I just love the true believers. In order to do a double blind or any accurate test you need to know all the variables for a first step.
Dowsing as far as it seems has no known mechanism. So not much to go on to design a decent test.
So how many times does a guy with a stick need to tell you how deep to dig to find water in the middle of nowhere need to be right to be statistically significant? 1/10? 1/100? What if his experience is 4/5? And he does this for a warm beer?
I think the true believers would be shocked by how many underground utility crews use a Dowser.
Dowsing as far as it seems has no known mechanism. So not much to go on to design a decent test.
So how many times does a guy with a stick need to tell you how deep to dig to find water in the middle of nowhere need to be right to be statistically significant? 1/10? 1/100? What if his experience is 4/5? And he does this for a warm beer?
I think the true believers would be shocked by how many underground utility crews use a Dowser.
See the chapter on the dowsing tests in "Flim Flam." Designing tests is pretty straightforward. The post hoc excuses are predictable.
A former office partner was in the leak detection business, and wanted me to reverse-engineer a pipe locator. To begin with I hate reverse-engineering anything, so of course I developed my own approaches. At one point one of the machines could discriminate between ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic stuff, and he went through the roof thinking that with some work it could be a gold detector.
I can't say I miss working with him all that much.
I can't say I miss working with him all that much.
Last edited:
Wouldn't it be great if vinyl surface might be beneficially altered via uv, or perhaps some lubricant molecules cured/bonded/attached to existing surface? Remainder washes away. It's that form of answer that offers most hope, I think.........
It probably follows that those readily willing to accept dowsing as plausible are also likely to willing to accept equally implausible audio perceptions & explanations I reckon. Because both are really all about the human condition, and the way we deal with warps in perceived reality. It can reinforce a sense that there is a mystical/unexplained mechanism in play, when similar crops up in other walks of life. Such things seldom stand objective scrutiny, however, and when confronted with this 'believers' might readily choose to disregard objectivism rather than concede belief as false. Fascinating, much more so than electronics, don't you think?
On the strength of the following experience I (subjectively, as I have no scientific evidence upon which to base this assumption
) believe that you may be on the right track.Having had a lifelong passion for flyfishing it became apparent that some types of specialised line for that sport became hard and the plastic coating became and cracked. Research by a few fishing plastics engineers concluded that the plasticisers used in producing the covering tended to migrate - which I am told is a common problem with plasticisers - with obvious results. One company at least marketed a paste which was to be applied to hardened lines, and provided they were not too hard, this treatment rendered them fully usable again. The cracks and pops heard from old vinyl records which are clinically clean I suspect are due to over hardening of the plastics used.
The only real problem in experimenting with "improvers" is the potential for damage to the cartridge as mentioned in my earlier post.
I suspect that SY knows far more than he stated above.
Last edited:
A couple of decades ago I spent some time with a dowser, learning some things.
He showed me remote dowsing, and dowsed the property where I lived 20km away and showed certain elements including a water stream on a sheet of A4.
The freaky thing is that he was perfectly correct
.The mechanism is not that difficult.....it is a case of sensing for particular fields/spectrums.
Rods are merely indicators and not actually required.
Dan.
This is now getting close to what my employer pays me for, so I have to be a bit vague, my apologies. There are a variety of molecules that can provide surface modification and have reactive end or side groups which can semi-permanently attach to the surface.
There's a lot of patent literature on these surface treatments. The ones held by LAST, though now expired, make interesting reading.
Written like a true believer. Designing tests may be straightforward but is certainly not simple. Even after all the work required to set up and run a test all you can conclude is that under your test the result was a null. It is amusing to watch one try to prove a negative.
Should we even try to discuss some of the variables that are constantly ignored in many audio proofs? It is one thing to test an individual for simple issues such frequency response and even masking. Quite different to extend such testing to the difference between say two audio power amplifiers.
But SY you really are a true believer and discussing such is meaningless as you will eventually get around to changing the subject, offering opinion as fact or misquoting stuff.
Last edited:
Because he is. Look at his cites. Latest one if I recall correctly is where they placed a bunch of plastic pipes underground and asked their "test subjects" to identify which ones had flowing water vs those that were static.
Those of us who have hired panels, qualified them and then run accoustic tests have a good feel for what can go wrong. SY repeats his mantra over and over whether it applies or not. The is the hallmark of a "true believer."
I know the LAST inventors... LLNL chemists. Walt Davies was my next door neighbor. The treatment is not a surface coating but a LP treatment which is a part of the vinyl. The test result is that record wear becomes almost non-existent and distortion from repeated playing does not increase after treatment. For some reason, chemists make poor marketers and LAST isnt well known or appreciated as it should be. It really works with no down side.
THx-RNMarsh
Last edited:
I watched a guy walk around with two rods, sketch a bunch of lines on the ground, have his coworkers break out the concrete, dig down and have the newly exposed pipes match his sketch.
No I think it is open minded to be able to admit there just might be something to it. Explanation? I have none.
Deny it because you have never seen it...
- Status
- Not open for further replies.