Thread: Dowsing in the Falklands

Originally Posted by theslayerofmen

so sceptics could be foolong themselves too?

:D Yes, absolutely.



Their only advantage is that they know this and try to take counter-measures.

nice one. me too. if i am wrong then i shall just pretend to be clinicaly insane. win win either way.

further to (and back on thread) dowsing for mines would work (and make perfect sense). Just send an extended line of dowsers through a suspected minefield. everytime one goes bang pop a mine marking cone next to the hole. See. I have proved it works (in theory - which is good enough for many scientists ). Whats the prize for this?

:D

Originally Posted by theslayerofmen

nice one. me too. if i am wrong then i shall just pretend to be clinicaly insane. win win either way.

further to (and back on thread) dowsing for mines would work (and make perfect sense). Just send an extended line of dowsers through a suspected minefield. everytime one goes bang pop a mine marking cone next to the hole. See. I have proved it works (in theory - which is good enough for many scientists ). Whats the prize for this?

:D

A million dollars, get claiming. Let us know how you get on. :D

Hmmm Well, being naturally curious about everything............I tried it once...and totally freaked myself out when it worked.
The thing is, this theory of all these thousands of people "fooling" themselves for all these years? I find that almost as hard to believe as the fact that dowsing does actually work. I have an Uncle out in Oz who apparently was well known for going out in the bush and finding water ( and no he didn't work for the water company or anything related). As has been said...maybe it's an intuitive thing, maybe only some people can do it, for whatever reasons........
However, as a mere civvie...not sure I'd like to depend on it to fin mines though! Big difference between finding water, elec cables etc etc...and big (little) metal things that are going to blow me or others to smithereens!!!!!

Originally Posted by thegimp

Some one explain the scientific reasoning behind dowsing...............

I haven't got a scooby but I have used it to find buried services. It's worked for me and I'm a very sceptical person.

Originally Posted by Alba58

Hmmm Well, being naturally curious about everything............I tried it once...and totally freaked myself out when it worked.
The thing is, this theory of all these thousands of people "fooling" themselves for all these years? I find that almost as hard to believe as the fact that dowsing does actually work. I have an Uncle out in Oz who apparently was well known for going out in the bush and finding water ( and no he didn't work for the water company or anything related). As has been said...maybe it's an intuitive thing, maybe only some people can do it, for whatever reasons........
However, as a mere civvie...not sure I'd like to depend on it to fin mines though! Big difference between finding water, elec cables etc etc...and big (little) metal things that are going to blow me or others to smithereens!!!!!

Go for the prize then.

ref. Your uncle: There was a good documentary I saw a few months ago. It was about a guy who was a pioneer doing original mapping of Oz. He was good at finding water too, used binoculars a telescope and knowledge though.

Originally Posted by StickyEnd

Originally Posted by Alba58

Hmmm Well, being naturally curious about everything............I tried it once...and totally freaked myself out when it worked.
The thing is, this theory of all these thousands of people "fooling" themselves for all these years? I find that almost as hard to believe as the fact that dowsing does actually work. I have an Uncle out in Oz who apparently was well known for going out in the bush and finding water ( and no he didn't work for the water company or anything related). As has been said...maybe it's an intuitive thing, maybe only some people can do it, for whatever reasons........
However, as a mere civvie...not sure I'd like to depend on it to fin mines though! Big difference between finding water, elec cables etc etc...and big (little) metal things that are going to blow me or others to smithereens!!!!!

Go for the prize then.

ref. Your uncle: There was a good documentary I saw a few months ago. It was about a guy who was a pioneer doing original mapping of Oz. He was good at finding water too, used binoculars a telescope and knowledge though.

Well my Uncle wouldn't have had any knowledge as he wasn't brought up there...... lol But who knows...maybe it's an unconscious thing...still makes it interesting

Well this is what Dowsers think:

No magic just "....an intuitive art and discipline used in all parts of the world in both ancient and modern times. A technique for bringing information from the intuitive or subconscious senses to the attention of the rational mind.."

Sounds possible: the rods are just a way of giving a physical indication of what many people would term gut feelings

http://www.britishdowsers.org/learni...t_sheets.shtml

Originally Posted by Blogg

Well this is what Dowsers think:

No magic just "....an intuitive art and discipline used in all parts of the world in both ancient and modern times. A technique for bringing information from the intuitive or subconscious senses to the attention of the rational mind.."

Sounds possible: the rods are just a way of giving a physical indication of what many people would term gut feelings

http://www.britishdowsers.org/learni...t_sheets.shtml

Sounds reasonable.

Only if you take 'intuition' and 'gut feeling' to mean 'guesswork'. If you can't do better than chance (and no-one yet has), you aren't actually doing anything more than guessing. Sometimes you'll be right, more often you'll be wrong.

That million Septic shekels is a real sum of money. Why has no dowser yet won it?

Originally Posted by big_les

That million Septic shekels is a real sum of money. Why has no dowser yet won it?

Possibly because the small print says more than the headlines.

I've used dowsing rods to ACCURATELY plot the position of land drains across a couple of my fields & to track the underground watercourse feeding a spring.
Neither of these were previously known & therefore a pretty good test of something to which I applied a high degree of scepticism.

What small print?

If for whatever reason you don't trust his challenge, there are sceptical and parapsychological groups all over the country that would happily help you design a protocol to show that you are indeed the first dowser in history to provide evidence that it works.

If you don't trust sceptics full stop, why don't scientists (professional geologists in particular) believe in it? Never mind Randi's cash, you could win a Nobel prize if you proved that dowsing worked. Why has no-one done that?

As for underground water, it doesn't actually flow in streams and rivers - it permeates the geology to varying degrees. So if you dowse over a given field, you've actually got a good chance of hitting various spots where there is water.

Did you count your 'misses'? If not, you don't know whether it's luck or what is essentially magic.

One last quote from the Skeptic's Dictionary;

The testimonials of dowsers and those who observe them provide the main evidence for dowsing. The evidence is simple: dowsers find what they are dowsing for and they do this many times. What more proof of dowsing is needed? The fact that this pattern of dowsing and finding something occurs repeatedly leads many dowsers and their advocates to make the causal connection between dowsing and finding water, oil, minerals, golf balls, etc. This type of fallacious reasoning is known as post hoc reasoning and is a very common basis for belief in paranormal powers. It is essentially unscientific and invalid. Scientific thinking includes being constantly vigilant against self-deception and being careful not to rely upon insight or intuition in place of rigorous and precise empirical testing of theoretical and causal claims. Every controlled study of dowsers has shown that dowsers do no better than chance in finding what they are looking for.

Originally Posted by auscam

Not strictly to do with dowsing, and nothing to do with the Falklands, but I can assure readers that there is another world/plane/dimension/whatever you want to call it, that we normally cannot perceive (nothing to do with religion, either)

I am assured by a scientist friend that there are at least 4 dimensions and that time isnt one of them. In fact some physicists now propose that time does not exist except in the human consciousness. Perhaps you would like to start a new thread on the subject?

Originally Posted by Oddbod

Neither of these were previously known & therefore a pretty good test of something to which I applied a high degree of scepticism.

On a sample size of one? I think you need to read up on scientific protocols.


MSR

Well I also had a high degree of scepticism, but it shocked the hell out of me when the bit of whale bone I was holding apparently came alive in my hands and nearly took my nose off. But you are quite right it was a sample of one and highly subjective. So I am interested in finding out more about how it was that the thing I was holding moved so violently that I couldnt control it and had to drop it. Ideomotor effect was it? Lets have some details about how that works please. From what I read on the website that debunks dowsing, the controlled tests generally observed twitching and small movements. In my case the bloody thing I was holding nearly took my nose off.