Dell, thank you for your long paragraph, addressing many of the issues all at once (the test challenges, the "how does it work", etc....). First, as for tests to determine random vs better than random: "... it doesn't matter whether it was found by random chance guessing , Dowsing, or just good luck? It's the results that counts. " This is sort of a mystery to me. I would have thought that if a person could be shown that his lucky charm rabbit foot (or whatever he was using) amounted to "random chance", then he would understand that he is not increasing his chances at finding goodies. I mean, the mere definition of random chance, means you are no better off WITH a particular system, than without it. So I don't understand why you would say it doesn't matter if dowsing can be shown to be random chance. To prop up dowsing, a dowser would need to show that it is BETTER than random chance. Otherwise, why do it?
Sure, random chance produce results now and then. Blackjack sometimes produces a perfect hand of 21, etc....
"It appears that Most Dowsers, and skeptics agree that Mental Dowsing is a function of the Brain/Mind" Well, when someone says their mind can discern a treasure from across the planet (like in map dowsing), wouldn't you agree that teeters into new age spiritual things? I mean, it's an easy jump from that to things like: casting spells, levitation, ESP, talking to the dead, etc.... You're welcome to dabble into those things, but just recognize mental dowsing as being in just such a camp of things.
siegfried, you have a good idea for a test. A neutral 3rd party would need to choose the place, to be announced at the last minute, lest anyone claim the other side went out and buried a goodie to "find". Art also has a good question about this: "Since some dowsers pick a spot then use a standard metal detector to pinpoint an area somewhere near the dowsed spot, could the skeptics do that as well? Pick a spot, then "pinpoint" within a certain area to find the object? " Does each side get to use a detector to pinpoint?
One of my favorite areas to hunt, are adobe sites. Adobes are the mud-brick houses that Spanish and Mexican era settlers to CA lived in (late 1700s to the 1840s). When CA became a state, a lot of these homesteads were abandoned, and left to melt back into the earth over time. We research out clues to where these ranchos were, and comb the suspected area for signs of the habitation. Often, there is no surface clues left. We are forced to comb hillsides, cow pastures, ag row-crop areas, etc..... hoping for our detectors to sound off on iron, etc... By doing this over the years, I have experienced acres at a time, with litterly no beeps whatsoever. Just endless sterile soil. That tells me that I am not near the adobe site I'm looking for, because the minute we close in on the location, we would start getting iron nail readings, for starters. What's my point of this paragraph? HUNCHES! To begin with, when we start researching a site, we have it narrowed down, where we think it might be (example "Juan Perez had his little adobe on the road from mission such and such, to lagoon such & such"). Next, we sight out likely spots that a person would put a habitation, to begin with. So we're not blindly swinging, but rather, eye-balling the landscape to see guess where people would most likely have built (next to a water source, protected from prevailing wind, etc...). And then add in clues like an out-of-place fruit tree, or a lone high spot in the ground, etc... and we gravitate to those areas to reconn. All I'm saying is, that no matter if it's a dowser going by hunches, or the md'r going by hunches, the minute they turn on their detector to "pinpoint", either one, if they are experienced at TH'ing in general, will already be in the proximety of signals 50% of the time.
One time we were working a stage stop site near Concord, CA out in the country. My friend & I eyeballed a gigantic oak tree WWAAAAYY off in the distance, at the foot of a nearby hill. We both thought: that looks like a place people might have hitched horses, or taken shade, etc... So we decided to check it out. It was nearly a 5 minute walk. On the way, we just kept our machines on, swinging as we went. The whole distance, we got zero signals (save for perhaps a single piece of bailing wire in the middle of nowhwere). But as we approached the tree, we immediately got some bullet shells, and heard some iron signals. Our hunch was right: persons had, in antiquity, stopped here (to shoot birds in the tree was all, perhaps, but none-the-less, our hunch about targets there, was correct). So hunches have a lot to do with it. Hunches ALONE could propell a dowsers results above 50% Like, if you just put a blindfold on, walked 100 paces into any given cow pasture, and just started digging, THAT would be random chance. But if you let someone walk, based on their visual judgements, 100 paces in any direction, their results would be better, whether or not they were holding a rod. Simply because they are using common sense at the most likely places people gathered.
It will put people in a defensive corner, rather than getting things thought of, on their merits alone.
