Divining Rods

[peter eldergill]

Do diving rods (those coat hangers you hold in your hands to find water) actually work? I saw someone on a construction show (Hlomes on Homes) use a pair to find some water lines for a septic system a couple of nights ago on TV

I know the Amazing Randi doesn't believe them and I'm also very skeptical, but people in the drilling industry do use them, and missing a water vein could be expensive.

Has anyone had any experience with this stuff?

Pete

[Gillianren]

Stephen King says they work. Cecil Adams (of the Straight Dope) says they don't. (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_168.html) Guess who I'm trusting in this one?

[01101001]

Instead of finding mere water, why don't diviners find Randi's megabuck? Many have tried; none have succeeded.

JREF Encyclopedia: Dowsing

[Huevos Grandes]

File it away with magic crystals, telekinesis, and self-levitation. Divining rods have been shown conclusively NOT to work consistently one person to the next, therefore is not a scientifically-driven principle. I'd be skeptical myself when someone claims to be able to tell the difference between a coin, a pipe, and an underwater stream, all buried underground, by means of a stick or two.

Wikipedia sez:
Practical guide for use in construction
"Real Magick"

[Wolverine]

Skeptic's Dictionary entry.

[JohnD]

I'm not convinced, but have you tried it? It's most convincing!
I used (on the advice of a sewer technician!) two pieces of wire coat hanger, bent at right angles, to form short and long arms. Hold the short loosely in the fist with the long horizontal and walk about. Eventually the long arms will seem to move and cross without any input from you, and to do so along a line on the ground. That marks the sewer.
That the line was also from the house manhole cover to the gate had nothing to do with anything.
Great entertainment! And only entertainment, but try it!
John

[Van Rijn]

A Ouija board can be quite convincing too, and for the same reason - it works in much the same way as divining rods.

A reasonably controlled experiment or two will show you that it is all based on what you know and what you are thinking (but perhaps not consciously), though.

[snarkophilus]

A Ouija board can be quite convincing too, and for the same reason - it works in much the same way as divining rods.

A reasonably controlled experiment or two will show you that it is all based on what you know and what you are thinking (but perhaps not consciously), though.

I figured out a nice trick regarding the Ouija board once upon a time. The legs/pads on the bottom of the pointing thing are not all of the same height. Therefore, a light downward pressure tends to make the thing slide toward the highest one and rotate. It's actually quite brilliant, if it was planned that way (I've only seen one board, so maybe this one was just different). You don't even need the people to push in any direction -- it has a tendency to move just from downward pressure. It's not magic, but I doubt that many people look at the heights of the pegs on the bottom, so it could certainly seem that way. Then it's just a matter of psychology as to when the thing stops.

I wonder if you could make it move on its own by blowing a wind down on it... get yourself into an old, abandoned building with a heavy downdraft, and watch the pointer change position every time there's a gust. That would be really cool, and would scare the heck out of a lot of people I know!

[Peter B]

Pete

Allow me to offer you a few insights.

I’ve been involved in a couple of tests of water diviners, and I’ve spoken to people involved in other tests. Put simply, there’s nothing to water divining, or related areas of divining.

Water divining is quite popular here in Australia, given its rarity. As a result, a lot of farmers are convinced it’s genuine. The problem is that when they’re tested under reasonably controlled conditions, their skills desert them. Before the tests, the diviners are quite convinced of their abilities, and after the tests they produce the excuses – this part of the process is actually the most reliably predictable part.

The two tests I was involved in were preliminary tests organised by the Canberra Skeptics.

In the first case, a farmer provided all the equipment for the test, and some friends of mine went out to watch the test. The farmer dug four holes and made a stoppered pipe full of water. While his back was turned, my friends randomly chose a hole to place the pipe in, then covered all four holes. His initial success rate was low and he suggested that there was a problem in that the pipe wasn’t flat, so the water was gathering at one end. So the test started again, with my friends taking care to keep the pipe flat. Again his success rate was low, and the test was soon abandoned. The farmer’s colleague later confided to me that the farmer concluded he’d been put off by recent rain soaking the ground.

The second test involved a farmer’s wife travelling to Canberra, where we tested her ability to tell sand from water in 20 bottles. The night before the test, one of my friends took 20 bottles, and flipped a coin to determine whether it should be filled with sand or water (therefore there wouldn’t necessarily be 10 of each). Each bottle was then placed inside a plastic shopping bag. There were two other bottles, clearly labelled as water and sand, which she was asked to test her skills against. At the start of the test she was satisfied that she was getting the right signals from the test bottles. Her score in the test was 9 out of 20 on the first occasion and 11 out of 20 on the second. A total score of 20 out of 40 was about as random as you could get. After the test, she was convinced that there was extraneous moisture in the sand which threw her off. This was despite her being satisfied with the test bottles at the start.

The Australian Skeptics twice ran tests at a little town called Mitta Mitta, in country Victoria. The tests were run as part of the Mitta Mitta Muster, and one was filmed and turned into a DVD you can buy from the Australian Skeptics (you know you want to buy a copy!). Each test was conducted at the local tennis courts, again using 20 bottles of either sand or water, placed inside plastic shopping bags. In each case, about 30-odd people took part in the test.

In the first test, the scores produced something fairly close to a normal curve, to the surprise of the professional diviners. One of them then said that he’d been thrown off by an underground stream, and others took up the argument. The organisers then asked the diviners to each mark on their maps where this stream was located. Six diviners took up the challenge, and marked streams in seven different locations (one of them found two streams). In other words, there was no correlation between them as to the location of the stream.

In the second test (the one recorded for the DVD), the organisers were ready for complaints. Before the test started, they asked the diviners to go out and test the location, to ensure that they were satisfied, and to avoid complaints about underground streams. When asked on the record whether they were happy with the conditions and confident of success, the professionals said yes to both. But scores again produced close to a normal curve, again to the surprise of the diviners. Then the complaints started. This time, they complained about the water which was placed in the bottles. One complained that the water left in the bottles all day lost its charge, which made it harder to find. Another complained that the water had come from some suspicious source, and wouldn’t believe the organiser who said it had come out of the tap at the back of the hotel where the organisers were staying.

Remember what I said about confidence beforehand and excuses afterwards?

So let’s look at the logic of water divining.

What sort of tools do you use? Forked sticks? If so, what wood? A pair of metal rods? If so, what metal? A pendulum? There’s no agreement on this.

Secondly, how does success manifest itself? Does the forked stick go up or down? Do the rods cross or uncross? Does the pendulum swing forwards and backwards, sideways, or around in circles? No agreement here, either.

Thirdly, what can diviners detect? The most ambitious claim to be able to find water, gems, electrical cables, gold and dead bodies, though perhaps not all at once.

Fourthly, what’s the mechanism at work? Are the divining tools the vital part of the process, or are they the easily visual aspect of something that relies on a more human effect? This also raises an important test. If the divining tools are the vital part, and humans are irrelevant, then theoretically you could place the tools in a mobile cradle, and get the same effect as if they were held in a person’s hands. On the other hand (so to speak), if the effect is something which works through humans directly, then why is so much effort invested in debating which tools to use and how to use them?

Finally, I’d like you to consider the situation of someone who claims to be able to divine, say, both water and dead bodies. He’s in a field which is believed to contain both, ready with his divining rods, and asked to divine for water. He walks around the field, and at some point his rods cross. Presumably we can assume that he’s found water. He’s now immediately asked to divine for dead bodies. What will happen to his divining rods? Assuming there are no dead bodies underneath him, what will his divining rods do?

[Swift]

I have encountered several people over the years, all who were fairly logical, would claim to have seen a demonstration of divining that worked (one is a co-worker who claims his brother can do it). Most of these cases have been in finding a spot to drill for a well. I suspect that there are two things going on here.

One is that people tend to remember hits, but not misses. So they remember the time or two the diviner got it right, but not the five or ten times they missed. As Peter B shows in his posting, even by random guess they will be correct once in a while - but people do not appreciate that they are random hits.

In the case of well drilling, at least in this part of the world, that it is more dependent upon water table, and so if you are off by 10 or 20 or 50 meters from the "best" spot, you will still hit water at some point. I also suspect that some of the diviners may be consciously or sub-consciously picking up clues from the geology, geography, and botany of the area (as to where the water is) - something that any trained observer could also do.

[peter eldergill]

Thanks, Peter

The thread in the other website has been locked, so I've asked the mod if he'd let me link to this one

He better read this! (Hi, Chuck!)

Pete

[JohnD]

Peter B,
That's a fascinating story!
No need to convince me that divining is false, though I'm grateful for your account. But you are a little unfair to the diviners (who are pretty unfair themselves). They believe (AFAIK) that the person is the detector, not the rod. So when they 'tune in' to bodies, or water, or treasure, the rods are just an indicator, like the needle on a gauge.

But you, we, are skeptics. Have you tried divining? It works! In that the rods seem to turn of their own accord, however you try not to influence them. If you were a believing person, this would be totally convincing.

JOhn

[hewhocaves]

Cavers and divining rods have a history as well... with no better results than sheer chance. For every time someone claims to have discovered a cave with one of those, there are at least a dozen people who have been unsuccesful. And one of the most famous 'successes' is nothing but an urban legend anyways. (as the ridgewalkers did their homework first, studied the local drainage and narrowed it down to a particular end of a particular valley first).
And there have been reports of cavers buying land first, then using divining rods (as well as backhoes, etc..) to find a cave on the property, unsuccessfully. The phrase "money pit", quite literally

John

[Enzp]

Randi's book Flim Flam has a chapter devoted to this. It explains in great detail a series of tests done. Not unlike the Australian scene mentioned above. The book is interesting, and includes a bunch of other topics related.