Drought Inspires a Boom In Pseudoscience, From Rain Machines To 'Water Witches'

merbs (2708203) writes Across drought-stricken California, farmers are desperate for water. Now, many of them are calling dowsers. These "water witches," draped in dubious pseudoscience or self-assembled mythologies—or both—typically use divining rods and some sort of practiced intuition to "find" water. The professional variety do so for a fee. And business is booming. They're just part of a storied tradition of pseudoscientific hucksters exploiting our thirst for water, with everything from cloudbusters to rainmachines to New Age rituals.

Comments

1st post

[deadweight]

Dowsers? They need THIS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

Could try sacrificing virgins

[BenSchuarmer]

but it's California, so they may be hard to find.

Not surprising

[ericloewe]

It sounds like a typical reaction:

"No, I'm afraid we can't fix this. We're going to have to work around our problem... Conserve water, reuse wa.... No, no! Don't pay the fucking witch doctor for a rain dance!"

Re:It's OK to attack mythology and superstition...

[mythosaz]

To quote Cecil Adams:

Fighting ignorance since 1973 -- It's taking longer than we thought.

Re: A fool and their money (Witching Sticks)

[tompaulco]

Gas lines, water lines, sewer lines, coaxial lines, electric lines can all be found with a minimum of effort without witching sticks. All you have to do is go to a random spot, any old spot, it doesn't even have to be within 1000 miles of a human settlement, and dig. If you do not hit one of the above, you will at the very least cut the only fiber connection to an entire continent.