I was doing some experiments on dowsing last year and wondered what people thought about this?. I used two "L" shaped coat hanger wires held lightly in my hands with the long part facing forward and the wires about 12" apart. In fact the wires did cross for me whenever I passed over a know water, electrical or gas line. However we could attribute this to some kind of cognitive bias on my part having had prior knowledge of the lines location. However that's not the strange part. On my acreage the dowsing wires clearly crossed in my back yard showing a line running South to North. I considered this an error however a month later I found an old 1" iron gas line buried in that exact location while landscaping. I also detected random points which later turned out to be places where someone buried the contents of burning barrels with old cans, nails, hinges and such. The notion of supposedly sensing buried objects or lines with two pieces of wire sounds completely absurd however I cannot dispute my own experiments. I would expect random hits and an error rate well beyond 50% but this was not the case. In fact the error rate was very low near 10% which makes no sense. I have little interest in all the online hearsay and was wondering if anyone had a rational explanation?. Regards Bondo
It has been shown over and over that it doesn't work. If you didn't know they were there the dowsing wouldn't work. You are subconsciously crossing the wires because you know where the wires or pipes are. In double blind tests done the dowser can never do better than chance at detecting anything.
I am aware of what some others have claimed however I always like to do experiments to prove matters for myself. I understand this however in 5 of the 40 instances where the wires crossed I had no prior knowledge anything was present underground. It was only after the fact when landscaping later on that I discovered there was something present underground where the wires crossed, hence my dilemma. Logically, the wires should never cross under any circumstances and a supposed cognitive defect subconsciously allowing it is troubling in itself. The popular explanations seem contradictory because if we allow that our mind can subconsciously move the wires in our hands without our permission in some cases(knowing) then why not others(supposedly unknowing)?. Both are equally strange in my opinion and logically the wires should never move. It's also problematic when millions of people, more so on the internet, claim something cannot work but refuse to spend 15 minutes to prove it right or wrong for themselves. I thought all this was complete nonsense but I'm not so sure anymore. So I guess my real question is has anyone actually tried this experiment for themselves?.
Dowsing and the "pendulum phenomenon" discussed in Hermann's thread are both subsumed by the same category that's explained by ideomotor responses. VIDEO EXCERPT (ideomotor action): "What happens is when I think about these [pendulums] moving [and controlling each in a specific manner], my hands move in tiny little ways that are completely imperceptible. In fact, I once hung this up on the other side of a room and I stared at it for an hour thinking about it, trying to make them move. And you know what happened, my wife told me to get a real job. Because these stones did not move unless I was touching the stick. And that's the science behind all of this." James Hazlerig: Ideomotor Movements (link)
LOL I once went thru a psychokinetic phase where I would stare at a paper pinwheel inside a glass jar to make it move. To this day I can't say whether it moved or not. But it finally hit me that if the effect is this miniscule, then there's really no point in pursuing it!
You're making assumptions here. I have done the experiments. I have done dowsing and shown others how to do it. I have done the same with pendulums. They are good party tricks and it is fun to do because it seems kind of spooky because you don't feel like you are making the dowsing rods or pendulums move. But of course it is nothing more than unconscious movement and it reveals absolutely nothing you don't already know.
There was a telekinesis trickster who used to place an open book underneath an upside-down aquarium, and make a page on it gradually turn by imperceptibly blowing underneath a tiny gap between the glass and the tabletop. Making sure the latter can occur and training to direct air flow at an angle are apparently essential, along with convincing observers that one needs to be a foot or so from the container in order for one's mental powers to be effective. _
As I said in a prior post "in 5 of the 40 instances where the dowsing wires crossed I had no prior knowledge anything was present underground". In 5 of the instances the dowsing wires did reveal something I didn't know. As such I think there may be something to this in some instances I just don't know exactly what it is. I agree with ideo-motor and ideo-sensory responses coming into play however it does not negate the possibility dowsing appears to work in some instances. For example, there is an underground line present and... 1)I see indicators an underground line is present and my hands unconsciously move the dowsing wires. 2)Nobody can see any indicators present and my hands still unconsciously move the dowsing wires. The "seeing" part is an illusion and it is well known our mind discards 99% of our sensory input not related to the task at hand as a form of bias. https://neurotray.com/what-does-the-brain-do-as-soon-as-it-receives-information/ Quote: "Furthermore, our brain discards more than 99% of the sensory information it perceives. However, when the brain considers that information is relevant or pertinent, it directs it to the integrating and motor regions of the brain to generate the most convenient responses for the subject." As such it is possible my senses detected uneven ground, different plant life, a change in soil color or countless other small variations I was not aware of but my subconscious mind was. It then becomes a matter of how much of the sensory information our brain received, how much was discarded and how biased it is towards the information. This seems like a much more credible answer versus all the telekinesis nonsense others proposed in my opinion.
Bondo: Welcome to sciforums. Great! What you need to do is a controlled experiment, rather than just going out into your back yard or whatever and randomly digging wherever the wires cross. The usual controlled test works something like this: 1. Get yourself 10 or so identical containers that are opaque (plastic lunch boxes would be fine. Even covered coffee mugs could work. 2. Line up the 10 containers in a row, with sufficient space between them that you'll be able to tell which one your dowsing rod is "detecting". 3. Get a friend to put a substance you believe the dowsing rods are sensitive (e.g. water, metal, whatever) to in (only) one of the 10 containers. Have that friend leave the area while you test your dowsing rods (so they don't give you any unconscious signals about which container the substance is in). 4. Use your dowsing rods to try to determine which of the containers the substance is in. 5. When you're done, make (only) one prediction as to which is the "correct" container. 6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 many times, to get good statistics - say 20 times if you have 10 containers. 7. Count the "hits" and "misses" from all the tests. 8. If you had 10 containers and 20 tests, then by chance alone you will expect to get about 2 of your predictions correct out of the 20 tests. It could be 3 or 4, or more, with diminishing chances. 9. If you get more than say 10 out 20 correct, then further investigation will probably be warranted. Warning: make sure that you consider the test "fair" at the start. Don't change the rules half way through. Don't make excuses for why the test wasn't fair after all, after you have the results. It is very common for dowsers to make excuses for why they consistently fail such tests. Please let us know how you go. Have you considered that, perhaps you're testing in an area where there's lots of stuff underground, so that no matter where you dig you're quite likely to find something? For instance, dowsing is often claimed to be good for finding water. But the fact is that unless you live in a desert, chances are very high that if you dig down a bit you'll eventually hit water just about anywhere. It's called the ideomotor effect. Look it up. Right. So it will be interesting to hear the results of your own tests. Note: you don't have to do 20 tests, but more tests will give statistically more significant results. It would certainly be possible to do a cut-down version of the test I suggested above in 15 minutes. Be careful of making things too easy, though. A choice of only 3 containers instead of 10 will significantly increase your chances of having random success that has nothing to do with whether dowsing works. 5 out of 40 is a 1 in 8 chance. But you haven't done a controlled experiment, there. Also, even assuming there's something to this dowsing, what would your results mean? Dowsing works once in every 8 attempts? Why would the "power" of dowsing be so unreliable? (This is where dowsers typically start making excuses.)
I used to work with an older fellow who used to make toys for children. One of his creations he called a "Whoopee Stick", a stick with notches on the top and a propeller at one end. When he stroked the notches with another stick, the propeller would turn. He told a story about the whoopee bird, which lives in the Arctic and can fly forward or backward. Every time he said the word "whoopee", the propeller would change direction. Then he had me hold the stick and stroke the notches. Every time I said "whoopee" the propeller changed direction. I suspect that it worked for me because he had previously planted the idea in my head by doing it himself. Of course, there's no way for me to do a blind test because I can't un-think the idea. (I have also played around with pendulums with very unsystematic results.) I think it's all in our heads. There's a lot of stuff going on in there that we don't know about.
That's a good but subtle point. Negative results are just as important as positive results. I have the psychic ability to summon earthworms! I have looked under six rocks and Lo! every one of them had an earthworm under it!
James R I agree with what your implying and I should have clarified that I had 40 hits (wires cross) in total. 35 hits for known lines like water, gas and electrical, 5 hits for things unknown to me at the time which were later confirmed and no false hits. I added a 10% error rate because sometimes the wires randomly moved but did not cross. I'm not sure I understand where your going with this. We could look at other events statistically or use controlled experiments as you suggest however this changes the context. If there was a subconscious reaction (ideomotor effect) to uneven ground, different plant life or a change in soil color it would not show up in any controlled experiment using containers. We would be trying to compare apples and oranges then compounding the problem statistically in my opinion. This seems unlikely to be a one off event getting 40 confirmed hits with no false hits although there is always the possibility it could be. I plan to look into this problem further with some stuff on hand, NodeMCU 8266, GPS and some accelerometer sensors to monitor hand motion. What I have seen in the literature to date just seems amateur cherry picking a few dowsers, having them run around a field with sticks, then trying to correlate this with flawed lab experiments. I mean, the people supposedly doing the experiments seem just as incompetent as the dowsers running around with bent twigs. Surely someone could do better considering it's now 2023.
No need to do 'better', there have been many, many tests that show it doesn't work so there is not really any doubt.
Dick Smith Electronics (when he was in business) did so Controlled Went on to sell these Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! So even after showing everyone dowsing does not work he sold these Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Bondo: I am interested to hear about your plans for your own controlled, unbiased test of dowsing. Can you please outline your proposed experimental protocol for me? Perhaps we can work on this together, to try to eliminate any extraneous factors that might bias the results. As I said, you need to view any test as being fair, in advance of actually doing the test. From what you have said, it sounds like you think a test with containers, like the one I proposed above, will not be fair, given your beliefs about how dowsing works. So, can you suggest another test protocol that will be fair?
Did he, though? What year was this on sale? You're aware that Dick Smith sold his business, including the name?
↕ YES ↕️ **** Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! In August 1983, Australia's Dick Smith received a letter from Robert Homer of Worcester, England, who was the organizer of the Worcester Dowsers. The letter said that John Rainbow, a gifted young dowser, had performed a startlingly positive test on videotape and that a copy was on its way to Smith for his viewing. Said Homer, "I am sure that we are making ESP history." If his claims were correct, that would certainly be true. http://undeceivingourselves.org/S-grea.htm **** I'm guessing soon after 1983 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
