Updated 7 a.m. Wednesday Most of the major water companies in the United Kingdom use dowsing rods — a folk magic practice discredited by science — to find underwater pipes, according to an Oxford Ph.D ...

can be used to identify the best locations to drill.

In these times, most of the old superstitions have fallen by the wayside, but dowsing’s many believers robustly defend this ancient practice. I am acquainted with scientists and engineers who have ...

“Further testing of dowsing…would be a misuse of public funds.” — U.S. Geological Survey report, 1917 Somehow or other, that decades-old admonition has fallen on deaf ears at the U.S. Department of ...