Dousing
Offline I just watched part 1 of Enemies of Reason with Richard Dawkins and noticed where he took to task 'Dowsers'.
Now, in case I am spelling it wrong or using the wrong term, dowsing is the process of an individual holding two sticks or wires bent at 90 degrees, and walking over an area in hopes of finding water (although I have heard of them being used to find other things as well).
Richard Dawkins used a double blind study with six closed containers, with only one of them having a bottle of water in them (the others having sand). The results of the test showed basically a one in six chance of detecting the water, which was well within the are of statistical chance.
Now, in my past, when I was earning money in an attempt to mis-spend my youth, I worked on a civil engineering survey team. The reason I bring this up was that they taught me an interesting way to find underground water pipes. Basically I took coat hanger wires (metal, not plastic) and bent them at the afore mentioned 90 degree angle, and holding them loosely in my hands walk around.
I did this, thinking it was some kind of initiation (like retrieving a left-handed smoke sifter or the like) but it DID work. I was able to see the wires bend and in looking at the maps of utilities later, there WAS a water pipe where I (or rather the wires) said there was.
I was told later that this was because running water generates a small magnetic field that can push the wires aside. This tells me that there may be a scientific method behind dowsing. Am I just deluded?
Comments?
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Check this article from the Skeptical Enquirer:
http://www.csicop.org/si/9901/dowsing.html
James Randi did a test, also double blind and with running water, in Australia with folks who were professional dowsers. You can watch the video from the resulting television show here. (He also demonstrates some of his skills with spoon bending and other illusions. Great vid, well worth the time, in my opinion.)
Chances are you already had a pretty good idea where the pipes were. I've noted dowsing skill in finding pipes gets better as the person seeking the pipes gets more familiar with how main-to-tap piping works. =^_^=
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Interesting paper... Thanks for the link.
However, the paper seems to be concentrating more on finding an ACCURATE DOWSER rather then finding out if there is any scientific reality behind the claims. It seemed that the idea of finding if water was there at all was secondary to being within drilling range (agreed that this would be required for a real dowser).
My test would be more akin to placing the dowsing rods into some type of holder, and then walking over a known water source to see if there was any physical evidence that the rods would indeed move without human interaction. Once thats discovered we could move forward.
First of all, if the test entails "walking over" a known water source, then you have not eliminated "human interaction".
In any case, should you actually eliminate human interaction, you would first have to establish a baseline by testing on a known water source and observing the expected reaction, then on a sample known not to have water, to ensure a similar reaction is not elicited. Then you would have to test on a series of samples whose water content is not known in advance, then seeing if the final results are significantly better than random. Essentially, Randi's protocol works just as accurately with or without human interaction.
However, your interest in exploring this is predicated on the apparent success of your first trial. You ought to first establish that you yourself were not succumbing to the idiomotor effect; that may very well disinterest you in giving this ay further thought.
There are no theists on operating tables.
For some reason, I can't help but think that this could be the subject for the most boring episode of Mythbusters ever.
Here's my two cents on the matter. Residential and small scale commercial underground pipes (In other words, anything in your average city) are usually made of terra cotta (if they're old) or PVC or that stupid shit that's essentially roofing shingles rolled into a pipe. I can't remember what that's called. Some are made of cast iron. None of these are going to encourage the buildup of electrical current. Furthermore, they're buried under dirt, which is electrically neutral, and would easily absorb even substantial electrical discharge well before it got to the surface. If they're under cement, that's also neutral, and also not going to conduct any electricity to the surface.
If this is all about electrical current, then it's really simple. You get a pipe, run some water through it, and test it on the outside for any electromagnetic activity. If there's any, you then bury it under four feet of dirt and run the same test. If there's still some on the surface (which there isn't) you test humans for sensitivity to electromagnetic energy. If it's below the threshold of human detection, then the whole thing is bullshit.
Like others have said, there are lots of ways of succumbing to confirmation bias on this. I'm pretty sure I could give any competent general contractor a set of playboy bunny ears to walk around the yard with, and he would have a pretty good chance of guessing where the pipes are.
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If running water altered the local electro-magnetic field, there would be much more sophisticated instruments for detecting it than a couple of bent wire hangers.
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