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People have been dowsing for thousands of years. For the most part dowsing has been used to find water but not exclusively. Since ancient times, dowsers have been trying to find water, metals and other objects hidden or buried underground. The science on this has been questionable at best and we should all be looking to science for our answers and not anecdotal evidence.

Too many people look to anecdotal evidence to bolster their claims of dowsing. Many others believe that because this "technology" is so old and in fact ancient then it must be a "technology" that works. After all, why would people use something for thousands of years if it didn't work? Well, there are other examples of ancient technologies that have been used for thousands of years that don't work either.

People have bought into the idea of dowsing because, like so many things, they sometimes need something to believe in. Folks can convince themselves that dowsing works much like they can convince themselves that Homeopathy works. You can convince yourself of almost anything if you don't do the proper research or look at things critically.

According to Dowsers Canada "In Dowsing, we train our nervous-muscular system to be like wires that connect the intuitive part of our 'mind-brain team' to a tool that indicates the nature of the message - to a Dowsing tool, that signals YES or NO." This sounds both simple and wonderful. It is simple but it's not so wonderful because there is nothing to dowsing.

We have all seen the dowser with metal rods in each hand wandering around a field suggesting areas where people might find whatever it was they were after. Oddly, if a dowser is looking for water he'll find water but seldom does a dowser looking for water find metal ore or something else that dowsers can apparently find.

There have been very few scientific studies done on the success on dowsing. One could imagine that scientists had never found the idea of dowsing compelling enough to engage in such research; after all, research funds are often difficult to get. But there have been scientific testing done on dowsing and the results were not nearly as good as the anecdotal evidence.

James Randi has offered cash prizes to dowsers if they were to find pipes with an 80% success rate. All of the other conditions were agreed to by all parties and Randi still has all of his cash. The success of dowsing has been shown to be no greater than chance so instead of dowsing to find water take a guess at where you might find it. There is a chance, regardless of how remote it might be, that you might find water. There is always a chance you won't find anything even if you dowse.

Learn more about this author, R.A. Scott.
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