Hansen is now a well known parapsychologist (see his book
The Trickster and the Paranormal
), but he wrote his paper in 1982, when just starting out in the field.
His aim was to clarify the “status” of dowsing from a scientific perspective, i.e. what could be concluded from the published literature?
But his conclusions were rather downbeat, claiming that all too often, poor methodology meant that he was unable to come to any clear conclusions.
He left though, a very comprehensive literature review of the subject up to that date. Locating many of the works is a difficult task, but over time I have managed to collect together some of them. Having done so, it seemed appropriate to make them more publicly available.
Therefore, a few years ago, I created a no frills download site with an appropriate domain name:
www.dowsing-research.net
Here t
he articles etc are listed alphabetically by author along with the title, and a download link to a pdf file containing the article. Some of the pdfs are searchable, some are not. Some are scans of originals, some have been created as pdf files. But all are readable
.
When Hansen wrote his paper, the era was one in which much effort was spent trying to demonstrate the validity of dowsing (and psi effects in general).
I believe that this was largely successful. Of course, many sceptics still deny this, because the conclusions are statistical in nature, and there is still no comprehensive theory to explain psi; so much for persuading the un-persuadable!
In more recent time, the focus has moved on to investigating the processes underlying psychic phenomenon, which seems to me to be a more sensible approach. In light of this, many of the articles cited by Hansen, are perhaps not that quite as interesting today as they were then.
Having said that, I spent some time collecting many papers by the Physicist and former president of the American Society of Dowsers, Z. Harvalik. A great experimenter, who simply followed his own ideas.
Then there is A.B. Kaufman, who I have mentioned in an earlier newsletter, with his work on the psychokinetic effects in dowsing. The works by the legendary William Barret, who made the first extensive and pioneering investigations into dowsing are also interesting.
Over time, I have added other papers, articles, books and book reviews, which I have come across, accidentally or otherwise, but not associated with the Hansen paper. For example, the papers relating to the “million Deutsch Mark” dowsing experiment, are worth a read.
The subsequent argument about the disappointing results obtained by the experimenter, a German physicist named H-D. Betz and his sceptical detractor, J. Enright, are interesting. With a contribution by Betz’s co-worker, S. Ertel, who appears to demonstrate a possible a wave-like effect in the dowsing response. That would be a good experiment to retry, but sadly I think it will never happen.
Then there is the work by Prof. Reddish on his “D-force”. An eminent scientist and self-taught dowser, (but who stayed clear of the BSD), he published two books on his dowsing research, and several papers in the prestigious Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
When first launched, the site soon reached the first page of “dowsing research” hits on Google, but several months later dropped off the radar, though it is still high on Bing and Yahoo. This may have been due to my lack of attention to the site.
I decided that more valuable insights into the dowsing were to be found in the many accounts recorded in the BSD Journal and I have set about digitising the archive for easy access. (This is something that I will return to in another issue of this newsletter).
However, I have now made improvements to the site, which might improve its prominence. As I mentioned above, modern day dowsers may find some of the present content rather irrelevant to their particular interests, but I hope that by making this collection available to any interested parties, it at least offers a spot of dowsing PR.
But the site is by no means finished and much more content could be easily added. If anyone has suggestions, then please contact me at
haywood_nick@hotmail.com
Nick Haywood
This is a fantastic resource.
Ced Jackson
Special Interest Groups
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