divining rod

Great Debates
21

I can’t speak to the divining rod being able to find water, but I have witnessed and then performed the operation of using 2 metal rods dangling in my hands and then they cross when over an electrical line. I didn’t believe it at all until I tried it myself.

When i was in Kuwait another troop claimed that the bars would cross when he walked over the top of a buried comm line. I saw him do it and I thought that he was turning them himself when he went over the line because he knew it was there. So I tried it myself, letting the bars dangle as loosely as possible and looking straight up at the clouds. As soon as I heard the bars hit each other I looked down and I was standing directly over the top of the comm line. I’m sure I didn’t somehow turn them myself and I wasn’t even looking at where I was going.

I know there is no way to talk the skeptics into believing that this works, but I’m one of the most skeptical people out there and I know it works now. Try it out.

22

When my father was involved in building a highway they ran across an old cemetary. Those charged with moving the remains used divining rods (“L” shaped aluminum in swivels) to find them. He borrowed them and kept finding “bodies” every six feet beyond the official edge of the cemetary but since the state wasn’t paid to move anything outside the cemetary he said nothing. I assume the first body was under one of the few remaining headstones and if you know that the bodies were likely to be on six foot centers your involuntary muscle movements would do the rest, but I didn’t bother saying anything. Fighting ignorance is fine here but at Thanksgiving dinner it’s best to just smile and nod.

23

Over the years I’ve witnessed a number of new houses built, and thus a number of new wells dug in this rural area where I live. I’m guessing that about 1/4 of the wells that were dug without “witching for water” turned up dry.
Every single well that was located by “witching” has produced water. Make of that what you will.

If I ever have to get a new well dug, I’ll get the community Witcher to pick my spot. So what if it’s all hokus-pokus and the guy is just lucky or very observant about the indicators of water deeper down. Luck, science or pact with the devil, it’s worth a few bucks to get a good well on the first try. :stuck_out_tongue:

24

Of course you’re sure you didn’t do it. That’s how subconscious stuff works. Just look a Ouija boards. You wouldn’t suggest that spirits or demons cause the planchette to move, would you? It’s obviously the participants’ doings, yet they always claim that they didn’t do anything at all.

It would take someone with a very poor sense of their surroundings to not be able to tell when they had reached a known location (as long as it’s within a reasonable distance) even without looking.

Don’t you wonder if it would have “worked” had the other troop not indicated the location to you first? Besides, anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of physics should be aware that something like a comm line wouldn’t produce an electromagnetic field anywhere near strong enough to move (relatively) heavy metal bars.

25

Why is this still a debate? We have a perfectly good theory on how it works, i.e. the user of the divining rods are subconsciously moving the rods based on experience and visual cues. This theory seems to explain all observed phenomena, and doesn’t contradict any observations or laws of physics. Until someone can come up with an observation that contradicts this theory, there isn’t anything to debate here.

26

I knew the name Peter Morris sounded familiar when I saw the hijack about Randi’s legitimacy.

Feel free to start a “James Randi is a Fraud” thread, and then we can rehash it, without hijacking this one.

27

So how come you didn’t complain about a ‘hijack’ when several people posted their Randi-is-a-hero comments?

But, I agree, please do let’s leave Randi out of it. That’s the point, he’s not worth taking notice of. Please, if you want to be a skeptic, thayts fine, but think for yourself. Don’t just parrott the old it-can’t-be-true-because-Randi-says-so BS. Randi’s unclaimed prize proves nothing.

28

I dunno, reading the account of your exchange makes me more sympathetic to Randi than to you. I expecttehre’s a lot of selective quoting going on.

But even if he was rude to you, what Randi does is sufficiently valuable and interesting for me to overlook personal abrasiveness (although he does seem to be going a bit off the deep end in recent months). Your claim that he is bigger fraud than Geller is going to need better support than you’ve offered in this thread.

And the mechanism by which two wires or a stick can detect underground water will need better evidence, still.

29

This thread at Randi’s board sums up Peter’s arguements against Randi and why they fail.

Note that Randi shows up in the thread a couple of times.

30

Okay, Bryan, if you wish to overlook Randi’s abraisiveness, that’s up to you. Of course, you are also overlooking a few other things too. For instance, you have to overlook the scientific errors he makes. Randi states that there is water under 94% of the earth’s surface. The geologists I consulted disagree with that. You have to overlook his “figures of speech” He told his lecture audience that he always challenges dowsers to find a dry spot, but they don’t wan’t to. Turns out this was just a figure of speech, not intended seriously. He never really made this challenge, and they didn’t actually refuse it. Figure of speech, thats all, absolutely not a lie, though. I’m sure I could offer you a hundred examples, and you would be willing to overlook them all.

But really, I must disagree with your opinion that he’s “useful” What good does he do, really? All he’s doing is preaching to the choir. He writes his books and gives his lectures directed at people who already hate any notion of the paranormal. He gets lots of praise for telling skeptics what they want to hear. He’s not going to change anyone’s mind like that, Indeed the dishonesty of his arguments is likely to discredit skeptic in general.
Oh, and Miskatonic… what part of my list do you think was adequately answered? Randi promised to anser my list, he attempted one of the five, promised to answer the rest but never did. Even the one he answered, he got wrong.

31

He provides kooks with a forum in which to prove their theories, or (more commonly) have their theories disproved objectively. And the lucky kook who can actually demonstrate paranormal ability will receive a cool million - I’d say that’s pretty good.

32

Didn’t you see my earlier post? How Randi’s behaviour makes it impossible for someone to succeed in his test, even if they can actually do what they say?

33

No, but I did see a post from you about a challenge that Randi himself admits isn’t serious. Someone who claims to be able to find water can still try for the cash by demonstrating that ability, e.g. by locating hidden pipes that an impartial observer routes under a floor.

34

I don’t know how much of what said here about Randi is true, but if his test is actually to find a “dry” spot and then he says 94% of the planet is wet, the man is very suspect.

I think it should be fairly easy to prove or disprove whether or not divining rods work.

Firstly, you’d have to find someone that has NEVER heard of the system before. If need be we could look for someone who is mentally challenged, because anectdotally dowsing is so well known probably almost everyone has heard of it.

Anyways, we take this person who meets our criteria, and set him up to start dowsing.

We just explain how the stick/metal et al is to be held, we do not explain that he is looking for anything, and we don’t explain that he should even notice any change in his rod.

When send him out over a field where we KNOW for a fact water/a line is, and if the rod responds them I’m pretty sure we’ll have to accept that the system works.

Because with this test we have a person who has no understanding of dowsing, no expectations, and therefor it is ludicrous to assume they would be subconsciously doing anything or recognizing anything.

To me it would be a lot more legitimate than a test with criteria set up by a man who stands to lose $1m if he’s wrong, and a lot of face.

I don’t even think we have to go this far and acquire the aid of a mental patient/mentally handicapped person.

We could just ask geologists if there are clear cut signs on the surface of a parcel of land, say a parcel of land comprised of a few dozen acres, that make it obvious or even apparent that water suitable for drilling a well to is under that spot.

We’d have to ask the geologists if there are a) signs, and b) signs that one can notice even if the person has no familiarity with the geography in the region as a whole.

I think the real question is, before we start assuming that people are just subconsciously noticing geologic signs, ARE there in fact geologic signs that you can notice in a very restricted area of land without ANY knowledge of the directly surrounding areas? These geologic signs we think people are just picking up on may in fact not exist, I don’t know, I’m not a geologist.

Furthermore, I’ve taken enough geology classes in my life to know that in most cases not even the most trained professional geologist can look at a back yard and plot for you exactly where a given utility line runs. Utility lines wouldn’t leave geologic signs like water wells.

35

Well, if you were to look through Randi’s collective works with a microscope (that’s a figure of speech; I don’t expect you to use a literal microscope, but given your interest in accuracy, I feel compelled to point out the metaphor to avoid confusion), I have no doubt whatsoever that you could find a hundred factual errors, some of them more than trivial. The key, though, (not a literal key, mind you) is that minor errors on Randi’s part do not invalidate his overall premise: that a great many pseudoscientific claims are being presented, many with the deliberate intent to defraud.

He’s funny. He makes me smile. That makes him at least as useful as episodes of Frasier or The Simpsons. And, along the way, he points out that a great many commonly-held beliefs are completely without basis. At the very least, his arguments give me ammunition when I’m confronted with people who try to convince me of the merits of horoscopes, homeopathy and, yes, dowsing.

Hey, I would love the idea of provable ESP or telekinesis or whatnot. Once proven, though, the label “paranormal” disappears and “normal” expands to cover the new evidence. In the meantime, I strongly dislike (not quite “hate”, though) claims that misuse scientific terminology in order to perpetrade fraud.

Of course, you’re perfectly free to say whatever you like about Randi (though I think you’re bordering on libel in some cases), but nothing I’ve seen from you goes beyond trivial nitpicking and hair-splitting. I suggest you get some contributors, get your own million dollars, and run your own “paranormal” contest using whatever criteria strike you as perfectly fair.

Heck, I’ll kick in fifty cents. Canadian.

36

It’s been a while, but I believe the test method is something like the following.

He digs a dozen or so holes, and places large buckets in these holes, some with and some without water. If memory serves, he even tells them where the buckets are, just not whether they are filled or not. He then sees if they can correctly identify the ones that contain water at a higher percentage than one could reasonably get by pure luck.

He explains the test method in advance, and the dowsers all agree to it, and they still say they can find the ones with water after understanding exactly how the test will be run. Thus far, they haven’t.

37

To borrow a cliche, if he stops a single person from turning over large amounts of their hard earned money to Sylvia Browne or John Edward, he’s done good.

Hardly. I’m a skeptic. I think mind-reading would be the coolest thing in the world. I’d also love for there to be an afterlife (although hopefully a lot more happening than the typical religious description of one). Reincarnation sounds pretty nifty, and as long as they didn’t bother me in the middle of the night, I think ghosts would be a lot of fun. Heck, even an omniscient being would be great, as long as he wasn’t all hellfire and brimstone.

We don’t all “hate” any notion of the paranormal, as some of us think it would be great if it were true, we’re just waiting to actually see some proof of it. Any proof.

38

Miss Cleo predicted this thread. I can prove it. She said so, and told me, in a vision.

39

In response to yet another desperate Peter Morris attempt to fling mud at Randi, I feel it is only necessary to pull a quote from the JREF boards:

That perfectly sums up these silly and never-ending attacks of rabid nit-picking from Randi’s number one fan. But if that isn’t enough, there are over a hundred concise and highly factual posts responding to Peter’s nonsense in the quoted thread, and several thousand responses overall in places like the SDMB and JREF. In spite of your impressive and oft-repeated efforts, Peter, I don’t think anyone other than you has any doubts left as to who the fraud in this situation is, or, indeed, who it is that displays the more “abrasive” behaviour.

40

I don’t really think that sounds like a very good test at all. If there is any scientific basis to dowsing (I doubt there is) then it probably has to do with geographic formations and some sort of energy fields that probably aren’t effected in any way by buckets of water.