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waterwitch80 t1_j6fh9qz wrote

May not be very scientific but dowsing works. I've seen it done but can't explain how it works. If you're someone with the ability you can take a forked branch, or some people use L shaped metal rods. A douser or waterwitch walks along and when they cross water the rods cross or the branch rotates to point down. I've personally witnessed someone find a triple well by dousing. When the people came to drill and hit the first stream they continued and hit second stream, kept drilling and hit the third stream.

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a_bear_there_was t1_j6fyfz3 wrote

It demonstrably doesn't work.

Well, it "works" in the same way that a Ouija board works. There's a person in control of when the rods cross, just like there are human(s) in control of the planchette on a Ouija board. It's very easy for a person to influence the movements of both, without necessarily being conscious that they are doing so.

Inevitably, the person who is holding the rods has some idea of where to find water. Like others have pointed out, there are hints on the surface, like trees and plants, even the shape of the terrain. Once they have an idea of where to look, it's very easy to make the rods cross at that point.

And if there's not water there, then there's always an excuse. "The energy was not good that day." "There's an underground stream, but it's dried up now." "There is water, but you didn't dig deep enough." etc.

And of course, they almost always find *some* water because there's water nearly everywhere if you dig deep enough. And confirmation bias being what it is, they will always point to their successes as evidence that dowsing works, and their failures are just times where they did it wrong.

Again, they may not even realize that they're doing this. They may really believe it's magic.

Some don't of course. Some people are just charlatans. But there are plenty of true believers too.

Whichever they are, they don't have a real ability. Every time we run a properly controlled experiment, they do no better than random chance.

The James Randi Foundation used to do these tests, offering a million dollars to anyone who could demonstrate any one of a number of abilities (dowsing included). No one has ever successfully passed even the preliminary tests.

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waterwitch80 t1_j6geiit wrote

Not and get results.

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Hayduke_Abides t1_j6go5bv wrote

Dowsing is as legit as tarot cards, astrology, and palm-reading. They hit often enough to fool the gullible.

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cyanrarroll t1_j6gjhk5 wrote

Underground streams are a myth (except those that are literally rivers in caves). Water just kind of permeates everywhere underground and slowly moves towards lower elevation openings to leave as surface waters. Dowsing works as well as asking a frog to jump toward the direction of underground water, and then flipping a coin on whether or not you'll agree to it.

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Hayduke_Abides t1_j6gngv7 wrote

You are partly correct, large amounts of water do move through the pore spaces in rock. However, in addition to that type of flow, almost all rock formations have a network of cracks and fractures, and water often moves preferentially along these pathways. How much porous flow vs fracture flow you get in an aquifer depends on the nature of the rock and the degree of fracturing in the aquifer. In wells, intersecting a few good fractures can be the difference between a productive well and one that does not produce sufficient flow to be useful.

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cyanrarroll t1_j6gpxwn wrote

True but not necessarily useful since most groundwater tables, especially where most humans live, is significantly higher than bedrock.

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