Mythbusting

Dowsing is an unexplained process in which people use a forked twig or wire rods to find missing and hidden objects. Dowsing, also known as divining and water witching, is often used to search for water or missing jewelry, but it is also often employed in other applications including ghost hunting, crop circles and fortunetelling.

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Skeptic James Randi in his "Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural," notes that dowsers often cannot agree on even the basics of their profession: "Some instructions tell learners never to try dowsing with rubber footwear, while others insist that it helps immeasurably. Some practitioners say that when divining rods cross, that specifically indicates water; others say that water makes the rods diverge to 180 degrees."

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Science differs from the Dowsing in that it progresses, correcting and building on itself. Technology and medicine are continually advancing and refining. Designs and techniques are improved or abandoned depending on how well they work. By contrast, dowsers have not gotten any more accurate over centuries and millennia of practice.

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The James Randi Educational Foundation offers $1 million “to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.”

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As the foundation notes: “To date, no one has passed the preliminary tests.”

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