I'm open-minded about a lot of things, but dousing rods?

Question

come on, your hands will naturally go together a bit when you're nervous. Also, the turned-up microphone? That's just radio waves off of metal.

Answer 1

Actually, I know professionals in surveying fields that use dowsing rods effectively.

Answer 2

Bookshop Lady said it perfectly.

Answer 3

Dousing rods only appear to be successful because of something known as the "ideomotor" effect.  This is subconscious muscle movement.

Have you ever heard of the stage magician, The Amazing Randi?  James Randi is a skeptic of all things woo-woo.  If you check out his web site (http://www.randi.org), you will find many many many articles in his SWIFT newsletter and many many many posts in his JREF forums regarding scientific testing of dowsing.  In every instance where dowsing has been tested in an unbiased, double-blind study, it has been proven to be completely bogus.  The "water witches" got positive results at a rate consistent with pure chance.

There is a lot of knowledge in a person's head.  A surveyor looking for minerals or someone dowsing for water or whatever, is going to have a lot of knowledge about reading the lay of the land and looking at landmarks and using that information to find a spot where whatever it is they're looking for could be.  This is a subconscious assessment, not something that they knowingly think through.  Then, when they use their dowsing rods to go to the spot where they expect to find whatever, the ideomotor effect comes into play and they subconsciously make the tiny muscle movements that cause the rods to swing or bend.

Nothing mystical or magical about dowsing.  Nothing real about it, either.  Again, check out Randi's web site and these other web sites to learn about the ideomotor effect for yourself.

(By the way - Ouija boards also work in large part due to the ideomotor effect.)

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRela...

http://www.skeptics.org.uk/article.php?d...

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread....

http://www.wyrdology.com/mind/ideomotor....

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Ideomot...

Answer 4

Dowsing is the BEST way to know anything you want. I can dowse my level of consciousness, I can know if im low in salt, I can know if I can eat this and it will be good for my body. It's the same pricipal as muscle testing and once, my doctor used it on me before I knew what it was.