[QUOTE=BTW, have you read the suggested test procedure in one of my previous posts? It’s quick & simple. If you can do that with some friends, it will be even easier for the formal JREF test, which will probably be quite similar. Good luck![/QUOTE]
Can you guide me?
When I said positive/negative energy, I meant this:-
For eg. You agree that a battery cell has two points. One ‘+’ and other ‘-’. When the dowsing rod is held against the side with ‘+’ the rods swing outwardly, which I call as positive. Whereas, when held against the side with ‘-’, the rods swing inwardly, which I call negative. Similar action is seen with the rods during other occasions and hence I call it positive or negative.
Also, when the rods are held in front of photo of a dead person, they swing inwards. The same rods with same photo swings outwardly if the photo is held facing south direction. When the rods are held in front of photo of a living person, the do not move. When the rods are held in front of photos of Indian gods and goddesses, they move outwardly.
Same is true with different vegetables and fruits.
If you move into a room where, say, a cancer patient is lying, the rods move inwardly. This I call as negative energy. This negative energy is reduced or neutralized if photos of Indian gods are placed near the bed.
You will agree that mobile phones cause radiation. When the rods are held against the mobile phones, they move inwardly. Can’t we not say that this is negative energy. This negative energy can be neutralized if a god’s photo is pasted on the back side.
These do not have any explanations. But these are real, which I can demonstrate.
Any comments?
Let’s just stick with that statement then.
Regardless of my position with regards to dowsing or the paranormal, how is this statement like the claim of an ability to detect occult water, positive and negative energies, mineral ores or any other substance using coat hangers or coconuts?
Is this aspect of dowsing limited to those with ability, or is it demonstrable by anyone? Would the effect, in this simple example, require a human hand or is it something that would happen if a dowsing rod were connected to a battery mechanically?
From everything I have read and seen, it seems to me that the tests done by James Randi and the JREF are scientifically rigorous. (I am not a scientist of any kind.)
However, they almost always focus on the claim of the dowser that they will demonstrate 100% accuracy (or at least some very high percentage).
It seems to me that-- in a test as you described-- if a claimant were to find the water in 3 out of 10 tries, that would be significant. If they could repeat that success rate in three consecutive trials of ten tries each, that would be indicative of something other than “luck”.
For the record, I have yet to see any case where any claimant does even as well as I have described above. Nor am I familiar with any claims of dowsing ability wherein the practitioner’s success rate is a paltry 33%.
As best I can, but first, the disclaimer: I do not represent JREF in any capacity.
I also would like to suggest that you register at the JREF forums (it’s free, and the forum software is similar to SDMB) and start a thread in the Challenge Forum. The Forum dudes aren’t official reps, either, but it would be a good place to learn what you need to know. They can help you design a test which you can then make part of your application and that will speed up the process.
The tests are NOT done by James Randi, who may not even be present, although his advice will be respected, and he must sign off on the application for it to continue to the test stage.
They are scientifically rigorous in the sense that cheating is not likely, but that doesn’t mean they are difficult to do or hard to understand. The outcome is designed, in advance, to be “self-obvious,” so no subjective judging is required. You either found the jug of water each time or you didn’t; there is no gray area.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a test that required 100% accuracy, although I have always thought that’s what should be required. The services of a statistician are employed to set a level that is rigorous enough to prevent the claimant from winning purely by chance, but loose enough that absolute perfection isn’t required. In any case, this is decided and agreed upon by all parties in advance. If you don’t feel it is fair, you don’t have to continue.
Significant, maybe, but the purpose of the MDC is not to find something “interesting”, but to prove what you claim you can do, no more, no less. If you were offering a million dollars, wouldn’t you want to be very sure that the winner didn’t get it by chance? So the level must be high enough to rule that out.
What is your confidence level? You say you can detect water (or some other substance). How well can you do that? Just a little, or a lot? Why don’t you try some tests as I have suggested first, and see what your level is? Maybe you are better than you thought, or maybe only chance is at work. You won’t know until you try.
OK, so what? You’re not like the other claimants, are you? You have a talent or skill and said:
So let’s get started!
We are veering a little away from the OP in this thread…how about we start another, perhaps at the JREF Forum, and continue with your Challenge application there? If you do that, just post a link here so we can go right to it.
No, JREF will not pay any of your expenses, but you won’t be required to fly to Florida for any test, either. JREF has affilliated organizations worldwide, and they will attempt to put you in contact with the nearest one for the preliminary test.
I suggest you read the Challenge FAQ and join the JREF Forum – it’s free. They have a special Forum just for Challenge applications where you can discuss your proposal and get ideas on how to make it better and how to avoid common pitfalls.
It’s very interesting to do a scientific test of your abilities.
Good luck.
Leaving aside the question as to how one would obtain photos of Indian gods and goddesses(the statues of them, perhaps?) this claim alone can be submitted for the MDC. Random photos of people, alive and dead, are flipped over so that you cannot see them, and you dowse them and tell us which are which.
Can you do this?
Even easier (and more rigorous), have someone provide pictures the subjects of which are a mix of currently alive and currently dead, without telling the dowser which are which. That way the dowser can look at, handle, or do whatever to, the photos all they want.
Of course, nobody who knows which are which can be present during the dowsing, celebrities or anyone who the dowser might know can’t be used, and all the pictures should be from the same time period and of people of a similar age (so there are no clues from the pictures themselves).
But, heck, if pramanujan has an e-mail address and a printer, a doper can send him 20 pictures of their family without telling him who is still alive. If he can do much better than chance at picking out who is alive, that’s good evidence that he actually does have some ability.
As I said earlier, the rods do not have any significant ability. It is the person who holds them. It really moves when I hold them.
I would love to take this challenge.
When I do it, it was my experience that underground laid water pipes and drainage pipes do not interfere with my process. I just identify the natural source of water, that is my experience so far,
YES. Please send the photos to me - pramanujan2007@rediff.com
YES. Please send the photos. pramanujan2007@rediff. com
Wow, I can’t believe I made it through 100 some odd posts without someone restating the obvious. All these posts and the best you could do is argue about The Paranormal vs. The Skeptic, or in many cases both at the same time. All of this, and all one really has to do is re-read the OP:
“The Ideomotor Response”
The greatest tool (ok, to be fair it’s more of an observation than a tool) to sideshow psycics and magicians everywhere.
Of course water divining works, as does any other sort of divining. And, of course the Randy people will not pay for proof of the paranormal based on a successfull divining demonstration, because there is nothing paranormal about it. No unseen energies, no magnetic pulls, no invisible spirits pushing the divining tools away. Nothing but the human mind and their connection to the human hands.
Picture a field, bone flat and well plowed. Nothing at all to reveil what lies beneith. At least nothing you can see. There’s always something - the grass is a little greener, perhaps a little thicker, the ground swells ever so slightly, dirt has settled on either side of a drainage tile a tiny bit more than the dirt above the tile itself, etc. You don’t see it, but there’s something. Your brain however picks up all of the information available whether you realize it or not. As you near an area that differs, if you haven’t realized the difference yet the brain will be more than glad to say “Hey dummy, dig here.”
Even the example with the newspaper and the coin relies on this subconscious motor response. There will be something different about where the coin was. The kicker here is, the person placing the paper/coin is the exact source of the inconsistancy, it is his brain’s way of telling your brain where the quarter is.
Pictures of dead relatives, well, I could see an automatic subconscious response if the pictures are originals. We may have handled them differently, touched them differently, our fingerprints imprinting our grief upon them in tiny wrinkles and smudges. Digitally scanned photos would be a different challenge.
My point is, although I’m not saying things unseen do not exist, things like auras and Aum, the whole point of dousing for water is simply a biological reflex, the body’s way of reacting to what the mind has recognised but our consciousness has not noticed yet.
SiXSwordS said:
I skimmed that page and did not see that stated. Could you quote it? Or ID the paragraph?
Would it? What level of performance is statistically relevant, vs within the realm of chance? I’m not a statistician, either, so I’ve always been fuzzy over what level would reasonbly be considered indicative of something even borderline.
With regards to the challenge, first, most claimants claim high success rates. Look at the dowsers in this thread. Any of them saying that they only have a 30% or eve 70% rate? No, they claim 100%, or no actual percentage stated but that they find things all the time not on the plans.
I did try asking the question once with regards to someone who theoretically felt they had some talent but that it was, say, 70% effective. Sometimes they would be wrong, but mostly right. In order to make a statistically relevant test of that condition, one would need to greatly increase the number of test iterations. Instead of running 10 passes, you might have to run 100. Or 200. A lot more time involved, but the fidelity of the test is enhanced. Statistical anomalies don’t skew the results as bad. It’s basically a data sampling problem. If your data is very consistent, then a few data points will show the trend (i.e. linear). Whereas if your data is inconsistent, fluctuates about, you will need a lot more data points before any trends become evident.
If a dowser claims a near 100% test rate, and they demonstrate in the pretest (non-blinded) a 100% success rate, is there any reason to think their powers are suddenly affected by blinding so that now they only have a 50% ability to do what they claim? Is getting 3 tries in 10 significant when they claim and show the ability to get 10 out of 10? Would 5 out of 10 mean anything? Is even a 30% consistent rate over many tests outside the bounds of statistical possibility? With regards to the JREF Challenge, the results are chosen and agreed to be unambiguous. No judging involved, no opinion allowed. Either it self-evidently was right or wrong. Same thing for picking statistical relevance.
Suppose you fail the agreed level of performance, but still feel there is something borderline being expressed? Well, that is where repeat testing with more iterations and perhaps tweaks to the protocol to reduce any confounding factors would be relevant. Of course, for the official test one would need to wait a year and then officially reapply, but an individual could arrange his own testing without the JREF, or with JREF members but not officially for the prize.
Musicat said:
It seems from this point on you have misattributed quotes from SiXSwordS to pramanujan.
nd_n8 said:
I don’t agree with this statement. You are essentially saying that JREF will accept a claim that dowsing actually works (as opposed to appears to work), will enter a legally binding contract to pay out on the demonstration of this ability under test conditions, and then will renege on the deal if the claimant actually succeeds on the grounds that dowsing isn’t paranormal. That is in direct disagreement with the FAQ for JREF, which states that if they accept the claim and enter into the contract, they are accepting the claim as paranormal for the purposes of the contract.
Now I think it is fair to say that Randi and JREF do not expect to ever have to pay out, either for dowsing or any other claim. And I think it is safe to say the reason Randi and JREF don’t expect to ever have to pay on dowsing is because they understand what is really happening with dowsing, i.e. the ideomotor response, and why it appears to work for dowsers. Thus they think they know why all tests will fail under proper conditions. But your quote presents it as if at some point someone did successfully pull off a dowsing demonstration even after the tests were properly controlled for non-paranormal conditions (i.e. ideomotor response) that JREF would not pay, and would claim the method was not paranormal as their excuse. If they ever did so, they would lose all credibility they have within the skeptic community.
In short, I don’t think it will ever be an issue, because I don’t think there’s anything to dowsing, but I assume that if JREF enters a binding contract and someone does manage to fulfill the contract, they will honor the contract.
Let me put it this way: if dowsing can statistically find the answer when the answer is not known and no subtle clues are present, then it doesn’t matter if it works by ley lines or auras or thaumic fields or little fairies running around and turning the rods, or if it works by the mind picking up hidden clues - it passed the test.
From the Challenge FAQ:
Dowsing is most definitely considered paranormal, at least for the purposes of the Challenge. In fact, it is the most widely claimed power of all. So knock yourself out.
“Of course water divining works, as does any other sort of divining.” Then winning $1 Mil should be a walk in the park. What are you waiting for?
We can speculate on how it works only after you can show that it really does work. Until then, some of us have better things to do with our time than speculate about how something might work, if it existed. Win the $1Mil and you can brag all you want and I’ll eat my hat. Until you win it, I call bullshit.
And I would love to see you take it. So follow the instructions here and let’s get busy:
The only thing we haven’t discussed yet is the requirement for a “media presence”. But that shouldn’t be too hard. Just set up a demonstration for a local newspaper or TV station, or get some reporter to write you up. If you can continue to perform as claimed, that’s newsworthy to be sure. Perhaps you already have something like that. Do you keep a scrapbook of your exploits?
I’d be happy to send pictures.
But are you going to take my word for it as to who is alive and who is dead? Say I send you 30 pictures of family members. You pick a couple who your skill says are dead. Now you tell me which pictures you picked, and I tell you if you’re right or wrong. Do you trust me to tell the truth?
I will tell the truth, of course. And I’ve been posting on this message board for long enough that it’s possible a couple of other posters would vouch for my veracity. But I don’t expect you to trust me, a complete stranger.
So how do we deal with that problem? Is there a third party we would both trust to do the judging? For that matter, how do I prove to anyone over the internet that any particular person is alive or dead?
I am sure this is not a bet or challenge. You may send the photos. If you are satisfied with the result, you may reveal it. Since I stick to my stand, it doesn’t matter if you deny the truth. In such a situation, we may think of including a third party.
You may mark the photos with serial numbers. I will try to classify them into two groups.
However, let me reveal one fact. I have come across one case where the photo of a living celebrity did really show negative signs. There has only been one such case till now. All other living persons’ photos showed neutral position for the dowsing rod. Therefore, I can’t rule out one such possible case. I hope you understand.
2.2 What is the definition of “paranormal” in regards to the Challenge?
Within the Challenge, [paranormal] means that at the time your application is submitted and approved, your claim will be considered paranormal for the duration. If, after testing, it is decided that your ability is… scientifically explainable… you needn’t worry. If the JREF has agreed to test you, then your claim is paranormal.
I am not a statistician either and I don’t know the answer to your question.
It might take ten trials of ten tries each and it might take a hundred. But, I think, after some number of trials with a consistent success rate of even 33%, you would have to say that the claimant was succeeding at a rate that was better than chance. (Assuming the test case described by Musicat earlier…)
…but you agree that at some point it would become relevant?
As well as attributing the claims of others to me.
Inasmuch as that is true, I regret not spelling out my position more clearly. Beyond that I find it difficult to take on a, “if-the-sun-DID-go-around-the-Earth” style argument, meaning: it doesn’t make sense to argue about what would happen if someone did have a paranormal ability even if no one ever has or ever will have a paranormal ability.
I find it utterly disheartening that the fact that I agree with someone’s position means the selfsame statement gets a pass, but if I challenge that position-- if I am critical of it-- then making my statement becomes tantamount to claiming paranormal abilities.
I have not made any claim for having any paranormal ability.
But they could keep the Million, right? 
Agreed.