"Tony Polson" wrote in message
...
....

The people who make the fuss about dowsing always appear to be those
who would not do it, could not do it, or (mostly) those who have not
even tried. They always have absolute, total "faith" that it doesn't
work, based on their strongly negative preconceived ideas and - the
one essential component - zero experience.

Yes, they're not prepared to chance winning a fortune becaue they'd have to
admit that they were wrong :-)

Mary

;-)

Derek ^ wrote:

On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 00:24:29 +0100, Tony Polson
wrote:

I was a sceptic until I found underground services that no-one knew
existed and of which there were no clues of any kind.

Then I'm curious why you were looking for them at that particular
location, Tony.


I wasn't. I systematically covered the entire site.

The site was privately owned and there were no records of the
existence, let alone the locations of the majority of the services.
The few records available were grossly inaccurate - I found a water
pipe about 30 metres away from where the as-built drawings stated it
had been installed. Dowsing found its route within an accuracy of
half a metre or so.

I'm still sceptical. There are many false claims made for dowsing,
particularly when it comes to locating underground water supplies,
none more so than the current controversy in Jersey. The claims being
made there are patent nonsense. But dowsing seems to work for
locating buried services that are fairly close to the surface, such as
gas, electricity, water and telephone.

I have never trusted dowsing on its own; I have always used it to
decide where to dig trial holes (with great care) in order to
positively locate the services. Given the risk of death or serious
injury when live cables, gas and water mains are severed, it would be
extremely foolish to place blind trust in dowsing alone.

But it is definitely of positive help in deciding where to dig trial
holes, which is why so many people routinely use it, without fuss, and
without making any extravagant claims for the technique.

Douglas de Lacey wrote:
Geronimo W. Christ Esq wrote:

It's total hokum, and here's how you prove it.

Get a friend to bury ten pipes in a piece of ground, and then run water
through one of them, without telling you which one. Then try to use your
magick dowsing techniques to find out which one it is.

You've done this, have you? Please could you point us to some published
results?


From my limited experience of dowsing, I don't think having water in
one of the pipes would make a significant difference. Dowsing does
not seem to differentiate between buried services. The crossing of
the rods occurs in a similar way regardless of whether the buried
service is a water pipe, a drain, an empty cable duct, an electricity
cable or a telephone cable.

In my experience, dowsing provides only a location, and several such
locations help you to find a route. But you have to dig trial holes
to find out what the buried service is.

If you find a manhole, a valve pit or suchlike, you can use dowsing to
trace the route(s) of the service(s) from that location.

Geronimo W. Christ Esq wrote:
A lot of dowsing (like in Tony Polson's case) is down to luck.


If I was that lucky, I would have won the lottery many times by now.

;-)

Mary Fisher wrote:

Although it's a
waterworks it didn't actually have its own water supply (obvious when
you think about it!), but it has a large standpipe from another
pumping station a few miles away.
Out of interest a while ago a few of us wondered about the source of
this supply, which appeared as a cast iron pipe around 3 or 4 inch
diameter directly from the floor in the "museum" area. We took a
couple of brazing rods as dowsing tools just for fun and were able to
"guestimate" the direction from which the supply originated. Later
this was confirmed by Northumbrian Water, who own the site.

It's quite surprising how many people do have their first experience of
dowsing 'for fun' or similar reasons - even scepticism. Suddenly it becomes
a wonder ...

..... and as I described, when they investigate further, it turns out
not to work.

--
Chris Green

Mary Fisher wrote:

"Douglas de Lacey" wrote in message
...

snip lots

I haven't seen any posts from Mr Christ so he can't exist.

Don't start *that* thread as well! :-)

--
Chris Green

Geronimo W. Christ Esq wrote:

you can't think of a use for $1m ?

I can think of every possible way in which someone prepared to put up
such a sum in order to disprove something in which he does not believe,
will be able to nullify any legitimate demonstration under any test
conditions.

Now, if he were to say he would provide the test conditions that met his
approval, he would have lost his money a thousand times over!

--
http://gymratz.co.uk - Best Gym Equipment & Bodybuilding Supplements UK.
http://trade-price-supplements.co.uk - TRADE PRICED SUPPLEMENTS for ALL!
http://fitness-equipment-uk.com - UK's No.1 Fitness Equipment Suppliers.
http://Water-Rower.co.uk - Worlds best prices on the Worlds best Rower.

Steve Firth wrote:
On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 15:29:31 +0100, Tony Polson wrote:

I judge it on the evidence that it *does* work, and very well too.

Yet all you have is anecdote.

All science is based on the summation of anecdotes.

'Look the sun has come up this morning'
'It comes up every morning'
'You only have anecdotal evidence for that'

Guy King wrote:
The message
from Tony Polson contains these words:

You cannot make them cross. They just do it themselves. There is no
input from the user, other than to hold the rods so that they can
respond to whatever it is that makes them cross.

So why aren't automated dowsing trolleys seen roaming the streets
looking for all the lost services the utility firms keep digging up the
roads in search of?

Too easy...

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:30:00 +0100, Steve Firth
wrote:

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 07:57:40 +0100, Douglas de Lacey wrote:

it's a pity that those who oppose the idea here seem to have such a poor
grasp of the concept of scientific method.

It's a pity that those who believe in dowsing have no grasp at all of
scientific method and prefer to rely on anecdote and belief, absent of
evidence.

Here's a clue, those who propose that dowsing works need to provide
evidence to support their claim. It is not a case of a "dowsing works
unless proven not to work".

If you could produce some credible evidence that dowsing works, I'll pay it
attention. If you had the slightest clue about scientific method, I'd pay
you some attention. But a blanket claim that those stating that there is no
credible basis for dowsing to work know nothing about scientific method, is
the sound of an empty vessel making a loud noise.

The water board use dowsing rods to confirm the location of their
pipes.
--
Get away from it all
http://www.travelfreebies.co.uk/thomson-holidays.htm
Late deals, mega cheap flights and bargains

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:50:54 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

All science is based on the summation of anecdotes.

Heck, guess what, you're wrong.

Steve Firth wrote:
On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:50:54 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

All science is based on the summation of anecdotes.

Heck, guess what, you're wrong.

Tell me any science that is not based on individual observations, by
individuials, all of which could be classed as anecdotal.

wrote:
Mary Fisher wrote:

It's quite surprising how many people do have their first experience of
dowsing 'for fun' or similar reasons - even scepticism. Suddenly it becomes
a wonder ...


.... and as I described, when they investigate further, it turns out
not to work.

You gave us some anecdotal evidence. Care to add references to specific
experiments?

Douglas de Lacey

mogga wrote:
On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 10:30:00 +0100, Steve Firth
wrote:


On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 07:57:40 +0100, Douglas de Lacey wrote:


it's a pity that those who oppose the idea here seem to have such a poor
grasp of the concept of scientific method.

It's a pity that those who believe in dowsing have no grasp at all of
scientific method and prefer to rely on anecdote and belief, absent of
evidence.

You cannot know that! What is your model of "scientific evidence"?
(Mine's popperian, if that helps).


Here's a clue, those who propose that dowsing works need to provide
evidence to support their claim. It is not a case of a "dowsing works
unless proven not to work".

If you could produce some credible evidence that dowsing works, I'll pay it
attention. If you had the slightest clue about scientific method, I'd pay
you some attention.

If you mean me, I assure you that I do. I could also add that I have
never tried dowsing, and am entirely agnostic about it. Hence my desire
from some evidence. But since (my impression is) your side comes up only
with flat denial, I'm beginning to wonder. After all, one could easily
think of models which could work.

But a blanket claim that those stating that there is no
credible basis for dowsing to work know nothing about scientific method, is
the sound of an empty vessel making a loud noise.

Who is making such claims? All I did was to ask for some evidence (which
seems to be what you too demand).


The water board use dowsing rods to confirm the location of their
pipes.

Now if you could document that, it would indeed be evidence of a sort.
But not the kind I'd like to focus on, because it depends on no model of
its efficacy, and therefore is not (as it stands) testable. Have any
dowsers offered models of how it works? Have any opponents studied the
apparently verifiable claims of success? I don't know, but no-one in
this thread or its predecessors appears ready to enlighten us.

Douglas de Lacey

On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 08:14:08 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Steve Firth wrote:
On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:50:54 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

All science is based on the summation of anecdotes.

Heck, guess what, you're wrong.

Tell me any science that is not based on individual observations, by
individuials,

Or groups of individuals? Most science does have a role for observation.

Theoretical physics for one is not based on observation.

Even where science is based upon observation, the use of observation does
not make the evidence anecdotal, since scientific evidence is amenable to
statistical analysis and anecdotal evidence is not.

What the proponents of dowsing have been giving here is a testimonial,
absent of evidence, absent of analysis, absent of statistics. When dowsing
is examined within the confines of the scientific method, utilising
double-blind studies with appropriate controls, dowsing cannot be shown to
work better than random chance, which rather precludes further analysis.

all of which could be classed as anecdotal.

Umm no, you appear to misunderstand the term or to be willfully misusing
it.

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 20:47:48 +0100, mogga wrote:

The water board use dowsing rods to confirm the location of their
pipes.

The US DEA used dowsing rods to confirm the location of cocaine.

This was as laughable as the water board using dowsing rods to look for
pipes.

Which water board, when?

Douglas de Lacey wrote:

Now if you could document that, it would indeed be evidence of a sort.
But not the kind I'd like to focus on, because it depends on no model of
its efficacy, and therefore is not (as it stands) testable. Have any
dowsers offered models of how it works? Have any opponents studied the
apparently verifiable claims of success? I don't know, but no-one in
this thread or its predecessors appears ready to enlighten us.


Why *should* anyone enlighten you?

Does anyone else here care what you think, because I am sure I don't.

On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:21:48 +0100, Tony Polson wrote:

Why *should* anyone enlighten you?

Because if you don't then it makes your claims look like either
self-delusion or worse.

Does anyone else here care what you think,

Yes, I do for one.

because I am sure I don't.

And that should make him (or anyone else) upset?

Huge wrote:
On 2006-08-01, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Steve Firth wrote:
On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:50:54 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

All science is based on the summation of anecdotes.
Heck, guess what, you're wrong.
Tell me any science that is not based on individual observations, by
individuials, all of which could be classed as anecdotal.

Just look at those goalposts run!

Its a serious point.

In the ultimate analysis, all observations are taken by human beings,
whose perceptions are just as potentially unreliable as any dowsers.

You haven't personally charted the movements of all the planets to
justify Newtons laws of motion ...

Science derives its strength from other areas then the anecdotality of
its observations.

To dismiss dowsing as unscientific because there is only anecdotal
evidence, is to say nothing.

Mary Fisher wrote:
"Tony Polson" wrote in message
...
Douglas de Lacey wrote:
Now if you could document that, it would indeed be evidence of a sort.
But not the kind I'd like to focus on, because it depends on no model of
its efficacy, and therefore is not (as it stands) testable. Have any
dowsers offered models of how it works? Have any opponents studied the
apparently verifiable claims of success? I don't know, but no-one in
this thread or its predecessors appears ready to enlighten us.

Why *should* anyone enlighten you?

Does anyone else here care what you think, because I am sure I don't.

Um - I'm not sure you understant Douglas's point ...

Mary

On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:26:17 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

To dismiss dowsing as unscientific because there is only anecdotal
evidence, is to say nothing.

However to state that dowsing has not been proved to work because it's
proponents producing nothing but anecdotal evidence is correct.

"Each dowser goes away from any trial of their powers, dismayed by their
failure, puzzled at the reasons for the failure, but always capable of
coming up with a reasonable to them excuse. That excuse may be any one of
many. It may be an unfortunate arrangement of the planets, improper
temperature or humidity, a problem of indigestion, too much ambient noise
or too much silence or a poor attitude on the part of the observers. These
are not invented excuses; they are all drawn from my personal experience in
testing these folks.

"I must say that of all those who have ever tried to win the Pigasus Prize,
and of those who I have otherwise tested in every part of the world, no
claimants even approach the dowsers for honesty. These are persons who are
genuinely, thoroughly, self-deceived. In only two instances one in
Australia and the other in the U.K. did I ever encounter any cheating being
tried by dowsers. And those cases were easily solved and immediately
terminated."

-- James Randi.
http://www.randi.org/library/dowsing/index.html

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

In the ultimate analysis, all observations are taken by human beings,
whose perceptions are just as potentially unreliable as any dowsers.

You haven't personally charted the movements of all the planets to
justify Newtons laws of motion ...

Science derives its strength from other areas then the anecdotality of
its observations.

To dismiss dowsing as unscientific because there is only anecdotal
evidence, is to say nothing.

'Anecdotal' is when Bill tells Ben about something he has seen, and
Ben has to take Bill's word for it because Ben cannot also make the
observation. If Ben can go and see for himself, it's not anecdotal.
That still doesn't make either Bill's or Ben's theories about the
phenomenon correct, but if anyone can test those theories, sooner or
later any holes will be found. Think of it as Open Source in action.

Cold fusion looked at first to be 'scientific', but turned out to be
'anecdotal'. We're back to repeatability. It can, of course, go the
other way: something that is anecdotal can become repeatable when
someone spots a condition which was not being replicated correctly
in trials. It may be that we do not yet know the factor which would
make dowsing repeatable at will. The position of the planets, the
date of birth of the dowser, the number of witnesses...

Steve Firth wrote:
On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:21:48 +0100, Tony Polson wrote:


Why *should* anyone enlighten you?


Because if you don't then it makes your claims look like either
self-delusion or worse.


Does anyone else here care what you think,


Yes, I do for one.

Thanks for that!
Thus encouraged, let me expand a bit on my model of scientific method.
The big question in philosophy has always been (more or less) what can
we know? After Newton, that changed: he showed clearly what we know, and
so the question became How? How did he get to this absolute and
invariant knowledge? You see Kant in particular wrestling with this
question, but up to the start of 20C it was on everyone's agenda. So
science was seen as developing clever ways of getting at these brute
facts, and remarkably successful too; think of Clerk Maxwell,
interestingly able to "correct" Ampère's Law. Of course there was a lot
of careful experimentation but increasingly physics became dominated by
the theoreticians; as Rutherford put it: "All science is physics or
stamp collecting" -- and physics, one could say, was maths backed up by
experiment. Scientific law therefore embodied two vital facts:
repeatable experiment and an explanation. As Pope put it: "Nature and
Nature's Laws lay hid in Night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was Light."

Then after Eddington provided some support for Einstein's gravitational
theory and propelled him into the limelight with his other theories,
everything changed. Squire put it neatly "It did not last: the Devil,
shouting 'Ho, Let Einstein be' restored the status quo". Suddenly the
whole concept of science changed: we cannot after all get at brute fact,
only make more-or-less inaccurate models of our world. Many of those
models aren't even required to make *sense* at all (in a matter-of-fact
sense): do superstrings "exist"? how does one understand the inside of a
black hole?

To my mind the best description of this change, and of what science is
(or should be) about, is Karl Popper (_Logic of Scientific Discovery_).
And Popper's argument is that, since we cannot know that a theory is
right but can discover where it is wrong, we should as he says, make our
mistakes as quickly as possible; science is the exercise of *destroying*
our theories, not establishing them. Because that destruction leads to
better theories: still probably wrong, but at least not wrong where they
were before. A corollary of this is that understanding is not, as was
generally believed, "explaining the unknown by the known" so much as
"explaining the known by the unknown": reaching towards bigger and
better theories to explain things we (wrongly) think we understand.
Science really advances when it experiences a paradigm shift: when we
throw out the "received wisdom" of earlier generations for new and more
exciting theories.

That's why I am interested in things like dowsing. There does seem to be
a lot of anecdotal evidence that it "works"; but excitingly it doesn't
fit our current theories of how things work. So we should either find
out where it doesn't work (testing to destruction the understanding of
the believers) or how we can incorporate it into a new theory of how
things work (testing to destruction the understanding of the sceptic).
(Or rather, the best approach will be a both-and, and hopefully done by
both sides together.)

Tony (if you bother to read this) doesn't that strike you as a
worthwhile thing to do?

Of course, meanwhile there will be awkward facts we don't understand but
must live with: Heaviside said "Why should I refuse a good dinner simply
because I don't understand the digestive processes involved?" Whether
dowsing is a good dinner or not I simply don't know. But I think James
Randi is unfair in the useful quote Steve gave us:

"Each dowser goes away from any trial of their powers, dismayed by their
failure, puzzled at the reasons for the failure, but always capable of
coming up with a reasonable to them excuse. That excuse may be any one
of many. It may be an unfortunate arrangement of the planets, improper
temperature or humidity, a problem of indigestion, too much ambient
noise or too much silence or a poor attitude on the part of the
observers". These might give us clues for useful areas of research: is
noise/silence a factor, those of you who have dowsed? is there a model
which could explain that? (Well, of course there are several; and those
which try to explain the successes in terms of making conscious some
unrealised knowledge might latch on to them; though they would probably
discover that they are stretching what they originally meant by
"knowledge".)

Sorry, for an OT post this has gone on far too long. But I'd still be
interested in feedback. Thanks for listening.

Douglas de Lacey





because I am sure I don't.


And that should make him (or anyone else) upset?

"Douglas de Lacey" wrote in message
...




That's why I am interested in things like dowsing. There does seem to be a
lot of anecdotal evidence that it "works"; but excitingly it doesn't fit
our current theories of how things work. So we should either find out
where it doesn't work (testing to destruction the understanding of the
believers) or how we can incorporate it into a new theory of how things
work (testing to destruction the understanding of the sceptic). (Or
rather, the best approach will be a both-and, and hopefully done by both
sides together.)

Tony (if you bother to read this) doesn't that strike you as a worthwhile
thing to do?

Only if you want to do it. To some of us the why of many things isn't
important. We accept them and don't feel the need to challenge what we
experience (that includes a lot more than dowsing).

Of course, meanwhile there will be awkward facts we don't understand but
must live with: Heaviside said "Why should I refuse a good dinner simply
because I don't understand the digestive processes involved?"

Or not hang a picture or not smell a flower (when the scent is incidental to
human perception).

Quite.

"Each dowser goes away from any trial of their powers, dismayed by their
failure, puzzled at the reasons for the failure, but always capable of
coming up with a reasonable to them excuse. ... "

That could also be expressed as, "Each *dowsing sceptic* goes away from any
trial of their powers, dismayed by their failure, puzzled at the reasons for
the failure, but always capable of coming up with a reasonable to them
excuse."

I sometimes wonder why people who know everything bother coming on news
groups and trying to prove people wrong when they could be saving the world
:-)

But I don't spend much time on that wondering, there are more satisfying
things to do. I don't understand them but Life's good and too short to
waste.

Mary

Mary Fisher wrote:

I sometimes wonder why people who know everything bother coming on news
groups and trying to prove people wrong when they could be saving the world
:-)

Try Popper. While it's not universally true/accepted it's a fairly
good way of deciding whether things are factual/useful or not.

Popper surmised that one cannot prove that things aren't true, he said
that 'truths' which aren't falsifiable are pointless.

I don't think anyone is trying to prove that dowsing is wrong/untrue,
that's not really possible.

It's only that which can be proved to be true is generally useful.

--
Chris Green

On Wed, 2 Aug 2006 12:19:49 +0100, "Mary Fisher"
wrote:

I sometimes wonder why people who know everything bother coming on news
groups and trying to prove people wrong when they could be saving the world
:-)


Yes Mary, why exactly do you do this?
--
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

The message
from Douglas de Lacey contains these words:

Sorry, for an OT post this has gone on far too long. But I'd still be
interested in feedback. Thanks for listening.

I tend to be sceptical about most things but I have long had an open
mind on dowsing or at least about the conventional sort, with a hazel
twig or bent wires. Why? Firstly because there are loads of people who
can get results at least some of the time (at at a probability well
above random). Secondly because while it is currently unexplainable in
scientific terms there is much we do not know for sure and dowsing is
inherently no more unlikely than the ability of homing pigeons to home.
Indeed dowsing might make use of much the same facility, tuning in to
the local magnetic or gravitational field.

Now the caveats.

Dowsing by map just has to be pure bunkum. If the dowsers are not
present on site they cannot interact with the local surroundings in any
way at all.

That the bent wires are moved directly is likewise bunkum. They are
moved either by involuntary muscle movements or deliberately. If they
were moved directly then dowsing would work for everyone every time.
Dowsing was traditionally done with a forked hazel twig which twisted
upwards. ISTM that much the same muscle twitch could produce the
dissimilar movements in the different tools so the modern approach with
wires is actually following the long standing tradition.

As to why the Randi prize has yet to be won who knows. Perhaps Randi is
just demanding too high a standard of proof. Even some commonplace
things don't have a 100% success rate.

I have tried dowsing in the past and it just doesn't work for me but it
doesn't need to be an ability that every one has for it to be real and
if it is something as vague as a sense of direction then there is every
reason to suppose it will be less than 100% successful. But a sense of
direction, like dowsing, could be influenced entirely by subconscious
signals from the local environment rather than local force fields. For
me the jury is still out.

--
Roger Chapman

wrote:
Mary Fisher wrote:

I sometimes wonder why people who know everything bother coming on news
groups and trying to prove people wrong when they could be saving the world
:-)


Try Popper. While it's not universally true/accepted it's a fairly
good way of deciding whether things are factual/useful or not.

Popper surmised that one cannot prove that things aren't true, he said
that 'truths' which aren't falsifiable are pointless.

Err, that's your self-contradiction, not Popper's! Did you mean "that
things are true"?

I don't think anyone is trying to prove that dowsing is wrong/untrue,
that's not really possible.

It's only that which can be proved to be true is generally useful.

That's a bit of a travesty of Popper. You *can't* prove things
(hypotheses) are true. You *can* prove them false (hence falsifiability)
and thereby make better hypotheses.

Douglas de Lacey

Douglas de Lacey wrote:

Tony (if you bother to read this) doesn't that strike you as a
worthwhile thing to do?


I'm sorry, but it doesn't strike me as being worthwhile because I see
absolutely no need to satisfy the doubters - it really isn't worth
wasting my time on them. Whether people choose to believe in dowsing
or not is entirely their concern.

I am not trying to defend it, nor to promote it, just to point out
that it works well enough (for some people) to be quite widely
accepted in several major industries as a practical aid to finding
buried services. I started out as a sceptic. I'm still a sceptic!
But dowsing worked very well for me, and that is all I need to know.

I accept that it works well for some people, and less well (or not at
all) for others. But these numbers are probably small relative to the
number of armchair "experts" who pontificate at length about dowsing
yet have never tried it.

They will never be convinced, so why bother?

I would only be concerned if the idiots lobbied MPs to pass a law
prohibiting what is a safe, surprisingly useful and minimally invasive
technique for helping to find buried services.

If anyone ever discovers what makes it work, I suppose I would find it
of mild interest, but that is all. There is a whole world out there
with *myriads* of things that are *really* worth getting curious
about. In my humble opinion, dowsing is not one of them.

Douglas de Lacey wrote:
wrote:
Mary Fisher wrote:

I sometimes wonder why people who know everything bother coming on news
groups and trying to prove people wrong when they could be saving the world
:-)


Try Popper. While it's not universally true/accepted it's a fairly
good way of deciding whether things are factual/useful or not.

Popper surmised that one cannot prove that things aren't true, he said
that 'truths' which aren't falsifiable are pointless.

Err, that's your self-contradiction, not Popper's! Did you mean "that
things are true"?

I don't think anyone is trying to prove that dowsing is wrong/untrue,
that's not really possible.

It's only that which can be proved to be true is generally useful.

That's a bit of a travesty of Popper. You *can't* prove things
(hypotheses) are true. You *can* prove them false (hence falsifiability)
and thereby make better hypotheses.

You are absolutely right, I think I lost my way very thoroughly in
there somewhere! Thanks for correcting my nonsense.

--
Chris Green