Dowsing

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Dowsing, sometimes called divining or water witching, refers to practices enabling one to detect hidden water, metals, gemstones or other objects, usually obstructed by land or sometimes located on a map. Most commonly, detection is made through the movement or vibrations of an apparatus, such as a Y-shaped twig, an L-shaped rod, or a pendulum. Some practitioners claim to need no apparatus at all.

While science has failed to prove dowsing's efficacy, some researchers believe there is evidence to support it,^[1] and many ordinary people continue to believe that it works.^[2]

Contents 1 History of dowsing 2 Possible explanations 3 Dowsing equipment 3.1 Pendulums for divination and dowsing 3.1.1 Prominent pendulum dowsers 4 Evidence 4.1 Munich 4.1.1 Enright responds 4.2 Kassel 5 See also 6 References 7 External links 7.1 Dowsing organizations 7.2 Skeptics

[edit] History of dowsing

Dowsing has existed in various forms for thousands of years.^[3] The original may have been for divination purposes — to divine the will of the gods, to foretell the future and divine guilt in trials. Dowsing as practiced today probably originated in Germany during the 15th century, when it was used to find metals. The technique spread to England with German miners who came to England to work in the coal mines. During the Middle Ages dowsing was associated with the Devil. In 1659 dowsing was declared Satanic by the Jesuit Gaspar Schott. In 1701 the Inquisition stopped using the dowsing rod in trials. In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, U.S. Marines may have used dowsing to locate weapons and tunnels.^[4] An extensive book on the history of dowsing was published by Christopher Bird in 1979 under the title of The Divining Hand.

[edit] Possible explanations

Skeptics of dowsing and many supporters of it believe dowsing apparatus have no special powers, but merely amplify small imperceptible movements of the hands arising from the expectations of the dowser.^[5] This psychological phenomenon is termed the ideomotor effect. Some supporters agree with this explanation, but maintain that the dowser has a subliminal sensitivity to the environment, perhaps via electroception, magnetoception, or telluric currents.^[5] These explanations give rise to the classification of dowsing as pseudoscience. Other dowsers^[5] cannot explain the source of their powers apart from the paranormal, such as paranormal auras, or as a matter of faith.^{[citation needed]}

Those who believe in dowsing may do so because they severely underestimate the probability of finding water at a given location.^{[citation needed]} A charlatan could tell his gullible listeners that water runs underground in narrow streams, when in fact it is contained in strata of porous rock at various depths (hence the name "water table"). Therefore a water-witch who has an apparently high success rate at finding water may not be any better than someone merely guessing. On the other hand, in some areas underlain by hard rocks, a substantial flow of water might only be obtained if the well intersects a fracture in the otherwise impermeable rock.

[edit] Dowsing equipment

Many dowsers use simple brass rods bent in an "L" shape known as divining rods; others use wooden Y-rods and/or even bent wire coat hangers. According to some dowsers who use divining rods, brass allows the rod to attune to magnetic fields emanated by the target without the earth's EM field interfering, as would be the case with a metal such as steel. The end of the rod to be held by the dowser is often encased in a material that provides a constant electrical impedance, to prevent the dowser's own conductivity from interfering with the dowsing process.

[edit] Pendulums for divination and dowsing

Pendulums (these may be a crystal suspended on a chain, or a metal weight) can be used in divination and dowsing. In one approach the user first determines which direction (left-right, up-down) will indicate "yes" and which "no," before proceeding to ask the pendulum specific questions. In another form of divination, the pendulum is used with a pad or cloth that has "yes" and "no" written on it, and perhaps other words, written in a circle in the latter case. The person holding the pendulum aims to hold it as steadily as possible over the center. An interviewer may pose questions to the person holding the pendulum, and it swings by minute unconscious bodily movement in the direction of the answer. In the practice of radiesthesia a pendulum is used for medical diagnosis.

[edit] Prominent pendulum dowsers

• Karl Spiesberger
• Ludwig Straniak
• Wilhelm Wulff
• A. Frank Glahn
• Baron Dr. Carl (Karl) Ludwig von Reichenbach
• Professor Hellmut Wolff
• Thomas Charles Lethbridge; claimed there is a link between the length of the pendulum and the object being looked for, (see external links).

[edit] Evidence

Dowsing for water has been scientifically investigated in two studies, the Munich study in the late 1980s and the Kassel study in 2004, both referring to the locations in Germany in which these experiments were performed. Both studies failed to conclusively prove that dowsing is more than guesswork. Yet, the authors of the Munich study contended that a few of the 500 dowsers tested:^[6]

in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ... a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven ...

However, researcher and skeptic Jim T. Enright reviewed the data and disputed these claims, while the Kessel study demonstrated that dowsers fared no better than chance.

[edit] Munich

The scientific study^[7] of dowsing in Munich, Germany was performed in 1987 to 1988 and involved more than 500 dowsers in more than 10,000 double-blind tests.^[1]

Five hundred dowsers were initially tested for their "skill", and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them. These 43 were then tested in the following way. On the ground floor of a two-story barn, water was pumped through a pipe; before each test, this pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the 43 dowsers performed 843 such tests. This experimental setup and the data obtained from it were generally agreed by the dowsers, the experimenters, and the critics to be scientifically valid and a fair test of dowsing ability.^{[citation needed]} Of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 of them showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that "a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."^[6]

[edit] Enright responds

Five years after the Munich study was published, scientist and skeptic Jim T. Enright contended that these results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and do not demonstrate any real ability.^[8] He noted that the best tester was on average 4 millimeters out of 10 meters closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.0004% advantage. The study's authors responded^[9] but Enright remains unconvinced.^[10]

[edit] Kassel

More recently, a scientific study^[11] 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 30 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 percent success rate. However, the results were no better than what would have been expected by chance.

[edit] See also

• J. Francis Hitching
• Michel Moine
• Reveal the Power of the Pendulum: Secrets of the Sidereal Pendulum, A Complete Survey of Pendulum Dowsing, by Karl Spiesberger

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b} Enright, Jim T. (Jan/Feb 1999). The Failure of the Munich Experiments. 'Skeptical Inquirer'. Paul Kurtz. Retrieved on November 14, 2006. “The researchers themselves concluded that the outcome unquestionably demonstrated successful dowsing abilities, but a thoughtful re-examination of the data indicates that such an interpretation can only be regarded as the result of wishful thinking.”
2. ^ As translated from a preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in Germany alone can generate a conservatively-estimated annual revenue of more than 100 million DM (US$50 million)". See Kassel references.
3. ^ "the earliest sign of its usage dates from a 4500-5000 year old grave inscription in Brittany." Ramsus, Jansson (1999-01-27 (revised)). Dowsing: Science or Humbug?.
4. ^ FIX ME (could not access entire article) Error on call to Template:cite web: Parameters url and title must be specified.
5. ^ ^{a b c} See references to Enright, J.T., and "DowsingWorks" among the external links.
6. ^ ^{a b} Wagner, H., H.-D. Betz, and H. L. König, 1990. Schlußbericht 01 KB8602, Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie. As quoted by Enright in Skeptical Enquirer.
7. ^ Wagner, H., H.-D. Betz, and H. L. König, 1990. Schlußbericht 01 KB8602, Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie.
8. ^ Enright, J. T. 1995. Water dowsing: The Scheunen experiments. Naturwissenschaften 82: 360-369.
9. ^ Betz, H.-D., H. L. König, R. Kulzer, R. Trischler, and J. Wagner. 1996. Dowsing reviewed — the effect persists. Naturwissenschaften 83: 272-275.
10. ^ Enright, J. T. 1996. Dowsers lost in a barn. Naturwissenschaften 83: 275-277.
11. ^ GWUP-Psi-Tests 2004: Keine Million Dollar für PSI-Fähigkeiten (in German) and English version.

[edit] External links

• Divining Beats Britain's Drought
• Dowsing at the Open Directory Project (suggest site)
• Unconventional Water Detection - article from Journal of Scientific Exploration
• Dowsing for Health
• Mystery Robot Said to Solve Crimes, Find Mines in Chile - Manuel Salinas, a 39-year-old inventor, claims he has built a machine that has extraordinary capabilities for finding buried objects.
• An Introduction To Dowsing
• Dowsing for ghosts
• Lethbridge's pendulum lengths
• Dowsing References - Famous Advocates of Dowsing.
• Hansen, George P. (1982). "Dowsing: A Review Of Experimental Research" 51 (October): 343-367. Retrieved on 2 January 2006. 

[edit] Dowsing organizations

• ISD - International Society of Dowsing Research
• International Digital Dowsers Forum Board
• ASD - American Society of Dowsers
• BSD - British Society of Dowsers
• CSD - Canadian Society of Dowsers
• Dowsers Association

[edit] Skeptics

• James Randi on Dowsing
• Fortean Times: The Dowsing Detective
• Australian Skeptics Divining Test
• An Australian television program about the above divining test at Google Video.
• The Skeptics Dictionary - Includes details of various scientific tests.
• CSICOP - The failure of the Munich experiment.
• Dowsing In Connecticut - by Perry DeAngelis
• "Beyond Science" video PBS show Scientific American Frontiers on dowsing featuring Ray Hyman, Nov. 19, 1997