Detecting Underground Water

James Randi in his book "Flim Flam" said that the water dowsers were the most depressing people to debunk because they were not con artists, but in fact, truly believed that they could do what they claimed to do. That they often felt that an attack on their beliefs was normally equated to an attack on their person, and would leave his testing area in tears and sqealing tires. I know how they feel...when somebody says dowsing works, that is an attack on MY belief system, and my knee jerk reaction is almost always varying degrees of hostility. I am (I think successfully) getting over that attitude though. I now reserve the umbrage towards true flim flam men who are selling false hope at 60 thousand dollars a pop! (this would be US taxpayers dollars being spent so who other than me and anybody who has lost their house due to the mortgage crisis cares?)

You asked, did any University do a controlled study on water dowsing? I am not aware of any, but it sounds like it would make a good first year project. Randi paid for Sandia labs to test the explosives dowsers, and found them to be bogus. Other than paying the bill for the testing, Randi had no involvement, and in fact, is a little miffed that he didn't get the credit for exposing this hoax. It was all done by the National Explosives test establishment at Sandia and Sniffex company representatives. (the links are illuminating)

Randi said that is is a very pernicious form of self delusion, and he has put his money where his mouth is...so I guess he can say what he likes. I dunno....I think that the fact that nobody has yet to claim the million dollar prize is pretty indicative, because there is no lack of people trying! They even get to design their own testing protocol! Money talks and BS walks. But I think if you accept one form of delusion such as wart charming, or water dowsing, then it makes it somehow easier to accept another form of delusion such as explosives detecting. Again, I would not care except that my friends, allies, and the innocents on my watch will reap the results of such dangerous thinking.

I guess you didn't work for Major General Jehad al-Jabiri, the head of the Ministry of the Interior General directorate for combating explosives. Seems he feels they work just fine! Major General Richard Rowe Jr. thinks Major General al-Jabiri is full of horse pucky, and refused to allow his US command to purchase the devices. But where did the Iraquis get the money to purchase them? How many dead US combat engineers because of that evil man and the even more evil Jim McCormick? You should know Capt. Moosie...you were there.

As I said, I reserve my umbrage for the con artists. I rather like dowsers. I especially like combat engineers who kept my airfield safe during the twenty odd years I fixed airplanes for the military. So Capt Moosie is all right in MY book.

Anyway, are we not getting off topic here? Perhaps I should mark it off topic. Oh heck, if anybody thinks this is off topic, they can mark me down....

Regards.

Yusef1

Per Ardua Ad Astra

Maybe they only failed because the star signs were wrong at the time!!!

I believe it is related to the "clean window" syndrom. My mom used to say, "nobody sees the clean window, they only see a dirty one". Similarly the people who believe in "head on", "chiropracty", "water witching", "homeopathy", and "bleeding to balance humours" see the very occasional success story, discard the unsucessful examples and build a mountain of anectdotal evidence out of a molehill of evidence.

This does not make the people who get their necks manipulated, or apply head-on to the forehead for headache, or witch for water con men or bad people in any way. They are not! They have developed a world view which suits them, and they will go to their grave exclaiming about the wonderful stories they witnessed of water witches who found stuff that nobody else seems to have been able to find.

Nor is all of it fake. A horse named "clever hans" was able to count. He would stamp his feet. When he could not see a human being though, he somehow lost the ability to count, and it was determined that it was his "reading" of people which enabled him to count and get his treats. Similarly, psychics will get feedback from the people they are doing readings for, and by the means of often unconscious perception, will get good solid, and repeatable results. Police get hunches in much the same way. A salesman I knew once watched people's eyes, and when their pupils dilated, he knew he "had them". I am sure many good salespeople will pick up on that without really noticing exactly what they are picking up on. I presume that a water witcher will see things like the lay of the land, the lush growth of vegetation, and a hundred other factors, and will be able to state correctly that there is water here. Again, it is a perception, a feeling they get which might be manifested with a pendulum or a bent stick but there no magic here...just good common sense at work. (thats is why I tend to like water witches...by and large, they are good solid perceptive people who do not want to defraud anybody.)

This is opposed to the people who are deliberately faking in order to get money. TV psychics, televangelists, some politicians, and the makers of dowsing rods for the purpose of finding explosives. Please note that this does not mean that the people who fall for these fakeries are stupid, or uneducated....in fact, a con man of my aquaintance told me once that it is easier to fool a smart person than a dumb one since the con works better on people who think they can't be fooled. "Well, since I am far too smart to be fooled by a mountebank trick, this MUST be real magic then!". A fine example of this would be to watch a couple of episodes of "psychic kids" or "paranormal experience".

Anyway, Carl Sagan was astounded to discover that more that three times as much was spent on astrology (paying for space in the paper, and so forth) than was spent on actual astronomy. What does THAT tell you!

Sorry Yusef1, I disagree with your stance about Chiropractors. I've been going to some-well chosen Chiropractors that have helped me since I was 14 years old and I'm now 52. There have been many times where I was doubled over with extreme back pain unable to walk or literally move, period. Only a Chiropractor was able to help me by manipulations of my leg. arms, shoulders, neck and the entire spine. Usually, within a few treatments I was able to walk once again. The alternative was going under the knife of a Spinal Surgeon and taking massive amounts of pain killer pills and muscle relaxers! NO WAY!!! NO MD HAS EVER HAD ANY SUCCESS ALLEVIATING THE PAIN AND CORRECTING SKELETON MISALIGNMENTS!

I only go to well establish "old-school" Chiropractors that do not offer the homeopathy crappola like the newer younger Chiropractors do. And these treatments have been for nearly almost my entire life and not some "occasional" happenstance. Without the successful treatments I would have ended up stranded in a wheelchair, paralyzed for the remainder of my life, and most likely a ward of the state. I come a medical family, where my late father was a Dentist for 43 years and my mother is still a licensed RN at age 75. My X-wife's family is nearly all medical, and so is my current wife's family. My X is an OTR, and she has a RN mother, 3 sisters that are RN's a sister that is a PA, and 2 brothers that are MD's One other brother is studying Chiropractics and is in his final year before Residency. My current wife is a RN of 32 years and has served in nearly every nursing capacity there can be, including the ER operating rooms and the standard OR's. Her siblings are a Shrink w/her PhD and is the Dept. Head at the NJ college she teaches at. My wife's brother has a double MS and is a Psychologist and CEO of a drug and alcohol rehab firm that is located nationally and in Canada. I will tell you this, nearly all use and believe in Chiropractics and have done so for some time now.....and all know it isn't a crock either.

I ask you not to make such blanket statements, especially in regard to the practice of Chiropractics. Yusef, don't be so closed-minded, especially if you have never tried it before, and if you had once and had a bad experience then you went to the wrong Doctor. Yes, by law Chiropractors are Licensed and Registered as a Doctor, as in Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine. I for one am glad to have received the expert care of several wonderful and caring Chiropractors over the years, who, by the way, have as much Med Schooling and Residency as their MD cousins.

And whatever your retort is herein it will not influence my decision to continue seeing Chiropractors for treatment, because I know it works for me. Nor will it influence my advice to others that seek such treatment. Enough said!

Signed,

CaptMoosie, BS/BS/MS/MS & PhD

You can disagree with me all you want. I am not a chiropractor. No skin off MY nose. But you should know by now Captain, that I NEVER make a statement without backup. And I never make a cheap retort. Ever. All my retorts are very expensive, that is, I take a good amount of time with them. But, retort or not, I am not proposing to attack you, your belief system, nor do I hold your long and varied experience cheap. If it were your religious position, I would simply nod my head and say "fine". But it is a service, same as the guy who fits me for my shoes, its NOT a religion, even though it seems to be often treated as such. It is created and run by people who put their pants on one leg at a time. Many, perhaps most of them are caring individuals who for some reason didn't want to become physicians specializing in back pain (physiatrists), but instead became back crackers. There may be a lunatic fringe which ruins it for everybody for instance, just as there is in every profession. I am happy that you have found one you trust, and I hope you stick with him (or her) because clearly something is working for you. I do not have that trust, I would rather spend my money on a good massage therapist.

I know, people don't like to follow links. Maybe, after exploring the same links that I have, you will see why I have taken this position which seems so much at variance with your world view that you have risen in righteous umbrage! (insert smile here to to indicate that I take your points seriously, and that I am not really the enemy) I have no hope that I would be able to "convert you back from the dark side", but I offer this "retort" as the reason WHY I hold MY particular world view.

Your experience with chiropracty is positive. Mine is overwhelmingly negative. Anecdotal evidence is, and always has been wildly unreliable. I have stories too, and more bad stories than good ones. But a story does not make a fact, as I have pointed out before. I might share one with you at the end...my own in fact as you have shared yours with me. Thank you.

However, before I make a blanket statement attacking a whole profession, I really did go to the trouble to find out if I had a leg to stand on. Here are some results I have found in the last couple of years. You see, unlike Daniel David Palmer, I don't make this stuff up.

There seems to be quite a controversy about chiropracty. Certainly the medical profession needs to learn how their bedside manner seems to create so many excellent, if short lived results. Most people feel better after they come away from a chiropractor. But then in my view, people feel better upon leaving church, the beer tent, and the bordello, but that doesn't make the people that run these fine institutions into medical practitioners. So I would have to look deeper into what is going on besides the simple "make it feel better". Unfortunately, the more you look into it, the less scientific it seems to get. It makes one wonder just why a chiropractor can not quite seem to "fix" anything. (job security?) Far from the medical profession being on board with it, The Canadian Paediatric Association, for instance, doesn't think it is good for kids. Everybody who is involved with Chiropracty is willing to admit that there is "something to it", but it is not as recognized as a legitimate medical sub-specialty like, say Podiatry. And it won't be until they clean up their philosophy, essentially clean up their act. Its not me saying this, this link is an open letter written from within their own profession.

So, like any statement I make, I can back it up. But hey, I'm nobody special. Not a medical guy, not a new age guy, not a conservative or a liberal, I'm just a guy. A guy that can read. And chooses my sources carefully. Lets hear it from the back benders themselves....

Relax Cap'n, I'm not the enemy here! Did you actually see a physiatrist? (no, not a psychiatrist, a physiatrist! The skeleton specialist guy!) The Medical Centre here in Ottawa fixed me up pretty good once I got around to seeing the right specialist. The chiropractor, working from x-rays said it was a skeleton misalignment and kept twisting my toes. The physiatrist (specialist in skeletal disorders) noted that it was a series of green stick fractures in the foot bones, caused by heavy packs and route marches. They splinted them as best they could (can't do much with feet) and made a shoe insert. I was standing parades within a month. Your mileage may differ, but I am okay with that. So yeah, I have never missed a chance to call a spade a spade, and get even for the months of agony that quack put me through.

Allow me to congratulate you on one particular outstanding statement, that homeopathy is crappola! Yes. yes it is. Could not say it better myself.

Regards,

Makes ya wonder don't it?

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