from Randi Foundation to demonstrate that the pieces of sh*t being sold by these companies actually works. Their explanations are both nonsense and at the same time contradict each other.

Cue knee-jerk bellyaching because Randi's name has been invoked.

Regardless, dowsing has been used with tremendous success for THOUSANDS of years and the idea to the contrary didn't take on a concrete form until the past 40 or so years. The Allies of WWII used dowsing rods & pendulums for mine detection but I'm rather confident they didn't have something as fancy and neat as these things appear to be.

I can't help but wonder just how good they would be (in the hands of a properly trained dowser) at actually locating and verifying that the elusive Randi Million is more tangible than Santa Claus

I suspect there may be something in dowsing in terms of people subconsciously reading the landscape and revealing this subconscious thought through ideomotor response. The experiments that have been done where people dowse for water hidden in known locations, and then hidden in unknown locations certainly hints at that.

I must say, though, that dowsers are often their own worst enemies. Like pendulum work, pretty much anyone can pick up a pair of rods and have some kind of success with it. They then seem to cling to explanations that don't make sense. The worst are those who seem unaware that it is they themselves that move the rods.

And I wouldn't spend good money on dowsing rods that are claimed useful in detecting explosives without some pretty solid research to back it up. False negatives are rather costly.

Mr_Grue wrote:And I wouldn't spend good money on dowsing rods that are claimed useful in detecting explosives without some pretty solid research to back it up. False negatives are rather costly.

In October, 155 people were blown to bits in downtown Baghdad by 2 tonnes of explosives that at least one of these idiot devices failed to detect.

'scuse me for stating the bl**din' obvious but explosives are a chemical compound which can be detected by taking in samples of the product, or the surrounding air containing microscopic traces of the product, and analysing it - very much like the gas detectors we use to check for leaks and so on whereby particles of hydrocarbons are detected. Anything with a bit of rod poking out doesn't stand a chance unless it's an air sample collector with built in analyser so why the heck did anyone think these pieces of tat would ever work with any accuracy and consistency? Nowt wrong with dowsing but it's hit and miss so not exactly up to the job of detecting explosives. A properly trained sniffer dog might have been more useful...

Mandrake wrote:'scuse me for stating the bl**din' obvious but explosives are a chemical compound which can be detected by taking in samples of the product, or the surrounding air containing microscopic traces of the product, and analysing it - very much like the gas detectors we use to check for leaks and so on whereby particles of hydrocarbons are detected. Anything with a bit of rod poking out doesn't stand a chance unless it's an air sample collector with built in analyser so why the heck did anyone think these pieces of tat would ever work with any accuracy and consistency? Nowt wrong with dowsing but it's hit and miss so not exactly up to the job of detecting explosives. A properly trained sniffer dog might have been more useful...

Sniffer dogs are good. Sniffer dogs work. If the device was sampling the air like other detectors, that'd be fine. But no, this nonsense claims to detect the kinds of vanishingly small forces that usually take liquid helium-cooled superconducting magnetometers (SQUIDsfor short). What's more, its makers seem to be claiming that this waggly little aerial thing does this from up to half a mile away. That must be a comfort to the families of the people who have been blown apart when these devices evidently didn't work.

can't homeopathy help cure them?

IAIN wrote:can't homeopathy help cure them?

Do we dare ask an exponent?

Astrololgy might be an equally effective process....

For a reasonable fee I'd be prepared to hold my pendulum over a map of Iraq and tell them where the minefields are likely to be situated.

themagicwand wrote:For a reasonable fee I'd be prepared to hold my pendulum over a map of Iraq and tell them where the minefields are likely to be situated.

Mines aren't the issue, though. What are you like at with truck bombs?

Mr_Grue wrote:I suspect there may be something in dowsing in terms of people subconsciously reading the landscape and revealing this subconscious thought through ideomotor response. The experiments that have been done where people dowse for water hidden in known locations, and then hidden in unknown locations certainly hints at that.

Actually, the majority of today's serious students of the skill (not to be confused by the wack-jobs) actually study things like plant life, the lay of the land, the kind of soil, etc. This was done by the old timers as well but not from the more critical or "scientific" perspectives found in today's researchers.

I must say, though, that dowsers are often their own worst enemies. Like pendulum work, pretty much anyone can pick up a pair of rods and have some kind of success with it. They then seem to cling to explanations that don't make sense. The worst are those who seem unaware that it is they themselves that move the rods.

I don't know of a single "minority" group that isn't their own worse enemy, it's one of the reasons I loathe anyone that lives down to the classic type-cast attributed to their race, culture, gender, etc.

And I wouldn't spend good money on dowsing rods that are claimed useful in detecting explosives without some pretty solid research to back it up. False negatives are rather costly.

Agreed... but they really are neat looking and would make for a wonderful stage prop

Tomo wrote:Sniffer dogs are good. Sniffer dogs work.

The latest thing is sniffer bees, which are better than dogs in many respects. They're quick to train, cheap to keep, have a sense of smell at least equal to dogs', and don't get bored with the job.

A company called Inscentinel has patented a hand-held detector built around trained bees. It takes a couple of hours to teach a bee to respond (stick out its "tongue") to any one scent. You load trained bees into the device, and it signals you when they respond. Reprogramming the detector is a simple matter of replacing the bees with ones trained to a different scent.

I am perhaps even more sceptical than Randi, yet the strange fact remains that I can dowse for water.
There are a lot of strange things in the world, including the ability of birds to navigate by the earths magnetic field. We are slowly beginning to understand many of these things.
Obviously humans can be aware of things subconsciously, either through a reading of the countours of the landscape, or through smelling particles in the air, or whatever. And the ideomoter response in the twitching dowsing rod amplifies and reveals that information.
But its a big jump from this to selling bogus "detectors" to superstitious nations.
If they were selling this as a toy or a parlour game, like ouija boards, I would have no problem with it. But selling it as a serious product to be used in potentially life-threatening situations is just criminal.