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Dousing?

flabe

New Blood
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Joined
Dec 23, 2009
Messages
4
I work for an electric utility company and part of our job is to locate underground electric utility cables. Of course there is high tech equipment to accomplish this, but a few weeks ago an old lineman showed me a trick using two pieces of #6 copper wire bent at a 90deg angle. He would hold these loosely in his hands and walk slowly across the road, when he would get over the buried line they would cross. We then put the locator on the cable and it confirmed its location, he was right on. I then tried this method and it seemed to work for me too. I have done it on multiple occasions since then and it always seems to work.
This reminds me of dousing, and I am cannot think of any realistic mechinism by which this could work. The most likely explanation is that since I have a pretty good idea where the cable is to begin with I could be subconsciously moving the wire myself. Or could it have something to do with the changing magnetic field that surrounds any cable energized with alternating current, could this be acting like the iron core in a transformer and be conducting the magnetic field? This seems less likely due to the distance that the dousing rods are from the conductor.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
 
Does it work when you don't already know where the cables are? You might find testing this carefully to be enlightening. (Also, for ease of looking up references, you might care to note that the conventional spelling is dowsing.)
 
Welcome to the forum. Please do a forum search for "dowsing" and you will learn everything you ever wanted to know and more, about the subject. I have a feeling that it has been talked to death at JREF.

Bottom line is, it works when you know where the dowsed item is. Ideomotor effect. Every dowser who has ever showed up here has turned out to be less than honest.
 
Olowkow said:
Every dowser who has ever showed up here has turned out to be less than honest.
Click to expand...

Not true, unless you mean a sort of intellectual honesty in accepting when one is wrong. Many dowsers are simply deluded. They honestly believe they have a talent. Those who are tested (with negative results) make a plethora of excuses, but rarely seem to be out-and-out lying.

- Dr. Trintignant
 
flabe,

You could be on the way to earning yourself a million dollars. If you don't think you have enough experience, your old lineman friend could win the money. You probably don't have the necessary media presence or academic attention to win the million, yet. But, there are other prizes like the IIG's $50,000 prize (www.iigwest.org) or the North Texas Skeptics have their $12,000 prize (www.ntskeptics.org). Winning either of those will put you on a path straight to the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge.

Good luck,
Ward
 
Dowsing , Like magnetic fuel enhancement, seems like it might make sense. The idea that a moving current -or moving water- might generate a magnetic field detectable to a sensitive instrument is not actually nonsense. Such instruments do exist- proton magnetometers and all sorts of field induction detectors. The question is - can humans do it without such instruments?
We know some animals can detect weak em fields and can even use the planet's magnetic field to navigate, so it again seems not unreasonable that some humans might be able to respond to such fields without machinery to help.

It seems possible.

The trouble is that every time it is tested objectively, it doesn't work.

That said, I think it's likely that there may be the occasional person who actually can detect a powerful EM field unassisted. I can't see why such a sense can't evolve - but I would not call it "psi" or "paranormal" any more than being able to detect photons in the visible range is paranormal.
But until such an individual shows up I'll stick with my B&Q cable finder.
 
flabe said:
The most likely explanation is that since I have a pretty good idea where the cable is to begin with I could be subconsciously moving the wire myself.
Click to expand...

The only first-hand experience I've had watching a douser work, was an electric company guy who forgot his equipment, and insisted on that method to try to locate the underground wire that ran where we needed to put a fence post. It was downright embarrassing.

We'd watched as the land had been prepared for a mobile home years before, and knew within a couple feet where the line was, but not close enough to risk digging.

His wires started out indicating a tire track left in the back yard by a bulldozer, that we'd never bothered to level out (it was back by the woods). It did look like a sunken trench from an electric line.

When we told him what it really was, he insisted it must be some former water line or something. Nope. No one had lived on the site ever before (well, maybe native americans had camped there), except for a barn fifty years earlier, which had fallen down before running water was installed.

We pointed out approximately where the electric line ran, but the same bulldozer had covered it so well that there was actually a slight hill over it now, rather than a dip, so it looked a very unlikely place to bury a line. He insisted the line wasn't there. We insisted it was, within a foot or two.

His metal wires didn't start working until I carefully pointed out where a slight trench showed back by the pole, and where the electric line ran into the house, and how the underground line probably curved between those two points under the slight hill. Finally his dowsing rods indicated something.

It was pathetically obvious he was only using his own observations about what looked like the route of an underground line. Needless to say, we insisted he come back with real equipment.

But if the trench had been left ungraded over the line and had settled as trenches normally do, his dowsing skills would have looked impressive.
 
It's the ideomotor effect. Dowsing for water/utilities/gold/oil/ley lines/etc doesn't work. And given that you're playing with people's lives when locating buried utilities, I do hope you abandon the bent rods and stick with the locator equipment that's known to work.

ETA: Oh, and it's "dowsing", not dousing.
 
Do people really come here without ever reading anything first before making a post like this?
 
I have added a tag. I suggest flabe reads some of the threads that come up when he clicks on the tag before posting again. The tag is the thing that is just above and to the right of the post reply button at the top of the page.

And welcome to the forum.
 
Dr. Trintignant said:
Not true, unless you mean a sort of intellectual honesty in accepting when one is wrong. Many dowsers are simply deluded. They honestly believe they have a talent. Those who are tested (with negative results) make a plethora of excuses, but rarely seem to be out-and-out lying.

- Dr. Trintignant
Click to expand...
Exactly, thanks. I was searching for the right word and kind of got off target.
 
Thank you for correcting my spelling.
If you read my posting it is clear that I am not claiming that this is paranormal, nor do I want to take the million dollar challenge. Because I know that James Randi had debunked DOWSING in the past I thought that this might be a good place to get some good input, and an explanation on something I had observed.

But the snarky comments were very helpful.
 
flabe said:
... Or could it have something to do with the changing magnetic field that surrounds any cable energized with alternating current, could this be acting like the iron core in a transformer and be conducting the magnetic field? ...
Click to expand...
Your copper wires are non-magnetic and, therefore, unaffected by any magnetic field.
 
flabe,

I hope I did not seem snarky when suggesting that you try for the prize money. I was serious. If I thought I could dowse (even if I felt it was scientific and not paranormal), I would go for it. I could use the money, and even if I didn't need the money, I can think of worthy causes that do, and I could always donate it to them.

And along the way, I'd learn a lot more about dowsing because I would certainly test myself a lot so I could make sure I would pass the test and win the money. That kind of self-testing is where you will find all your answers. It's easy to read here (or elsewhere) about dowsing and whether it works or not. You've experienced it which counts a lot more than just reading about it. More experience will give you more answers, but reading about it will tell you how to test yourself so that you cannot fool yourself.

So far, you have been taking the right approach and do not deserve snark. Here you will find a lot of people who say "it doesn't work." They were not there and did not witness or experience what you did. It's up to you to find out what happened in your case.

Thanks and welcome to the forum,
Ward
 
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