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.
How it works: it is the mind, not the tool. That is all. I did an experiment with a pendulum. Asked questions of myself holding the string between finger and thumb in a meditative state. Clockwise yes, counterclockwise no. Up and down maybe, back and forth I don’t know. It felt like ants under the skin twitching on my finger bones.
Really it is the subconscious mind. It evaluates the data and responds. Birds can tell direction, humans can locate water.
Is that really surprising?
A friend of mine (now deceased) studied “dowsing” and wrote a summary of his work. He concluded after many experiments that dowsing does detect structural changes in the earth and because water tends to collect in natural examples of structural changes, many successful dowsers attribute the dowsing effect to the presence of water. As well, reefs,(mineralised or otherwise),, filled trenches, and similar structural changes are detectable by this method.(even graves!! …only a very brave person would offer to dowse an old grave for the police who would promptly put your name to the top of the suspects list)
His conclusions as to the source of the dowsing effect was that the ambient microwave radiation field is affected by the structural changes in the earth, and these fields are detected by the muscles in the arm which in turn moves the rods. There is quite a lot more in his paper but its a bit too much for this forum.
If skeptics keep being fixated by water, they will design experiments as done by Dick Smith ( a well known Australian) who buried pipes with & without water and offered quite a good prize for the dowser who could detect the ones with water. Dick Smith is a man interested in truth & scientific fact. Unfortunately he designed the wrong experiment.
I remember my house builder father, back in the 1960s, coming home from a rural job and telling us about the well driller hired by his client, who wanted two wells.
“Whereabouts?” asked the driller.
“One by the house and one in the paddock over there,” said the client.
“OK.”
“Aren’t you going to divine for them?”
“Why? If I drill, I’ll strike water.”
“How do you know?”
“Watch me.”
He drilled; he struck water.
“How did you know where the water was?”
“There’s water everywhere.”
And in my part New Zealand, there is. A creek, for example, is just the visible and more voluminous manifestation of moving water. Adjacent to it will be a mass of water, happily creeping along underground and out of sight . . . but definitely there.
I asked my Grandfather when I was young what he thought about weaning calves and planting potatoes by the signs of the moon. He said there was nothing to it. I asked him how did he explain all the apparently intelligent people who were convinced it made a difference. He asked me, “How do you explain all the intelligent people who vote Democrat?”