James Randi and a Dowser

A dowser gives a demonstration of his professed powers and fails. Dowsing (also known as ’divining’ and ’water-witching’) is the claimed ability to locate water, oil, minerals, objects, locations, missing persons etc. using such objects as a metal rod, a pair of bent wires, a forked stick, a pendulum or the open hands. In controlled tests, dowsing fails every time. Dowsing is actually nothing more than an example of the ’ideomotor effect’ - a known psychological phenomenon in which the dowser moves/ti