"Dowsing for water has been scientifically investigated in two studies, the Munich study in the late 1980s and the Kassel study in 2004, both referring to the locations in Germany in which these experiments were performed. Both studies failed to conclusively prove that dowsing is more than guesswork. Yet, the authors of the Munich study contended that a few of the 500 dowsers tested:[9]
in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ... a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven ...
Researcher and skeptic Jim T. Enright reviewed the data from the Munich tests and disputed these claims, while in the Kassel study the dowsers fared no better than chance.
[edit] Munich
The scientific study[10] of dowsing in Munich, Germany was performed in 1987 to 1988 and involved more than 500 dowsers in more than 10,000 double-blind tests.[1]
Five hundred dowsers were initially tested for their "skill", and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them. These 43 were then tested in the following way. On the ground floor of a two-story barn, water was pumped through a pipe; before each test, this pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor, each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years, the 43 dowsers performed 843 such tests. Of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates, at least 37 of them showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that "a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."[9]
[edit] Enright responds
Five years after the Munich study was published, scientist and skeptic Jim T. Enright contended that these results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and do not demonstrate any real ability.[11] He noted that the best tester was on average 4 millimeters out of 10 meters closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.0004% advantage. The study's authors responded[12] but Enright remains unconvinced.[13]
[edit] Kassel
More recently, a study[14] was undertaken in Kassel, Germany, under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) [Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences]. The three-day test of some 30 dowsers involved plastic pipes through which a large flow of water could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried 50 centimeters under a level field. On the surface, the position of each pipe was marked with a colored stripe, so all the dowsers had to do was tell whether there was water running through the pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100 percent success rate. However, the results were no better than what would have been expected by chance."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing
