There's nothing to this dowsing business. Controlled experiments have shown time and time again that a man with a forked willow stick is no more likely to find underground water than someone choosing a drilling site randomly from a map.
Those dowsers who think they've tapped into some inner resource and developed the ability to sense the whereabouts of water, lost objects and other sought-after materials are deluding themselves. And the folks who enlist their aid are plainly misguided.
And yet... the practice continues, both out here in the country and in the cities, and it is growing. There are probably more dowsers practicing today than ever before in history, and they are doing a lot more than just helping folks site their wells.
In their book, Water Witching U.S.A., University of Oregon psychology professor Ray Hyman and Harvard anthropologist Evon Vogt report that in the last 20 years the American Society of Dowsers has grown from 1,000 members to over 5,000 members and not all of them are looking for water. Some specialize in locating golf balls or missing persons; others track down the source of diseases and dangerous energy fields.
In their book, Hyman and Vogt explore the history of dowsing and the people who practice the art. Their study includes a collection of photographs, drawings, and historical woodcuts showing the tools, techniques, and early instances of dowsing. They question how dowsing works and present data from controlled experiments and statistical studies showing that in every instance, when put to the test, even the best dowsers perform no better than chance.
"Presumably, an increasingly sophisticated and rational public would take such evidence into account," write the authors. "If so, we should have witnessed a sharp decline in the popularity of dowsing during the past forty years. If anything, the reverse has taken place. Not only does the popular media continue to cover and popularize dowsing, but more prestigious publications and broadcast outlets do so as well."
In the last few years The New Yorker, the London Times, the New York Times and even Smithsonian magazine have all published feature articles on dowsing. To the dismay of Hyman and Vogt, all of the articles were either neutral or supportive of dowsing; none of them debunked the practice.
They blame the media for much of dowsing's popularity and question whether journalists are "equipped to properly understand what constitutes adequate evidence for the dowsing hypothesis." They wonder what it will take to create a better appreciation for the scientific method.
The scientific method says that dowsing doesn't work. So why do so many people believe in it? A 1956 survey of county agricultural agents revealed that 44 percent of them either believed in dowsing or were open-minded about its potential.
Would that percentage be much different today?
Science says that lotteries are a bad bet, and they are more prevalent than ever. Science says that thinking you can come out ahead with a slot machine is illogical, and still we feed them our quarters.
Divination survives reason because most of us, at some level, distrust scientific rationality. We sense, intuitively, the chaotic randomness of nature. Snow falls where meteorology failed to forecast; crops fail for reasons agronomy cannot explain.
Science can only see what it has the tools to see with, and there is much that remains unseen, or so we hope. A man with a forked stick is much like a supplicant with a Bible; it's a matter of faith.
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"Water Witching U.S.A." by Evon Zartman Vogt and Ray Hyman can be found at local bookstores or libraries