Drought Inspires a Boom In Pseudoscience, From Rain Machines To 'Water Witches' 266
merbs (2708203) writes Across drought-stricken California, farmers are desperate for water. Now, many of them are calling dowsers. These "water witches," draped in dubious pseudoscience or self-assembled mythologies—or both—typically use divining rods and some sort of practiced intuition to "find" water. The professional variety do so for a fee. And business is booming. They're just part of a storied tradition of pseudoscientific hucksters exploiting our thirst for water, with everything from cloudbusters to rainmachines to New Age rituals.
It's OK to attack mythology and superstition... (Score:5, Insightful)
...unless someone was taught it over a series of Sundays. :/
I suppose ignorance on things like this is generational, and we'll stamp it out slowly, like racism or smoking.
As it's always gone (Score:4, Insightful)
People who are suffering, ignorant, and afraid are more willing to turn to the supernatural - be it religion or superstitions - as a 'solution' to their problems.
Re:As it's always gone (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's say I'm a farmer, but I don't want to hire a geologist because a dowser is cheaper. The dowser causes me to dig 3 wells and find water only on the third. Then I pay their flat fee. I have expended resources and time to dig those two previous wells, causing me not to have those resources or time to do other things with. A dowser is less effective than a geologist and bears, at the minimum, a higher opportunity cost over the average (of instances of people searching for water with a dowser instead of a geologist).
TL;DR: It's called wasting your time. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Re:Eww.. (Score:4, Insightful)
just your county? that employee is a canary. you should feel bad for the whole country.
Re:1st post (Score:1, Insightful)
Raise the price of water until people use something else? Oh wait, that's the capitalist solution.
Re: A fool and their money (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this runs against everything /. but I have seen it work a couple of times.
Why do you think that an unconfirmed anecdote being presented fallaciously as an argument is against everything /.?
It would actually be astonishing if no one had "seen it work a couple of times", for several reasons. One, if there were a 100% failure rate dousing would have been abandoned years ago. Even pre-scientific peoples mostly abandoned things that were never, ever correlated with their nominal goals.
Second, given humans are known to be prone to confirmation bias, we can predict that almost everyone who has ever seen a dowser identify one of the many, many places where water can be found will come away believing "dowsing works".
So a large number of scientifically illiterate people saying, "Hey I saw it work a few times that proves it's true so I believe it!" is exactly what science would predict if dowsing doesn't work.
If dowsing did work science would predict a bunch of peer-reviewed studies systematically detailing how accurate it is and investigating the factors that influence it's accuracy.
We see the former, not the latter.
Posts like yours actually constitute evidence that dowsing does not work.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
A dowser is less effective than a geologist and bears, at the minimum, a higher opportunity cost over the average (of instances of people searching for water with a dowser instead of a geologist).
A fine economic analysis, but you're forgetting the balance-of-costs comparison.
If what you saved using a dowser (who, by your own scenario, is cheaper than a geologist) is more than the cost of two wasted wells, the dowser was a cost-effective alternative. In that case.
If, on the other hand, the dowser wasn't much cheaper, or you had to sink 5 dry wells, or your dowser never finds water, the dowser was a net loss.
I think that on balance, the latter scenarios are more likely. If you're thinking about choosing dowsing, you're better off just throwing darts at a large map of your property and saving that cost for the same effectiveness.
But if you're going to do an economic analysis, show all your work.
Re: A fool and their money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: A fool and their money (Score:5, Insightful)
my father called the local dowser in for his house in a remote part of SW Ireland.
The low areas of Ireland get more than 40 inches of rain a year, and the mountains get as much as 80 inches. I would be much more surprised if he found an area without ground water.
uh no (Score:4, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with farmers, or droughts.
Plenty of people here on Slashdot believe in:
Ghosts
Vaccines cause Autism
Sugar is poisonous
Gluten sensitivity
Alien visitors
Wifi allergies
and on and on and on...
Some people are desperate for water, others are desperate to explain their childs ailments, desperate to explain their own ailments, desperate to live in a world different than our own. Desperate people will believe strange things. Myth is the anesthesia for anguish.
Re: A fool and their money (Score:5, Insightful)
Found 3 spots that felt just right, drilled the first, and found water at 70 feet.
How deep did you have to drill for the holes in the control group?
Re:It's OK to attack mythology and superstition... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want a good laugh ask a Christian why they believe in God and Jesus and the Holy spirit, but not in Zeus or Odin or Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. If you get anything other than circular logic or "because" let me know.
Re: A fool and their money (Witching Sticks) (Score:4, Insightful)
The Amazing Randy has $1 million waiting for you to come and claim. You fucking liar.
100% would be interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
One, if there were a 100% failure rate dousing would have been abandoned years ago.
Actually if the failure rate was exactly 100%, it would be a valuable tool:
it would very reliabily show where NOT to look for water, and by deduction you'll know that you need to look for water at the remaining NOT dowsed places.
The real failure rate would be something very high, but not close to 100%.
By random chance, you're bound to find water, eventually.
The whole point of a scientific statistical test would be to see if the few successes occur as frequently as random chance, or if dowsing has a slightly higher success rate that could NOT be explained purely by random chance.
Re: A fool and their money (Score:2, Insightful)
so, a stick/rod/object made of a variety of materials but in a particular and non-exact shape has special water-locating scientific properties?? give me a break. unless your dowser is drilling 'control holes' to prove that its not possible for him to always be correct due to the geography, its just another anecdote. look, everyone who drank my snake oil woke up the next morning, thus proving that my patented snake oil ensures you will not die in your sleep the night of your consuming it.
if there is any scientific validity to dowsing, its likely to do with the person themselves and some kind of instinct based on environmental and physiological factors. similar to how animals are able to sense earthquakes or storms before we do.