This is an answer to stephendv's question on http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2382&page=2#Item_1 but in a fresh Topic cos it's straying from that Topic's subject.

Posted By: stephendv

Posted By: fostertom
BTW, how do we explain this in http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2390&page=1#Item_19?:

Posted By: mrswhitecatWater was found with a very low tech meeting of hazel twigs

Funny, I was just having this debate with someone else over the weekend, since we're about to start drilling our well today (which was found using sticks and a pendulum). I think an interesting question is to forget the science or pseudo science of _how_ it could work, and just look at the cold an impartial economics of it, e.g.: Do gold/diamond mines use this technique to find ore? Companies are purely profit driven, they don't care about dogma, scientific fact or not, they just want to make a buck. And if they could reliably spend a few hundred dollars using divining to find ore instead of spending thousands on geologic studies, they would. The fact that no commercial application for divining exists (apart from finding wells for small holdings) speaks volumes for its efficacy.

In answer, I'm laying a paper trail - if interested , look at my first ever post on http://britishdowsers.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1124&sid=364fe706136fb8701b35374a8300381e , and also follow the links within the answer I've received over there - and let me know what you think!

Martian, Wandi is a Ranker. Hero!

Posted By: fostertomMartian, Wandi is a Ranker. Hero!

At least he puts his money where his mouth is: the $1000000 prize has been up for grabs for years and no-one has come close to claiming it. Of course, as a top-class magician, Randi is able to do any of the fun stuff that people like Uri Geller made a living at: bending spoons and keys and such like. I'm sure he can do levitation too - always impressive to see a live show with a lit cigarette floating up to the magician's mouth through various hoops. A friend of mine was taken in by such a trick at some kind of new-age retreat. He was pretty depressed when I pointed out this is a classic trick.

So, to cut a long story short, Randi does have heroic credentials if he helps prevent fools from being separated from their money.

Paul in Montreal.

"They have adopted a philosophy that shields them against reality." Probably use multifoils to help 'em do it.

See this [edited] quote from Martian and compare with his stance against Scientific heresy:

Posted By: MartianTheir need to believe [in the safe immutability of Scientific principles and procedures] is so strong and so ingrained, that they will refuse to accept any quality and/or quantity of good evidence. They have adopted a philosophy that shields them against reality.

And why not? - even Scientists and ex-Building Inspectors are human - even do a bit of poetry

"good" evidence is it. If 'good' means present standards of rigorous experimental procedure, then I'm tellin' ya, that (apart from vested interest and petty ego) those standards are the very way that timid conservative science preserves itself safe from whole realms of phenomena. Even having had quantum weirdness, chaos etc forced upon it, the scientific mentality still yearns for the long-gone simplicities of Newtonian cause-and-effect. Anything uncontrolled is still ruled 'unscientific' and simply ignored. Present standards of rigorous experimental procedure aim (but often fail) to eliminate human error and bias, but thereby also eliminate the other side of that coin - intuition and other subtle responses. Even scientists, being human. live their everyday lives immersed in such phenomena, would die without them - but may pretend to be immune, or at least eliminate any scientific curiosity about such things. Why? It's so unscientific, such a systematic lie, to leave so much uninvestigated except with the pre-intention to disprove, with all the enthusiasm previously reserved to heretic-hunters, today cloaked in pious Mary Whitehouse-type service to "prevent fools from being separated from their money".

Present standards of rigorous experimental procedure are custom-designed to disable the very means by which so-called (so far) subtle phenomena like dowsing actually work. Those parts of science that do have an interest in this wide and potent realm are having to find new experimental methods that don't simply gratify the quackbusting urge.

Perhaps I don't say enough, how much I appreciate the generosity and clarity with which many on this forum, including Paul in Montreal and Martian, share their expertise and experience - and are always up for a bit of controversy. This forum is a brilliant University of the Air. What I can't stomach is the unbending need to nip in the bud whatever they regard as quackery, often with virulence of language that nothing else provokes. Why? Who is it that so needs protecting from heresy, con or ... what? Why is it out of the question to state your reservations, by all means, but to just allow a bit of 'what if there were some truth in this ... what then?'. Creativity, including scientific creativity, proceeds in surprising ways, and you might find such un-pre-conditioned speculation throwing fresh light on areas that you regard as 'good' science.

That's a challenge - do you decline it?

Tom,

I admire the strength with which you defend your beliefs.

However, the urge to justify a complete abandonment of critical thinking when it comes to 'alternative' phenomena seems somewhat misguided to me. The rejection of scientific method prevents anyone managing to quantify whether something like dowsing has any practical benefit. Dowsers themselves actively resist clear minded consideration of whether their results are any better than either pure blind luck, or basic human intuition. You asked them if any companies employ dowsers, and you get an evidence free response. What does that tell you?

Humans are hard wired to spot patterns in nature, even when there are none. Depending on our mind set, one good experience can be more memorable than ten bad ones, or equally one bad experience can outweigh ten good ones. These qualities allow us to invent phenomena and explanations, and find evidence for them when there is no such thing in the real world. Equally, these qualities have allowed the human race to develop language, arts, technology and a massive range of understanding of our universe. Scientific method and critical thinking allow us to distinguish one from the other.

You accuse scientists of timid, conservative thinking as a way to defend uncritical acceptance of unsubstantiated claims. Scientists have timidly and conservatively discovered particles of matter that are so small it takes equipment 20 miles long to spot single fleeting instances. They've conceieved (and proven) beams of energy that travel at a speed completely independent of the speed that you're travelling - exactly counter to any human experience prior to that. They've demonstrated matter that can slow light to a crawl, and particles that can cause completely disconnected particles thousands of miles away to change state spontaneously at the flick of a switch. Scientists love odd and unexpected results - those moments when someone says "that's strange" can open whole new avenues of thought and understanding, from DNA to radioactivity, from gravity to the passage of time. No scientist is closed to the unexpected. They are deeply distrustful of the unverified or unsubstantiated.

That distrust can be quite vociferous, but that's often because alternative phenomena are often used to sell snake-oil and influence uncritical individuals. Whilst some unexplained phenomena are truly worth investigating, many others come up time and time again as a convenient disguise for wooly minded thinking or outright deceipt. As an architect, you would get pretty irate if client after client tried to tell you that u-values are irrelevant if you have a powerful enough MHRV unit for instance. You know that the principles that you use to develop a building are well established by centuries of experiment and refinement. Of course that understanding can be extended, but do you genuinely believe that years of experience can be completely invalidated by a new discovery? Can you cite a single case of a discovery making previous measured results no longer correct? That is what many practitioners of alternative science are asking for - not just an extension of existing principles, but a complete abandonment of well established and tested explanations for the things we see in the world around us.

I think you misunderstand or mischaracterise the scientific process. Being critical of a theory is not the same as refusing to accept new phenomena.

Personally, I'm an engineer, not a scientist. As long as the real world results are near enough what's needed, the formula is good enough for me! :D

What's the problem with dowsing? I dowsed the exact position of the water main for a new connection for the water board last year, and the small water pipe that I was replacing, tracing it all along the building and up the side to the neighbours cattle trough. You can also dowse drains, and I think there might be a well too in one spot (rods spread apart rather than crossed over)
or is it just dowsing things other than water that is the problem?

Posted By: Cliff Pope"No experiment should be believed until it has been confirmed by theory"
(Sir Arthur Eddington)
What is the theory behind dowsing?

What happens if the theory that would support dowsing exists outside the canon of current theory? Popper and Kuhn have shown pretty convincingly that scientists do not simply accept newer, better evidence as it comes along but tend to reject that which contradicts existing theory.

An example: for many people acupuncture works. Having lived in the far east for many years I have heard too much convincing anecdotal evidence to believe that this is just the panacea effect (there is some research to support the usefulness of acupuncture). Yet for centuries (and maybe even now) we did not have a consistent theory to explain this efficacy that was congruent with existing theories of how the body works. Thus acupuncture has traditionally been rejected as mumbo jumbo. In theory, it doesn't work. In practise, for many, it does. In such cases the wise man goes with what works, rather than what he thinks should work.

I am not arguing for dowsing, simply pointing out that being unable to integrate an idea or phenomenon into our current set of theories does not mean that said idea is automatically invalid. It may mean that we have to throw away some of the existing canon. Copernicus and all that.

Dan

Funny you should say that, it was the man from Severn Trent Water that got his dowsing rods out of the back of his van to find the mains. (he had no luck with the electronic pipe locator because there was nowhere to access it and attach a clip to send the signal)
I was so impressed, he showed me how to do it, and it worked for me too.
I told the father-in-law, who said he has known how to do it for years, so we subsequently dowsed the whole site and located all the water pipes, possible drains, and as I said a possible well in one place (there was an unexplained large curve around it in the drystone wall)
I would not be able to say that something is definitely a water pipe, drain, or well at this stage - just that there is something down there. Most of the clues are above ground i.e. cattle trough at one end, tap at the other, dowse the route of the supply pipe in between. It is surprisingly accurate in terms of location - but i wouldn't know exactly what was there until I dug down!

marktime, would you say that your mind, unlike others', tells you only 'true' things?

In India in the early 1970s, Firestone, the American tyre company employed dowsers to find underground water supplies during a drought. They were then able to successfully sink bore wells.

There are many mysteries in this world, dowsing is one of them - so are astrological sun signs, tarot cards, feng shui, and spiritualists.

Posted By: Cliff PopeLots of ... (you name it) ... work because people believe they work or they want them to work.
You want the (whatever) to work, you are paying for it, the (energiser) says it works, therefore it probably will work

Thanks Cliff Pope - you've perfectly described a well-known phenomenon, so natural and commonly-used that life would be difficult if not impossible without it. Everyone, even cynics know this phenomenon - but why doesn't it arouse scientific curiosity? 'You believe it, therefore it is' - blimey, is that powerful, or what? If only science could uncover what's actually happening here, just think of the unscratched potential.

It is actually mad to describe something that happens and then dismiss it as only 'belief', in some way not real, a delusion (even though it happens); certainly not science. This is a science that has disappeared up its own jobsworth back passage, so far has it come from cool observance and making-sense of 'what is'.

Posted By: Dominic CooneyWhat's the problem with dowsing? ... or is it just dowsing things other than water that is the problem?

No it's dowsing as a symbol or representative of all the unexplained things that make some people so nervous. If your grip on sanity depends on sharing a reassuring, stable worldview with your choice of likeminded subgroup e.g. orthodox scientific method as 'the truth', then dowsing, homeopathy, intuition, kinesiology, Bristol Cancer Centre and suchlike all have to be vigilantly defended against.

That was the idea, to find the pipe. I knew there was one, I wanted to know where it lay, in a possible cross section of 12 metres I wanted to avoid digging a trench through it.
As for the water main, the two navvies from the water board weren't going to dig down 4 feet by hand to 'see if the main was there' they wanted to know exactly where it was first. There may be some kind of human influence on the action of the rods, but it doesn't mean it doesn't work. Perhaps the human is the vector for the signal/energy or something to do with magnetism? from the flow of water - a bit like these devices that reduce your fuel consumption in your car, or help people's blood flow improve (I have heard of magnet treatment for circulation).