Demand switches for reducing EMF

willie.macleod

fostertom, just ask those who point out how this isn't an issue to explain how dowsing works...... funny how some people can dowse and others can't, isn't it?

Simon Still

Or perhaps dowsing doesn't work and is just another load of woo.

Again, scientific if evidence is severely lacking. Most tests get results no better than chance.

http://skepdic.com/dowsing.html

willie.macleod

Posted By: Simon StillOr perhaps dowsing doesn't work and is just another load of woo.

Again, scientific if evidence is severely lacking. Most tests get results no better than chance.

Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It is clearly something very specific to individuals, an awful lot of those who are capable aren't the kind to engage in any form of study. That instantly skews any "scientific" study.

I have no issues personally with EMF sensitivity, don't own a tinfoil hat, can still accept that some folk are more sensitive to these things than others.

Simon Still

But you specifically raised dowsing, suggesting you believe it is real. Claiming those who are capable army the sort to engage in scientific study is codswallop. The research generally try's to test people who specifically claim to have the power.

So the real magicians hold their cards close?

fostertom

Dowsing is a lot of fun - here's a classic M and F pair of earth-whatever lines (who knows?) crossing Druidstone, Dartmoor, trackable/repeatable to the milimetre - though they do tend to reconfigure a bit when someone (rarely these days) pays them some attention.

Note how the old buildings seem to acknowledge the lines, while the newer bungalows are completely ignorant of same.

SteamyTea

Oh dear

fostertom

Thought you'd like it - I'll show you how if you like but it's best self-discovered.

SteamyTea

Next time you bring your caravan down, to clutter up my roads, you can show me. :wink:

Remember this article, it is over years old now, so ancient history:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jan/16/ben-goldacre-bad-science-aliens-woolworths

andyman99

My father in law could dowse, and actually used it professionally more than once, including being asked to discover the route of something flowing under the M62 during its construction. I saw him find all sort of underground pipes/cables including a drain in our back garden that we didn't know existed. No doubt it works, though I too would be a sceptic if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Now he said one day that it worked with car headlights. So my brother in law and I went out and switched his car headlights on/off just for a few moments, he dowsed the exact line of the beams (we moved the car of course). There are forces that we don't yet understand.

willie.macleod

Posted By: Simon StillBut you specifically raised dowsing, suggesting you believe it is real. Claiming those who are capable army the sort to engage in scientific study is codswallop.

Yes, I do believe it is a real phenomenon. I wouldn't claim to understand it. I have not written codswallop. You may not accept it, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. Just because no-one knows much about it doesn't mean it should be disregarded as magic tricks.

A true scientist would be one to work out what's going on and not just dismiss things they don't understand. Double blind tests of folk testing for small samples of water contained in buckets etc in a tent are an absolute joke and of course are highly unlikely to give better than 50/50 results as that's nothing like natural conditions.

Greenfish

Now the thread has turned to dowsing, I also have had enough personal experiences to conclude that dowsing, for water at least, certianly works.

An uncle found a well in his garden, a cousin in Canada finds water by dowsing for a living; same cousin located an underground stream in our road, thought nothing of it until the cellar of the house opposite (on line with stream) floooded in very wet weather and none of the others did. Quite happy when our builder admitted getting the local dowser in to locate best place for our borehole, he also accurately predicted the flow rates and water quality. Local knowledge may have contributed to that, but not in the other examples.

[edit]There seems to be as much scientific evidence for whole house minimum ventilation requirements in well insulated and air tight houses as there is for dowsing! But now am way off topic.

SteamyTea

Posted By: willie.macleodA true scientist would be one to work out what's going on and not just dismiss things they don't understand

They have looked at it and found nothing though.

Posted By: willie.macleodDouble blind tests of folk testing for small samples of water contained in buckets etc in a tent are an absolute joke

Why are they a joke? What do you see wrong with that method of testing?

Posted By: willie.macleod50/50 results

That is getting chance and randomness mixed up based on the flip of a 'fair coin'.
I think that is is where some of the confusion about 'the unknown' comes from. Most biology scientists work to a 5% error. This means that there is a 1 in 20 (2 standard deviations) probability that the result is wrong. They do not always attribute a reason to this. Physicist at CERN, when looking for the Higg's Boson, worked to 5 Standard Deviations, or 1 in 3,500,000.

If dowsing really works, surely we could locate underground water supplies easily and cheaply. I have a map and a plumbline to use as a pendulum. I also think that, if it works on 'other substances' then living in Cornwall I could find someone that can find me some Cornish Gold, or that unknown mineshft.

Now I am off to read New Scientist in a cafe, I am willing to predict that there is something on the last two pages about quackery and my coffee will be black. I shall put a limit of 99% confidant on that and report back.:wink:

Gotanewlife

I am always deeply sceptical of unproven stuff so when I borrowed my diviners forked twig (they were locating a place to dig a well for me) I was not ready for it to work for me - they suddenness and force of the twig moving completely caught me by surprise - too strong for a subconscious self-generated action, could only have been hypnotism or science I don't understand. The fact that the stick moved is not, however, why we found water given the local topology - well not necessarily anyway.

The guy then tried out a circular pendulum to estimate the depth and flow - he was spectacularly wrong on that.

We don't have to understand the science to prove it works via a test/experiment and experiments can be worthless for reasons we don't understand so the double blind tests may have been incorrectly conceived in some way. Divining seems to have been adequately disproven but all we can say for certain is that it hasn't been proven.

Simon Still

The defence that "they're not testing the right people", "it won't show up in tests" when the results don't agree with your belief is codswallop. It's the same used by the golden ears hifi buffs listening for sonic differences between hard drives.

Im always reminded of the guys running "how to get rich" courses. If you teally knew you'd be doing it not running courses on it.

I fully accept some people may be very good at picking up environmental indicators (trees, grass growth, undulations etc) but draw the line at mystic force fields.

SteamyTea

With all these 'unproven' tricks,, you never see all the failures (bit like medical drug trials).
This is why we can 'predict' with seemingly good accuracy. We don't count the failures.

I ran an experiment over 60 times, with measurements every few seconds, the best I could say was there there was a week correlation between treatments. A colleague of mine did a similar experiment, but run it once and claimed a strong correlation.
I would not have used my own money to build a thermal store (what the experiment was about), but my colleague did. All I shall say is that she is a few hundred quid down and does not have a working thermal store.

If some people really can 'feel' things that the rest of us cannot, they would be the most valuable people in the world. There would be buildings full of them finding lost puppies and feeding the needy. Such a shame it is not like that, so we shall just have to put up with buildings full of people making small incremental changes, testing those changes to destruction, arguing every sentence with other experts and maybe eventually getting a safe and effective product to market.
Thing is about a dowser getting it wrong is that it does not really matter in the developed world, we can always turn a tap somewhere. It may be different for other cultures. About time I watched the Wicker Man again I think.

Ed Davies

http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.00108

Paul in Montreal

My father could dowse for water and used it professionally a couple of times as a civil engineer and he taught me how to do it when I was a child. I thought it was the rods themselves that did it (we used nice welding rods).

A few years ago, I had to have some work done in the basement to find a sewer connection ... so got the rods out. The plumber thought I was out of my mind ... so I gave the rods to one of his assistants. He was astonished he could do it too! I sent them outside to try and also another friend who was skeptical. Both of them found the GSHP well in the front garden without knowing it was there, as well as where the gas pipe connects to the street. I don't think there's anything too mysterious to dowsing - we have some braincells that are magnetically sensitive and it's not inconceivable that pipes and water affect the magnetic field to a tiny degree that is detectable. After all, this is how RF-based pipe finders work too! All that said, the Great Randi has a $1M prize available for anyone who can do this in a controlled environment - many have tried, none have succeeded. I think "electrosensitivity" is a load of guff, though as no proper tests have found any real correlation.

Paul in Montreal.

SteamyTea

Posted By: SteamyTeaNow I am off to read New Scientist in a cafe, I am willing to predict that there is something on the last two pages about quackery and my coffee will be black. I shall put a limit of 99% confidant on that and report back

I was right, a bit about David Icke and my coffee was black. :wink:

Nice one Ed, Karl will be proud.

Also in this weeks comic is a bit about beliefs, you can read it for £3.90 if you don't believe me.

willie.macleod

Posted By: SteamyTeaThey have looked at it and found nothing though.

Why are they a joke? What do you see wrong with that method of testing?

I can look for long enough for something, but if I don't know exactly what I'm looking for it can be right in front of my nose.

What is right about that method of testing? Dowsers can't explain what it is they can actually detect because they don't know, I can't explain what it is they are detecting, it isn't only water. We can only guess it is some form of magnetic fields but that might be completely wrong.

So a plastic bucket of small quantity of water in a tent is in any way similar to underground water/mineral sources? For a forum full of pseudo skeptics, anyone else suggesting this was a suitable equivalent double blind test would be torn to shreds. It is pretty clear to anyone who would think about it that it is in no way similar to any field that may exist in the natural environment. Again, it comes back to the lack of understanding of what is actually being tested, it is far to simplistic simply assume its the actual water itself.

The Randi prize if for psychic, supernatural, or paranormal ability. I don't believe dowsing is under any of these, although many do. I think it is one of the many areas of science that is not well understood so gets conveniently labelled as such. When someone studies the subject seriously and can clearly identify what exactly is happening I look forward to reading their work.

SteamyTea

Posted By: willie.macleod
What is right about that method of testing?

It is the controllability and repeatability that is right about it, not to mention that there is something to find.

An alternative may be to have 3 fields of reasonable size, say a hectare each, with known water sources in them. Then, at night (or blindfolded) get the dowser to find the water sources. To get the repeatability, get them to repeat it some time later, but don't let them know which field they are in. Allow them up to 20 positions per field. Repeat this a number of times but always randomly select a field. Plot the results and see how much they vary. If you did this 20 times for each field, they you would have up to 1200 points, so you could expect 60 to be wrong.
But I suspect that it will fail as dowsing probably does not work at night or when blindfolded, or other visual clues are unavailable.

Shall we try and discount magnetic fields, the forces are so weak that they are not going to move a stick or a wielding rod. You can try this at home. Get a magnet and wave it infront of a stick and see what happens. Now do the same with a steel rod that is 4 foot away (about the distance between the ground and your arms). If magnets can cause the body to become a sensitive 'conduit' don't visit CERN, or a hospital with an MRI scanner in it. I don't have any fridge magnets, and hardly anything in the fridge, though I have friends that have lots of fridge magnets and overfull fridges. That would be more interesting and worthy research into social phenomena than professional dowsers getting lucky occasionally.

Paul in Montreal

Posted By: SteamyTeaShall we try and discount magnetic fields, the forces are so weak that they are not going to move a stick or a wielding rod.

It's the dowsers/diviners arms that move the rod. I had believed when I was a child it was the rods, but it's not - they are just the indicators. Most people who have tried with the rods I have can do it, much to their amazement!

I also saw and experiment on Horizon many years ago (about magnetic sense) that had people try and point north when spun around and blindfolded. There was a positive correlation. To make it interesting, they then strapped a coil on the participants heads. When energized, they all pointed in random directions, but not when it wasn't - neither experimentor nor participant knew if the coil was energized or not. The gist of the program was that migratory birds have brain cells with magnetic sensing abilities and we apparently have a few as well. So I can believe there is a purely physical explanation for any dowsing abilities - there's no need to invent mysterious paranormal ones. The Randi prize does cover dowsing, by the way.

Paul in Montreal.

p.s. there's a an epsisode of Holmes on Homes where a contractor who installs septic tanks uses diving rods - much to Mike's amazement. Mike then has a go himself and can also do it

http://mikesweeklyskepticrant.blogspot.ca/2006/09/holmes-on-homes-oncrack.html

SteamyTea

Paul
There was some research done about pigeons navigating by visual clues, roads, railway lines, rivers, fields towns etc too.
There was also some research done using Google Earth that showed that cows align themselves with magnetic fields, this was debunked pretty quickly.
So you saying that the mechanism is magnetic fields in the body, then why use sticks and rods, why not just point with your finger?

Without double blind randomised trials you are not going to convince anyone. As I said earlier, if people really could dowse, even if it is only 1 in 10 million people, and it is claimed on this thread that at least some people can, and they remarkably know others that can, once shown how to, dowsers would be valuable people. There not. Square the circle.

Paul in Montreal

Posted By: SteamyTeaWithout double blind randomised trials you are not going to convince anyone. As I said earlier, if people really could dowse, even if it is only 1 in 10 million people, and it is claimed on this thread that at least some people can, and they remarkably know others that can, once shown how to, dowsers would be valuable people. There not. Square the circle.

Oh I agree - even though I think I can do it (though I don't believe it's paranormal). I would have thought, that at one time, it would have been a useful skill to have. These days, there are not many people who need to find water so the skill is not very useful. I take your point about just pointing, but if the reaction to the field is an autonomic reflex, then you can't consciously point anyway. The fact that no-one has claimed the Randi prize makes me think it's all BS anyway, even if I can do it - maybe I'm just fooling myself - though my father had used his skill to find buried pipes on a construction site and when he showed me how to do it, I just assumed it was something everyone could do (and therefore didn't even consider the wackiness aspect). I'm as much a scientific skeptic as you are, too :)

BTW, it's "they're not" not "there not". Sorry, I'm a grammar nit-picker.

Paul in Montreal.

SteamyTea

Posted By: Paul in MontrealBTW, it's "they're not" not "there not". Sorry, I'm a grammar nit-picker.

My bad typing/spelling/dyslexia coming out. Not something I get hung up on. :wink:

Paul in Montreal

Posted By: SteamyTeaMy bad typing/spelling/dyslexia coming out. Not something I get hung up on.

And I know I should resist commenting on such things - especially as many people are using predictive text these days and sometimes it predicts the wrong word. Of course, it could be you meant, "here be dowsers, there not!". :D

Paul in Montreal.

p.s. we always called them diving rods - dowsers were those Morris-dancer look-alikes that had weird pendulums and strange sticks. Welding rods are used by engineers :D

SteamyTea

You get rods and cones in eyeballs, or should they be called divers and pendulums.
Would be great to send some of these mystics to my mates farm as he has a huge national grid gas pipeline a few meters underground. And it is right by the place they found a huge load of old treasure or coins or something. How come these mystics don't find this sort of stuff, but metal detectors do (after loads of historical research).
Drill a hole in my back garden and you will get water, tin, copper, uranium ore, arsenic, old car parts, bones maybe (used to be a funeral parlour), builders rubble, more granite than the Appalachians I think, probably gold and silver. Don't need a diviner for that, just a history book. Go down far enough (350m) and you will get some decent heat too, along with some methane. :wink:

fostertom

Posted By: SteamyTeathe forces are so weak that they are not going to move a stick or a wielding rod

It's not the stick or rod that does it - it's your own body. The tool just amplifies tiny muscle tensions so they become visible. That's why you can get a yes/no to any question imaginable - not just water/pipes/wires and such utilitarian stuff. But you have to mentally/internally ask/hold concentrated a precise question. You won't find anything you're not precisely asking for. I can do it without tool - just kinda knowing pops into my mind, just as accurate - but I still like to see something external move, old habit of confidence in an era where we've been brought up to mistrust intuition.

SteamyTea

Posted By: fostertomThe tool just amplifies tiny muscle tensions so they become visible.

This is getting to the level of clutching at straws.
If you want to believe in magic, set up a Harry Potter Party.

Simon Still

Posted By: fostertom That's why you can get a yes/no to any question imaginable - not just water/pipes/wires and such utilitarian stuff. But you have to mentally/internally ask/hold concentrated a precise question. You won't find anything you're not precisely asking for.

but not anything really useful like "what are this week's Eurolottery numbers" or would that be misuse of the power?

fostertom

It would indeed but there's always been black 'magic', as knowingly (apparently) depicted in Harry Potter. Personally I can't make 'which direction is the nearest fish and chip shop?' work, or asking my rod to point to where I dropped the other one - but others can.

ST why wd you find it more credible that it's a dumb welding rod 'doing it', than the human body? Speak for yourself, if you're so vehemently sure that yours is no more than the lump of meat that's known to western science, even while that science constantly announces that the body is/does more than it previously 'knew'.