MadSci Network: Earth Sciences
Query:

Re: How do 'diving rods' work?

Date: Tue Aug 24 12:46:10 1999
Posted By: Diane Hanley, Geologist
Area of science: Earth Sciences
ID: 934497909.Es
Message:

Thanks for writing to ask a great question!

There are numerous scientific studies that indicate that dowsing, also 
known as divining or witching, is not a real phenomenon.  A large majority 
of scientists regard it as pseudo-science and superstition.  I would be 
interested to know if  you were working with or without maps of water lines 
and what your success rate was!

Originally dowsing was claimed as a method of detecting ground water or 
metals via a dowsing rod (usually a forked stick) but this is no longer the 
case.  Dowsers now claim to find all manner of things - water in pipes, 
missing people, ancient ruins, etc - with each practitioner using a 
different method of detection: pendulums, metal rods that converge, metal 
rods that diverge, etc.

The largest and most rigorous dowsing study I am aware of was conducted in 
the late 1980’s by physicists in Munich, Germany and funded by the German 
government.  This experiment is widely known as the Munich Experiment and 
its purpose was to test the water dowsing phenomenon.

The experiment was designed by the physicists AND dowsing proponents to be 
scientifically rigorous and open-minded.   The tested individuals consisted 
of 43 dowsers selected because they seemed particularly talented in 
dowsing.  All the participants performed several tests for a total of 843 
tests.  Only ten of those tests had outcomes more successful than chance 
alone.  In other words, in 833 of the tests, the dowsers would have had a 
greater chance of successfully finding the water by merely guessing where 
it was!  In addition, the dowsers that performed the 10 successful tests 
did not perform well on every test they took.  

Anything that non-reproducible is usually rejected in science.  In fact, 
the James Randi Educational Foundation offers $1,000,000 to anyone that can 
successfully prove their dowsing skills when put to scientific testing.  So 
far all challengers have been disproved.

However, all this scientific reasoning doesn’t seem to deter dowsing 
proponents all over the world including a few geologists and physicists 
(even some of the physicists that performed the Munich Experiment!)  Here 
are a few web sites and articles I can recommend:

Testing Dowsing, The Failure of the Munich Experiments
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
This article is posted on their web site, http://www.csicop.org/si/9901/dowsing.html 

The James Randi Educational Foundation    http://www.randi.org 
Also known as “The Great Randi”, he is a well-known skeptic of such 
phenomena.  This web site contains a very good section on dowsing.

Janet Raloff, "Dowsing Expectations," Science News, August 5, 1995.

Theory of how dowsing works according to a dowsing practitioner: http://www.connect.ab.ca/~tylosky/

Wagner, H., H.-D. Betz, and H. L. König, 1990. Schlußbericht 01 KB8602, 
Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie.
(This is the original article presenting the results of the Munich 
Experiment.
A condensed & English language version of the research can be found at  http://www.groundwater.com/betz.html)

J. Randi, 1995.  An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the 
Occult and Supernatural,


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