Dowsing or Water Witching
'Dowsing' is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus. Dowsing is considered a pseudoscience and there is no scientific evidence that it is any more effective than random chance. Dowsers often achieve good results because random chance has a high probability of finding water in favourable terrain.
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A dowser with a 'Y' Rod in hand |
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 remains popular among believers in Forteana or radiesthesia.
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Dowsing Equipments |
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 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."
Below are some notable dowsers -