The Guardian, "UK water firms admit using divining rods...."

[DarkChestofWonders]

From the Guardian Online;

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... -and-pipes

I thought this would be an interesting article, but just another scientist who has got it in for divining! WITHOUT EVEN TRYING IT OUT!!!

Some nice admissions from the water companies that they use dowsing rods, just a shame some back paddled.

Well done to Anglian Water for offering to set the matter straight.

[mike]

Its a sad fact both companys and Universitys will ignore the idea dowsing does work, and they cannot fully explain it away, so its much better they ignore it till the time comes when they can understand it better and not seem so out of touch , so for the moment dowsing is very much in the grey area of science....The only people who will write about dowsing are the people who dowse, as anyone involved with science or has a University post cannot if they value their pension and job speak in an open way about it.Just a shame dowsing is not accepted yet, it will be one day, as more and more people get involved and dowse for fun or as a hobby and get to understand more about it....A water company is the one place where they will use a dowser and perhaps keep quiet about it, who cares how they found the leak along a two hundred yard length of piping, as long as they know where to dig and plug the hole in the pipe . I remember years ago where I worked they had a leak in the pipes and wanted to sort it out, and during the night I walked the pipe to find where the water was running free, and the position I dowsed was where the break was, they had to take up a large part of the road to find it, so I dont think they used a dowser that time.

[mike]

Following on from that news report the Water Boards use dowsers to find leaks and check where pipes run, our local Radio WM did an experiment where the producer one Kevin Pashby (Posh Pashers ) dowsed three cups on the table with one having water in it looking for water, AND he managed to dowse which one had the water.He could not understand how or why it worked but was very excited to feel the L rod in his hand move, and Danny Kelly who runs the programme till midday was impressed.....The BSD rep was Fay Palmer who explained in great detail how it works on the radio, and to be honest I thought it was a really wonderful exposure of dowsing to the people who listen on the WM radio for once.I spoke a little while afterwards on the dowsing subject and was asked questions which I tried to answer as best as I could, but today I think the dowsing message got across to many people who might in the past have had little or no knowledge on the subject, well done Fay and Radio WM.

[Ian Pegler]

Clip from BBC WM:


Ian

[DarkChestofWonders]

Great find Ian, nice footage of George dowsing.

It's funny how the presenter asks George how dowsing works,doesn't really believe him and asks him again at the end.
The presenter also asks if George has failed in finding water .

[Ian Pegler]

That's the footage of Kevin Pashby. The footage of George (and Vincent Reddish) is here:



Ian

[Grahame]

Me with the Sunday Post...

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/our-repor ... lly-works/

[DarkChestofWonders]

Whoop's my mistake Ian, I replied to the wrong post .

Nice report too Grahame.

I'm of the opinion that, "We know dowsing works, we don't need to put it in a box and tick it!"

[Ian Pegler]

Sally Le Page declined a TV appearance with a water diviner.

This is a quote from a tweet sent by Sally Le Page, posted 30th Nov. 2017:

"Update: their angle was to have a VT of me in a field with a diviner trying to find a hidden water source. I didn't want to lend credence to an unscientific demo masquerading as a scientific experiment so I politely declined. Divination shouldn't be up for debate."

Odd that someone who touts herself as a science communicator, with her own Youtube channel and website should decline the opportunity of appearing on the box, when she's already been on several local radio stations and also on Radio 2 with Jeremy Vine. but as one of her supporters put it:

"Being right is nothing without editorial control"

(tweet sent by @MartHill2112 Nov 29, 2017)

Quite so....!!!

Ian

[Grahame]

I just came across a thread about this on (of all things) the UK Cycle Chat forums. The usual mix of sceptical disdain and "well it worked for me" sympathisers, but fairly evenly spread. What it has to do with cycling is anyone's guess.

I wouldn't have bothered to mention this at all except that this forum and Mike's UFO corner get a name-check on page 5.

[Grahame]

The 'Le Page' virus has spread down under.

I've noticed a few newspaper articles in the last couple of days that have all the hallmarks of an organised sceptical campaign. Here are a couple of examples:

Wellington (New Zealand) Officials Are Wasting Taxpayer Money on Magic Sticks
The Wellington City Council in New Zealand is looking for water pipes that may be buried underground. But for some reason, and with taxpayer money, the company they contracted with is searching for the water with dowsing rods.

And if you don’t know what a dowsing rod is, then congratulations, you know just as much about them as so-called experts. In theory, the copper rods “work” by vibrating when the user is directly over water. No scientific study has ever shown these contraptions to work.
...

Or:

Wellington ratepayers foot bill for pseudo-science
Wellington ratepayers are funding a pseudo-scientific method to find buried water pipes. The contractor, Downer and the Wellington City Council are not concerned at the public's perception their money has been spent on disproved science.
...

And a (slightly) more balanced article:

Wellington City Council contractor Downer uses 'magic' dowsing rods to find pipes
Divining rods are being used to find important infrastructure in Wellington on the ratepayer-funded clock.

Downer Group said the practice was one tool used to find underground water supplies while on contract to Wellington City Council and the firm had defended dowsing as being "used quite widely".

"Farmers and the waste industry also use this practice to locate underground water sources," Gary Sue, Regional Manager of Wellington Transport Services at Downer wrote in an email to NZ Skeptics Chair Craig Shearer.

"It's not fool-proof but I am told it does work."
...

[Grahame]

Some positive ripostes to the Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... tect-water

[Grahame]

A little late to the party with this one, but here's a really interesting blog post by Eric Wargo from July 2019 reacting to Ms. Page's campaign and supporting the use of dowsing. It's a long read, but well worth it.

Interestingly, Le Page never says whether the dowsing water engineer found the pipe leading to her parents’ house. She does not complain that Severn Trent Water dug up the street in front of her folks’ house and came up empty handed, which would have added a certain substance to her complaints.

A fair point. We never did find out if the dowser was successful or not.

Why shouldn’t people use all the tools at our disposal, even the hard-to-understand, uncanny, and inexpensive tool of intuition, which may well stand on firm scientific footing one day in the not-too-distant future?

Citing the well-known case of the missing harp of Elizabeth Lloyd Meyer that was map-dowsed (and successfully located) by Harold McCoy, Wargo also suggests that a possible mechanism for dowsing might be more akin to mild precognition, where the dowser is reacting to the future temporal reward of a successful find. 'Subtle messages from your future self', as he puts it. There have been several experiments by Dean Radin and others demonstrating the reality of short-term precognition, although I'm not convinced it can be applied to all areas of dowsing; but it's an interesting idea and certainly could use some more research.

CLICK HERE for the full article.
(thanks to Ian Pegler for finding this)

[Grahame]

I see the sceptics are at it again - virtually verbatim reports in the Times, Evening Standard, Daily Fail, and this one from Nation.lk, which has a terrible picture of John Baker at the top.

One of the UK's biggest water companies is still using dowsing as a method to hunt for leaks, despite evidence showing it doesn't work.
Thames Water, which services nearly 15million homes, has admitted some of its engineers continue to use dowsing rods in their jobs.
This is despite the water regulator, Ofwat, being told by experts to stop companies spending money on the practice, which has been derided as 'witchcraft' in the past.
It comes as the firm tries to stop leaks that have caused the loss of hundreds of millions of litres of water every day and on the back of last year's drought which saw hosepipe bans put in place across the country.

Click Here for full story.

[Ian Pegler]

Indeed, the author of said piece in the New Scientist tweeted his thanks to Chris French and Richard Wiseman. Same old same old...



Ian