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'Dowsing', sometimes called 'divining' or 'water witching', refers to practices which some people claim enables them to detect hidden water, metals, gemstones or other objects, usually obstructed by land or sometimes located on a map. Most commonly, the movement or vibrations of apparatus, such as a Y-shaped twig, an L-shaped rod or a pendulum, is used in the practice. Some practitioners use no apparatus at all.
The efficacy of dowsing is not accepted by the general scientific community. Research intended to prove its efficacy has failed to do so.^[1] Many people believe that it works, and it is widely practiced in its various forms.^[2]

Contents

History of dowsing

Possible explanations

Dowsing equipment

Pendulums for divination and dowsing

Notable individuals claiming dowsing ability

Evidence

Munich

Enright responds

Kassel

Gotland

Geophysical explanations

See also

External links

Dowsing organizations

Skeptics

References

History of dowsing

Dowsing has existed in various forms for thousands of years."the earliest sign of its usage dates from a 4500-5000 year old grave inscription in Brittany." Dowsing: Science or Humbug? The original may have been for divination purposes — to divine the will of the gods, to foretell the future and divine guilt in trials. Dowsing as practiced today probably originated in Germany during the 15th century, when it was used to find metals. The technique spread to England with German miners who came to England to work in the coal mines. During the Middle Ages dowsing was associated with the Devil. In 1659 dowsing was declared Satanic by the Jesuit Gaspar Schott. In 1701 the Inquisition stopped using the dowsing rod in trials. In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, U.S. Marines may have used dowsing to attempt to locate weapons and tunnels.FIX ME (could not access entire article) An extensive book on the history of dowsing was published by Christopher Bird in 1979 under the title of ''The Divining Hand''.

Possible explanations

Skeptics of dowsing and many of dowsing's supporters believe that dowsing apparatus have no special powers, but merely amplify small imperceptible movements of the hands arising from the expectations of the dowser. This psychological phenomenon is termed the ideomotor effect. Some supporters agree with this explanation, but maintain that the dowser has a subliminal sensitivity to the environment, perhaps via electroception, magnetoception, or telluric currents. These explanations give rise to the classification of dowsing as pseudoscience. Other dowsers say their powers are paranormal.
A belief in dowsing may arise because witnesses to a "successful" dowsing severely underestimate the probability of finding water at a given location. A dowser could tell his listeners that water runs underground in narrow streams, when in fact it is contained in strata of porous rock at various depths (hence the name "water table"). Therefore a dowser who has an apparently high success rate at finding water may not be any better than someone merely guessing. On the other hand, in some areas underlain by hard rocks, a substantial flow of water might ''only'' be obtained if the well intersects a fracture in the otherwise impermeable rock.

Dowsing equipment

Many dowsers use simple brass rods bent in an "L" shape known as divining rods; others use wooden Y-rods and/or even bent wire coat hangers. According to some dowsers who use divining rods, brass allows the rod to attune to magnetic fields emanated by the target without the earth's EM field interfering, as would be the case with a metal such as steel. The end of the rod to be held by the dowser is often encased in a material that provides a constant electrical impedance, to prevent the dowser's own conductivity from interfering with the dowsing process.

Pendulums for divination and dowsing

Pendulums (these may be a crystal suspended on a chain, or a metal weight) can be used in divination and dowsing. In one approach the user first determines which direction (left-right, up-down) will indicate "yes" and which "no," before proceeding to ask the pendulum specific questions. In another form of divination, the pendulum is used with a pad or cloth that has "yes" and "no" written on it, and perhaps other words, written in a circle in the latter case. The person holding the pendulum aims to hold it as steadily as possible over the center. An interviewer may pose questions to the person holding the pendulum, and it swings by minute unconscious bodily movement in the direction of the answer. In the practice of radiesthesia a pendulum is used for medical diagnosis.

Notable individuals claiming dowsing ability

The following are among those notable people who claim to be skilled in dowsing:

★ Karl Spiesberger

★ Ludwig Straniak

★ A. Frank Glahn

★ Professor Hellmut Wolff

★ Thomas Charles Lethbridge; claimed there is a link between the length of the pendulum and the object being looked for, (see external links).

Evidence

Dowsing for water has been scientifically investigated in two studies, the Munich study in the late 1980s and the Kassel study in 2004, both referring to the locations in Germany in which these experiments were performed. Both studies failed to conclusively prove that dowsing is more than guesswork. Yet, the authors of the Munich study contended that a few of the 500 dowsers tested:Wagner, H., H.-D. Betz, and H. L. König, 1990. Schlußbericht 01 KB8602, Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie. As quoted by Enright in ''Skeptical Enquirer'', some dowsers:
:in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ... a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven ...
Researcher and skeptic Jim T. Enright reviewed the data from the Munich tests and disputed these claims, while in the Kassel study the dowsers fared no better than chance. A 1982 review of the literature concluded that "considerably more experimental work is required to support the case that dowsing is a psi process." Dowsing: A Review Of Experimental Research, , George P., Hansen, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1982

Munich

The scientific studyWagner, H., H.-D. Betz, and H. L. König, 1990. Schlußbericht 01 KB8602, Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie. of dowsing in Munich, Germany was performed in 1987 to 1988 and involved more than 500 dowsers in more than 10,000 double-blind tests.
Five hundred dowsers were initially tested for their "skill", and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them. These 43 were then tested in the following way. On the ground floor of a two-story barn, water was pumped through a pipe; before each test, this pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the 43 dowsers performed 843 such tests. Of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 of them showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that "a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."

Enright responds

Five years after the Munich study was published, scientist and skeptic Jim T. Enright contended that these results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and do not demonstrate any real ability.Enright, J. T. 1995. Water dowsing: The Scheunen experiments. ''Naturwissenschaften'' 82: 360-369. He noted that the ''best'' tester was on average 4 millimeters out of 10 meters closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.0004% advantage. The study's authors respondedBetz, H.-D., H. L. König, R. Kulzer, R. Trischler, and J. Wagner. 1996. Dowsing reviewed — the effect persists. ''Naturwissenschaften'' 83: 272-275. but Enright remains unconvinced.Enright, J. T. 1996. Dowsers lost in a barn. ''Naturwissenschaften'' 83: 275-277.

Kassel

More recently, a study^[3] was undertaken in Kassel, Germany, under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) [Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences]. The three-day test of some 30 dowsers involved plastic pipes through which a large flow of water could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried 50 centimeters under a level field. On the surface, the position of each pipe was marked with a colored stripe, so all the dowsers had to do was tell whether there was water running through the pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100 percent success rate. However, the results were no better than what would have been expected by chance.

Gotland

In 1982 the department for geophysical studies at Lund University tested different methods for karst water channels on Gotland. The test included three geophysical techniques (slingram, VLF and ground radar) and one biophysical (dowsing). About a third of the dowsers had reliable and statistically significant reactions.^[4]

Geophysical explanations

Some researchers have investigated possible physical or geophysical explanations for dowsing abilities. For example, Soviet geologists have made claims for the abilities of dowsers,Williamson, T. ''New Scientist'' '81', 371 (1979) which are difficult to account for in terms of the reception of normal sensory cues. Some authors suggest that these abilities may be explained by postulating human sensitivity to small magnetic field gradient changes.Rocard, Y. ''La Recherche'' '12', 792 (1981)Presti, D. & Pettgrew, J. ''Nature'' '285', 99 (1980)Baker, R. ''Nature'' '301', 78 (1983)
One study concludes that dowsers "respond" to a 60 Hz electromagnetic field, but this response does not occur if the kidney area or head are shielded. Anatomical localization of human detection of weak electromagnetic radiation: experiments with dowsers., Harvalik ZV, , , Physiol Chem Phys, 1978

See also

★ J. Francis Hitching

★ Michel Moine

★ Reveal the Power of the Pendulum: Secrets of the Sidereal Pendulum, A Complete Survey of Pendulum Dowsing, by Karl Spiesberger

External links

★ Unconventional Water Detection - article from Journal of Scientific Exploration

★ Mystery Robot Said to Solve Crimes, Find Mines in Chile - Manuel Salinas, a 39-year-old inventor, claims he has built a machine that has extraordinary capabilities for finding buried objects.

Dowsing organizations

★ ISD - International Society of Dowsing Research

★ International Digital Dowsers Forum Board

★ ASD - American Society of Dowsers

★ BSD - British Society of Dowsers

★ CSD - Canadian Society of Dowsers

★ Dowsers Association

Skeptics

★ James Randi on Dowsing

★ The Skeptics Dictionary - Includes details of various scientific tests.

★ Australian Skeptics Divining Test

★ An Australian television program about the above divining test at Google Video.

★ Dowsing In Connecticut - by Perry DeAngelis

★ "Beyond Science" video PBS show ''Scientific American Frontiers'' on dowsing featuring Ray Hyman, Nov. 19, 1997

★ Experimental protocol: Dowsing - Scientific test conducted by the Observatoire Zetetique

★ The Straight Dope: Does dowsing for water really work?
(2007)

References

1. The Failure of the Munich Experiments
2. As translated from a preface of the Kassel experiments, "roughly 10,000 active dowsers in Germany ''alone'' can generate a conservatively-estimated annual revenue of more than 100 million DM (US million)". See Kassel references.
3. GWUP-Psi-Tests 2004: Keine Million Dollar für PSI-Fähigkeiten (in German) and English version.
4. "Unconventional Water Detection" page 14