Thread: Water divining

Yep, pass the (I presume Australian Skeptics) challenge and when the successful result to the challenge is published in the Australian Skeptic magazine or website (or the successful challenge gains coverage in mainstream media) I will happily shout you not one, but two cartons of Pale Ale.

Ten cartons if you pass the million dollar challenge after that!

The real challenge is entering. They seem to make it hard. But I'll enjoy that beer.

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Ten cartons if you pass the million dollar challenge after that!

and I'll put in another 10 as well, it's the least I can do if I'm proven wrong.

SB

Originally Posted by elanjacobs

Been watching this thread for a while, but talk of an actual test has me curious as to how you'd measure success.
Will someone be hiring a geologist/hydrologist to survey the site first? Will you need to find multiple water sources?

Generally, it's up to the challenger to propose a test protocol, depending on the nature of their claim.

The challenger might say "I can reliably locate the best place to drill for water eight out of ten times - test me by letting me divine ten good points in a 200x200 meter area, blindfold me, then I will walk that area again and I will again divine eight out of ten of those exact same areas to within half-meter accuracy"

Or they might say that they can divine filled two litre bottles of water hidden under a bucket with 100% accuracy - in which case they might have to successfully locate the one filled bottle that's under one of ten buckets in a set of three or four tests.

Or they might be able to walk across a suburban area and indicate where all the underground water utilities are.

Or they might say that they can look at an unlabelled map and point to locations of existing water bores of over X litres a minute capacity, or look at a map with no topographic features and sketch out surface water courses, or be able to indicate on a map if an existing bore is supplying fresh or salty water.

Here's what they did in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQVPkrIipV0

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Generally, it's up to the challenger to propose a test protocol, depending on the nature of their claim.

The challenger might say "I can reliably locate the best place to drill for water eight out of ten times - test me by letting me divine ten good points in a 200x200 meter area, blindfold me, then I will walk that area again and I will again divine eight out of ten of those exact same areas to within half-meter accuracy"

Or they might say that they can divine filled two litre bottles of water hidden under a bucket with 100% accuracy - in which case they might have to successfully locate the one filled bottle that's under one of ten buckets in a set of three or four tests.

Or they might be able to walk across a suburban area and indicate where all the underground water utilities are.

Or they might say that they can look at an unlabelled map and point to locations of existing water bores of over X litres a minute capacity, or look at a map with no topographic features and sketch out surface water courses, or be able to indicate on a map if an existing bore is supplying fresh or salty water.

Here's what they did in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQVPkrIipV0

Ok that makes sense.
Only problem I have with the 10 points in a given area would be that a large portion of that area might be one big aquifer. Personally I would think that that kind of test would need to be verified by some sort of scientist. If if the test area turns out to be 70% aquifer anyway you might as well throw darts around and dig where they land.

That's my 2c anyway.

All I can do is find water that is moving or has been moving, that is in a pipeline. Nothing more or less. I can't find a buried barrel. Why people think that an aquifer is a lake underground is beyond me. Same with oil and gas...it moves. It is called migration.

With that sort of test (which has actually been done), they are saying that they can indicate on the same spots again - basically it's a test of the repeatability of their dowsing.

There are also tests where the dowser's indicated points are marked on the ground, and the dowser has to then re-indicate over them, but unknown to the dowser, the points get moved before the second set of indications. They are very good at indicating again over the marked (but moved) points.

See also:
Lovibond SR (1952). The water diviner's frame of reference. Australian Journal of Psychology 4, 62-73
Ongley PA (1948). New Zealand diviners. New Zealand Journal of Science and Technology Section B, 30, 38-54
Dale LA et al (1951). Dowsing: a field experiment in water divining. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 45, 3-16
Foulkes RA (1971). Dowsing experiments. Nature 229, 163-168
Lovibond SR (1952). The water diviner's frame of reference. Australian Journal of Psychology 4, 62-73

Originally Posted by wireliner

All I can do is find water that is moving or has been moving, that is in a pipeline. Nothing more or less. I can't find a buried barrel. Why people think that an aquifer is a lake underground is beyond me. Same with oil and gas...it moves. It is called migration.

Oil and gas are generally only moving in reservoir that is in production. As hydrocarbons are removed from a reservoir, fluid moves in to takes it's place. In a reservoir that hasn't been produced this doesn't happen.

On the general theme of local geology and finding water, the State and Federal Governments have made a huge effort to place online a lot of historical information from boreholes and geological exploration, geophysical surveys, and mapping in order to aid exploration companies. Many farmers and others do not realise how readily available this information is or how useful it could be. Googling reveals some astonishing resources that are freely available to the general public.

http://www.ga.gov.au/
http://www.vvg.org.au/cb_pages/gedis.php
http://www.energyandresources.vic.go...nd-data/geovic


Other states may have done the same.

Some of the sites I have visited also carry information and statistics regarding suitability for Wind and Solar power generation as well as water levels in bores, borelogs, estimates of landslip probability, locations of bores, water quality analysis, locations of landslide prone areas etc. etc. etc.. You can often draw a polygon on the website's maps to specify the area you are interested in. Other sites have links to gazetted land parcels so that you can call up the outline of your property on top of the available geological information - see snippett below called land parcels.

Well worth a look if you are interested in finding out a bit more about your local area. In Victoria this effort has been well publicised in the Mining and Exploration industry but I get the impression few other people know what is easily available. Some samples of output are shown below.

Some data sets are too large to download and are available as DVD data packs and are easily requested.

In Victoria the Catchment Management Authorities can also have useful websites and so do some Landcare groups.

http://www.wgcma.vic.gov.au/

There are a couple of sites that I visited have 3d geological models as 3d pdf files that are downloadable - quite interesting.

Bill

Originally Posted by Master Splinter

Well, I have to say it is something I have never tried.

But then, I've never:

- tried talking to spirits or angels
- tried seeing Jesus in a vision (or on a piece of toast),
- spoken in tongues while possessed by the holy spirit,
- spelled words on a ouija board,
- tried astral travel (which is a pity, as it might have sufficient leg room for me),
- bent spoons with my mind,
- tried psychic surgery,
- seen a ghost or vampire or space alien (in real life, anyway)
- had cancer that's been cured by ingesting silver, and,
- I've never had my horoscope done by an astrologer and found out that 'OMG it was so true!'

Why? Because all of these share one common element - they all have their very ardent believers, but none of them can provide any empirical proof of what they claim.

All of these are extraordinary claims; as such they require extraordinary proof.

If anything, the only thing that gets proven, time and again, is that people have an almost limitless ability to fool themselves.

Would I believe in dowsing?

Yes, in an instant, if someone could demonstrate that they could actually do it. That's all it takes - proof.

I'm always open to the possibility that dowsing is real phenomenon (just like I am open to the possibility that Nessie is real, and that Bigfoot is stomping around the US of A, probably hand-in-hand with Elvis), but all the available evidence to date indicates against it.

I don't think that requiring proof is a particularly high bar to set when I'm asked to believe in something.

Well how about that. We must be twins. I have never done any of those either.
If you would like to have a go, to see what happens, I would be happy to oblige. As for relocating a given spot, that's no problem, its part of the divining process. Or at least should be. I would be happy to demonstrate that as well. In this age of modern technology it isn't hard to pin point a location using coordinates.
I agree, the requirement of proof to believe in something is reasonable. The fact that you have not found suitable proof is reasonable grounds for doubt. But it doesnt give the right to judge others, only the right to judge oneself.
As the old saying goes; It is better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.
We have never met. I am being judged on the performance of others. You have never even tried. Sounds a bit rough wouldnt you think?

So it's better to ignore the results of thousands of tests on hundreds and hundreds of people over the last 60 or so years because 'it might still be true'?

The probability - after all those tests, of all those people who were so sure, so positive that they had the ability and were shown to be wrong - is vanishingly small.

How small? Surprisingly small. I'll dust off my creaky knowledge of stats...

Lets make the guestimate that 200 dowsers in Australia have been tested (and failed) for dowsing ability. What are the odds of this happening by chance?

For this, we'll assume that a goodly number of people in that 200 are put off by the test conditions, and can't perform as they usually do. We're also taking that the test results are binomial (can dowse/can't dowse).

We'll say that out of those 200 dowsers, we'll only expect 75 of them to be able to dowse properly during the test. So we're expecting less than half of them to be able to perform as claimed.

So what's the probability of those 75 dowsers out of 200 all failing by some particular random circumstance (ie hands too sweaty/Jupiter in Uranus/God thinks it's a good joke to pull/water too pure/sand not dry enough and so on)?

The probability that all 75 dowsers all suffered from some random failure at test time is less than 0.0002%

Lets take this one step further; assume that there have been a total of 3,000 people tested worldwide for dowsing ability; lets further assume that no more than one in ten of these people can actually perform under test conditions - so we are only looking for 300 actual dowsers out of these 3,000 claimed dowsers.

What's the probability of every single one of those 300 dowsers out of 3000 failing their test due to some random event?

6.9x10^-482 percent.

That's a 6 with 481 zeros in front of it. That's considerably worse odds than marking 7 numbers on a phone book* sized lotto card and expecting to win.

That's why I don't think dowsing works.

But if you are happy to demonstrate, by all means contact the Australian Skeptics and demonstrate. If you don't want the cash prize, it can go to your preferred charity.


*New York phone book, all volumes...

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/testin...h_experiments/
Possibly the largest scientific test ever done on the subject. 500 whittled down to the best 43 with a budget of $250,000 (hell of a lot of money in 1986). Warning : It's a long read

http://www.undeceivingourselves.org/S-divi.htm
And another one. In one of the tests they actually drilled at each point marked by diviners and at 16 marked by a hydrogeologist. They measured depth and flow rate. No prizes for guessing the results

As per Steamingbill's post, surface, NSW groundwater and borehole data are available from NSW Waterinfo.

Not that I'm at all cynical, but if I wanted to make people think I was a good diviner, the first thing I'd do is have a look at these sites. The mechanics of making a forked stick or wire 'twitch' without apparent input from the operator are well documented.

Not that I'm at all cynical, of course...

One problem....It hasn't failed me yet.
What others have done or not done is of little consequence to me. I have said that I understand the incapable to be doubters. I have no problem with that. I understand that kept data shows that chance is probably the answer. But as sensible as all that may seem, I still have over 40years of experience seeing others in operation and doing it myself. What am I supposed to do with that?
Read through some of those anecdotes I have mentioned earlier, keep an open mind and see what you come up with? Maybe Im missing something. I do know for a fact, when the wires turn for me there will be water, there always has. Sorry if that doesnt suit statistics, but that is just what happens.
Should you ever have the need for water and conditions are suitable, dont hesitate to give me a call.