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<< Feature Articles >> The results of the Megalithic Portal Map Dowsing Experiment and Competition

Submitted by Andy B on Tuesday, 22 November 2011  Page Views: 8292

Mysteries
The results of the Megalithic Portal Map Dowsing Experiment and Competition
The results of the Megalithic Portal Map Dowsing Experiment and Competition submitted by Andy B : Results of the dowsing and guessing entries for Target X, the rock art plotted as dots on the map. Yellow dots are dowsing entries, blue dots are guesses. (The exact position of each dots in the square is not significant, they are just showing the totals for each square) The Rock art in question has been named Turrerich and its exact location is here. Please see the main page for more de... (Vote or comment on this photo)
I have been busy analysing the entries for our dowsing competition from last week and here are the results. Various people sent descriptions of how they did the dowsing and it's clear a lot of thought went into these entries.

Thanks to a mention by Maev Kennedy in The Guardian and various dowsing groups passing the word around we had 42 dowsers of all levels of experience (and scepticism) taking part.
We also had 16 people who sent in guesses - perhaps a lot of thought went into these as well - who knows! The numbers guessing were a little disappointing, clearly map dowsing is more fun. Not surprisingly all those in the guessing group were either sceptical or open minded / impartial about map dowsing. So on to the actual results:

For Target X, George's Rock Art, 7 people out of 42 correctly dowsed the rock art as being in square B3. This is 17% of entries correct. I am not a statistician but I unearthed my 25 year old A-level Maths and an online calculator of cumulative binomial probability to calculate that the chances of getting 7 or more correct answers by chance alone are around 0.057, which is one in 17. This is (I think) almost at a 5% significance level. Hopefully a stats expert can help us out here. So the results are on the verge of what you would call 'statistically significant'. Just 'by eye' a result of 7 appears to be slightly above chance to me - by pure chance you would typically expect 3 or 4 correct 'hits' but to get 2 or 5 by chance is almost as likely.

Tuesday evening update: Note that only squares B4 and A3 got 6 and 5 dowses respectively and although 'wrong', these are adjacent to the correct square. You could take this as evidence towards or against the case for dowsing.

However looking at both maps there seems to me to be a bias in the dowsing results generally towards the right hand half of the maps which is not present with the guessed results. This is even though Target Y is well to the left. There also appears to be a small but measurable bias away from the visible 'valley' on Target X. See the comments below for more analysis.


The dowsers who hit the correct square for target X are
Lynne Kelly (sceptic)
Jill Maunder (open minded / impartial)
Ina Sigerist (experienced dowser)
John L Hanscum Jr (experienced dowser)
Brian Hummerston (experienced dowser)
Roger Albin (sceptic)
and Michael Rinaldi (occasional dowser)

For Target Y, Runemage's quartzy boulder, 2 out of 42 identified the correct square as C1. This result is a little low but within the limits you would expect to get by chance (Using the probability calculator again says the chances of getting 2 or fewer correct hits is one in three) so this is within what you would expect from a small sample.

The dowsers who hit the correct square for target Y are Sue Brown (occasional dowser) and Brian Hummerston (experienced dowser).

50% of the dowsing group who declared their attitude were experienced or occasional dowsers who believed that map dowsing works. However it is interesting (but probably not significant) that 5 of the 8 correct entries came from the group of dowsing believers whereas only 2 out of the 8 correct dowsers came from the sceptical group.

A final surprise - Brian Hummerston, who declares himself an experienced map dowser managed to correctly dowse both squares which contained our ancient sites! Initially I got really excited by this but it then dawned on me that someone has a 1/144 chance of getting both correct by chance, and we have 42 people entering. So purely by chance there is a roughly one in three chance that of one of our 42 dowsers would get both correct. It still seems a good result, and I'm sure Brian will think that too!

Brian is one of our calendar winners through dowsing, the other winner chosen at random being Michael Rinaldi.

For the guessing group, one out of 16 hit upon the correct square in each case which seems to be a reasonable chance level, and is good on the calendar giveaway front as well. The correct guessers are Hamish Fenton (yes he of the super kite photographs) and second Simon Charlesworth, our Welsh stone alignments guru.

What is interesting about the guessing entries is that while 69% of the guessing entries said they were very sceptical about map dowsing, both of the two correct guesses came from the 25% of people who declared themselves as 'open minded / impartial'. What we can read into that I don't know...

So a very successful experiment and competition. Thanks to everyone who took part.

The raw data:
Target X Dowsing: A1,B3,C1,B4,A1,A2,B4,B1,B3,B4,B4,B4,A3,C1,A4,A2,C3,C3,B1, B2,C4,A3,A3,A1,B1,B3,A4,A3,A4,B4,C1,B3,B1,B3,C4,C4,C2,B2,C4,B3,B3,A3
Target X Guessing: A3,B2,C1,A4,C1,A2,C1,B2,C2,A3,B4,A4,A2,B3,A4,A4
Target Y Dowsing: B3,C2,C3,B2,B3,B2,A4,B2,A3,B4,C2,A3,B3,B4,B2,B4,A3,A3,C4,B4,A2,B2,B2,C4,B1, C4,B3,B4,C2,C4,C2,B4,C4,C1,C3,C2,C1,B3,C2,C3,C3,B2
Target Y Guessing: B1,C1,B4,B4,B3,B3,B3,B3,B4,B2,B2,A3,C3,B1,C4,C2

As I said above, if any statistics experts would like to help me analyse the data, please get in touch. I also have the results in an anonymised spreadsheet, if you would like a copy please email me via the 'Contact Editor' link to the left. Or please feel free to leave comments below on what you think of the results.

The results of the Megalithic Portal Map Dowsing Experiment and Competition
The results of the Megalithic Portal Map Dowsing Experiment and Competition submitted by Andy B : Results of the dowsing and guessing entries for Target Y, the quartzy boulder, plotted as dots on the map. Yellow dots are dowsing entries, blue dots are guesses. (The exact position of each dots in the square is not significant, they are just showing the totals for each square) The boulder in question is very close to the stone circle of Uragh NE in Co. Kerry, Ireland and its exact location ... (1 comment - Vote or comment on this photo)

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"The results of the Megalithic Portal Map Dowsing Experiment and Competition" | Login/Create an Account | 9 News and Comments
  
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In regards the "right hand" bias for "dowsers" by bat400 on Wednesday, 23 November 2011
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May I suggest that the bias is due to the majority of dowsers using some sort of hand manipulation with their right hand.
If viewing the figures with the "A4" square in the upper right hand corner as presented on the webpages, I would think a right hand bias would be natural for selections made with a right hand manipulation.
Alternately, picking a square at random (no physical manipulation) would result in no bias.
I'm sure there may be physiologists that might be able to confirm or deny my theory.

Too bad we didn't get more entries.
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Re: Sceptic by rogeralbin on Wednesday, 23 November 2011
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Just to clarify I do dowse a fair bit the sceptic comment was specifically with reference to map dowsing of which I have not really tried and had some doubts about.
On the method used I did not dowse the map simply asking "is it in the top horizontal, middle horizontal etc"and the same for the verticals so I was pleasantly surprised to get 3 out of the 4 available vertical/horizontals.
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Re: Skeptic as Dowser by Lynne_Kelly on Tuesday, 22 November 2011
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A very interesting article, with my name listed as a successful dowser. I must point out that I am a sceptic, using a pendulum, and registered for this as such. As the author of 'The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal' (a chapter of which is on dowsing) and doing a doctorate taking a very pragmatic approach to interpretation of non-state non-literate archaeological sites, I must explain!

I use a pendulum a lot in doing magic tricks and public performances explaining the ideomotor response (the innate muscular movements that will cause a pendulum to move on thinking about it without you being conscious of the fact you are actually causing the movement). I have no doubt that the pendulum moving over that square (as it did) was a result of my identifying that square as the most likely - and not anything to do with some kind of psychic response. I have a strong ideomotor response and can make a pendulum swing in any direction by thinking that way. In experiments I have done with dowsers, and other paranormal claims, I have been able to replicate anything claimants have been able to do - including very accurate psychic readings - WITHOUT using any paranormal means. I use rational reasoning.

So please keep my name firmly on the sceptical end of the spectrum - but as a true sceptic - happy to be convinced otherwise by evidence produced under test conditions.
Fun debate! Thanks, Andy!
Lynne Kelly
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    Re: Skeptic as Dowser by Andy B on Wednesday, 23 November 2011
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    Thanks for the comment, I've updated the article to add people's attitude that they declared to me.
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Re: More thoughts from a longer consideration of the results. by Andy B on Tuesday, 22 November 2011
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It has been suggested that there could be a bias against people choosing squares in the valley, due to the suspicion that rock art tends to be found on high ground.

I have also analysed the 'valley' squares (B1 B2 C2 C3) vs 'non valley' squares.
Target X: Valley 21.4%, Non Valley 78.6% (the results by chance should be 33% / 66% so there does also appear to be a small bias here - I don't see why two biases could not be working at the same time.

I've also compared the same squares on Target Y where there is no discernible valley.
Target Y: 'Valley' 42.8%, 'Non Valley' 57.2% (again vs 33% / 66%)
These seem closer to pure chance variations so there doesn't appear to be an effect where there's no valley visible.

They say you can prove anything via statistics so I think I've probably gone as far as you can go here...
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More thoughts from a longer consideration of the results. by Andy B on Tuesday, 22 November 2011
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Some more thoughts from a longer consideration of the results.

Note that only squares B4 and A3 got 6 and 5 dowses respectively and although 'wrong', these are adjacent to the correct square.

However looking at both maps there seems to be a bias in the dowsing results towards the right hand side of the maps which is not present with the guessed results. This is even though Target Y is well to the left.

I have analysed this on my spreadsheet and the results are as follows:
Target X, dowsing results on LHS of map 35.7%, on RHS of map 64.3%
Target Y, dowsing results on LHS of map 40.4%, on RHS of map 59.5%
These are at round about the 95% confidence level so appears (I think) to be a 'statistically significant' bias in the dowsing results towards the right hand side of the map.

This could be a psychological effect of the need to 'find' something before you 'run out of map' as it were (assuming people were working from left to right). Equally perhaps people's eyes were drawn to something on the map, although this is present on both maps and we were quite careful to avoid making the correct maps square distinctive in any way.
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Dowsing cartoon by Andy B on Tuesday, 22 November 2011
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Tony Husband has very kindly done a cartoon to mark the occasion
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=a312&file=index&do=showpic&pid=84978
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Re: by sem on Tuesday, 22 November 2011
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Get's even more interesting. I've just dug out the memo pad I wrote my guesses on and I see that for my attempt on target X, I initially wrote B3, but changed the 3 to a 2! Honestly.
I wouldn't believe it myself if I'd thrown the pad away!!!



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Re: by NickiMacRae on Tuesday, 22 November 2011
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Very interesting!!
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