6 ms·

Two of the UK's water companies are still using dowsing to find leaks

workingdog 4y ago
The only way dowsing could be remotely useful is to keep the practitioners focus on the task at hand and thereby increasing the ability to perceive the evidence around them gained by observation,.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Gullibility on the part of customers ?
- convery 4y ago
  Sometimes people just want to "see" work being done, rather than trusting that it's based on statistics/previous work/gut-feeling. Kind of like when you add a loading icon to an action that has already been completed in the background to show the user that it's working.
  - Overtonwindow 4y ago
    Very interesting, your comment reminded me of why soap and shampoo manufactures have to put a chemical to make it foam up so people would know "it's working"
allears 4y ago
This isn't science, it's business. Are the companies able to find leaks via dowsing? Does it work quickly and efficiently? If so, there's no reason to stop using it. Science can speculate that it's all a hoax, that there's no scientific basis, etc., but if it works, it's hard to argue with that.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  It doesn't work though, that's the point. It's often difficult to convince people that something they have been doing for a long time doesn't work.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I think that depends on how you're approaching the question. If you pay someone with 40 years of experience that happens to use dowsing rods to find a leak you'll probably get better results than someone off the street. From a business perspective, it might be entirely reasonable to hire someone that uses dousing rods.
    - krapp 4y ago
      If you're hiring someone with 40 years of experience who happens to use dowsing rods and you believe the dowsing rod is a relevant factor in their success, you need to be fired immediately.
      - LarryMullins 4y ago
        > and you believe the dowsing rod is a relevant factor in their success You added this part..
        krapp 4y ago
        > it might be entirely reasonable to hire someone that uses dousing rods. It's implied here.
        LarryMullins 4y ago
        I don't think that implies the dosing rods themselves are what works. It may be reasonable to hire somebody who uses dowsing rods, if they have a lot of experience and can therefore make educated guesses about where the water is. The dowsing rods are just a prop, maybe a psychological crutch that allows the dowser to listen to their gut. But the point is that somebody using a dowsing rod might be good at finding water even though dowsing rods don't work, and therefore it may be entirely reasonable to hire somebody that [incidentally] uses dowsing rods.
- brookst 4y ago
  Spoiler: it doesn’t work.
  - timc3 4y ago
    Spoiler: it totally works
    - teawrecks 4y ago
      And I have a dragon in my garage.
- ASalazarMX 4y ago
  > Science can speculate That's now how science works to find out if something works.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  If you could demonstrate it worked, that's an experiment. If most people agree the experiment is testing for the right thing, that's peer review. If a bunch of people all conduct the experiment, get the same result, and come to the same conclusion, that's science. If it's speculation, it's not science. So either you're saying the majority of people who have conducted this experiment did it wrong, or that the methodology used by companies is testing for the wrong thing but just happens to be profitable. Given how low tech and quick the experiment is, and thus how widespread the testing has been for over a century, the latter is the most likely case.
- benj111 4y ago
  I read an article over here about how even though lemon juice was known to prevent scurvy. But cost cutting led to the use of lime (which has less vitamin c) or processed the lemon juice in such a way to destroy the vitamin c. Point is, something may seem to work, but if you aren't being scientific in your approach you aren't going to compare to something that actually works and discover your mistake.
- Lio 4y ago
  What if it’s not working any better than blind luck but the water companies are using it anyway? What if it’s actually a form of fraud disguised by the woo woo effect of saying it’s dowsing? If I were a shareholder in one of these water companies I’d want some answers and some concrete stats.
LarryMullins 4y ago
I think that dowsing is mostly a method to justify relying on somebody's gut instinct, intuition, experience or common sense, for lack of (affordable and practical) alternatives. Digging a well isn't cheap and people want something "better" than letting the well diggers make their best guess, even though their best guess is generally good enough. My favorite dowsing story is from when I was a kid, a new house was being built downhill from my parents' house and the developer hired a dowser for the well. The dowser started to mark out a spot directly downhill of my parents' septic tank until my dad warned him.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- User23 4y ago
  Well there's definitely water in that there septic tank! Among other things.
VLM 4y ago
Some of it is the old horoscope trick of if you have enough leaks, you can just throw a dart and be correct. Much like most people meet enough people every day that a horoscope claiming "you'll meet someone today" is accurate most of the time although the process to get that result was nonsense. My guess is if you observed a highly enough experienced and successful dowser for long enough you'd find out diagnostic work depends on a lot more unconscious knowledge than most give it credit. As an engineer I know to look for a slight depression in the ground, maybe so slight most can't notice, and the smell of wet dirt is different, and pipe comes in coils or segments of length X so even unconsciously I might eventually learn to detect at spots multiples of X away from the water main. I imagine I could unconsciously become a highly skilled dowser just by working it hard enough for enough years and storing enough data. I know for a fact I can repair old ham radio equipment this way. I can "smell", or something, failed electrolytics far better than using an ESR meter by hand or replacing randomly. Only takes 40 years of experience and you can learn it too. I'm not marketing my skill as a form of witchcraft I'm well aware its merely decades of unconscious study. It is not even remotely controversial that different humans have different abilities to focus their eyes and resolve small things and see in darker environments; I think it quite likely indeed that I can unconsciously see bulging capacitor packages better than the average bear. I know for a fact, having replaced many, that old HP/Tek instrument-grade "black beauty" capacitors have a, shall we say, unique smell when soldered as part of the removal process, and I feel unconsciously that I can smell a cracked/leaking "black beauty" capacitor at room temperature whereas most people cannot. I do not smoke, for example, so I know for a fact my sniffer works better than anyone who smokes anything, but I also think that having screwed around with electronics for several decades I can quite literally smell a failed "black beauty" capacitor (edited: at room temperature; I assure you anyone can smell it when overheated LOL).
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  > As an engineer I know to look for a slight depression in the ground, maybe so slight most can't notice, and the smell of wet dirt is different Also spots with unusually healthy plants. If most of the grass is dry but there's a depression in the ground with slightly greener grass, there's probably water there. There are lots of subtle signals like that which an experienced dowser could subconsciously tap into.
engineer_22 4y ago
I've always been skeptical of the old well drillers who use a Y shaped stick to find water. But here's my anecdote as a civil engineer with plenty of field time in the water industry, you can test this yourself for free, just call 811 and have them mark your utilities at home or the office: I've never heard of using dowsing rods to find leaks, but they can actually find underground utilities pretty reliably. You take two bent metal rods that are an L shape. Conveniently here they use little plastic flags on metal rods to mark the locations of utilities. They also spray paint in broken lines the direction and location of the utility. This is useful when you have to excavate so you know where you're safe to use the machine and where you need to do hand digging. OK so bend the metal rods in an L shape and point them straight ahead. Walk towards the buried utility (water pipe, storm sewer, gas line), and as you approach the location of the utility the dowsing rods will align themselves with the direction of the pipe. It's definitely spooky! And I didn't believe it until I tried it, believe me, I was skeptical. I wish someone could provide a reasonable explanation that doesn't rely on psychology. If you've never done it, I encourage you to try. Edit: I should mention utility companies don't use dowsing rods to find their pipes. We have modern methods with sophisticated detectors and accurate maps. It is ILLEGAL to dig if you haven't called 811 for a professional markout.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/AW_xDXDtDmc https://youtu.be/AW_xDXDtDmc This is what it looks like. There's no explanation for this phenomenon. No, it's not "gut instinct"
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    https://youtu.be/rHm-lZb5kuo https://youtu.be/rHm-lZb5kuo Here's a dorky journalist doing it. Maybe that's more credible.
  - blincoln 4y ago
    Before I begin, let me start by saying that I know of no evidence that dowsing for water can work. To my knowledge, it's from there that the technique of using two L-shaped rods has been treated as discredited, even though the testing was generally only for "water witching". That having been said, if there's a magnetic field present, it's easy to find using one or two of those L-shaped metal rods,[1] and also fairly straightforward to understand. If you start with just one, the field will exert a dragging effect on the arm of the rod as it moves through the field, and the rod will more or less end up pointing toward the center of the field. I.e. the rod will act sort of like a cat whisker. It's such a small effect that the rods have to already be in motion to notice it. In most cases the field isn't strong enough to move the rod when it's at rest. If you do the same thing with two rods, they will indeed cross under certain conditions. I don't know enough about magnetic field theory to explain that behaviour. The first time I tried it, decades ago, I found a magnet that I didn't even know was present, so I knew immediately it wasn't just the ideomotor effect. Some types of metal will affect the Earth's magnetic field enough to he detectable remotely (e.g. military magnetic anomaly detectors used to find submarines), so maybe an underground metal pipe is enough? I haven't tried that myself. That having been said, the supposed ability to detect other buried objects is so persistent over centuries that I wonder if there could be a very subtle equivalent for gravity fields or something else. I highly doubt it, given that no one has been able to detect water in controlled tests, but it would be a fun surprise. Edit: these days it's much faster and easier to use the magnetometer in your phone, but the first time I tried it was long before smartphones. [1] I don't know how much the type of metal matters. I assume iron or steel is best.
groffee 4y ago
[flagged]
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  I also have a rock that repels tigers. It works! No tiger attacks so far.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  Civil engineer here: it baffles the mind, but it works! Edit: would recommend you call 811 before you dig :)
- simmerup 4y ago
  Overconfident sheltered programmers thinking they can judge something they’ve never been part of is an epidemic in this industry
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    When examining claims like this I trust the opinion of those familiar with "magic" over software engineers: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xOsCnX-TKIY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xOsCnX-TKIY In this case though, they seem to agree.
    - kypro 4y ago
      I love James Randi and I think dowsing is BS, but James Randi doesn't claim to be magic. He's a performer and an illusionist - someone who does tricks which look like they're magic. Given this background Randi is sceptical of those who claim to have real magical powers. While he might try to remain objective, his whole thing is that magic is BS. I'm sure if you asked someone like Uri Geller if dowsing is real he'd probably have different answer
      - OscarCunningham 4y ago
        I believe it was also Randi who pointed out how strange it is that 'real magic' refers to the kind that doesn't exist, while fake magic is the kind that does exist.
edkennedy 4y ago
There were a number of studies done in Germany where they would send dowsers out in places where people had cancer. The doswers were seeking geopathic stress lines (or "earth lines") which were thought to have aided the development of cancer. There are a number of articles online, here's a more recent one from the Irish Times discussed with a modern dowser: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/checking-the-fault-lines-in-our-lives-1.929389 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/checking-the-fault-li...
01acheru 4y ago
Wow I would have never thought that dowsing was still used and that it would be such a heated argument here on HN. It seems that many people are really into it. Can anyone post actual evidence on the fact that it works that is not anecdotal or an easily falsifiable video? Looking around the net there seems to be 100% scientific consensus that dowsing doesn't work better than a random guess.
- irq 4y ago
  No, no one can do this because it’s not real. It’s not even pseudoscience, it’s 100% BS.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  I know, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. People claiming to be professionals who vouch for it. The scientific literacy in this thread is flat out depressing.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    I think you're mostly jumping at shadows, I see a small number of comments claiming dowsing rods work (and they're downvoted for it) but far more comments that amount to saying that dowsing rods don't work but experienced dowsers can make reasonable guesses as to where water may be found. These are very different claims. My comment claiming the latter was initially downvoted, I think by people who thought I was saying that dowsing rods work. They don't, obviously. But that doesn't mean hiring a dowser is categorically irrational.
  - blincoln 4y ago
    I think there are a couple of aspects of human psychology at work here. One is that if someone tries to dogmatically argue that some broad category of thing is impossible, because a small, specific subset of that category doesn't hold up to scrutiny, people who have themselves observed some other subset of that same category with their own eyes will tend to assume everything the first person is claiming is wrong. Another is that in the absence of a better explanation, people will tend to develop folk wisdom explanations that run the gamut from "more or less accurate" to "not a good explanation, but correlates actions and effects with reasonable accuracy under certain common conditions" to "not a good explanation, and is no better than random chance at predicting outcomes". The last is that if someone has been told that a particular activity is pseudoscientific nonsense, they will often assume that everything about it is incorrect, even if there is some grain of truth buried in layers of incorrect understanding. This will trigger the first kind of psychological reaction I mentioned. AFAIK, there is no good theory that would allow dowsing for water to work, using any of the types of tools dowsers typically use. There have also been tests performed that seem to rule out specific scenarios. E.g. Randi's challenge in 1979 seems to rule out the ability for supposed dowsers to locate water moving through a buried plastic pipe. On the other hand, as I discussed at length in a separate post, one type of dowsing apparatus (L-shaped metal rods held in some kind of cylindrical handle) can be used to easily detect magnetic fields. It is not subtle, and not the ideomotor effect. So when someone claims that no type of dowsing-style activity is possible, I can be reasonably sure they haven't tried the magnetic field variation, and are arguing from the dogmatic extrapolation of the more specific scientific testing regarding dowsing for water. When "dowsing" for magnetic fields, the rods behave _exactly_ like dowsers claim they do for water (or other material). e.g. at certain points within the field, the rods will cross and feel "stuck" relative to each other. That seems like a weird coincidence if there's only random chance and the ideomotor effect going on elsewhere. People in civil engineering or similar fields will likely have seen the technique used to find buried power lines, which AFAIK actually makes sense in some cases, because the current running through the line will generate a magnetic field. IIRC, it would have to be just one of the conductors, or the fields would cancel each other out, but still physically possible. Everything I've read makes me extremely skeptical of the idea that any sort of dowsing technique can reliably detect water. But that doesn't mean it's not a measurable physical phenomenon related to something else (metal deposits, very dense material, etc.) that's just been incorrectly associated with water because water is relatively common if one digs far enough down. If I had the time, I'd approach it from the angle of "can we reliably reproduce the movement of the dowsing apparatus in different locations, using different dowsers?" and if so, try to figure out what might be causing it, as opposed to assuming it's due to underground water or some other cause. It's probably something that's easier to detect now using existing technology, but it would be interesting to know for sure, and it would bridge the big divide between "I know for sure that all of you are just experiencing the ideomotor effect because I read that somewhere" and "I know that dowsing for all sorts of substances works because in at least some cases, I can feel an actual force acting on the implement(s)."
benj111 4y ago
My water company (Yorkshire water) basically uses stethoscopes. It's a walking stick length pole that they put their ear to, and you can hear a difference if there's a leak or not.
edkennedy 4y ago
Interestingly this all started in 2017 when a PhD student started aggressively pursuing water companies to find out which ones used dowsing: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-water-firms-admit-using-divining-rods-to-find-leaks-and-pipes https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-water-fi... It seems she did not follow up on the claims of accuracy, or investigate the validity of the practice at all. It was simply immediately discredited as witchcraft and called a waste of public money. I guess this is the scientist vs engineer dilemma at work. The fact that 10 of the 17 water companies were using dowsing 5 years ago before a public shaming shows that the practice could have practical use.
- guitarbill 4y ago
  > The fact that 10 of the 17 water companies were using dowsing 5 years ago before a public shaming shows that the practice could have practical use. Err, no it doesn't. By this argument, thousands of doctors having used bloodletting or trepanning also "shows that the practice could have practical use". > It seems she did not follow up on the claims of accuracy, or investigate the validity of the practice at all. She's the one who cited studies where dowsing performs no better than chance, while the water companies published no data on the matter.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    fwiw, both bloodletting and trepanning have legitimate modern forms. In this case, where many for-profit companies were practicing dowsing it makes sense to ask if it might have worked. Probably, I agree, not because it fundamentally works, but as others in this thread have suggested - because practitioners unconsciously recognize the external signs of leaking pipes. This could match the the studies - actual randomized dowsing wouldn't work but standardized dowsing of the usual failing pipes could be easy.
nyreed 4y ago
We had this happen. There was leak somewhere in the pipe running from the street into our property, which ran under a small front grass lawn before running into the building. We had been away for a month and came back to find everything very damp and overly cold, it was quite subtle. We figured the leak was somewhere under the lawn and running downhill to the house. So the man from the water company comes and says it's very hard to detect where the leak is, but he will come back with his dowsing rod to find it. We told him not to bother, and figuring the leak was somewhere between the house and the water mains under the pavement (about 2m distance), started digging holes where the ground started getting soggier. Found it quickly by applying a bit of common sense.
AlbertCory 4y ago
This is about gas, not water, and not about dowsing. But it does have to do with little clues that humans can miss: The house next to me had a gas leak out by the street (or thought they did). PG&E came and cut down the tree, claiming that the roots had damaged the gas line. They ground up half the stump. Months elapsed. The leak was still there. They came back, dug a really deep hole, and still didn't find it. So they moved a little towards my house, and found that the pipe had just aged and sprung a leak. Eventually I'll get all new pipes to my house. Here's the "dowsing" part: I told the workers that they should just inject some bacon grease upstream from the leak, and my dog would find it by smell. They said that there actually are dogs who are trained to detect gas leaks. Why they didn't use one here, I have no idea. Anyhow, I would bet that dogs can be trained to detect underground water, too. Postscript: they did replace the tree, eventually.
oliwarner 4y ago
Almost half the UK's lost treated water came from pipes under the purview of Thames Water and Severn Trent Water, nearly 400bn litres. If you're going to practise this quackery, it makes sense that you'd have the best luck working for one of these two sieves.
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Druids, with telepathic connection to mermaids, relayed to them by unicorns!
psychphysic 4y ago
Part of me would expect that under some circumstances the engineers have trained to know where leaks are likely. Dowsing involves you walking mindfully methodically over the area. At the end of the day it's be ridiculous for water companies to insist engineers don't carry the rods so long as they overwise follow policy and have acceptable pace.

The only way dowsing could be remotely useful is to keep the practitioners focus on the task at hand and thereby increasing the ability to perceive the evidence around them gained by observation,.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Gullibility on the part of customers ?

convery 4y ago
Sometimes people just want to "see" work being done, rather than trusting that it's based on statistics/previous work/gut-feeling. Kind of like when you add a loading icon to an action that has already been completed in the background to show the user that it's working.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  Very interesting, your comment reminded me of why soap and shampoo manufactures have to put a chemical to make it foam up so people would know "it's working"

allears 4y ago

This isn't science, it's business. Are the companies able to find leaks via dowsing? Does it work quickly and efficiently? If so, there's no reason to stop using it. Science can speculate that it's all a hoax, that there's no scientific basis, etc., but if it works, it's hard to argue with that.

mgraczyk 4y ago
It doesn't work though, that's the point. It's often difficult to convince people that something they have been doing for a long time doesn't work.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I think that depends on how you're approaching the question. If you pay someone with 40 years of experience that happens to use dowsing rods to find a leak you'll probably get better results than someone off the street. From a business perspective, it might be entirely reasonable to hire someone that uses dousing rods.
  - krapp 4y ago
    If you're hiring someone with 40 years of experience who happens to use dowsing rods and you believe the dowsing rod is a relevant factor in their success, you need to be fired immediately.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      > and you believe the dowsing rod is a relevant factor in their success You added this part..
      - krapp 4y ago
        > it might be entirely reasonable to hire someone that uses dousing rods. It's implied here.
        LarryMullins 4y ago
        I don't think that implies the dosing rods themselves are what works. It may be reasonable to hire somebody who uses dowsing rods, if they have a lot of experience and can therefore make educated guesses about where the water is. The dowsing rods are just a prop, maybe a psychological crutch that allows the dowser to listen to their gut. But the point is that somebody using a dowsing rod might be good at finding water even though dowsing rods don't work, and therefore it may be entirely reasonable to hire somebody that [incidentally] uses dowsing rods.
brookst 4y ago
Spoiler: it doesn’t work.
- timc3 4y ago
  Spoiler: it totally works
  - teawrecks 4y ago
    And I have a dragon in my garage.
ASalazarMX 4y ago
> Science can speculate That's now how science works to find out if something works.
teawrecks 4y ago
If you could demonstrate it worked, that's an experiment. If most people agree the experiment is testing for the right thing, that's peer review. If a bunch of people all conduct the experiment, get the same result, and come to the same conclusion, that's science. If it's speculation, it's not science. So either you're saying the majority of people who have conducted this experiment did it wrong, or that the methodology used by companies is testing for the wrong thing but just happens to be profitable. Given how low tech and quick the experiment is, and thus how widespread the testing has been for over a century, the latter is the most likely case.
benj111 4y ago
I read an article over here about how even though lemon juice was known to prevent scurvy. But cost cutting led to the use of lime (which has less vitamin c) or processed the lemon juice in such a way to destroy the vitamin c. Point is, something may seem to work, but if you aren't being scientific in your approach you aren't going to compare to something that actually works and discover your mistake.
Lio 4y ago
What if it’s not working any better than blind luck but the water companies are using it anyway? What if it’s actually a form of fraud disguised by the woo woo effect of saying it’s dowsing? If I were a shareholder in one of these water companies I’d want some answers and some concrete stats.

LarryMullins 4y ago

I think that dowsing is mostly a method to justify relying on somebody's gut instinct, intuition, experience or common sense, for lack of (affordable and practical) alternatives. Digging a well isn't cheap and people want something "better" than letting the well diggers make their best guess, even though their best guess is generally good enough. My favorite dowsing story is from when I was a kid, a new house was being built downhill from my parents' house and the developer hired a dowser for the well. The dowser started to mark out a spot directly downhill of my parents' septic tank until my dad warned him.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
User23 4y ago
Well there's definitely water in that there septic tank! Among other things.

VLM 4y ago

Some of it is the old horoscope trick of if you have enough leaks, you can just throw a dart and be correct. Much like most people meet enough people every day that a horoscope claiming "you'll meet someone today" is accurate most of the time although the process to get that result was nonsense. My guess is if you observed a highly enough experienced and successful dowser for long enough you'd find out diagnostic work depends on a lot more unconscious knowledge than most give it credit. As an engineer I know to look for a slight depression in the ground, maybe so slight most can't notice, and the smell of wet dirt is different, and pipe comes in coils or segments of length X so even unconsciously I might eventually learn to detect at spots multiples of X away from the water main. I imagine I could unconsciously become a highly skilled dowser just by working it hard enough for enough years and storing enough data. I know for a fact I can repair old ham radio equipment this way. I can "smell", or something, failed electrolytics far better than using an ESR meter by hand or replacing randomly. Only takes 40 years of experience and you can learn it too. I'm not marketing my skill as a form of witchcraft I'm well aware its merely decades of unconscious study. It is not even remotely controversial that different humans have different abilities to focus their eyes and resolve small things and see in darker environments; I think it quite likely indeed that I can unconsciously see bulging capacitor packages better than the average bear. I know for a fact, having replaced many, that old HP/Tek instrument-grade "black beauty" capacitors have a, shall we say, unique smell when soldered as part of the removal process, and I feel unconsciously that I can smell a cracked/leaking "black beauty" capacitor at room temperature whereas most people cannot. I do not smoke, for example, so I know for a fact my sniffer works better than anyone who smokes anything, but I also think that having screwed around with electronics for several decades I can quite literally smell a failed "black beauty" capacitor (edited: at room temperature; I assure you anyone can smell it when overheated LOL).

LarryMullins 4y ago
> As an engineer I know to look for a slight depression in the ground, maybe so slight most can't notice, and the smell of wet dirt is different Also spots with unusually healthy plants. If most of the grass is dry but there's a depression in the ground with slightly greener grass, there's probably water there. There are lots of subtle signals like that which an experienced dowser could subconsciously tap into.

engineer_22 4y ago

I've always been skeptical of the old well drillers who use a Y shaped stick to find water. But here's my anecdote as a civil engineer with plenty of field time in the water industry, you can test this yourself for free, just call 811 and have them mark your utilities at home or the office: I've never heard of using dowsing rods to find leaks, but they can actually find underground utilities pretty reliably. You take two bent metal rods that are an L shape. Conveniently here they use little plastic flags on metal rods to mark the locations of utilities. They also spray paint in broken lines the direction and location of the utility. This is useful when you have to excavate so you know where you're safe to use the machine and where you need to do hand digging. OK so bend the metal rods in an L shape and point them straight ahead. Walk towards the buried utility (water pipe, storm sewer, gas line), and as you approach the location of the utility the dowsing rods will align themselves with the direction of the pipe. It's definitely spooky! And I didn't believe it until I tried it, believe me, I was skeptical. I wish someone could provide a reasonable explanation that doesn't rely on psychology. If you've never done it, I encourage you to try. Edit: I should mention utility companies don't use dowsing rods to find their pipes. We have modern methods with sophisticated detectors and accurate maps. It is ILLEGAL to dig if you haven't called 811 for a professional markout.

engineer_22 4y ago
https://youtu.be/AW_xDXDtDmc https://youtu.be/AW_xDXDtDmc This is what it looks like. There's no explanation for this phenomenon. No, it's not "gut instinct"
- engineer_22 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/rHm-lZb5kuo https://youtu.be/rHm-lZb5kuo Here's a dorky journalist doing it. Maybe that's more credible.
- blincoln 4y ago
  Before I begin, let me start by saying that I know of no evidence that dowsing for water can work. To my knowledge, it's from there that the technique of using two L-shaped rods has been treated as discredited, even though the testing was generally only for "water witching". That having been said, if there's a magnetic field present, it's easy to find using one or two of those L-shaped metal rods,[1] and also fairly straightforward to understand. If you start with just one, the field will exert a dragging effect on the arm of the rod as it moves through the field, and the rod will more or less end up pointing toward the center of the field. I.e. the rod will act sort of like a cat whisker. It's such a small effect that the rods have to already be in motion to notice it. In most cases the field isn't strong enough to move the rod when it's at rest. If you do the same thing with two rods, they will indeed cross under certain conditions. I don't know enough about magnetic field theory to explain that behaviour. The first time I tried it, decades ago, I found a magnet that I didn't even know was present, so I knew immediately it wasn't just the ideomotor effect. Some types of metal will affect the Earth's magnetic field enough to he detectable remotely (e.g. military magnetic anomaly detectors used to find submarines), so maybe an underground metal pipe is enough? I haven't tried that myself. That having been said, the supposed ability to detect other buried objects is so persistent over centuries that I wonder if there could be a very subtle equivalent for gravity fields or something else. I highly doubt it, given that no one has been able to detect water in controlled tests, but it would be a fun surprise. Edit: these days it's much faster and easier to use the magnetometer in your phone, but the first time I tried it was long before smartphones. [1] I don't know how much the type of metal matters. I assume iron or steel is best.

groffee 4y ago

[flagged]

AlexandrB 4y ago
I also have a rock that repels tigers. It works! No tiger attacks so far.
engineer_22 4y ago
Civil engineer here: it baffles the mind, but it works! Edit: would recommend you call 811 before you dig :)
simmerup 4y ago
Overconfident sheltered programmers thinking they can judge something they’ve never been part of is an epidemic in this industry
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  When examining claims like this I trust the opinion of those familiar with "magic" over software engineers: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xOsCnX-TKIY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xOsCnX-TKIY In this case though, they seem to agree.
  - kypro 4y ago
    I love James Randi and I think dowsing is BS, but James Randi doesn't claim to be magic. He's a performer and an illusionist - someone who does tricks which look like they're magic. Given this background Randi is sceptical of those who claim to have real magical powers. While he might try to remain objective, his whole thing is that magic is BS. I'm sure if you asked someone like Uri Geller if dowsing is real he'd probably have different answer
    - OscarCunningham 4y ago
      I believe it was also Randi who pointed out how strange it is that 'real magic' refers to the kind that doesn't exist, while fake magic is the kind that does exist.

edkennedy 4y ago

There were a number of studies done in Germany where they would send dowsers out in places where people had cancer. The doswers were seeking geopathic stress lines (or "earth lines") which were thought to have aided the development of cancer. There are a number of articles online, here's a more recent one from the Irish Times discussed with a modern dowser: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/checking-the-fault-lines-in-our-lives-1.929389 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/checking-the-fault-li...

01acheru 4y ago

Wow I would have never thought that dowsing was still used and that it would be such a heated argument here on HN. It seems that many people are really into it. Can anyone post actual evidence on the fact that it works that is not anecdotal or an easily falsifiable video? Looking around the net there seems to be 100% scientific consensus that dowsing doesn't work better than a random guess.

irq 4y ago
No, no one can do this because it’s not real. It’s not even pseudoscience, it’s 100% BS.
teawrecks 4y ago
I know, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. People claiming to be professionals who vouch for it. The scientific literacy in this thread is flat out depressing.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  I think you're mostly jumping at shadows, I see a small number of comments claiming dowsing rods work (and they're downvoted for it) but far more comments that amount to saying that dowsing rods don't work but experienced dowsers can make reasonable guesses as to where water may be found. These are very different claims. My comment claiming the latter was initially downvoted, I think by people who thought I was saying that dowsing rods work. They don't, obviously. But that doesn't mean hiring a dowser is categorically irrational.
- blincoln 4y ago
  I think there are a couple of aspects of human psychology at work here. One is that if someone tries to dogmatically argue that some broad category of thing is impossible, because a small, specific subset of that category doesn't hold up to scrutiny, people who have themselves observed some other subset of that same category with their own eyes will tend to assume everything the first person is claiming is wrong. Another is that in the absence of a better explanation, people will tend to develop folk wisdom explanations that run the gamut from "more or less accurate" to "not a good explanation, but correlates actions and effects with reasonable accuracy under certain common conditions" to "not a good explanation, and is no better than random chance at predicting outcomes". The last is that if someone has been told that a particular activity is pseudoscientific nonsense, they will often assume that everything about it is incorrect, even if there is some grain of truth buried in layers of incorrect understanding. This will trigger the first kind of psychological reaction I mentioned. AFAIK, there is no good theory that would allow dowsing for water to work, using any of the types of tools dowsers typically use. There have also been tests performed that seem to rule out specific scenarios. E.g. Randi's challenge in 1979 seems to rule out the ability for supposed dowsers to locate water moving through a buried plastic pipe. On the other hand, as I discussed at length in a separate post, one type of dowsing apparatus (L-shaped metal rods held in some kind of cylindrical handle) can be used to easily detect magnetic fields. It is not subtle, and not the ideomotor effect. So when someone claims that no type of dowsing-style activity is possible, I can be reasonably sure they haven't tried the magnetic field variation, and are arguing from the dogmatic extrapolation of the more specific scientific testing regarding dowsing for water. When "dowsing" for magnetic fields, the rods behave _exactly_ like dowsers claim they do for water (or other material). e.g. at certain points within the field, the rods will cross and feel "stuck" relative to each other. That seems like a weird coincidence if there's only random chance and the ideomotor effect going on elsewhere. People in civil engineering or similar fields will likely have seen the technique used to find buried power lines, which AFAIK actually makes sense in some cases, because the current running through the line will generate a magnetic field. IIRC, it would have to be just one of the conductors, or the fields would cancel each other out, but still physically possible. Everything I've read makes me extremely skeptical of the idea that any sort of dowsing technique can reliably detect water. But that doesn't mean it's not a measurable physical phenomenon related to something else (metal deposits, very dense material, etc.) that's just been incorrectly associated with water because water is relatively common if one digs far enough down. If I had the time, I'd approach it from the angle of "can we reliably reproduce the movement of the dowsing apparatus in different locations, using different dowsers?" and if so, try to figure out what might be causing it, as opposed to assuming it's due to underground water or some other cause. It's probably something that's easier to detect now using existing technology, but it would be interesting to know for sure, and it would bridge the big divide between "I know for sure that all of you are just experiencing the ideomotor effect because I read that somewhere" and "I know that dowsing for all sorts of substances works because in at least some cases, I can feel an actual force acting on the implement(s)."

benj111 4y ago

My water company (Yorkshire water) basically uses stethoscopes. It's a walking stick length pole that they put their ear to, and you can hear a difference if there's a leak or not.

edkennedy 4y ago

Interestingly this all started in 2017 when a PhD student started aggressively pursuing water companies to find out which ones used dowsing: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-water-firms-admit-using-divining-rods-to-find-leaks-and-pipes https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/21/uk-water-fi... It seems she did not follow up on the claims of accuracy, or investigate the validity of the practice at all. It was simply immediately discredited as witchcraft and called a waste of public money. I guess this is the scientist vs engineer dilemma at work. The fact that 10 of the 17 water companies were using dowsing 5 years ago before a public shaming shows that the practice could have practical use.

guitarbill 4y ago
> The fact that 10 of the 17 water companies were using dowsing 5 years ago before a public shaming shows that the practice could have practical use. Err, no it doesn't. By this argument, thousands of doctors having used bloodletting or trepanning also "shows that the practice could have practical use". > It seems she did not follow up on the claims of accuracy, or investigate the validity of the practice at all. She's the one who cited studies where dowsing performs no better than chance, while the water companies published no data on the matter.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  fwiw, both bloodletting and trepanning have legitimate modern forms. In this case, where many for-profit companies were practicing dowsing it makes sense to ask if it might have worked. Probably, I agree, not because it fundamentally works, but as others in this thread have suggested - because practitioners unconsciously recognize the external signs of leaking pipes. This could match the the studies - actual randomized dowsing wouldn't work but standardized dowsing of the usual failing pipes could be easy.

nyreed 4y ago

We had this happen. There was leak somewhere in the pipe running from the street into our property, which ran under a small front grass lawn before running into the building. We had been away for a month and came back to find everything very damp and overly cold, it was quite subtle. We figured the leak was somewhere under the lawn and running downhill to the house. So the man from the water company comes and says it's very hard to detect where the leak is, but he will come back with his dowsing rod to find it. We told him not to bother, and figuring the leak was somewhere between the house and the water mains under the pavement (about 2m distance), started digging holes where the ground started getting soggier. Found it quickly by applying a bit of common sense.

AlbertCory 4y ago

This is about gas, not water, and not about dowsing. But it does have to do with little clues that humans can miss: The house next to me had a gas leak out by the street (or thought they did). PG&E came and cut down the tree, claiming that the roots had damaged the gas line. They ground up half the stump. Months elapsed. The leak was still there. They came back, dug a really deep hole, and still didn't find it. So they moved a little towards my house, and found that the pipe had just aged and sprung a leak. Eventually I'll get all new pipes to my house. Here's the "dowsing" part: I told the workers that they should just inject some bacon grease upstream from the leak, and my dog would find it by smell. They said that there actually are dogs who are trained to detect gas leaks. Why they didn't use one here, I have no idea. Anyhow, I would bet that dogs can be trained to detect underground water, too. Postscript: they did replace the tree, eventually.

oliwarner 4y ago

Almost half the UK's lost treated water came from pipes under the purview of Thames Water and Severn Trent Water, nearly 400bn litres. If you're going to practise this quackery, it makes sense that you'd have the best luck working for one of these two sieves.

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago

Druids, with telepathic connection to mermaids, relayed to them by unicorns!

psychphysic 4y ago

Part of me would expect that under some circumstances the engineers have trained to know where leaks are likely. Dowsing involves you walking mindfully methodically over the area. At the end of the day it's be ridiculous for water companies to insist engineers don't carry the rods so long as they overwise follow policy and have acceptable pace.