Like the subject of pet psychics, the subject of dowsing is one I never thought it would be necessary to write about. This form of divination, like casting rune stones or knuckle bones and examining the entrails of sacrificial animals, is so clearly superstitious nonsense incompatible with science that it is hard to imagine even the most extreme advocates of alternative medicine taking it seriously.
Sadly, my ability to imagine the credulity of others has proven insufficient. A recent article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has chosen to treat dowsing, as employed by practitioners of another bit of folk magic, homeopathy, as a proper subject for serious scientific inquiry. (The paper is in the April issue, so I still secretly hope it was intended as an April Fool’s joke)
R McCarney, P Fisher, F Spink, G Flint, R van Haselen. Can homeopaths detect homeopathic medicines by dowsing? A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. J R Soc Med 2002;95(4):189-191.
The authors describe dowsing this way.
Dowsing is a method of problem-solving that uses a motor automatism, amplified through a pendulum or similar device. In a homeopathic context, it is used as an aid to prescribing and as a tool to identify miasm or toxin load….Dowsing, also known as divining, water witching or rhabdomancy, has been defined as a ‘problem solving technique which apparently utilizes a motor automatism in conjunction with a mechanical instrument to obtain information otherwise unknown to the dowser’
I prefer this definition, from the Skeptic’s Dictionary:
Dowsing is the action of a person–called the dowser–using a rod, stick or other device–called a dowsing rod, dowsing stick, doodlebug (when used to locate oil), or divining rod–to locate such things as underground water, hidden metal, buried treasure, oil, lost persons or golf balls, etc. Since dowsing is not based upon any known scientific or empirical laws or forces of nature, it should be considered a type of divination and an example of magical thinking.
The authors of the dowsing study list several theories for how dowsing “works:”
Theories on dowsing come into three categories. Normal inference theory suggests that the dowser processes a large amount of information pertinent to the scenario at a subconscious level and moves the instrument accordingly. The physical theory sees the movement in the device being due to the amplification of minute reactions in the human body, with the precise nature of the reaction being unclear. It could be an electromagnetic field, or some form of vibrational energy.
According to the theory of psionic medicine, every living thing and inanimate object is continuously vibrating at a molecular level. This vibration is sensed subconsciously by the dowser, and it is then amplified through the pendulum or other dowsing device. Some proponents of this explanation suggest that this sense originally developed as a survival tool because it enabled individuals to find water. As the vibrational pattern can change with disease, it is purported to be a useful tool for clinical practice.
Finally there is the psychical theory which suggests the dowser employs some form of extrasensory perception.
They have, however, omitted one very important theory:
The ideomotor effect refers to the influence of suggestion or expectation on involuntary and unconscious motor behavior. The movement of pointers on Ouija boards, of a facilitator’s hands in facilitated communication, of hands and arms in applied kinesiology, and of some behaviors attributed to hypnotic suggestion, are due to ideomotor action… The term “ideomotor action” was coined by William B. Carpenter in 1852 in his explanation for the movements of rods and pendulums by dowsers, and some table turning or lifting by spirit mediums (the ones that weren’t accomplished by cheating). Carpenter argued that muscular movement can be initiated by the mind independently of volition or emotions. We may not be aware of it, but suggestions can be made to the mind by others or by observations. Those suggestions can influence the mind and affect motor behavior.
In other words, dowsing is yet another example of people fooling themselves into believing that outside forces are accomplishing actions which, in fact, they are generating through their own unconscious need to see what they want and expect to see.
Dowsing has been studied a number of times, in as scientific a way as it is possible to study magic. The studies have pretty consistently shown that with any reasonable controls for bias (such as blinding of the dowsers), dowsing doesn’t work. Dowsers have not demonstrated the ability to find anything with an accuracy better than chance if they don’t know in advance where it is.
Naturally, dowsers often complain that this failure is due to the effects of the testing situation, which in some undefinable way muddies the psychic waters so they can’t perform. In the current study, this concern was accommodated.
In discussions before the study began, dowsers expressed concern that the pressure of an experimental situation might be detrimental to the dowsing sense. For this reason the study packs were mailed to the volunteers for evaluation in their own time in relaxed conditions…there was generally a high level of confidence in the responses (n=99, 63.5%), which suggests that we were successful in making the dowsers feel relaxed about the study.
So how was the study conducted? Well, six registered homeopaths with experience in the medical applications of dowsing were sent 26 pairs of unlabeled bottles containing either a homeopathic solution (a 12C preparation of Bryonia which, as the authors put it, “is ‘ultramolecular’…a dilution of 10-24…very unlikely to contain any molecule of the starting material”) and a placebo (prepared in an identical way except from distilled water instead of the Bryonia mother tincture).
In other words, they received two bottles of water one with magic powers and one without. They also received a pair of labeled bottles to practice on. They were then instructed to identify the magic water (I mean the homeopathic remedy) by magic (I mean dowsing).
And how did they do? Of 156 selections between pairs of bottles,
48.1% responded correctly (n=156; 95% confidence interval 40.2%, 56.0%; P=0.689)….percentage of correct responses ranged from 34.6% (n=26; 95% CI 15.77%, 53.4%; P=0.170) to 61.5% (n=26; 95% CI 42.4%, 80.6%; P=0.327). Of responses given with high confidence, 45.0% were correct (n=99; 95% CI 35.6%, 55.3%; P=0.421).
So, almost eerily close to perfect chance levels, with performance no better for those who were confident in their choices versus those who knew they were guessing. In fact, “High confidence was slightly more associated with an incorrect response.”
Since this is science, the authors made some comments about the potentially inappropriate application of statistics (using a method which assumes independent samples for samples that are actually associated), but as they put it,
The data were in fact so far from showing any type of effect of dowsing that the assumption of independence was probably met, so the more appropriate clustered analysis is unlikely to show a different effect.
So does this close the book on “medical dowsing?” Undoubtedly not. It does serve, however, as an excellent illustration of the premise of this blog. The application of scientific study to the highly implausible only seems justifiable if resources are unlimited or if the results, when negative, will influence peoples belief in implausible practices. Neither of these conditions is met in the real world.
In an ideal world, it might make sense to study every idea no matter how unlikely to be truth based on established knowledge, since once in a great while crazy ideas actually turn out to be right. But in the real world, they usually don’t. Since we have to conserve our resources and use them as efficiently as possible in investigating potential therapies, and since scientific evidence against magic does little to reduce people’s belief in magic, conducting and publishing studies like this seems a pointless and unconscionable waste of time and effort which only conveys an inappropriate sense of legitimacy to the hypotheses being studied. On the other hand, it is entertaining.
Oh, I’m too tired with all that vibrating to think, now……….
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Homeopathy is a substitute treatment method . But this treatment method sometimes works better than any other treatment method .People talk about the treatment method and they say that Homeopathy doctors do not properly diagnosis patients .But this is completely wrong . The way to diagnose is surely different as the treatment method is different . It takes long to to cure a patient but it really cures from the root of a disease . I saw a woman who had infection in her toes and doctors advised her to operate .But , she didn’t .She went for homeopathy treatment and this is really amazing that after one year of complete treatment she survived from the disease .
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The problem is that there is no evidence for those claims. Homeopathy hasn’t been demonstrated to work, homeopathic diagnostic methods make no sense and haven’t proven reliable, and given these facts there’s no reason to believe homeopathy even understands the root of disease correctly much less cures it. I could just as easily say I have a magic invisible dragon in my garage which lkeeps my safe from tuberculosis, and since I’ve never gotten tuberculosis it must be true. Just repeating these things without meaningful scientific evidence doesn’t make them true. That’s the difference between science-based medicine and faith-based medicine.
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Believe it or not……there are many unexplainable things in this world. Science isn’t end all facts. Or else they wouldn’t keep changing their minds wether you can eat eggs or not, ect. Eyes wide open is a better frame of mind, not skepticism.
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Sure, we clearly do not understand everything, and it is likely we can’t understand some things. That doesn’t make giving up or making stuff up useful or reliable choices. Science is incomplete and imperfect, it’s just better than the alternatives.
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The problem with the JRS study, and with most scientific approaches to dowsing is that the conditions of the study turn on the logical mind. Dowsing mind vaporizes as soon as I convert to words and logic.
I dowse 6,650 homeopathic remedies for similimum. Up until the last two cases, all of these produced one “yes”. After 20 hours of “no’s”, this is very impressive!
Once I dowsed a women who had told me of her many complaints. Then, without telling her the remedy, I suggested that she dowse for it herself, and as she wanted to do it, I supplied her with the list. A couple weeks later I asked her if she had gotten Verbena hastata. She did a double-take, and said in wonder, “I think that’s what it was.” Later when I ran into her she confirmed that she had dowsed the same remedy that I had.
I’ve been doing this for only a couple years, but so far I find that the first similimum I picked out for myself was right on. I feel it was correct because of Herring’s laws and because of how it ended. I dowsed not to repeat, and all of a sudden had an increase in vitality. I went up to a high energy level, and the first similimum was no longer similimum, so I dowsed the list and a new similimum came up. That’s where I’m at now. Non-similimums, whether herbal, allopathic, or homeopathic, rob you of your vitality so I now refuse to take anything but what I dowse as similimum.
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The problem here is that when you start informing medical therapies with entirely subjective mystical concepts like “dowsing mind” and claim that things cannot be tested scientifically, you have left medicine and entered the realm of religion. There is no difference between this sort of claim and those made for why psychic phenomena, astrology, or religious experiences should be accepted as real despite the complete inability to demonstrate their reality through objective means. You are, of course, entitled to whatever beliefs you choose, but you shouldn’t be entitled to deceive people into thinking what you are offering is medicine when it is really a form of faith healing founded in a spiritual reality you define for yourself, not the physical reality we all share.
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Hi Skeptvet.
I have a few comments to make if you have time to read them. You have used second hand data to make the claim that dowsing does not perform any better than chance. All the water dowsers that have been tested have, on average, produced such results. The trouble is that these tests were conducted on models of the real thing – not in real life situations. Dowsers were asked to identify which water pipe buried under the ground (beside other pipes with no flowing water) had water running through it. Other experiments required dowsers to find plastic bottles filled with water but hidden from view and distinguish them from plastic bottles that just contained sand. Dowsers could only produce correct results in such experiments equivalent to chance. The conclusion from such experiments is that dowsing does not work any better than chance which was the correct conclusion. The experimenters then extrapolated their findings to the real world situation of finding water in cracks in rocks deep underground, saying that dowsers are unable to find underground water at a rate any better than chance. This was their error. Every scientist knows that the results obtained from experiments on models cannot be extrapolated. This is because the variables (factors that can affect the experimental outcome) in the model situation and real life situation are different. If you want to test a dowser on their ability to find underground water, drill a hole where they say water is and another one a yard away where they say there is no water. To the best of my scientific knowledge, such an experiment has not been conducted and so the skeptics have no valid data on which to base their argument.
I am a professional water dowser in a very dry continent where underground water is scarce. Here, water dowsing is a valuable skill needed to allow landholders to achieve water security. I find underground streams of water on a map of the landholder’s property. I then visit the property and pinpoint the best location for a well to be drilled . 40% of properties I map dowse result in a no-drill recommendation because either there are no streams on the property, the streams have gone dry, the water is too salty, the streams are too narrow for the driller to hit, the streams are too deep, the water volume is too low, or the aquifer supplying the stream is an unreliable water source. The other 60% get drilled. To date, 99% of these drilled wells have been cased and are in production. If I was unable to produce such results, I would not still be in business today. I provide no explanation for how dowsing works, I just know it works. I need you to know that we tend to do things that work, but don’t necessarily understand. One day in the future, we may come up with a valid explanation for the dowsing reaction. In the mean time, I will continue helping landholders to obtain water security irrespective of what skeptics say.
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Sorry, but your understanding of how the scientific method works is inaccurate and, not surprisingly, biased in favor of your beliefs. All controlled scientific studies are conducted under “controlled” conditions, meaning some of the complexity of the “real world” is excluded. This does not mean that none of the results are applicability to more complex situations. if that were true, science would be useless and no better t predicting the behavior of nature than the kind of uncontrolled anecdotal experience you rely on. The reality is that science does a MUCH better job of accurately predicting how the world works than anecdote. In a couple of centuries we have understood and changed nature, for the better and for the worse, much more effectively than in all the thousands of years we rely on guesswork and anecdote.
It is true that some studies may not be applicable to some situations due to specific differences between test conditions and the specific context of that situation. Studies done in very sick, old, white men, for example, may not be as accurate in predicting the effects of a medical treatment on young, healthy, African American women as would studies that included that population. However, this is not a reason to simply ignore any study that doesn’t perfectly match the conditions of your anecdotal experience. And even such perfect studies are often far more reliable than anecdote and personal belief.
If you view were followed, we would universally ignore scientific evidence because it never perfectly reproduces reality. That would take us back to the millennia before the scientific method was developed, and that would clearly be a mistake. You bear the burden of proving your claims about dowsing, and simply stating your anecdotal experiences isn’t reliable or sufficient evidence. If you have an idea for a better study design, by all means present that to scientists with the proper training and expertise to conduct a study, and even better use some of the money you earn doing something that resembles magic far more than science to fund those studies. If you are right, the evidence will be that much more convincing to skeptics. If the study proves you wrong, though, will you admit it, or will nothing eve meet your standards of evidence or change your mind? If that is true, than you are promoting something indistinguishable from religion and reliant only on faith.
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