“We don’t train our doctors in faith healing, but we believe some of them eschew modern medicine and use that method.”
“We don’t train our pollsters to read minds, but we believe some of them forgo verbally asking questions and telepathically receive responses instead.”
As I saId last time, of course you can find things via dowsing. People do it all the time. The question is, how?
Obviously not by magnetic fields or static electricity or some other physical phenomenon since there are so many different physical tools that people use successfully. A magnetic field isn’t going to move wires, pull forked wooden sticks, or wobble pendulums all at the same time.
The only explanation that makes sense are the mysterious powers hidden away in the human mind.
Please tell me you forgot to post a :rolleyes: smiley.
Please can you give a cite showing that happens.
(And are you relying on anecdotes or scientific tests?)
Which makes more sense to you:
- There is this mysterious power that defies known science that goes into hiding whenever someone takes a serious look at it, or
- Some people are easily fooled, by both themselves and by others.
I suspect that the mysterious power that Lemur66 is talking about is subconscious pattern-recognition, not anything mystical (but I could be wrong).
I certainly hope that was what he was referring to, because ambiguity in such matters serves no one.
That was how I read it.
Incidentally, I think strategically it works better to say “scientists have proven [paranormal phenomenon X] is explained by [human cognitive bias Y]” than to say “[paranormal phenomenon X] doesn’t exist.” People who think they experienced X are typically (slightly) more willing to listen to an explanation than a dismissal.
I think it’s more a case of “As long as they find the leaks, we’re not going to stand over them to double-check whatever they think works” (medicine doesn’t quite meet your intended standard for refutation, by the way - ever heard of the placebo effect?)
Equating “faith healing” with “the placebo effect”? That’s a nice straw you’ve grasped there.
BTW, “what they think works” is a pretty low bar-is there any evidence that it does work?
Can’t see much of a difference. No-one quite knows what either actually does or is likely to do.
Of course not: but the employing authority is not saying it does or that either they or their engineers rely solely on it, simply that all they’re interested in is that leaks get fixed.
That article would be useless even if dowsing were possible and it’s not. We don’t know how many test holes or false positives the field engineers experience. If you are sent out to an address that has a known underground water pipe, experience and a few test digs will turn it up. No need for dowsing.
I’m guessing they do it to mess with the young guys. Reminds me of my younger days as a carpenters apprentice and they would send me off for a board stretcher or a sky hook.