A recent article on medium.com is entitled In 2017,
UK water companies still rely on “magic.” The article is
about the practice called dowsing. Practiced for centuries,
dowsing involves holding a forked branch, and trying to wait for some branch movement indicating where water is underneath the
ground. The practice is dismissed by skeptics as superstition. The
problem is that a scientific paper by a physicist has actually presented very good
evidence that some people can perform dowsing with very good
effectiveness, achieving a level of success that is currently
inexplicable.
The author of the article on medium.com, an evolutionary biologist named
Sally Le Page, was originally surprised to find that two United
Kingdom water companies actually use this practice of dowsing. Her
article has been updated, and now states that 10 out of 12 of United
Kingdom water companies use dowsing to help find water.
Le Page suggests that the feeling of the branch pointing
one way comes from the user's mind itself. But such an explanation
does nothing to debunk dowsing. It may simply be that an idea about
the water's location could be originating in an anomalous way in the
dowser's mind, causing his arm to move and then causing the branch to
move. That still leaves standing the possibility that dowsing could
stem from clairvoyance in the dowser's mind, which makes more sense
than any type of “magic of the branch” type of explanation.
Le
Page misleads us by telling us, “Every
properly conducted scientific test of water dowsing has found it no
better than chance.” That is not at all true. In fact, one of the
three studies Le Page refers us to has the following statements,
citing or quoting conclusions in another scientific study:
Some
few dowsers, in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate
of success, which can scarcely, if at all, be explained as due to
chance...In every sort of test conducted, there were some few people
who showed location-dependent responses, some with good and some with
extraordinarily good reproducibility, which, in
their
departure from chance expectations, were highly significant...A real
core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven.
The
most extensive scientific study about dowsing was one done in the
1990s, a study conveniently not mentioned by Le Page. It was a
massive 10-year study involving more than 2000 drillings. The study
was summarized as follows in an article by Popular Mechanics:
The study in question,
finding very strong evidence that dowsing can be effective, was vastly larger in
scale and scope than two irrelevant studies Le Page cites (neither of
which even dealt with dowsing to search for underground supplies of water). In
his extremely detailed and lengthy paper, the physics professor Betz
stated, “Now,
however, extensive field studies...have shown that a few carefully
selected dowsers are certainly able to detect faults, fissures and
fractures with relative alacrity and surprising accuracy in areas
with, say, crystalline or limestone bedrock.” A press release on
the study notes the following:
An
overall success rate of 96 percent was achieved in 691 drillings in
Sri Lanka. Based on geological experience in that area, a success
rate of 30-50 percent would be expected from conventional
techniques alone.
You can use the Vassar binomial probability calculator to compute the chance of such a rate of success, using a chance success rate of 50 percent on each drilling. The results are shown below. According to the Vassar calculator, such a rate of success has a chance probability of less than <0.000000000001.
An arid area in Sri Lanka
You can use the Vassar binomial probability calculator to compute the chance of such a rate of success, using a chance success rate of 50 percent on each drilling. The results are shown below. According to the Vassar calculator, such a rate of success has a chance probability of less than <0.000000000001.
The standard deviation here is 13 sigma, vastly greatly than the 5 sigma used as a standard in physics for considering an experiment result to be a discovery. When I use my own binomial probability calculator, which I have tested successfully against benchmarks, I get a probability of 3.8926168636233847E-156, which is less than the chance of you guessing the full telephone numbers of 14 strangers on the first guess.
Le Page attempts to argue
against dowsing by saying “there was even $1
million up for grabs for anyone who could provide rigorous
evidence that you can find water using dowsing techniques.” That,
of course, was the Randi Prize, run by arch-skeptics who would never
accept previously produced evidence, but always demanded
that something be quickly proven in front of them – which isn't
practical with anything (such as dowsing) that could only be proven
effective by a long study involving many trials and attempts. Of
course, the Randi Prize was always run by people so avowedly hostile
to all paranormal claims that people soon figured out it was a waste
of time to participate, since it was all-but-certain that the judges
would always rule that no evidence had been found, no matter what
they observed.
We can ask: why would ten
out of twelve United Kingdom water companies use dowsing if it had no
effectiveness? What we have in the case of Le Page's article sounds like what goes on
frequently in regard to massive evidence (discussed here, here, here, and here) for extrasensory perception
(ESP): mainstream scientists refusing to acknowledge very strong
evidence for a phenomenon, and falsely telling us there is no
evidence for such a phenomenon, when there is actually very good and
abundant evidence for it. The scientists who make such
pronouncements are typically ignorant about the phenomenon they are
telling us is impossible, and they typically show no signs of having
seriously researched the relevant evidence. Sadly we have an academic conformity culture in which it is considered politically correct to say there is no evidence for any phenomenon considered taboo, regardless of how high a mountain of evidence has accumulated.
When I look at some of the skeptic articles on dowsing, I am not impressed by the reasoning used. We are told we should think dowsing cannot be effective because Chris French and James Randi did negative studies on the topic. These two are anti-paranormal crusaders who we can hardly expect to have produced objective studies on the topic. Moreover, you never discredit the idea that some people can produce a paranormal effect by doing a study in which some other people do not produce that effect. For example, if you test 100 people for ESP, and get chance results, that does nothing to discredit very impressive results produced by other people you did not test.
When I look at some of the skeptic articles on dowsing, I am not impressed by the reasoning used. We are told we should think dowsing cannot be effective because Chris French and James Randi did negative studies on the topic. These two are anti-paranormal crusaders who we can hardly expect to have produced objective studies on the topic. Moreover, you never discredit the idea that some people can produce a paranormal effect by doing a study in which some other people do not produce that effect. For example, if you test 100 people for ESP, and get chance results, that does nothing to discredit very impressive results produced by other people you did not test.
Dowsing is something which
seems like an unthinkable possibility when we consider it in
isolation. But when we consider dowsing within the context of the
very many strange observations of the paranormal made by humans, the
idea of dowsing does not seem so unthinkable. There is good evidence
that humans have quite a few abilities beyond the understanding of
physicists and evolutionary biologists. Our conclusions about such
matters should be based on the actual empirical evidence, not based
on a priori
assumptions about whether something is possible.
Dowsing could simply be a
form of clairvoyance, an anomalous ability of the human mind to
perceive external physical reality in a way not involving the senses.
There is abundant evidence for clairvoyance accumulated by
parapsychologists such as Joseph Rhine, and more recently by the US
government in tests of remote viewing. That some humans might have
an ability for clairvoyance is not something that will be admitted by
someone maintaining that the mind is simply a by-product of the
brain. But if humans have a soul we should not at all be surprised
that some humans may have psychic powers that reach beyond the body.
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