The ideomotor effect refers to the influence of suggestion or expectation on involuntary and unconscious motor behavior. This goes for things such as Ouji Boards and Dowsing rods (witch sticks).
However, I work in utility construction for 20 years. I have a foreman near 60 and even as skeptical as I am, I have in fact witnessed his amazing accuracy at finding not just utilities but even dry clay drain tiles in farmer fields.
Perfect example was 2 days ago. We had 1 mile to plow fiber duct and this mile was nothing but a farm field next to a county road. Several farmers notified us about a tile from the 1860’s that was buried somewhere within the first 1/8th mile. In fact, the land owner had the original hand drawn map that was drawn up in 1865. As a history buff, it was exciting to see. However the area had changed so much that it was useless, we just knew it was somewhere within an 1/8th of a mile from the corner intersection.
So my foreman uses his witch sticks. I make fun of them all the time. He gets a detection on the same spot several times while walking back n forth across this large area. I’ll be go to hell if he wasn’t dead on the mark. We dug up a lousy 3 inch clay tile right on the very spot he picked up on…and it was dry, we hadn’t any rain for a month.
Keep in mind that throughtou my 20 years there, he has been dead on at least 95% of the time using dowsing rods, though I still make fun of them and him for using them.
So science says that Dowsing rods are the result of the ideomotor effect. What do you guys think? I mean I have nothing else to go on buy my own personal witnessing of him picking up all sorts of utilities, from phone lines and now even a dry tile…how could this be possible?
But that article is about finding water period. You can find water anywhere, I can dig a hole in my backyard and probably find it. We were not dowsing for water. What I’m saying is he found a 3 inch clay tile…dry, within a very large area. Historically I witnessed finding cable tv, phone and other utilities with it when locating devices did not because sometimes those things can’t detect crap or not very well.
To further note, as I mentioned before, I understand that science considers it a ridiculous art but it’s never been tested in real world circumstances where you pick a random spot and tell a dowser to find a tile or utility line…something buried which would be a guessing game. So to find something dead on is an act of chance, but to be dead on beyond 15% accuracy is beyond chance…that’s my question.
I suspect your forman with years of experience unconsciously sees the lay of the land, and with knowledge that a drain line is somewhere, knows where it should be.
If it’s the ideomotor effect, what difference does it make whether there’s water present? The hypothesis would be that your highly experienced colleague unconsciously picks up on visible above-ground cues to the probable location of the objects he’s seeking.
You’ve got a foreman who might have 40 or more years at trying to locate pipes and who knows what underground. What was his success rate over that time? How many of his attempts did you witness? What’s the success rate of someone who doesn’t use magic to locate these pipes?
I have had almost the exact same experience working alongside utility workers using dowsing rods to find water mains (or whatever other infrastructure they were looking for)… and seeing them find the spot with no other apparent visual clues to go on. But if you think about it rationally, how could these rods actually be detecting anything? How could different types of objects like steel or copper or plastic which are buried underground be emitting some kind of field so powerful it can physically move around hand held wires (or bent pin flags) yet still be invisible to the ridiculously sensitive instruments we have which are actually designed to detect magnetic or electric fields?
It seems apparent to me that people who seem to be able to do this are simply relying on their gut feeling of where the object should be, and that gut feeling is derived of their experience combined with little visual clues or other knowledge that they have built up over the years. It is likely subconscious too and these people may really believe that the rods work but in reality the ideomotor effect just crosses the rods when the person is over the spot they feel is the most likely.
Notice how these people always seems to be older, and also that they have been doing such work on underground systems for much of their careers. You don’t see young dowsers traveling to new locations to find things… you do see old hands finding stuff in the same area they’ve lived and worked for decades. This leads to a lot of experience in knowing how the (for example) water distribution system in their town was designed and generally where different types of mains are located. They’ll often have been working on projects where they saw the system dug up and buried again… all those little things add up in a person’s mind. They know where the old road used to be, that the pipe ran along the ditch on the right of it, and that the new road was built 10 yards to the left of the old one. That knowledge alone would get you pretty near to the spot where the old pipe should be buried. Then they see a crack in the curb where the ground might have settled above an old trench or maybe a few tiny flecks of what might be worn off blue paint. So they start dowsing in that area. Excavator buckets can open up a pretty wide hole very quickly, so they don’t need to pinpoint the object… just get close.
The same process happens to anyone who spends enough time working in any trade or occupation; they recognize patterns and develop the ability to predict what will happen or where the problem or object is likely to be - it’s one of the things the human mind does best. Sometimes though, people get the idea in their head that something else is going on too. Like athletes who get superstitious and paint their nails or do some ritual before their competition. The gimmick (or in this case prop) actually has nothing to do with the person performing their task, but it makes them feel like it does and can also bring them a bit more recognition.
And yes, actually this phenomenon has been tested repeatedly by science. James Randi (among others) has set up experiments like this many times over the decades; you can watch them on youtube. I’ve yet to see one where the dowser actually found the hidden object.
If your colleague really can do what he claims to do, under fairly straightforward controlled conditions then there are many, many prizesout there that could be claimed by him.
Even if he doesn’t want the cash personally he could donate it to charity. Of course those that claim supernatural powers tend to be very shy about testing them under controlled conditions and there is simply no evidence that any of them are actually able to do what they claim they can do.
Nothing to see here, move on. The ideomotor effect, confirmation bias and environmental cues are well known and real phenomena that explain what your colleague claims. Why appeal to to the supernatural?
Well, no, not really. Unfortunately, James Randi has a bad habit of using sloppy standards and parameters, because he is so intent on exposing everyone as a fraud. He’s a showman himself, and NOT a scientist, and it shows.
Classic example I saw a long while back, on live TV, was a dowsing “test.” He set up an entirely artificial staged situation, with a bunch of small foot bridges over the top of sealed boxes. Some with tubs of water inside, some without. The self-proclaimed dowser had to walk across each bridge once, and then state which ones were over the top of water, and which were not.
The first “hit” was found to have water in the box. The next “hit” was empty, at which point Randi declared victory, and went on to his next stage act.
The trouble with his set up, was that he did NOT have the stage checked first, to determine if there were any OTHER things that a dowser could claim to find. In short, it was a lousy test. The dowser could have been deluded, yes, but it could also be true that there WAS water under the bridge, just not in the box.
I’m not taking sides myself in this, because I don’t have any way to do so. I just hate to see lousy stagecraft paraded around as being competent scientific investigation.
Yes, dowsing really has been scientifically tested. Randi is simply the most famous and easily searchable name to get a video to check out for those who think that nobody has ever tested dowsers before. The one TV episode you may have seen years ago does not represent the entire body of investigation done on this phenomenon. There are dry boring papers on the subject dating back over 100 years to be found as well, but fewer people will take the time to follow up on those.
And how did you get access to the backstage set-up to know what was and wasn’t done on a live TV show segment? You might get a list of names that worked on the show during the closing credits but that level of information?
That would be extraordinarily sloppy of him. SOP would be to establish that the person can do what they claim and to confirm that such an issue couldn’t arise. i.e. that they are detecting water in the box and only the water in the box. It is simply done and always done with the full knowledge of the person under test. You make it visible that there is no water present and get the candidate to confirm that they are not getting a signal. Then you make it visible that there is water and get them to confirm they detect it. Then you introduce the blinding and run the test itself.
Unsurprisingly it is only at this final stage that the candidates fail. It is entirely possible that this initial part of the protocol was not televised but I doubt very much that it was omitted entirely.
I’ll take you at your word, please provide cites for this astonishingly out of character protocol. I’d be very surprised if it happened the way you remember it. I’d be amazed if Randi mentioned on screen that they didn’t have the stage screened, and if he didn’t mention it how would you know it* hadn’t *been screened? It is, after all SOP in pretty much every serious test I’ve ever heard of Randi undertaking.
Also, regarding the ending of the test. It is always agreed in advance with the candidate what constitutes a “pass” or “fail”. What did this person claim they do? If they said they could detect water 100% of the time then yes, at the first failure the test is over.
So we can easily check this if you give us a cite for that test, the really good thing is that the people at the JREF keep records on such things and we can even mail them for a direct answer.
Look. AGAIN, I am not defending or supporting dowsing. I am criticizing the use of James Randi as a scientific point of reference.
He presented his show, as he chose to present it. As presented, his methodology was flawed.
I have read many other “debunkings” by Randi, and some are tremendous and excellent, such as when he proved that someone claiming telekinesis was a liar, by allowing them to set up an upside down fish tank over a pile of lightweight items, and then make them move by using their mind alone, as they claimed that they could do.
At the last moment, Randi added a lot of plastic packing fluff around the edges of the tank, making it obvious that the person was actually surreptitiously blowing air under the edge to make things inside move.
But Randi also claims to disprove some things, not by catching the claimant cheating, but rather by doing AS A TRICK, the same thing the person claims to do by real “magic.” It’s good enough to show Aunt Martha that she shouldn’t just believe the “magician” and give him all her money, but it’s not PROOF, in a scientific sense.
I'm just very picky about claiming SCIENTIFIC support for an argument pro or con, when the science is not actually there. That makes SCIENCE look bad, and helps the scam artists.
He didn’t make it obvious that the person was a cheat and a liar because the person involved refused to continue. He merely tightened the conditions, removed an avenue for cheating and brought them closer to what a true scientific test should be.
No, he is very careful with his language. He does not set out to “disprove”. He merely shows that what is apparently supernatural can be replicated by known techniques. The viewer is then left to their own conclusions. In these demonstrations and tests he is not, and has never claimed to give “proof” that these phenomena are not real
Science is a methodology, what Randi does is science. When lab chemists discuss with me how they guard against false positives, data mining etc. They are doing science in exactly (and often less effectively) the same way as Randi
