Dowsing,for caves?

[wolfart]

I started of a disscusion on ukcaving.com if anyone has dowsed for cave passages or enterances and got quite a reply on it, some sceptical. What are your thoughts on it and has anyone had any succes?

[wendy]

I don't really know what my thoughts on it are, because I don't know what it is....can you explain it briefly for me?

[Sean Ryan]

Dowsing is when you wave a forked branch over an area like a metal detector, looking for it to dip down in the presence of water. Dig at the spot where the branch dips, and you find water. Since caves are formed by the same underground water that dowsing rods are seeking, successful downers should dig up their share of caves. But that presumes that there's the tiniest bit of scientific validity to dowsing.

[wolfart]

correct as above,you can also use 2 bent pieces of wire at 90%. I think some early prospecters tried dowsing looking for gold

[Steven Johnson]

But that presumes that there's the tiniest bit of scientific validity to dowsing.

Which there isn't. (I actually did a double-blind experiment on this in 8th grade science class... to my surprise, I proved to my own satisfaction that dowsing seemed no better than random choice.)

Would be nice if it did work, though -- anything that made cave-locating easier would be nice

For more info on actual research done on dowsing, see:

http://skepdic.com/dowsing.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing
http://www.randi.org/library/dowsing/

It's worth nothing that the last link includes details of a million-dollar prize (!) which no one has yet been able to claim.

[Teresa]

I disagree with Steven. Dowsing is not a 'science' it is true-- it is an art, in the same way that medicine is an art, or that the prepared mind is more likely to come up with the correct answer than just going out on the street and asking someone. It is not supernatural, and people who claim to dowse maps in their living room or diagnose disease with a pendulum, but no medical training, just have a few screws loose.

One objection to dowsing is that some people say the premise is wrong--there are no 'veins of water'. Well, as we all know, that is incorrect when it comes to karst. If you accept that ground-penetrating radar, geophysical resistivity, and remote sensing of magnetic anomalies are possible (all are in a geologists toolkit) why not a crude form of any of these? Other species use earth-related clues to navigate, find food when they cannot see or smell it, and so forth. Why would humans have no such abilities?

Look in any industrial supply catalog. They carry something called 'locator rods' used to detect pipes/wires etc. I know a couple of solid as rocks engineering types who carry and use them. They don't know how they work, only that they do for them.

BTW, there is a cave in Missouri named Water Witched Cave which was found by this method. Sure, it was in a karst area. Sure, the person who found it was familiar with the area. But that's the method he used.

And what about Randi's challenge and so forth? Like I said, this isn't science. (James Randi has made a good living at what he does, and I'm not sure that I trust someone who makes a living by deceiving others (all magicians). If humans can have 'idiot savants' who do lightning calculation (but not everyone can do this, of course) why not some people who can dowse?

[Squirrel Girl]

I disagree with Steven.

I agree with Steven, and I like his links. Teresa, I remember when you PMed me on the subject on a previous incarnation of this board when you had a different username.

There is some art to applying medicine. You have to use some gut instinct, sometimes to decide, does this set of symptoms fit a certain diagnosis better than another. But to the best of its accumulated body of evidence, "medicine" uses studies on which treatments work, and which don't. Dowsing doesn't seem to do that. There aren't studies that say, "Hold the dowsing rods this way when working in granite bedrock," or "Use steel wires when dowsing over karst." Rather, it seems much like "magic" to me. And, of course, random luck will make a dowser occasionally correct.

No prediction method is perfect, but if I needed a well, I'd hire a hydrologist, and skip the dowsers.

[ScottM]

For a few years back in the 90's I worked for an environmental company. I had to log soil borings in the monitoring wells that this company would drill. Many, many times the site map was somewhat wrong, or the utilities weren't marked very well. One of the well drillers that worked for the same company, used dowsing to locate the underground utilites, I have seen him do it many times.
From what I understand, dowsing is used to locate a difference in the density of materials, like going from natural soil, to backfill, or gravel.

I had a hard time believing that it works, but some people can do it quite well.

[Scott McCrea]

I was just looking at an old NSS News, from 1990. It has an article about Scott Hollow Cave in WV. It's entrance was dug into after determining the spot with a forked stick. Now the cave is #13 on the Long US caves list, 27 miles as of 2001.

Anyone know what the current length is?

[hydrology_joe]

For a few years back in the 90's I worked for an environmental company. [snip] Many, many times the site map was somewhat wrong, or the utilities weren't marked very well. One of the well drillers that worked for the same company, used dowsing to locate the underground utilites, I have seen him do it many times.
[snip] I had a hard time believing that it works, but some people can do it quite well.

Scott,

I too work in the environmental field (on the regulatory side) and we use "dousing" (we call it "witching") to locate utilities quite regularly with amazing accuracy. As a matter of fact, I located the power lines for a parking lot lighting system on Wednesday using the method. (installing SVE piping) It also saved us a HUGE amount of $$$$ and trouble in Wichita earlier this spring as we found an unmarked 8" natural gas pipeline in the area we were going to trench. I was skeptical when I first saw it done, but after seeing it done repeatedly and learning the art myself, I believe in it. It doesn't cost anything to do (I just use a couple of wires from the utility marker flags) and it has saved us many times over.

[Ron Fulcher]

Just down the street from Scott Hollow Cave, a dowser said there was an underground stream through my Grandma's yard. We have mapped and dye traced it where the Dowser said it would be. Scientific? Was he right? yes. May have been the same guy at Scott Hoolow

Ron Fulcher
NSS44706RL

[Scott McCrea]

Just down the street from Scott Hollow Cave, a dowser said there was an underground stream through my Grandma's yard. We have mapped and dye traced it where the Dowser said it would be. Scientific? Was he right? yes. May have been the same guy at Scott Hollow

According to the article I read, Mike Dore did the dowsing at SHC.

[Ron Fulcher]

This is part of Acme 5 Cave system. I am not sure if it was Mike or not. I thought it was an older gentleman that did the dowsing in the yard.

Ron Fulcher
NSS44706RL

[Steven Johnson]

Well, as they say: nothing succeeds like success.

But if these guys are as accurate as you say, they should definitely check out Mr. Randi's Million-Dollar Prize!

[Lost]

I have dowsed to find underground conduit. I works pretty well.