Dowsing

Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, malign 'earth vibrations' and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus. Dowsing is also known as divining (especially in reference to interpretation of results), doodlebugging (particularly in the United States, in searching for petroleum) or (when searching specifically for water) water finding, water witching (in the United States) or water dowsing.
A Y-shaped twig or rod, or two L-shaped ones—individually called a dowsing rod, divining rod (Latin: virgula divina or baculus divinatorius), "vining rod", or witching rod—are sometimes used during dowsing, although some dowsers use other equipment or no equipment at all.
Dowsing is a pseudoscience, and the scientific evidence is that it is no more effective than random chance. Dowsers often achieve good results because random chance has a high probability of finding water in favourable terrain. The motion of dowsing rods is now generally attributed to the ideomotor response. The ideomotor phenomenon is a psychological phenomenon wherein a subject makes motions unconsciously. In less complex terms, dowsing rods only move due to accidental or involuntary movements of the user.
Dowsing remains popular among believers in Forteana or radiesthesia.
History.
Dowsing as practiced today may have originated in Germany during the 16th century, when it was used in attempts to find metals.
As early as 1518, Martin Luther listed dowsing for metals as an act that broke the first commandment ("i.e.", as occultism). The 1550 edition of Sebastian Münster's "Cosmographia" contains a woodcut of a dowser with forked rod in hand walking over a cutaway image of a mining operation. The rod is labelled "Virgula Divina – Glück-Rüt" (Latin: Rod Divine; German: Luck-Rod), but there is no text accompanying the woodcut. By 1556, Georgius Agricola's treatment of mining and smelting of ore, "De Re Metallica", included a detailed description of dowsing for metal ore.
In the sixteenth century, German deep mining technology was in enormous demand all over Europe. German miners were licensed to live and work in England; particularly in the Stannaries of Devon & Cornwall and in Cumbria. In other parts of England, the technique was used in the royal mines for calamine. By 1638 German miners were recorded using the technique in silver mines in Wales.
The Middle Low German name for a forked stick (Y-rod) was "Schlag-Ruthe" ("striking rod"). This was translated in the 16th century Cornish dialect to "duschen" ("duschan" according to Barrett) (Middle English, to "strike" or fall).
In 1691 the philosopher John Locke, who was born in the West Country, used the term "deusing-rod" for the old Latin name "virgula divina". So, "dowse" is synonymous with "strike", hence the phrases: to "dowse"/"strike" a light, to "dowse"/"strike" a sail.
In the lead-mining area of the Mendip Hills in Somerset in the 17th century the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, inspired by the writings of Agricola, watched a practitioner try to find "latent veins of metals". Boyle saw the hazel divining rod ("virgula divinatoria") stoop in the hands of the diviner, who protested that he was not applying any force to the twig; Boyle accepted the man's genuine belief but himself remained unconvinced.
Although dowsing in search of water is considered an ancient practice by some, old texts about searching for water do not mention using the divining rod, and the first account of this practice was in 1568.
Sir William F. Barrett wrote in his 1911 book "Psychical Research" that: 
In 1662, dowsing was declared to be "superstitious, or rather satanic" by a Jesuit, Gaspar Schott, though he later noted that he wasn't sure that the devil was always responsible for the movement of the rod. In the South of France in the 17th century it was used in tracking criminals and heretics. Its abuse led to a decree of the inquisition in 1701, forbidding its employment for purposes of justice.
An epigram by Samuel Sheppard, from "Epigrams theological, philosophical, and romantick" (1651) runs thus:
Early attempts at an explanation of dowsing were based on the notion that the divining rod was physically affected by emanations from substances of interest. The following explanation is from William Pryce's 1778 "Mineralogia Cornubiensis":
A study towards the end of the nineteenth century concluded that the phenomenon was attributed to cryptesthesia, whereby the practitioner made unconscious observations of the terrain and involuntarily influenced the movement of the rod.
Dowsing was conducted in South Dakota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to help homesteaders, farmers, and ranchers locate water wells on their property.
In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, some United States Marines used dowsing to attempt to locate weapons and tunnels. As late as in 1986, when 31 soldiers were taken by an avalanche during an operation in the NATO drill Anchor Express in Vassdalen, Norway, the Norwegian army attempted to locate soldiers buried in the avalanche using dowsing as a search method.
Dowsing is still used by some farmers and by water engineers in the UK, however many of the UK's water utilities have since tried to distance themselves from the practice. In Australia, a dowser claims to have located the Gruyere gold deposit.
Equipment.
Y-Rods.
Traditionally, the most common dowsing rod is a forked (Y-shaped) branch from a tree or bush. Some dowsers prefer branches from particular trees, and some prefer the branches to be freshly cut. Hazel twigs in Europe and witch-hazel in the United States are traditionally commonly chosen, as are branches from willow or peach trees. The two ends on the forked side are held one in each hand with the third (the stem of the Y) pointing straight ahead. The dowser then walks slowly over the places where he suspects the target (for example, minerals or water) may be, and the dowsing rod is expected to dip, incline or twitch when a discovery is made. This method is sometimes known as "willow witching".
L-Rods.
Many dowsers today use a pair of simple L-shaped metal rods. One rod is held in each hand, with the short arm of the L held upright, and the long arm pointing forward. When something is "found", the rods cross over one another. If the object is long and straight, such as a water pipe, the rods may point in opposite directions, showing its orientation. The rods may be fashioned from wire coat hangers or wire flags used for locating utilities. Glass or plastic rods have also been accepted. Straight rods are also sometimes used for the same purposes, and were not uncommon in early 19th-century New England.
Police and military devices.
A number of devices have been marketed for modern police and military use, for example ADE 651, Sniffex, and the GT200. A US government study advised against buying "bogus explosive detection equipment" and noted that all testing has shown the devices to perform no better than random chance.
Devices:
Studies.
Kassel 1991 study.
A 1990 double-blind study was undertaken in Kassel, Germany, under the direction of the "Gesellschaft zur Wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften" (Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences). James Randi offered a US$10,000 prize to any successful dowser. The three-day test of some 30 dowsers involved plastic pipes through which water flow could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried under a level field, the position of each marked on the surface with a colored strip. The dowsers had to tell whether water was running through each pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100 percent success rate. However, the results were no better than chance, thus no one was awarded the prize.
Betz 1990 study.
In a 1987–88 study in Munich by Hans-Dieter Betz and other scientists, 500 dowsers were initially tested for their skill, and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them for further tests. Water was pumped through a pipe on the ground floor of a two-storey barn. Before each test, the pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the dowsers performed 843 such tests and, of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that some dowsers "in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ... a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."
Five years after the Munich study was published, Jim T. Enright, a professor of physiology who emphasised correct data analysis procedure, contended that the study's results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and not significant. He believed the experiments provided "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim", stating that the data analysis was "special, unconventional and customized". Replacing it with "more ordinary analyses", he noted that the "best" dowser was on average out of closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.04%, and that the five other "good" dowsers were on average farther than a mid-line guess. Enright emphasized that the experimenters should have decided beforehand how to statistically analyze the results; if they only afterward chose the statistical analysis that showed the greatest success, then their conclusions would not be valid until replicated by another test analyzed by the same method. He further pointed out that the six "good" dowsers did not perform any better than chance in separate tests. Another study published in "Pathophysiology" hypothesized that such experiments as this one that were carried out in the 20th century could have been interfered with by man-made radio frequency radiation, as test subjects' bodies absorbed the radio waves and unconscious hand movement reactions took place following the standing waves or intensity variations.
Scientific reception.
Dowsing is considered to be a pseudoscience.
Science writers such as William Benjamin Carpenter (1877), Millais Culpin (1920), and Martin Gardner (1957) considered the movement of dowsing rods to be the result of unconscious muscular action. This view is widely accepted amongst the scientific community and also by some in the dowsing community. The dowsing apparatus is known to amplify slight movements of the hands caused by a phenomenon known as the ideomotor response: people's subconscious minds may influence their bodies without consciously deciding to take action. This would make the dowsing rod susceptible to the dowsers's subconscious knowledge or perception; but also to confirmation bias.
Psychologist David Marks in a 1986 article in "Nature" included dowsing in a list of "effects which until recently were claimed to be paranormal but which can now be explained from within orthodox science." Specifically, dowsing could be explained in terms of sensory cues, expectancy effects, and probability.
Science writer Peter Daempfle has noted that when dowsing is subjected to scientific testing, it fails. Daempfle has written that although some dowsers claim success, this can be attributed to the underground water table being distributed relatively uniformly in certain areas.
In regard to dowsing and its use in archaeology, Kenneth Feder has written that "the vast majority of archaeologists don't use dowsing, because they don't believe it works."
Psychologist Chris French has noted that "dowsing does not work when it is tested under properly controlled conditions that rule out the use of other cues to indicate target location."
Notable dowsers.
Notable dowsers include: