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Stuartfield Gun found by dowsing

thenigotoffthebus

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Reporting Scotland (BBC Scotland's main daily TV news programme) just reported as fact that a world war 1 German Howitzer gun has been discovered by dowsing.

The reporter states:
BBC Scotland said:
The exact location of the weapon was pinpointed through dowsing on local farmland
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While footage of the dowser doing his stuff is shown.

Maybe I'm expecting too much from a regional news programme on a light hearted story but I was still quite surprised that go by the editor unchallenged and reported so blatantly as fact. The BBC isnt usually too bad when it comes to wooish stuff.
 
There doesn't appear to be anything online, searching for all the obvious keywords. Please post a link if you find one.

Who knows what the editor thought "dowsing" meant; he or she might have thought it was a farming term.
 
thenigotoffthebus said:
Reporting Scotland (BBC Scotland's main daily TV news programme) just reported as fact that a world war 1 German Howitzer gun has been discovered by dowsing.

The reporter states:

While footage of the dowser doing his stuff is shown.

Maybe I'm expecting too much from a regional news programme on a light hearted story but I was still quite surprised that go by the editor unchallenged and reported so blatantly as fact. The BBC isnt usually too bad when it comes to wooish stuff.
Click to expand...

Do you have a link? I did a quick search but can't find anything.

ETA: Carlitos beat me to it.
 
Sorry doesnt appear to be anything on the BBC news site, or anywhere else for that matter. I did rewind and record on Sky+ though. If it doesn't appear on iplayer I'll upload it somewhere if anyone really wants to see it.
 
Nah, no need to post the video; I just wanted to confirm that you got the word right. If it's in Scottish, I'd never be able to confirm that anyway. :duck:

It's scary; there are guys in metal detector clubs that do "both" dowsing and using the equipment. Talk about the potential for confirmation bias.
 
If anyone turns up anything online, I'd be interested to see it. I've covered archaeological dowsing in some depth (ha) in the past.
 
OMG, they showed the guy working with dowsing rods. That's embarrassing. No wonder you noticed it.
 
I call BS. They used a backhoe to remove 1200 tons of rock and soil in a quarry that was filled in, and yet they never actually show the gun itself? If you dig up half the earth looking for something you KNOW is already there, of course you'll eventually find it! Not to mention, if they really wanted to dig the thing up, they wouldn't fill the hole back in the next day.

:cool:
 
I wonder who thought of the brilliant idea.

"Will, McGeorg, hewr we gun fi'n et 'er?"
"Dun wurri, McWilliam, ee've gut dese duwsin' ruds hiir!"

[apologies extended to any residents of Scotland for this typographical interpretation of Scottish English. I absolutely love the sound of it, I just couldn't resist doing a take]
 
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Well, have to say that was really poor, unskeptical reporting. Surprising it came from BBC Scotland.

I hope they receive a good number of complaints about it.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
I wonder who thought of the brilliant idea.

"Will, McGeorg, hewr we gun fi'n et 'er?"
"Dun wurri, McWilliam, ee've gut dese duwsin' ruds hiir!"

[apologies extended to any residents of Scotland for this typographical interpretation of Scottish English. I absolutely love the sound of it, I just couldn't resist doing a take]
Click to expand...

I loved this thanks for the laugh! I am also a fan of the Scottish lilt.
 
AdMan said:
Well, have to say that was really poor, unskeptical reporting. Surprising it came from BBC Scotland.
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What, you mean that a country which actively promotes a Loch dwelling monster as reality isn't treating a story with scepticality... what ever next? :D
 
Too little information from the video, to draw any kind of rational conclusion.

The reporter used the term "pinpointed the location" when referring to the dowser. We don't know how large an area the quarry covers, and we don't know whether or not anyone had any idea of the rough historical location of the gun.

It seems from the video, that the digger had dug out an initial level path into the side of a spoil "hill" in the quarry, which looked around tweny to thirty metres long, then stopped at a point and dug down another three to four metres or so, forming the excavation pit, but there was no physical signs of the gun in the video, at the bottom.

This, excavation technique in my view, did indicate a specific location, and not as someone said above, just an exercise in randomly moving tons of rubble until they happened to stumble on the target. However, as I said, too little information from a news report poorly cobbled together to suit the casual viewer not interested in technical detail.

The ending, depicting some kind of "religious" ceremony with wailing bagpipes in the background, made the whole thing totally ludicrous.
 
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Explorer said:
Too little information from the video, to draw any kind of rational conclusion.

The reporter used the term "pinpointed the location" when referring to the dowser. We don't know how large an area the quarry covers, and we don't know whether or not anyone had any idea of the rough historical location of the gun...
Click to expand...
We have a little, since it is stated by one of the locals - the local farmer,

"They decided to dispose of it in the river, twice I think(photos of such) and then up in this quarry here.".

Sounds to me that they knew it was in the old quarry, but had to find the quarry first...
 
I'd guess that believing in dowsing could actually get someone out in a field to look for things. That could improve the odds, compared to not looking at all.
 
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