I have been annoying the nice folks in Dwelling, an item on Alternative Water
Softeners, by suggesting that dowsing might have a scientific basis, and be
related to magnetic effects of flowing water.   Out of curiosity, I contacted
the American Society of Dowsers (see the Internet), who put me in touch with
their science advisor Ed Stillman (dowsered@sedona.net).  I just received
notice of a Discovery Channel program in which he was interviewed on the
subject, to be shown this Thursday, Jan 22 at 8 p.m. and again Sunday the 25th
at 5:30 p.m.).  


From dowsered@sedona.net Wed Jan 21 10:43:03 1998
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 98 19:31:09 -0000
From: Ed Stillman <dowsered@sedona.net>
Subject: Ed on TV?


The Discovery Channel has bought a series from London World TV called 
"Strange But True?".  I was interviewed in both Tucson and Sedona by LWT 
about "why does dowsing work?".  There were 11 difficult questions and my 
answers had to be given without seeing the questions beforehand, no 
rehearsal and no notes.  The series had it's debut on Thursday, January 
8, on the Discovery channel with a program on a USAF UFO sighting in 
England.  The events are re-created with actors, and each program has 
proponents supporting and opponents countering the events of the program. 
 Each program is repeated the following Sunday night, all on the 
Discovery channel.  From what I have seen so far, these are excellent and 
well done 1/2 hour programs.

The third show in the series, if they keep their schedule, is the one 
about dowsing.  It will air (or cable if you will) on the Discovery 
channel Thursday, January 22 at 10 pm Arizona time, and be repeated on 
Sunday, January 25 at 7:30 pm Arizona time.  Dowser Ted Kauffman's map 
and field dowsing of the missing truck location in the middle of a lake 
about 32 miles long and a mile or two wide is re-created with actors.  
Ted had excellent results in spite of the skeptics because there was a 
critical need for his answers.  The families of the missing men were in 
anguish over the fact that these two men had suddenly disappeared in 
their truck without a trace.  Ted, who won the coveted Dowser of the Year 
award in 1995, was at his best and was able to successfully dowse the 
correct location of their missing truck.  I'll be, of course, the dowsing 
proponent.  They would not tell me who the opponent will be.  I may be on 
the show for one or two minutes or maybe not at all.  In any event, enjoy 
what they have created.

I sincerely hope they kept the program order the same and this is the 
week that the dowsing show is shown.  If not, enjoy what they do present. 
The interviews were a tough but worthwhile and rewarding personal 
experience for me.          

Health and Happiness to all,   Ed Stillman


        I have a copy of the questions and his answers in a file named
'interview', and of his article on brainwave changes in a file named
'brainwave'.  (Can anyone explain how to access these files short of my
copying them into a response?)

Please watch the TV program and/or read these two files, and then
contribute your ideas on the subject to this item (and to Ed Stillman, if
you feel you have something really worthwhile to say - he has been really
helpful and I don't want his time to be wasted).  

I became interested because my roommate actually succeeded in dowsing for
water, with a nylon Y-rod, on the first try.  He is very right-brained.  I
would not have believed it otherwise, nor would he.  Despite some nonsense
associated with the subject, there does appear to be some scientific
basis for dowsing.
.

314 responses total.

  Dowsing for water is real.  I've seen it done, with near 100% accuracy.
The person I saw was driven to a field next to a school and was asked to
locate the three sources of water that were underground.  He wandered
about the field for 20 minutes or so; then said there were four spots,
not three.  He pointed out where they were: three pipes, and what he
thought was an underground river.

  He was right on all counts.  The people who disbelieved in this person
didn't tell him about the third pipe as a test.  They didn't know about
the underground river but had that verified with the building folks at
the city hall.  This was in Sylvania OH about 1980.

  Arthur C. Clarke had a TV show years ago where they looked at various
"mysterious" things.  They looked at dowsers as a group.  As a group
they were very accurate at finding water but *lousy* at finding anything
else.

While I have not watched the program or read your two articles, I can tell
you for a fact that dowsing for water is very real and works quite well.  A
good dowser, such as the one my sister used in MD, was able to not only find
the water underground, but was able to follow the flow of the water, tell my
sister when another stream or river entered it, tell her how deep it was (for
drilling purposes), and tell her the flow rate of the water.  My sister and
her husband drilled where instructed and as deep as instructed and this dowser
was right on the money.  The flow rate stated was accurate also.

You could not have watched the program yet because it is not on until tomorrow
(Thursday) at 8 p.m. or Sunday at 5:30.  You could not have read the articles
either because I just now moved them to my home directory.  To read the
articles from the ok prompt type


and !menumore /a/k/e/keesan/brainwaves  (for a long article about how dowsers'
brainwave patterns change during dowsing)

Make sure you leave a space after !menumore.  (I just learned this command
and made several errors in the process).  From the grex prompt omit !, just
type menumore /a/k/e/keesan interview.

I am still learning and something got lost in the above.  The files can be
accessed with

Whoops, I am still doing something wrong.
Type !menumore /a/k/e/keesan/brainwaves and !menumore /a/k/e/keesan/interview

From the "i need a well drilled" point of view, scientific proof or
disproof of dowsing isn't very useful.  If dowsing's a bunch of fairy
tales and the local "expert" is actually working off experience, 
hunches, and a bunch of oil company survey data he stole, you still
win if he takes your $100 and points out a spot where the well drillers
strike good water.  

On the flip side, if dowsing's as real as gravity, but the dude you
hire is a cheap wanna-be who can't find water any better than someone
throwing darts at a map blindfolded, you lose. 

 According to the guide, it's on at 9.00 pm. 

First of all, you will usually hit water wherever you drill. Studies of
dowsing still show that the failure rate is very great. What it amounts
to is someone walking around and saying he/she thinks there is water
at that point, and if he/she has some perception of likely drilling spots,
sometimes he/she will be correct. I would not put a penny on a dowser if
it were critical that I succeed in finding ground water.

we need car key dowsers. my gf always losses hers.

I know dowsing works.  WE used a dowser out on the farm and he told us within
several feet how deep to drill.  Also, we did experiments in school, and we
got good enough to use coathangers to find the schools pipes.

It is peculiar that there seems to be no simple way to convince people that
this sort of thing is claptrap. People come to believe in it because it
is hit and miss, and they come to be impressed by the hits, and forget
the misses. I suppose it also contains an element of gambling, and we
see how people seem to gladly throw their money away even though they
know the odds are against them. It does have some entertainment value,
however, and dowsing is less of a social problem than gambling. 

This response has been erased.

there may be no simple way to convince people that it's claptrap, maybe
because it isn't claptrap.

  It may well be that dowsers provide useful information and many people
  seem to feel they've gotten good value for their money.  I have to point
  out, though, that Bruce's anecdote in #9 doesn't really say anything
  about the efficacy of dowsing, it just says that the dowser he consulted
  knew roughly how deep the water table was in that area -- without telling 
  anything about how he got that information..  If you were to take a dowser
  around to areas with which he was not familiar and he were to report results
  to within the same accuracy, *then* you might start to conclude that he was
  getting his info by dowsing or some other practice you were not prepared to
  explain..

  I'm not saying that it works, I'm not saying that it doesn't...  What I
  *am* saying is that you have to design your experiments pretty carefully
  before you can claim to have proven anything.

There are many reports from controlled experiments on dowsing, and 
their global conclusion is that there is no special sense involved,
but just educated hit or miss results. I'd seek advice from a geohydrologist
any day, before taking a chance on a self-proclaimed "dowser". It is the
same as consulting Tarot cards to make predictions.

Thanks for the correction from 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. on the Discovery Channel
program tonight.  THe person being interviewed told me 8:30, sorry.
Rane, could you post one or more of your reports on grex?  (And here I thought
I was just annoying you in Water Softeners but you seem to have following the
topic over to Agora).  The DIviner's Handbook by Tom Graves, 1986, from the
library, gives practical instructions on making a dowsing tool from
coathangers, but could whoever it was who used them in school describe exactly
how they are made and used?
Members can find more information on dowsing on the Internet by typing lynx
altavista at R Run a Unix Program and entering Dowsing before the Submit. 
(Type H for more help, or contact me).  Membership is only $6/month.  There
were 1001 items exactly on the subject.  Number 8 was Intro to Dowsing.  SOme
of the other sites were about Ralph Dowsing ( person, not a method).
This discussion was supposed to start *after* the TV show.

I'm with Rane on this one. I would have to see dowsers in a controlled
experiment to believe dowsing works. It's kind of like the psychics who
tell people "amazing" things about themselves, like "you are not satisfied
with your job." A monkey can tell things like that and be right a significant
percent of the time. Someone who is more perceptive can analyze the caller's
voice and deduce certain things and be right more often. Believers also
forget awfully easily about the times when the psychic/dowser is wrong.
There's one born every minute...

I would be more convinced if a dowser is more successful than the most
successful geohydrologists at finding water in a controlled experiment.
Otherwise, I don't buy it. 

(And people wonder why there are so many phone and mail scams in this 
 country...)

I hope to never live in a place where I require the services of
a dowser.

Klaus also had a dowser find a very good well for him on their new property
(while neighbors have had no luck finding good wells).  I found his account
somewhat convincing, but I noticed that (1) the dowser had a lot of experience
drilling for water in the area and (2) the dowser was able to tell him quite
about about how the groundwater worked in the area.  I believe such a person
can find better than average well sites, and I believe that going through a
ritual like wandering around with a stick may even be a somewhat helpful tool
for engaging a lot of semi-conscious intuitive knowledge.

The people "testing" the dowsers in the experiments described above seem to
be lousy scientists.  They experimental design is shoddy.

Finding water pipes in a schoolyard doesn't impress me - anyone who has
experience at such things should be able to make some good guesses at where
the water pipes are.  Builders don't try to hide the pipes.  The put them in
the cheapest and most convenient spots, and, if in doubt, put them in the most
"normal" place.  There is an awful lot of space there for anything from a
direct con to just tapping into unconscious knowledge of pipe layout.

Finding an underground stream through a schoolyard is equally unimpressive.
If the dowser knows the area, he knows where the underground streams are.

If I wanted to test this, I'd find a nice dry field and dig an array of
holes spread ten feet apart.  I'd prepare a large number of identical
plastic drums, filling some with sand, and some with an equal weight of
water.  I'd put each drum in a random hole, so even I don't know which ones
have water in them, and fill them all back in.  Then I'd invite a dowser
out to figure out where the water is buried.  After he has mapped out the
water, we'll dig up the drums and see which ones were wet.  If he does
better than random guessing on a number of runs of this experiment, I'd
be very interested.

Try http://www.voicenet.com/~eric/dowsing.htm for starters.

re #18, dowsers detect 'energy fields', or moving water.  Your experimental
setup might have to involve pumps as well, to generate the slight
electromagnetic currents which are possibly being detected.  Groundwater does
not just sit there, it is slowly moving.  Does anyone know about animals
detecting the earth's magnetic field?  Migratory animals.  And then some eels,
I think, can detect their prey from the electromagnetic fields generated.
I will look at that website, Rane, after 5 p. m.

#18: Agreed. 

#20: Animals can detect EM fields. I saw a crude experiment on The Nature
     of Things a few years back with newly hatched Salmon and the direction
     they tend to swim in because of EM fields. That's a far cry from dowsing.
     What kind of fields does moving water generate? 

Ground water that is sought for wells, etc, moves at an inch or so a day,
unless pumped. The only field moving water creates is because it is moving
in earth's magnetic field, and a cross electrostatic field (and current) 
can result. Remote sensing of this can only be the magnetic field the
current produces. Not only would it be extremely weak, it would be just a
miniscule perturbation on the earth's field. I question whether it is
detectible. Please provide a reference to a peer reviewed article that
demonstrates detection of the field from flowing groundwater. 

Dowsers don't detect anything, except their hit-or-miss opinions. 

A number of organisms can detect and orient to the earth's magnetic field. 
All have magnetite crystals associated with their nervous system: they
detect the force trying to turn these crystals arising from the earth's
field.  Magnetite crystals have not been found in any human sense organ. 

Many aquatic organisms can detect (and many can produce) electrostatic
fields, which they can use for sensing their environment and prey.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs."

Which organisms can detect the magnetic fields?  I read something once about
sea turtles, but I think it was water currents they detected.

To look at the information in a web site, if you are a beginner (like I am),
try from the grex prompt typing lynx name-of-web-site (the latter meaning type
in the name of the web site, it seems to work if you start after the www.).
It should be self-explanatory after that, or write me for basic help.  And
Valerie said you don't really have to be a member to do this.

Has anyone actually viewed the program on dowsing?  Someone was going to
record it for me, since I don't have a TV.  (You can watch videos with a VCR
and the right kind of monitor, color or monochrome).  What do you think of
it?  Has anyone read the posted articles?

To answer some of my own questions, I used lynx altavista for the following
info:
1.  +dowsing + electromagnetism gives 16 documents.  At 
www.iufog.org/zines/cw/cw_17/cw17e.html is a book review of Tom Williamson's
Dowsing, New Light on an Ancient Art, 219 pp.  The author studied geology and
worked in climatology.  He father dowsed for a living.  He is a scientific
skeptic who debunks quite a bit but still believes in the subject.  Chapter
4 discusses possible reasons why dowsing works.  It may be based on ultrasonic
vibrations, electromagnetism or fault zones.

"animal navigation" brought me:

Sci Am Sep 23 97 at www.sciam.com/askexpert/biology/biology13.html
Ask the expert responds to a query about the Human Homing Instinct.  Many
insects, birds and reptiles have a magnetic compass sense, but the evidence
for humans is inconclusive.  The probably navigative more like rats, which
have a head direction sense and also depend on environmental clues.

Animal Magnetism.  The homing and directional abilitieses is at
www.physics.uogue/ph.ca/summer/scor/articles/scor37.html

The heads of pigeons and the bodies of honey bees contain magnetite. In 1980
magnetic bacteria were discovered which contain crystals that they use to tell
up from down, north from south.  (Handy when you have no eyes).
Yellowfin Tuna and Chinnok Salmon have a magnetic sense organ in the head in
the sinus center.  the Bobolink also has magnetitie near the olfactory nereve
and on bristles which when they move slightly the motion is amplified by
twisting of hte nerve cells.

Sensory Mechanisms of Animal Navigation
http://earth.library.pitt.edu/~biohome/faculty/kreithen.html

Homing pigeons whose vision was blocked by frosted goggles can still navigate.
They may use doppler shifts to localize the direction of very long wavelenth
sounds emitted from distant natural acoustic beacons.  (In other words they
can hear very low frequency sounds).  They can also detect ultraviolet.
Bees can see polarized skylight, pigeons may also see it.
Pigeons may be able to detect the very low frequency earth vibrations of
earthquake tremors.  (In China animal reactions have been noted for use in
predicting earthquakes).

Odor plumes are also used for navigation.

Anyway, it is possible that people, or at least other animals, may possibly
be able to detect certain objects by the electromagnetic or sound signals.

Good job, and thanks.

Interestingly enough, no oil company employs dowsers to find oil. 

I searched altavista with +dowsing +debunking. MIght do even better with
+skeptic. The web is full of pseudo science - and, thankfully, also the
skeptics trying to keep people more honest. Of course, there is so much
money to be made from pseudo-science, because most people are credulous,
that it is like shouting back the tide.

Yesterday I received in the mail a blurb for "Vitamin O", which is
water with 3% "stabilized oxygen". This costs $20 for a 2 ounce bottle.
The blurb has a couple of pages of personal testimonials, how 20 drops
a day of "Vitamin O" greatly improved people's headaches, fatigue,
Epstein-Barr syndrome, asthma, seborrhea, angina, age spots, arthritis,
migraines, diabetes, emphysema, and bronchitis. It also contains quotes
from some dozen "Dr. <whosis>". With all this authority and "proof", how can
anyone doubt it. It sure reminded me of this item.

[There are 12 pages of this "Vitamin O" stuff in this issue of Bio/Tech News.
The subscription rate is $195/year, but there is *no address* for the
publisher (though where you can buy "Vitamin O" is given).]

With so many gullible people in this world, only the truly unmotivated can
starve.

Fortean Times had a piece a few months ago about the controlled
experiment testing dowsers in Europe.  (Germany, I think.)  I'll
look it up.

Thanks Michael, I look forward to a summary.

[This item, at keesan's request, has been linked to TheZone, the
paranormal/occult conference]

Oh dear...I've steered clear of that cf, because it gets awfully tedious
continually trying to point out people's credulity.

I saw a TV program in which an experiment was conducted, almost exactly along
the lines of that proposed by Jan.  The dowsers failed completely.  They were
very surprised and puzzled, and advanced many plausible-sounding explanations,
involving electromagnetic currents and so on, for why they failed.

I recommend to all Cal Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit", described in
chapter 12 of his _The Demon-Haunted World_ (reviewed in books, in the
non-fiction item). It is too long to post here, but I can say that 
a lot of bells in it would be ringing during any discussion of dowsing.

(rcurl - actually, we've been having the opposite problem lately.  Too many
of us are skeptics to get a decent conversation going. )

Has *anybody* watched the TV program?  I don't own a TV.

has anyone accounted for the possibility that the magnetic field effects of
flowing water would be magnified by the particulate content of the water?
specifically mineral (metallic) particles...

You could try emailing Ed Stillman to ask him about iron particles or whatever
you are thinking of.  I don't want to bother him again before I at least watch
the recorded TV interview that he told us about.

There are no metallic particles in ground water (they have all rusted away
or otherwise reacted, except for gold, and if the latter, that's what the
dowsers should be dowsing for, not water....). Magnetite is a natural mineral,
but rather rare, and found in igneous rocks. None is found in most
groundwater. (Another problem in arguing against credulity, is that its
victims dream up an endless stream of empty arguments, which might actually
carry some weight with other credulous people).

  The program didn't air. In place they had a program on poltergeists.
It's bound to air one of these thursdays. I'll keep an eye peeled for it.

Shouldn't you use a forked stick?

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss