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Dowsing expectations: new reports reawaken scientific controversy over water witching - location of water or objects beneath the earth by the use of metal or wooden rods - Cover Story

Science News, August 5, 1995 by Janet Raloff

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To prove that Schroter relied on dowsing only, Hyman says, would require, at a minimum, blindfolding him, taking him to sites totally unfamiliar to both him and those working with him, and then asking skilled water-prospecting companies to select and drill sites in the same area.

Betz says such comparison drilling would have been impossibly expensive. But while acknowledging "sympathy" for Betz' situation, Finegold argues that only this would produce compelling data.

Hyman says that it's hard to evaluate dowsing without good records on what proportion of local, nondivined wells produces adequate, potable water.

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In a few regions of the world where government records document all water-prospecting efforts, he points out, diviners have done well at finding water--but no better than nondowsing drillers.

As an example, Hyman cites Australia, where the government of New South Wales has long maintained detailed records on every water well drilled--several thousand in all. These documents show that "about 70 percent of the divined wells were successful, versus about 83 percent of the nondivined wells."

Betz describes a series of more carefully controlled experiments conducted with dowsers in and around the University of Munich in the second part of his report, which appears in the summer Journal of Scientific Exploration.

In one test, 43 dowsers successively tried to divine, from the second floor of a barn, a pipe on the floor below. After each attempt, the pipe was moved. Statistical analyses indicated that there was only 1 chance in 1,700 that the best performance, that of Schroter, could be due to luck. However, most of the dowsers did no better than chance alone would predict.

In a second experiment, 40 blindfolded dowsers walked along a 13.5-meter-long plank in a field and noted where water might occur. Each individual attempted the task 40 times, with the plank being moved between each trial. Most dowsers failed to mark the same site each time. But certain individuals responded reliably within a meter of the same spot on each pass, a result with only a 1 in 100,000 likelihood, Betz said.

Skeptics note that from reading the report alone, it's hard to tell whether Betz took adequate precautions to prevent the participants from receiving aural or visual cues that might affect their performance.

"There are all sorts of experiments like this that initially look like they are without sensory cues--but in fact are not," Lehr says. "I guarantee you that if I or any number of skeptical scientists had been on hand to observe these experiments, it would be very easy to find flaws."

Hyman agrees. In particular, he doubts the value of the plank test. "It's virtually impossible to blindfold people and keep them from seeing down," he says. Even if the participants were adequately blinded, Sarma adds, their escorts were not. "There are any number of ways in which these individuals could have relayed some cues, perhaps involuntarily," he adds.

Since the Munich tests, Sarma says, SSIP has repeatedly challenged Betz to bring it dowsers for testing or to provide SSIP with the names of high-performing individuals. "Betz has consistently refused," Sarma told Science News.

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Dowsing expectations: new reports reawaken scientific controversy over water witching - location of water or objects beneath the earth by the use of metal or wooden rods - Cover Story

Science News, August 5, 1995 by Janet Raloff

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