Scientist Finds UK Water Companies use 'Magic' to Find Leaks

You can have all the magnetic devices and ground penetrating radar you like but water engineers in the UK still prefer to use the old ways ... magic.
Sally Le Page is a scientist at Oxford University who's parents told her of a water company technician who bent tent pegs to use as divining rods to find their water main , surprised by this Sally decided to contact UK water companies to ask if it was a thing their engineers do , the results are interesting.

The water companies who said their engineers did use older methods to find pipes were ...
Severn Trent Water
Anglian Water
Thames Water
Scottish Water
Southern Water
Welsh Water
South West Water
United Utilities
Yorkshire Water

Those who do not were...
Northern Ireland Water
Northumbrian Water
Wessex Water

So those who do not use the old ways are clearly in the minority , just three out of the twelve polled ... obviously their force is weak.

Ms Le Page said: "I can't state this enough: there is no scientifically rigorous, doubly blind evidence that divining rods work.
"Isn't it a bit silly that big companies are still using magic to do their jobs?"
www.bbc.co.uk...

Science is great and all but sometimes you can't beat a bit of magic.

a reply to: gortex

I know where we live, this is the method commonly used. Everyone claims it works. Nobody cares why.

a reply to: gortex

Everyone is looking for the big lie.
Maybe the big lie is that magic and gods aren't real?

a reply to: gortex

My wife water witches all the time. We use it for wells, planting as well as building.

Heck my daughter does it pretty well at 7. The oil and water industries both still use water witching...but there's not a lots youngins willing to pick up the bent coat hangers these days.

originally posted by: Bluesma
a reply to: gortex

I know where we live, this is the method commonly used. Everyone claims it works. Nobody cares why.

In the Canadian prairies too. I've heard many well drilling companies have a water witcher.

I don't think its magic. Its just something we don't understand at this time.

What is magic? Invisible aliens doing something? Angels?

Dowsing, or divining works. You can chuck all the tech at it, but it's just easier to us a couple of twigs, or coat hangers.

When I was young we mapped my parents gardens and ley lines for miles around. The things you used to do in long summers before smartphones killed childhood. Oh, those were the days.

a reply to: gortex

Dowsing is an intriguing method. Incredible it works.. I have done only a small amount of dowsing and hope in the future to make my own rod!

The worst part about all this is, that it is used by the authorities, yet no one and including science even cares to acknowledge it and then go, oh let's do some experiments and see how it works!

Imagine what we might learn from it...

My method was cutting down iron wire coathangers, bending them and putting them into Bic pens (with the insides removed first, obviously).

I can't say I did it often but the 4 or 5 times I did (usually to prove it works) it worked a treat....

I studied the science of that and there is a reason it works. You can use bent welding rods to do that and find water lines and even witch for water as long as there is water movement going on. special alterations to the rods can also locate gold. But only if gold is in a metallic form and close to the ground level.

It has to do with ions and the polarization difference in opposite sides of the body. My uncle could use a wishbone style branch to find water. My brother can use the two metal rods and is accurate. I can't get them to work, you need some special ability to do that. I understand that not everyone can do this. from my research it appears that maybe a third of people can do it. One article was actually a government research article and it showed that some people can find water and other conductors with the two metal rod method. There are phone company people here that use the wires to find buried wires, I have a gizmo in the garage that has the ability to find water lines and other buried lines and it uses a magnetic sensor, like a compass. It works on the same principle as the wires.

No magic to this, just because many scientists have not yet figured out how it works, doesn't mean it doesn't. When they figure it out they will claim they discovered it and write a journal entry on their discovery then it will be accepted as real.

When I go out over the underground river out back of the house, my arm hairs tingle and stand up. It feels cooler there but when I use the thermometer, it shows the same temperature. If you stand on a big rock outcrop with minerals in it, the same feeling seems to happen. Energy flowing through a person, I think it is geomagnetic energy or what they call negative ions that are by streams and rivers.

If I hadn't personally felt it and watched the compass spin in circles I would not believe it. If I did not see people find water lines then mark them and have miss dig come and mark them in the same spot, I would not believe it. That meter in the garage works great for me who cannot make the wires work, my brother using the wires matches the meter.

One thing I have found, if science cannot explain something or comprehend how it works, the people often deny it is real. That is the dumbest way I ever heard to do something. If I can't figure something out, I research it till I find how it works, not deny it. I will then say I don't know why, scientists do not say they don't know, they automatically deny it exists.

originally posted by: visitedbythem
I don't think its magic. Its just something we don't understand at this time.

What is magic? Invisible aliens doing something? Angels?

It doesn't work. As soon as it's looked into beyond mere anecdotes, surprise, surprise, the "effect" vanishes.

originally posted by: GetHyped

originally posted by: visitedbythem
I don't think its magic. Its just something we don't understand at this time.

What is magic? Invisible aliens doing something? Angels?

It doesn't work. As soon as it's looked into beyond mere anecdotes, surprise, surprise, the "effect" vanishes.

Not everyone can do it, I know people who can find power lines and water lines every time.

Yeah, not magic, but tech we lost understanding of. like all "magic."

I took a "Pseudoscience and the Paranormal" class and one of the days they had a dowser come in to demonstrate. Most of the previous guests, like fortune tellers and the like, embarrassed themselves and the smug professor used the examples as triumphs of reason over superstition, which I generally support, too.

The "water witch" was different... he located the pipes in the buildings exactly, and went on to find every pipe in the grounds around the building... 100% accuracy to inches.

Also, one "psychic" lady (of about 3) showed obvious "real" talents, knowing specifics about strangers that could NOT be explained by cold reading. Interesting class... interesting topic.

a reply to: rickymouse

No one has ever demonstrated this "power" under proper test conditions. It's magical thinking with a heavy dose of confirmation bias.

Did they find the pipes? Maybe that is why nobody is complaining.

a reply to: gortex

This old method is still popular in much of America too.

I imagine it will be used for a long time to come. Simple, cheap, and effective. That's a hard combo to beat.

My grandfather used them and it worked a lot of times. He used it to find silver gold and diamonds.

I don't understand it, but it worked for some reason.

Dousing has worked for centuries - all over the world.

at one of my family's places i watched someone do it, and my parents we so sure that this man was right my parents dug a well there and surprise surprise it was right were the man said it was going to be, and this was in the middle of the country so its not like there were pipes or something for this man to look at prior to coming to our house

I'm kind of skeptical of it, but not entirely.

When I worked in construction in my youth, we needed to find where the temporary power lines had been buried and they had forgotten to protect the markers. The electricians supervisor came out with a copper witching setup and quickly marked the lines and he was correct. I suspected him of knowing where they were anyway, but it was fun to watch it work.

I had an uncle who swore by it and even looked for gold with a witching stick he'd made for that. He did do quite well at a couple of his claims, found using that method.