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Date: | Mon, 22 Jan 2001 13:50:09 -0600 |
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on 1/22/01 1:23 PM, Robert L. Schuyler at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> I did not detect such an openess about dowsing. Some of the people
> discussing the issue may indeed know a literature the rest of us are
> ignorant about - testing and not confirming dowsing - but that was not, I
> believe, true for most of those in the discussion. "Scientific bigotry" is
> alive and well. I happen to believe in science, and think that archaeology
> is a scientific field and that there is an approximation of reality that
> only science [not other "stories'] can give to humanity. That is why it is
> so important that specific conclusions or general bodies of theory not be
> allowed to become true by definition.
I have already posted what I know about the such tests, which is really not
much. I always react to talk of the effectiveness of dowsing negatively out
of what I do not believe to be scientific bigotry but out of the
nonscientific way it is presented by supposed scientists. I've said before
that I'm open to its confirmation if it can be adequately demonstrated to
work. What I react against is the way scientific people will support it
based on uncontrolled tests and anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately, much of
the data against it is also anecdotal in that it hasn't been adequately
codified. However, James Randi has participated in what he says are hundreds
of tests using methods mutually agreed upon with the dowser and none has
every passed the test. I also cited the Sandia Labs test of an electronic
people finder dowser that failed completely.
I also think the burden of proof is on the dowsers. If someone thinks it
works on archaeological sites, demonstrate it with scientifically valid
methods.
> When I held the two (coat hangers) in Utah something happened. I never
> seriously considered using dowsing as a substitute field technique but
> I have always been curious about what caused the rods to move (or seem
> to move). Was it the length of the rods (gravity), was it me, or were
> they attracted to something [my Navajo belt buckle?]? It was probably
> one or two and not the last. Do the experimentors discuss this question?
The explanation is called the the Ideomotor Effect, which is the phenomenon
of involuntary, unconscious motor movements. The body causes the rods to
move, just as it causes the puck on the oujia board to move. "Successful"
dowsing may relate to conscious or unconscious use of visual clues such as
subtle depressions. Such surface indications can be read without dowsing
rods.
Mike Conner
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