NZ Skeptics investigate Dowsing!

Russell Tomes - 1 May 2019

In early January 2019, NZ Skeptics were alerted by an eagle-eyed supporter in Wellington to the almost unbelievable sight of a city-infrastructure employee apparently dowsing for water pipes on Willis Street! The employee was clearly wearing a ‘Downer NZ’ hi-vis jacket. Downer is an infrastructure company contracted by Wellington Water, the arm of the Wellington City Council which is responsible for maintaining the city’s water system as a whole. Initially, we contacted the Wellington City Council, and were told they knew nothing about the dowsing. Our phone number was passed onto Downer, who contacted us, and seemed pleased to field enquiries which appeared to be other than complaints about noise. Downer eventually confirmed that the person really was an employee, and that they were indeed ‘dowsing’ for water pipes!

I think it is a good idea to be sure that we are referring to the same ‘dowsing’ thing that you, the readers, are thinking about. I refer to the Wikipedia definition:

“Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water [and other things], without the use of scientific apparatus. Dowsing is considered a pseudoscience, and there is no scientific evidence that it is any more effective than random chance”.

Commonly, dowsing is also understood to be performed by walking around with bent metal rods loosely-held in the hands (or sometimes a single forked rod), and a ‘successful’ dowsing is when the rods move or cross over each other, apparently indicating that the desired target (i.e. water) is directly below. As far as can be discerned, this is precisely the same ‘dowsing’, as used by Downer, and there is no confusion at all by Downer as to the meaning of the term ‘dowsing’. It should be noted, to quote their own website, Downer describe themselves as ‘experts’ in the ‘water lifecycle’.

To my mind, when someone says ‘dowser’, I envisage an otherwise ‘rational-seeming’ person, doing strange things with bent metal rods. Here’s a reference link to a video example, which is the source of my mental image of dowsers: https://tinyurl.com/skep126-7

I’m afraid I just can’t unsee him now! Apologies for those with only a print-copy of this article, there is no easy way to place internet links! Nevertheless, as noted earlier, the dowsing rods seem to cross over, supposedly leading the user to believe that they have ‘discovered’ water below them. This is the sort of behaviour that was seen being performed by the Downer employee.

A visual approximation of a hi vis vest probably not spotted on Willis street Wellington.

Spoiler: Dowsing doesn’t work. There is a well-known and very simple explanation for the rod-movement phenomenon. Far from anything supernatural or magic, it is merely the Ideomotor Response (or reflex). The user unconsciously moves, twitches, or tilts their hands and, consequently, the rods move. Let’s be really clear, all well-tested results show that dowsing is no better than guess-work. Simple as that. For me, researching the Ideomotor Response in detail was both very informative and hugely explanatory. A short and informative video on this topic by Richard Dawkins can be viewed at this reference link here: https://tinyurl.com/skep126-8

Now, if you haven’t actually heard of dowsing before now, then I am rather positively encouraged. Maybe we, the human race, are finally starting to leave behind some of this medieval supernatural thinking, and that these ideas of ‘magic’ and ‘divination’ may be exiting the common consciousness (though, I confess, I’m not holding my breath waiting).

There has been so much scientific rejection and debunking of any claimed reality for dowsing silliness that one could scarcely believe that, in this modern day and age, any respectable or professional organisation would be so foolish as to actually pay a member of their staff to waste their time with this demonstrably silly activity, especially an organisation that is contracted to provide vital public infrastructure services. Yet, this is, by Downer’s own admission, exactly what is happening!

I also feel that ‘silly’ is a well-deserved label for anyone or any organisation which persists in engaging in such activity, in particular after they have been alerted to and shown the truth of the non-science of dowsing, and, more importantly, its utter unreliability. I often think that sometimes, the sanitising sound of laughter can be a very useful thing! Embarrassing, yes. Humiliating, perhaps. And I’m sure that no-one likes being called-out in public on things like this! Derisive laughter here, though, can surely be useful in encouraging the more responsible elements of the companies who provide our city infrastructure, to come forth and ‘sort out’ the mess and nonsense below them, so to speak.

Even a quick internet search for “dowsing debunked” easily produces a large number of reputable websites where anyone can find good and plausible information detailing why dowsing is nonsense. Websites purporting to be ‘pro’ dowsing seem obliged to acknowledge the mountain of evidence against the practice. For example, one pro-dowsing site admits “studies have shown that the average dowser is no better at predicting the location of water than anyone else”. The United States Geological Survey points out in relation to dowsing that “the United States is so water-rich you can get wet drilling just about anywhere, if you drill deep enough”.

One would also think that the reliability of a water-pipe-location method, such as dowsing, must surely be near the top of any agenda for an infrastructure organisation. If dowsing is regularly used in place of what are labelled ‘more expensive’ methods of pipe-location, I am certain that any good review of the accuracy would mirror the results of the countless scientific tests, and show to all involved that it is not at all reliable.

So, some questions one might ask at this stage:

Do they know about the uselessness of water dowsing?

If they do not know that dowsing is useless, then it would seem that they are wilfully ignoring all the evidence to the contrary which has been made available to them, and which can be easily found and verified via simple internet search.

If they do know that dowsing is useless, why would they continue to use it? This is perhaps a more serious question.

Is the corporate decision-maker ‘doubling-down’ so as not to have to acknowledge that they have been wasting their money, and, by extension, the public money, with their continued usage of dowsing? A discussion of why people and organisations engage in denialism would be very interesting indeed, especially as we seem to have some real world examples to look at. Or perhaps a discussion of how and why people will not accept scientific consensus. That would be a whole other very long article, and would cover a much broader topic range than just dowsing.

Downer clearly indicated in communications that their position was that employees who used dowsing had ‘never failed to find the water pipes’. This is a response which I simply do not believe. In later emails, a high-level representative also indicated that the practice was considered “safe”, “not costly”, and “effective”. It was also indicated said that Downer was not going to stop the practice.

One would suspect that there are, in fact, no real records of accuracy being kept, and that claims to the contrary are mistaken. I consider it utterly implausible that dowsing is in any way ‘effective’.

If the claims of accuracy and reliability (‘never failed to find the water pipes’) are to be believed, this would fly in the face of all the valid randomised double-blinded testing which has been done so far in pursuit of the truth of claims of being able to locate anything at all by dowsing! If the dowsing results were real, this would signal a major and world-changing new realm of physics. A realm of which the scientific community has been apparently completely unaware and unable ever to discern!

If Downer can show that it is real, then I would personally be delighted to assist with their nomination for the Nobel Prize for Physics. Currently worth around NZD $1.25 million, this is not an amount to be ignored by anyone! Money aside, the fame and honours which would go with it, would be priceless on their own. One should also give a nod to the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge: https://tinyurl.com/skep126-13

Started in 1964, and finally ended in 2015, and in its over 50 years, it was offered to anyone who could prove paranormal or supernatural abilities under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. Needless to say, it was never able to be claimed, even though more than a thousand self-proclaimed psychics, dowsers and others tried. Downer’s Never-fail-Dowsing should have been easily able to scoop up such a prize! The Australian Skeptics Inc also have a similar $100,000 prize: https://tinyurl.com/skep126-14

As Downer is an organisation in both NZ and Australia, it would be easily able to win this as well.

So, do you think I’m about to give up my day job, and take up full-time work lobbying for a dowsing Nobel Prize? Not a chance! I say this, of course, based on my confidence in the scientific method, and the fact that it has been proven to be the single-most reliable method for empirically determining the nature of reality that the human race has ever discovered, something of which humanity ought to be very proud. Thus far, every gold-standard test on dowsing (double-blind, randomised) has always shown outcomes which show that dowsing is no better than chance guessing.

I should note that this silly dowsing for water-pipe-location is not limited just to here in NZ. Water-pipe-location dowsing actually seems to be something that water-infrastructure organisations seem to believe and engage in overseas too. In but a single similar case I uncovered involving ‘Yorkshire Water’ in Britain, it is somewhat gratifying to hear that the service provider came under intense fire for their reliance upon ‘magic’ for results. I must say that my own sentiments regarding this are very aptly reflected by the stormy and angry tone of twitter responses. In particular, the following tweets sum up my thoughts quite neatly. The person wrote: “Is this some kind of really weird joke? Apparently [Yorkshire Water] still carry divining rods in their vans (alongside more sophisticated electronic/acoustic tools) because they’re ‘tried and tested’, despite zero evidence that they actually work!”, and “They are not used to detect anything, because they are provably useless. You are stating that you allow your techs to waste company time and resources doing nothing of value. That is insane, and stakeholders should be furious. Complete incompetence” https://tinyurl.com/skep126-21

After questioning Downer about their use of dowsing to try to locate water pipes, and in their response being informed that “it’s just another ‘tool’ in the toolbox”, one can only wonder whether words like ‘insanity’, ‘furious’, and ‘incompetence’ should also be applied here.

NZ Skeptics brought this dowsing nonsense to the attention of the larger New Zealand public. NZ Skeptics maintains an active Twitter feed (@NZSkeptics), which is well-worth following, and this has helped to spread the word. Certainly, the otherwise mundane activity of infrastructure maintenance should be able to be subjected to the same level of rational scrutiny as anything else.

The revelation that one of our supposedly trusted infrastructure contractors relies upon what amounts to ‘divination’ or ‘magic’ for vital city resource management is dismaying. Even if, as Downer claims, there is no direct extra financial cost to the ratepayer, we should be right now asking some very hard questions of the Wellington City Council regarding this. If a single road is ever closed, if a single footpath taken-up, if the smallest amount of traffic to businesses diverted, or if even a single minute of unnecessary delay or inconvenience is attributable to this ridiculous reliance upon ‘magic’, we should be collectively very, very angry indeed!

At the time of writing this article, there has been a reasonable amount of media interest in this issue, with various news organisations picking up on Downer’s actions, and all of them scathing of Downer’s reliance upon ‘magic’.

A few final thoughts to consider. You may recall only a few years ago when unscrupulous criminals sold fake bomb detectors, the so-called ‘ADE651 Bomb Detector’: https://tinyurl.com/skep126-25 and a very similar ‘GT200’: https://tinyurl.com/skep126-26

Packaged up, marketed, and sold for as much as $60,000 each, they were purported to be real bomb detectors, and were accompanied by very scientific-sounding claims. In actuality, they amounted to little more than novelty golf-ball-finder dowsing devices, the sort of utterly useless device you can still buy for around $20. The two heads of the respective companies, James McCormick and Gary Bolton, were both independently convicted of fraud and both jailed in 2013. Unfortunately, their devices had already been sold in large quantities to governments and agencies around the world, including 6,000 to the British Army in Iraq, where they were used as a first-line defence against car bombs. In Pakistan, they were used to guard Karachi airport, and around the Middle East they were bought to protect hotels. To quote the BBC news article of the time, “they were all bogus” https://tinyurl.com/skep126-28

One can only begin to count the real-world harm. Furthermore, although the devices were banned for sale in Iraq in 2010, they continued to used until 2015 by some agencies who actually insisted that they worked!.

One might suggest that it was allowing this sort of credulous mindset to exist in the first place, which opened the door for these criminals. The real consequences? Real people really died.

So, in case you thought that it was just a little harmless ‘quaintness’, or maybe even just humorous, that Downer uses dowsing in place of real and proven scientific methods, think again. Certainly, Downer’s dowsing is not on the same scale as the bogus bomb detectors, but magical-thinking needs to be confronted anywhere that it rears its ugly head!

One wonders if the only scientific things happening at Downer are confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance? Downer, nonetheless, seem convinced that dowsing works. I begin to wonder what other things at Downer are being decided upon based on no or poor analysis; what other money is being wasted on ineffective services; what other processes are being done perhaps just because they have always been done like that?

What can you do as a responsible member of New Zealand Skeptics Society? Here are a few ideas:

Contact the Wellington City Council, and make your views known: https://wellington.govt.nz/your-council/dealing-with-the-council/complaints.

Contact Downer, and make sure that the owners and stakeholders are aware of the ridiculous things their organisation is doing: https://www.downergroup.com/contact-us.

Contact your own city council, and verify that only proven scientific methods are being used to manage the resources you pay for.