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I've had my own bad experience with forensic science. I was a research intern at Oak Ridge National Lab. They put on several educational events for the interns

I've had my own bad experience with forensic science. I was a research intern at Oak Ridge National Lab. They put on several educational events for the interns. One event was a guy from the group doing forensic science to come in and talk about it. He talked about rate of decay of corpses and things like that. Then he brought out dowsing sticks. Said something about the bones of buried bodies giving off magnetic fields that affect the sticks. He then took a leg bone out of a trash bag, put it on the ground, and walked passed it holding the sticks. The sticks moved when he did it, but of course when anyone else in the room tried nothing happened. Honestly, all the interns in the room were dead quiet. I think we were all really confused, thinking that maybe it was some sort of joke or hazing. Or maybe a test of some sort? It was really weird, but destroyed my regard for forensic "science".

rjsw 11y ago
He could have been a complete nut, or... I have tried dowsing for water and found it very accurate. We had a problem with the water supply to a house. There was a spring that fed a collection tank through some pipes under agricultural land, we guessed that a tractor had squashed the pipes somewhere along their length. A backhoe was booked for the following day so it didn't really matter whether we got any results or not but we decided to try dowsing to see if we could work out the path of the pipes, just for a bit of fun more than expecting it to really work. We used some bent aluminium rods and walked about a bit in the field sticking twigs into the ground wherever the rods moved. This worked for some family members, not for others. The next day the backhoe dug out the old wooden pipes and they were exactly underneath where we had placed the twigs on the surface but several feet down.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  Well then, can I interest your successful family members in a million dollars? It's a genuine offer. One million dollars if they can do it. Dowsers have tried and failed in the past, but perhaps your family really do have supernatural powers.
  - rjsw 11y ago
    I'm more interested in finding out how we were "fooled". Even if whatever you hold just acts as an amplifier for small changes in the firmness of the ground underfoot it could still be useful.
    - sukilot 11y ago
      You were fooled by randomness and a poor analysis of prior probability.

rjsw 11y ago

He could have been a complete nut, or... I have tried dowsing for water and found it very accurate. We had a problem with the water supply to a house. There was a spring that fed a collection tank through some pipes under agricultural land, we guessed that a tractor had squashed the pipes somewhere along their length. A backhoe was booked for the following day so it didn't really matter whether we got any results or not but we decided to try dowsing to see if we could work out the path of the pipes, just for a bit of fun more than expecting it to really work. We used some bent aluminium rods and walked about a bit in the field sticking twigs into the ground wherever the rods moved. This worked for some family members, not for others. The next day the backhoe dug out the old wooden pipes and they were exactly underneath where we had placed the twigs on the surface but several feet down.

EliRivers 11y ago
Well then, can I interest your successful family members in a million dollars? It's a genuine offer. One million dollars if they can do it. Dowsers have tried and failed in the past, but perhaps your family really do have supernatural powers.
- rjsw 11y ago
  I'm more interested in finding out how we were "fooled". Even if whatever you hold just acts as an amplifier for small changes in the firmness of the ground underfoot it could still be useful.
  - sukilot 11y ago
    You were fooled by randomness and a poor analysis of prior probability.