Guest lampooning by David Middleton
Hopefully, this post won’t have as many typos as my last post.
I just love ridiculing The Grauniad…
The news that many water companies use dowsing to locate underground water has prompted outraged demands from scientists that they desist at once from wasting time and money on “medieval witchcraft”. They are right to call this practice deluded. But it reveals how complicated the relationship is between scientific evidence and public belief.
When the science blogger Sally Le Page highlighted the issue after her parents spotted an engineer dowsing for Severn Trent Water, the company responded to her query by claiming that “we’ve found some of the older methods are just as effective than [sic] the new ones” (such as the use of drones and satellite imaging). The engineer concerned told her parents that dowsing works for him eight times in 10.
Further inquiry elicited the comment from Yorkshire Water that “although few and far between, some of our techs still use them!”, while Anglian Water said: “There have been occasions where we’ve used dowsing rods.” Le Page says that 10 out of 12 British water companies she approached have admitted to the practice. But “admitted” isn’t quite the right word; what is striking is the jaunty tone of these responses, as if to say: “Yes, isn’t it extraordinary that these old methods work?”
Let’s be clear: dowsing doesn’t work. Le Page’s blog links to detailed experiments conducted in Germany in the 1980s which showed that the dowsers tested weren’t locating water at levels better than random chance.
[…]
The resistance to basic scientific reasoning and evidence displayed by large businesses that also deploy cutting-edge space technology may seem lamentable, but it shouldn’t surprise us. It has never been more apparent that an inability to make scientifically informed choices is no obstacle to flourishing in modern society.
[…]
Given that company executives and engineers seem no more immune to pseudoscience than the rest of the population, it’s not obvious that better public education about science is going to dispel the modern-day survival of concepts rooted in Renaissance natural magic. (Whether the public should be expected to bear any costs incurred is quite another matter.) Rather, these beliefs need to be understood – and if necessary confronted – in the way that all magical thinking should be: as an expression of desire and the need for consolation.
•Philip Ball is a science writer
This bit is worth repeating…
The resistance to basic scientific reasoning and evidence displayed by large businesses that also deploy cutting-edge space technology may seem lamentable, but it shouldn’t surprise us. It has never been more apparent that an inability to make scientifically informed choices is no obstacle to flourishing in modern society.
Given that company executives and engineers seem no more immune to pseudoscience than the rest of the population…
It always amuses me when academic pinheads and “science writers” lament about private sector scientists and engineers resisting the “basic scientific reasoning and evidence” which they reject.
While, there are lots of reasons to doubt that dowsing can directly detect water, minerals, lost jewelry or anything else. Dowsing can detect subtle variations in the Earth’s magnetic field… And the presence of groundwater can cause magnetic anomalies.
ABSTRACT
Perturbations on the earth’s magnetic field may coincide with the existence of groundwater. Theoretical calculations are made showing how and to what extent this effect may exist. The suggestion is also made that water dowsers may get a dowsing reaction as a result of entering a change in magnetic gradient. Tests were conducted to determine the statistical significance of dowsing reactions obtained by separate individuals dowsing in a common test area. Approximately 150 people participated in the experiment over a period of one year. Chi·square tests showed considerable statistical significance. Virtually all people tested experienced dowsing reactions though most of them had never dowsed before. There is some evidence of correlation between magnetic gradient changes and dowsing reactions.
Chadwick, Duane G. and Jensen, Larry, “The Detection of Magnetic Fields Caused by Groundwater” (1971). Reports. Paper 568. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/water_rep/568
There are reasons why scientists and engineers, with decades of experience in their fields and successful track records, might just choose to ignore the lamentations of academic pinheads and “science writers” and continue to employ practical methodologies despite the “outraged demands from scientists” to cease and desist.
Disclaimer: As a professional geologist, I am not endorsing dowsing as a method of finding anything. I’m just pointing out that the real world operates in a totally different universe than government, academia and journalism do.
Featured image from Wikipedia.
This article hits right at home…literally. My father was born in 1914 in the Ozarks. He learned Dowsing from an old man in his youth. Long before metal detectors and ground penetrating scientific device’s were ever thought of. One advantage of Dowsing is distance. Metal detectors and Ground Penetrating electronics have to be right over the top of the mineralization to detect it. Much like the old Green Willow Y branches for water Dowsing the Dowser would hold the branch high overhead and turn in a circle until it pulled in a direction and then head in that direction until in pulled downwards the strongest. You cannot do that with most electronic device’s. I personally do not have the skill my father had. But I have his set of Dowsing Rods after he passed away. By putting a metal or other materials on the end of a 1/16″ to 1/8″ dry dowling at least 24″ long he could find any object or mineralized area (ore body) from feet to miles away – as long as it was different from the rest of the area. He taught classes of people how to do it. If they couldn’t do it they didn’t pay for it. And he earned a good bit of side money finding things for people and corporations. All of our mining claims were found this way. So you can be as skeptical as you want. But until you watch a master doing it successfully repeatedly…
I have to wonder why anyone bothered to invent (AND USE!) metal detectors if dowsing works so well.
Metal detectors are easy to use and require little to no effort. Not so dowsing.
They don’t find water at all, unless it is in a metal pipe, so metal detectors are usless for finding places to dig wells.
Geomagnetic surveys are often used to identify groundwater accumulations in areas where reservoir presence and geometry is dictated by structural features (faults, fractures, etc.) of the bedrock/basement.
The 1971 Utah State study I cited in the post clearly indicated that dowsing identified magnetic anomalies in a manner similar to geomagnetic surveys, in a statistically significant manner.
Probably because people will buy them that don’t have the abilities to Dowse. Practice makes anyone better at something. But electronic device’s take the same principles that Dowsing does to make them work. That magnetic coil design amplification and the electronic signal the device reads separates the trash from the sought metals. Ground Penetrating electronics have the same principles that distinguishes the mineralization as a color schematic and ground from caverns/voids that have possible gases or liquids in them measuring multiple things in a single pass. A Dowser has only one item they are looking for at a time. You cannot find gold with pure silver on your Dowsing Rod or visa versa. And if you have Sterling Silver you may find Copper just as equally that has no Silver. One pulls to itself and nothing else. Just like any electronic device’s that don’t have a specific element in its range of detection is not going to distinguish it from other elements. And if that divice has a limited range of accuracy from the ground suface of a few inches, going over the ground that has a dip will not find anything in that dip area…that a Dowser would. A Dowser will pull to the strongest source first… Like a big bigger nugget, ore vein or cluster far away than the smaller nuggets under foot. Each having their advantages and disadvantages.
Because metal detectors require no skill – any idiot can use one. I’ve dowsed for water pipes, underground electrical lines, and the position of rock ledges for years. I learned how to dowse from my father, after our family construction company bought a backhoe and I was the designated operator. Like any other backhoe operator I needed “data” to economically find and dig for or around existing underground pipe. It’s cheap, saves time, and works reasonably well. (By the way, my degree is in Chemical Engineering)
I always heard this practice called “divining” or “witching” and it was done with willow branches. Anyway, I have never seen it done, but have listened to people I respect who claim to have used it with fairly good success. As a “the proof is in the pudding” kind of a guy, I tend to accept thing that work, even if I don’t know why it works. That said, as an engineer, I am always trying to understand how or why thing work that I don’t know.
The Chadwick and Jensen (1971) study, despite being wildly anti-dowsing biased, still found a significant result that there was some effect to be experienced. “Virtually all people tested experienced dowsing reactions though most of them had never dowsed before. ” What kind of results would they have found if they used only experienced, professional dowsers? Or even just experienced dowsers? Or trained dowsers?
Imagine doing such a study with 150 people-off-the-street using “scientific methods” of finding buried water pipes or suitable places to drill a new well, after a brief 3 minute explanation of how to do it.
Just because science can not yet explain something does not make it superstition. Birds apparently sense magnetic fields of the earth for long-distance navigation. Other animals seem to have senses that humans do not. Nearly brainless monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles on a journey they have never taken before in their short lives from the Central Hudson Valley of New York State to over-winter in specific spot Mexico (alternate generations make the journey each year — no butterfly lives long enough to make it twice).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_butterfly_migration
I do not dowse — but knew a man that could find buried water pipes and spots where groundwater was easily available for drilling — he wasn’t good at much else, but he could dowse. How? Beats me…..
Earth magnetic field has two components, strong one generated in the liquid core which naturally varies over period of decades, but has very little regional variability. If monarchs use this type of the field the magnetic map has to be re-build over generations.
However, there is a static component which has been frozen in the rocks for million of years.
I suspect that butterflies (birds etc) have a natural ability when flying close to ground to ignore the strong field and sense changes of the more complex localised magnetic field; such map once acquired may be good for thousands of generations.
Link for the Magnetic anomaly map of North America , zoom in for more details in the monarch migrating routes.
More like they cant make sense of the noise when closer to the ground so can’t act on it
To us humans it looks as a random noise but to the migrating creatures navigating long distances these magnetic field blobs could be simply the ‘road signs’ to their final destination.
European eels, even from the far reaches of the Baltic sea, find their spawning ‘ground’ 1000s of miles away in the Sargasso Sea,
A couple of anecdotes …
Humans May Have ‘Magnetic’ Sixth Sense
Scientist Claims He’s Discovered a Magnetic ‘Sixth Sense’ in Humans
Vukcevic ==> Thanks for the Mag anomaly map…very interesting.
The placebo effect in clinical medicine is real. It often times works as well as known efficacious therapies. Why does it?
The Theory of the Human Mind and our Expectations. Our mind creates expectations. We dismiss/forget failures and remember successes. Expectation also can subtly alter the behaviors which were exacerbating the pathology, so the pathology subsides until the behavior returns. Random events are noise in our lives, yet we forget about that thing called “reversion to the mean.”
Which is why the Climateers cannot let go of Catastrophic AGW. They have for so long become to expect it, they know it must just be because they need to tweak their models for another CMIP. Somewhere those glaciers must be melting beyond normal (expectations at work) even though we are in a major inter-glacial period.
Dr. Richard Feynman had a very clear insight to this in science turned PseudoScience – Feynman’s Cargo Cult Theory. IF they can just keep tweaking their favorite CGM. If they can just keep refining temperature data sets that reach back to 1850,. If they can just keep adjusting global SLR estimates.
Climate science today is nothing but Cargo Cult Science. Climateers’ expectations keep them doing and predicting the same failures over and over, hoping those wondrous cargo-filled airplanes are imminently about to arrive to deliver their intellectual salvation.
The placebo effect only works on things like pain. It does not work on an actual disease like measles or TB. Conditions that are the brain interpreting a physical condition are most affected by placebos. It makes sense because human’s have considerable control over the brain’s interpretation of things. Placebos direct that interpretation.
Placebos work quite well on hypochondria.
The entire fake-medicine field of homeopathy is built on the placebo effect, raking in hundreds of millions dollars every year in the US.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/7/prweb9714278.htm
Placebo effect works best on pain or 1 to 3 days. Typically the effect wears off after a short time.
Joelobryan: Agreed, since hypochondria is not a biological illness. It’s mental. Yes, homeopathy operates on the placebo effect, most definately.
Jeff: Probably. Though if a person choses a treatment himself/herself and believes it works, it might last longer. I’ve known people who swear by homeopathic pain relief long term. Of course, pain is very subjective and tolerated in varying degrees by individuals. Hard to say.
Learn about why so many clinical trials fail in late stage studies that seemed to do fine in smaller scale ones.
Placebo effect works on far more than pain, and not just fake or imagined illnesses.
It is not clear why, but it is clear that an effect exists.
When Thames Water fitted a water meter next door they tightened a connector on a plastic pipe without even bothering to hold it so there was a twisting action. After they went there was a serious leak and by two weeks later it was a fair sized stream. They used an electronic system which placed the leak well into next door’s drive and said it was his problem not theirs and demanded money to repair it.
I used dowsing to place it at least three metres closer to the newly fitted water meter. The boss ridiculed the idea but his junior suggested drilling a small hole in the tarmac when the water stopped in the higher outflow and rapidly enlarged the new hole.
I was right and I think the rods only amplify some sort of internal detection as I can never do it when I have even a slight cold or a headache.
David – agree with you, I never discovered what my BUUUUZZZZ was until one day somebody said to me here are some divining rods, then I realized, I can also see which way the water runs, which I find is very strange, as sometimes it appears to be uphill, which I know is a nonsense, its all down to the depth of the water, so uphill has nothing to do with it. I only feel if I am not thinking about anything else, I need to clear my mind, and just feel, and then I get the BUUZZZZZ. Sometimes it can be like an electric shock it is so strong, those times I have learn’t to move on, just gets too painful, sometimes very isolated, within a half meter radius. What I have found interesting that a lot of church sites are built on top of water, so wonder if the priests who selected sites because they were devine were feeling water. I do not have the ability to determine how deep so no use to me or anybody else, but I had a cousin who was a genius at finding water, found many a lost water pipe, and or well site, have another cousin that has been a well driller as was his father before him, had a very high strike rate at finding good water.
“The resistance to basic scientific reasoning and evidence displayed by large businesses … but it shouldn’t surprise us. It has never been more apparent that an inability to make scientifically informed choices is no obstacle to flourishing in modern society.”
Wow, just wow. What about public entities; governments and governmental bodies? They never display a resistance to scientific reasoning and evidence? As an example; what about the twaddle that breathes out of UN reps Christiana Figueres’s mouth? The bias here is showing.
Kip,
It wouldn’t be too difficult to take a half-acre of land, plow it, bury a water pipe, level the surface, and walk ‘dowsers’ back and forth over the surface. One should then take a record of both positives, false positives, negatives, and false negatives on a 1 meter grid. I don’t have high expectations for anything statistically significant.
Now that I think about it, a better test of dowsing would be to solicit dowsers to clear the many mine fields scattered around the world in the aftermath of numerous wars. There should he strong motivation to pay attention and get it right, and eliminate the frauds who are only in it for the money (They will be awarded posthumous Darwin Awards). Sort of like a vintage Hunger Games.
Kip, results from the German study are exactly as you predicted: random
sorry this was a response to Clyde Spencer
Yes, Kip seems to be a dowserista.
Shameful.
Judging from what I’ve seen with companies locating their own pipelines for water, etc, witching is probably just as accurate—as in the companies are dismal failures as often as not. Where my hubby works, it took at least a month to figure out who owned the pipeline, where exactly was the pipeline and was there anything in it.
There were many dry holes drilled for oil in spite of seismic processing in the 80’s. I’m hoping it’s improved since then. At the time I worked in seismic processing, throwing a dart at a map was equally likely to locate oil.
Perhaps it’s not that we should discard “old” unproven methods, but rather develop some actually effective new methods. If percentage success rate is the measure, where’s the data on the success rate of current methods?
Seismic acquisition and processing are many orders of magnitude better than they were in the 1980’s… which were already far more effective than throwing darts.
In the Gulf of Mexico, where seismic hydrocarbon indicators work very well, the probability of finding oil or gas is close to 95%. I can’t remember the last time we drilled a clearly dry hole.
Now, the probability of a wildcat well resulting in a discovery which can be economically completed and put on production is probably in the 50-70% range, in the Gulf.
Is it possible to drill a dry hole in the Gulf of Mexico? Isn’t the whole thing atop a layer of oil?
Yes. Many dry holes have been drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. The proper employment of seismic hydrocarbon indicators helps us avoid drilling dry holes that we would have drilled 20-30 years ago. It also leads us to drilling more “discoveries” that are too small to complete.
No. The whole thing is not “atop a layer of oil.” The Gulf of Mexico is underlain by extensive Jurassic, Cretaceous and Lower Tertiary source rocks… But this isn’t even remotely similar to a layer of oil.
Do you have an explanation for why these seismic hydrocarbon indicators don’t do as well as you claim with wildcat wells?
All you seem to be saying is that oil is reliably found where oil is known to be, and not reliably found where oil has not been found.
Where did I say that “seismic hydrocarbon indicators don’t do as well as [I] claim with wildcat wells?’
And… The best place to look for oil, is actually where it’s already been found. The larger an oil field, the more likely it is that the previous operator missed something.
I’m glad things have improved with locating oil.
Judging by the ever increasing amount of proven reserves, which have become ever larger even as more and more oil is extracted, I would have to say that it has never been difficult to find oil.
The fact that gasoline is cheaper than milk or bottled water, despite the huge amount of processing and transportation involved, proves it.
In September 2003 I had a medical test performed. In early 2004 I saw the doctor who scheduled the test. She told me, in no uncertain terms that, “With a … score of 1 or below, nobody lives beyond 5 years.” (My score was 1.06.) For some reason I didn’t freak out. Perhaps I innately knew that her prognosis did not fully apply. Or else it was simply denial. Shortly afterwards a dear friend said not to get upset until I saw the specialist and that what specialists tell you is often 180 degrees different than what the primary care doc says. But, make no mistake, the primary care doc here was a professor of primary care medicine at a renowned, university affiliated, big city hospital.
Shortly afterward I had the appointment with the specialist. He said I could live past 5 years. In early 2007 (trying to determine whether) to take an early retirement) I asked this very decent man for a range of life expectancies. He said that was very difficult but would try, and after some though, indicated it could be up to 10-12 years, but cautioned that it was likely to be less.
I’m now over 10 years and counting. I still drive – and fast when the opportunity permits – and still enjoy a good beer. Who knows; much to the disdain of never-Trumpets I may have lasted long enough to see him elected, and possibly complete his first term. (Get lost Mueller!)
Oh yes, when that dear specialist gave me the range of life expectancies I immediately replied, “The art and science of medicine” to which he replied, “Sometimes it’s more art.”
Life is both art AND science. And, until science can explain the mechanism behind the fundamental natural force of gravity, or explain sentience in human beings, it will remain so.
Wishing you continued victory.
Tom here’s hoping that you are still going strong by the end of his second term. If it was just a swamp I would not be so upset. It is more like a cesspool.
It is interesting that when one gets a study to show one effect you always can get one to show the opposite. The biggest influence on a scientific finding is the confirmation basis of those conducting the experiment. This is caused due to its influence over the design of the experiment and the interpretation of the data which will ironically lead to conclusions which are consistent with the scientists preconceived ideas ( or financial motivations). This is as much evident in Climate science, and biotechnology research as it is with dowsing.
I stopped reading the Guardian about forty years ago when they did some reports on subjects that I had studied in great detail and I realised how they twisted the truth for their narrative. When I understood that, nothing they wrote was credible as I had completely lost my trust in their journalism. It seems worse these days and even less credible.
A common tale, I am afraid Simon. I lost faith in journalism in general through the same kind of experiences! Some journalists do better than others and some publications place a lighter hand on their journalists to “fit” stories to their editorial narrative, but in general they are a sorry bunch the whole lot of them!
The owners of press outlets have shaped history through manipulation of public opinion. As Leif often says: “nothing new”.
These puffed-up self-appointed “defenders of science” are nothing but big blowhards with an axe to grind. They are big believers in “consensus science”, meaning that of course, CAGW is real, and anyone who doesn’t believe belongs in the same category as Medieval witchcraft.
So here is my experience with dowsing. My uncle used it in Mexico to find wells. We were down for a visit and he told us about it. We all laughed at the idea. So my aunt took us down to the creek and we cut willow branches into a y shape. We walked around and occasionally the end of the willow would dip. I do not think I was causing it. My brother held the ends of the willow my aunt was using to prevent her from consciously or unconsciously twisting the ends to make the other end dip and it still dipped. Now whether there was water there or not we don’t know. The end of the willow did go down without any apparent force applied by me or anyone else that was doing it. I am now a chemical engineer with thirty years experience in the lab measuring physical properties and phase equilibria. I know a bit about physics and chemistry. I have no explanation for this phenomena. Very intriguing.
Lets see a video.
From the department of Weren’t the Middle Ages Terrible comes this statement in the Guardian article:
“The news that many water companies use dowsing to locate underground water has prompted outraged demands from scientists that they desist at once from wasting time and money on ‘medieval witchcraft’.”
However, Wikipedia points out that:
“Dowsing appears to have arisen in the context of Renaissance magic in Germany..”
Turns out it was the Renaissance that was terrible and not the Middle Ages.
And yet, they published this.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/12/astrologers-predict-us-election-trump-clinton-zodiac
But to be fair, looks like the astrologers did better than their journalists did.
It works. annoying isn’t it.
There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
~Hamlet
Doh, you beat me to the quote! See below.
Sorry – I didn’t mean to copy you without attribution!
It is Shakespeare you are copying. I wish more people copied him.
Hey, I was going to say that! Fortunately, I always read the thread before commenting.
Trying to run so called scientific experiments on water diviners is the equivalent to holding a gun to their head and saying you’ll shoot them if they find nothing. The whole thing about divining is that the dowser is completely relaxed and confident that something will show him where the wells are. Our old boy used to say, “slip us a quid if us finds water for ee.” That was the nature of the contract.
On our farm back in the fifties a dowser using a forked willow twig found two underground springs for us. One for the house and another out on the farm. Both had water, winter and summer for the whole time I lived there for the cost of a couple of quid and two pits dug with pick and shovel.
So maybe he had £20,000 worth of ground radar and sonar kit hidden under his tweed jacket, who cares, It still only cost us a quid. Slight disclaimer..This was in a valley in Cornwall so you only really had to look straight up in the sky to find water.
If Philip Ball seriously thinks that just because we can’t find a scientific explanation for something then it cannot exist then he is a first order twit. The human race is a long way from understanding the entirety of the universe. We are probably on the first rung of the ladder of knowledge where we still don’t have a clue how many rungs there are.
I’m off to a bonesetter that I know to get my back fixed. He doesn’t do science either, he just fixes back problems.
Yeah, doing something while cameras are rolling is like a gun to the head.
GMAFB!
What exactly is an underground spring?
A spring by definition is water that flows naturally to the surface.
The term is an oxymoron.
Rephrase as: “While there are lots of reasons to doubt that dowsing can directly detect water, minerals, lost jewelry or anything else, dowsing can detect subtle variations in the Earth’s magnetic field…”
My grandfather, who was an electrical and signaling engineer in the Victorian Railways, was also an amateur water diviner and had about 85% accuracy. He had no idea what enabled it but people called on him all his life up to age 88. The evidence for water divining is much stronger than for anthropogenic climate change which requires data manipulation.
The evidence for fairies is greater than for gnomes, therefore I believe in fairies.
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio”
As skeptics, we should question and demand proof wherever we can. However, there are still lots of mysteries out there which we haven’t been able to reduce to discrete hypotheses. There is a lot anecdotal evidence that dowsing is better than random, but experimental evidence doesn’t back this up. Is this the experiment (which, let’s face it, may have been designed to fail – I can point to plenty of such “experiments” in nutrition research) or the anecdotes?
And in the end, it boils down to utility: A model is useful when it can be used to predict an outcome accurately – this has nothing to with being “true” – it is useful until it fails to predict accurately and when that happens, you develop a better model (Kuhnian science as opposed to Popperian). If the engineer gets results with his divining rods – what skin is it off your nose?
Meterology is classic Kuhnian science with the various forecasts all about getting a better prediction and being modified all the time to be more useful. Some of the modifications might get you closer to the “truth”, but who cares are long as they do a better job of telling people what weather to expect. Climate models, however, have shown a singular lack of utility in predicting future temperatures. Unless, that is, your purpose is to scare people into massive societal changes. Then they have been quite useful and if that is your purpose then of course you wouldn’t change them……
Interesting that the response of us climate skeptics to water diving seems to be cautious acceptance that there may be something in it. I have tried divining with bent rods and they did seem to move in a spatially consistent manner. I always assumed that my subconscious muscle control was operating the rods, and I favour the theory of a magnetic sense that drives that. I would speculate that springs may be associated with faults, and faults are often associated with changes in magnetic field strength. I have no personal experience of dowsing working for water detection. but I have heard testimony to its efficacity by several people whom I would consider reliable and honest witnesses.
When the AGW brigade of psychobabble loons hear that we are kindly disposed towards divining they will bring up the old codswallop of us falling for any and all weird conspiracy theories.
My favourite conspiracy theory, in which I passionately believe, is that the Loch Ness monster has not been seen recently is because it was abducted by aliens. Beware You could be next!!
When AGW reaches this level of supporting evidence, maybe I’ll take it more seriously.
There have been past opportunities for people with ‘talent’ to make some big bucks, but no one has collected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge
What level of supporting evidence? A single un-published and non-peer reviewed report from over 40 years ago. Not to mention the use of words like “may” etc plus an extremely small sample size which would make any claims to statistical significance meaningless.
It is extremely bemusing to see people here believing in something which if true would basically require a new law of physics in order for there to be a rational explaination yet find it hard to believe in the basics of
Global warming and the greenhouse effect which can all be explained using standard first year physics.
“There have been past opportunities for people with ‘talent’ to make some big bucks, but no one has collected:”
Uri Geller has (he says) collected millions from oil companies for his dowsing; anyway, he now lives in a mansion.
“but I have heard testimony to its efficacity by several people whom I would consider reliable and honest witnesses.”
And I know a lot of people who are highly educated and very intelligent who swallow AGW whole.
that is not a reason to buy a word of it for even one second.
Additionally, even if dowsing/water witching/divining or whatever is “bunk”, it hurts no one. I’d say it belongs in a gray area, somewhere between science and myth. Lots of things do, and it is sheer hubris to claim otherwise. Other beliefs are perhaps more fanciful, and even fun, such as the belief in bigfoot, or the Loch Ness monster. But again, they harm no one, except perhaps those who believe in them. CAGW ideology, which is replete with all kinds of myths, fantasies, and outright fabrications on the other hand does a great deal of harm to humanity.
“Additionally, even if dowsing/water witching/divining or whatever is “bunk”, it hurts no one. ”
Wrong, it hurts credibility to be associated with people who swallow such nonsense.
Being a crank is very much skin off of ones nose.
This comment section is offensively accepting of a load of freaking horseshit.
Click bait masquerading as opinion, masquerading as science. Welcome to WUWT
bitter bitter little critter 😛
I guess he’s having a Mcleody day…
tony…….””News and commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts”””
..the first eight words have it covered
First, David, try not to ridicule the Guardian too much. They are tooooo easy a target and its a bit like ridiculing the SJW child of ultra-manipulative SJW parents (look who owns it). They really do need their safe space and will never change in any case. They are pure unadulterated non-stop propaganda.
As for this dowsing story, it reminds me of the scientific calculations that showed that bumblebees can’t fly. (Or any number of Global Warming predictions.) All I can say is that it worked for me on our property where the underground water sources are distinct and separate streams and I did it with two metal coat hangers.
I also believe that bumblebees can fly.
Sorry but it is impossible to resist ridicule in the Guardain, I mean Grudian, I mean Garduin…that poncy paper for elitist pricks.
No doubt about that. But maybe not too much. They’ll just scream bully and play the victim card.
And how do you know that the water sources are distinct and separate streams?