This document ("The Application") outlines the offer made by the James Randi Educational Foundation ("JREF") concerning psychic, supernatural, or paranormal claims.
Quote:
The JREF will pay US$1,000,000 (One Million US Dollars) ("The Prize") to any person who demonstrates any psychic, supernatural, or paranormal ability under satisfactory observation. Such demonstration must take place under the rules and limitations described in this document. An applicant can be from or in any part of the world. Gender, race, and educational background are not factors for acceptance. Applicants must be at least 18 years of age and legally able to enter into binding agreements.
This doesn't ask someone to prove that they can dowse water... it asks them to prove they are able to do it by psychic, supernatural or paranormal means. Nor is the challenge specifically about dowsing. It's just about anything that people claim to possess supernatural, paranormal, psychic powers.
It isn't a paranormal activity. It's just science.
Last edited by Digging4Truth; 12-06-2011 at 09:28 AM.
This doesn't ask someone to prove that they can dowse water... it asks them to prove they are able to do it by psychic, supernatural or paranormal means. Nor is the challenge specifically about dowsing. It's just about anything that people claim to possess supernatural, paranormal, psychic powers.
It isn't a paranormal activity. It's just science.
Then it should work under agreed upon test conditions.
At Kassel, north of Frankfurt, Germany, the scientific group Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) in 1992 set up a very efficient and effective site for testing dowsing in cooperation with a local television station. A plastic pipe of suitable size was buried fifty centimeters beneath a level section of field, through which a very large flow of water could be directed from a switching valve. The test area was protected by a large tent, and the position of the buried pipe was prominently marked by a broad red and white stripe. The challenge for the dowsers was not to find the pipe, but only to say whether water was flowing in it or not.
In response to advertisements, GWUP obtained thirty dowsers, mostly from Germany but also from Denmark, Austria, and France. Each dowser was required to perform ten “open” trials in which he or she would know whether or not the water was flowing, and they would have to obtain 100 percent results at that time. This set of trials would provide GWUP with a baseline from which to judge the subsequent twenty “closed” trials which immediately followed, in which they did not know the answer. In all cases, both with the open and closed tests, the “on” or “off” condition was decided by the random selection of a marked ball from a bag.
Each dowser was asked to make, in advance, a statement expressing any objections he might have to the procedure and stating his or her expected success rate. Each and every problem was satisfied and each dowser expected 100 percent success, as attested by the signatures. Then each subject was asked to use his or her dowsing ability to scan the area in which the test was to be performed, to see if any underground distraction was present.
At the end of three days of testing, GWUP announced the results of almost a thousand bits of data to the assembled dowsers. A summary of their results produced just what would be expected according to chance.
Recall that in these tests each dowser had been asked to scan the test area in advance for any anomalies that might distract the powers. It was noted that none of the thirty dowsers found the same anomalies, though all but one found some anomaly, and some found several. Obviously, only one of the dowsers could have been right, and probably all were wrong.
It is perhaps significant that the German word for the dowsing rod is Wünschelrute, which translates as “wishing stick.” Occasionally, the art is referred to in English as “jowsing” or “josing.”
The American Society of Dowsers, Inc., can be reached at Danville, VT 05828. However, inquiries indicating doubt or challenging their convictions will not be answered in a positive fashion.
The challenge isn't just open to the supernatural either. So called Free Energy inventors also make up a huge amount of the applicants with the machines which are said to run forever and generate more power than they use.
At Kassel, north of Frankfurt, Germany, the scientific group Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) in 1992 set up a very efficient and effective site for testing dowsing in cooperation with a local television station. A plastic pipe of suitable size was buried fifty centimeters beneath a level section of field, through which a very large flow of water could be directed from a switching valve. The test area was protected by a large tent, and the position of the buried pipe was prominently marked by a broad red and white stripe. The challenge for the dowsers was not to find the pipe, but only to say whether water was flowing in it or not.
In response to advertisements, GWUP obtained thirty dowsers, mostly from Germany but also from Denmark, Austria, and France. Each dowser was required to perform ten “open” trials in which he or she would know whether or not the water was flowing, and they would have to obtain 100 percent results at that time. This set of trials would provide GWUP with a baseline from which to judge the subsequent twenty “closed” trials which immediately followed, in which they did not know the answer. In all cases, both with the open and closed tests, the “on” or “off” condition was decided by the random selection of a marked ball from a bag.
Each dowser was asked to make, in advance, a statement expressing any objections he might have to the procedure and stating his or her expected success rate. Each and every problem was satisfied and each dowser expected 100 percent success, as attested by the signatures. Then each subject was asked to use his or her dowsing ability to scan the area in which the test was to be performed, to see if any underground distraction was present.
At the end of three days of testing, GWUP announced the results of almost a thousand bits of data to the assembled dowsers. A summary of their results produced just what would be expected according to chance.
Recall that in these tests each dowser had been asked to scan the test area in advance for any anomalies that might distract the powers. It was noted that none of the thirty dowsers found the same anomalies, though all but one found some anomaly, and some found several. Obviously, only one of the dowsers could have been right, and probably all were wrong.
It is perhaps significant that the German word for the dowsing rod is Wünschelrute, which translates as “wishing stick.” Occasionally, the art is referred to in English as “jowsing” or “josing.”
The American Society of Dowsers, Inc., can be reached at Danville, VT 05828. However, inquiries indicating doubt or challenging their convictions will not be answered in a positive fashion.
We used to look for pipes on the golf course with the L Rods and very seldom were the pipes under pressure. You don't dig up a pressured up pipe. You dig up a pressured down pipe.
There could have been water in the bottom of the pipe or whatever field there is that causes the wires to come together could remain in residual form after the water is gone. I never worried that we wouldn't find the pipe if the water had been shut off.
The thing is that we always had L Rods in the back of our truck and we used them on a regular basis to find pipe & wire underground and it never failed us.
I've discovered this... people who doubt... doubt. And not much can fix them. It has worked for me without fail and if I need to find a pipe tomorrow I'd do so within minutes if I have a basic idea where it might be.
I've never sought to find an underground water deposit to dig a well into so I can't speak to that use of the appratus but my experience with pipes & wires gives me a notion that it all works on a similar premise.
But... as was alluded to in the opening post... what we don't understand we call demonic so we can be done with it... or we doubt it without wavering. These people have chosen the latter to deal with what they cannot understand.
Last edited by Digging4Truth; 12-06-2011 at 10:20 AM.
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