Unknown Caves and Dowsing

[ogof addict]

[gmod]New Topic split from "Traveling Time to Caving Regions"[/gmod]


how do we know there are 37 unknown caves?

 

[Roger W]

how do we know there are 37 unknown caves?

Because they are the unknown caves we know about.

There are probably lots of unknown caves that we don't know about, so we can't post details of them openly on the forum.   

 

[TheBitterEnd]

Donald Rumsfeld is that you  :blink:

 

[Robert Scott]

I'd say the 2 hours quoted earlier in this thread is a bit optimistic if travelling when the roads have their normal level of traffic.

And, do we know the lengths of these 37 unknown caves that we do know about?

Yes

 

[ogof addict]

are there surveys for any of the 37?

 

[Fulk]

I believe that some have been 'surveyed' by dousing them.

 

[langcliffe]

I believe that some have been 'surveyed' by dousing them.

With a douche?

 

[owd git]

well played boys.

 

[Fulk]

Oops; guess I meant 'dowsing'. :-[

They're probably wet enough already.

 

[Pitlamp]

Spell it how you like - it's still a load of rubbish.   

 

[Fulk]

John Wilcox wouldn't agree, Pitlamp.

 

[TheBitterEnd]

Obligatory

 

[langcliffe]

John Wilcox.

John Wilcock

 

[Fulk]

Oh dear; another  :-[

 

[owd git]

Will he? :yucky:

 

[Pitlamp]

With the greatest respect for Dr Wilcock (who has done a huge amount for British caving over many years in all sorts of ways) - I think his "dowsing" work is flawed. I say this because (for example) several years ago we opened up a certain well known resurgence and invited John to dowse over the continuation before we explored it. The dowsing "results" turned out to be 180 degrees different from the actual cave. This particular experiment never featured highly in articles written by John at the time.

I never made a point of drawing this to everyone's attention before but John is a very accomplished scientist and I doubt he'd object to statements of fact being made available. I think John's attitude is one of "sceptical interest"; he has doubts about the technique and tries to study it properly, as a scientist. My view is that if dowsing has many failures and many "successes" it's so unreliable as to be worse than useless as an aid to finding caves.

Most of the articles about dowsing seem to have appeared in popular caving magazines rather than in serious scientific journals such as Cave & Karst Science. Until these articles are subjected to scrutiny by reviewers of such proper scientific journals I'm afraid I just can't take them seriously.

At which point I'll shut up because this is way off topic, for which I apologise.

 

[owd git]

My respect to anyone who earnestly attempts to further any understanding, short of , perhaps illegal or too offensive passtimes.
Descartes made a fair point a while ago; "I doubt, therefor I am." (ish! )

 

[graham]

My respect to anyone who earnestly attempts to further any understanding, short of , perhaps illegal or too offensive passtimes.
Descartes made a fair point a while ago; "I doubt, therefor I am." (ish! )

Homoeopathy? Crystal healing? I would also add chiropractics but I don't want to be sued. 

 

[Roger W]

Hum!  Following up that link led me to the sparkling gem of knowledge that some of these chiropractors think that vertebral subluxations can interfere with the body's innate intelligence.

Could be catching?   

 

[rsch]

Homoeopathy?

Homeopathy works though - you take the tiniest hint of a crack in the right rock, dilute it to the nth degree by chucking several million million million million million litres of water at it and then instead of it disappearing, all that water magically magnifies the power of your tiny crack and it turns into a multi-km cave system