It’s where Ken Ham comes from, you know, and apparently the region has a bit of a reputation. Not everyone from Queensland can be bog-ignorant, of course, so it’s perfectly reasonable that someone from Queensland would be appointed head of the Australian national science organization, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). So good on their latest head.
Dr Larry Marshall grew up working on farms and his family run a property in drought-affected Queensland.
Fine motivation.
It’s why he isn’t afraid to talk about his ‘out-there’ vision for agricultural research at the premier science organisation.
Uh-oh. Brace for impact!
He’d like to see the development of technology that would make it easier for farmers to dowse or divine for water on their properties.
We have kooksign! Dowsing doesn’t work. It’s easy to test, it’s been tested hundreds of times, and it always fails. Always!
“I’ve seen people do this with close to 80 per cent accuracy and I’ve no idea how they do it,” he said.
“When I see that as a scientist, it makes me question, ‘is there instrumentality that we could create that would enable a machine to find that water?’
I can explain how they do it.
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A little working knowledge of hydrology can boost your success rate — it’s not the dowsing, it’s the brain.
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There’s water everywhere…it’s a matter of how deep you have to go and how much of it is useable that matters. So sure, if you keep drilling down to an impractical depth and score any trickle of water you find as a hit, you can have an 80% success rate.
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The marks are always impressed by the hits and ignore the failures, and part of the con is to always have a ready excuse for any misses. I doubt that his “80%” was objectively measured or even measured at all — but rather, was a gut feeling. Those don’t work, either.
Oh, well, Australia, you can console yourself that unlike certain American politicians, he’s not a creationist or climate change denier.
He isn’t, is he? Did anyone ask him?
The article and comments in The Grauniad indicate this possible woo-woo is a venture capitalist and inventor(of what is not clear) and engineer, and that his main job will be to sell off the CSIRO, or at least finish its disbanding (it has had massive budget cuts and staff layoffs).
Yeah, there’s something in the water in Queensland – crocodiles. Fucking massive saltwater crocodiles.
As a Queenslander I have to say I’m appalled, but not at all surprised. The current conservative government has made massive cuts to the CSIRO (huge science job losses and even several iconic radio observatories are being forced to shut down), and a heck of a lot of kooks have been getting into positions where they really shouldn’t be.
My only consolation is that the severity and brazenness of the attacks on science, the environment and the less fortunate has woken up a lot of people politically. These days I can’t find anyone who supports the current party in power, just a bunch of ex-supporters who now despise them. I hope it’s enough to make a difference next time the elections come round.
Oh bloody mates, now I have to go dowse for some strong coffee…
Contact the Australian Skeptics–they have his answers: “The Great Water Divining DVD (featuring four videos covering 23 years of water divining in Australia)” was produced in 2003.
Hell, if *I* have a copy of it, it should be easy enough for an Australian to get one!
Queensland is the one part of Australia that at one time had slavery. Perhaps that’s related to it being the Australian Bible Belt.
I did once have experience with dowsing. My farmer-uncle (in a different part of Australia) was explaining it to me. But it didn’t work for me. So my uncle had me hold one side of the dowsing rod while I held the other. That time, it worked — but I could easily tell that it was my uncle’s muscles, rather than dowsing magic, that was doing the work.
If only they could find some, to test its composition. hmmmmm, better get dowsing, to find some whater!1!1
I wonder if dowsing is made easier, when you are in the state overlying the world’s biggest artesian basin?
I used a dowser and he was right on every question. I asked how deep the well would be and he said deep enough and sure enough when we had drilled deep enough we found water, I also asked how much flow there would be and he said there would be flow enough and it did flow just enough. I then asked what the quality of the water would be and he said “wet” and it is the wettest water you will ever see so Skefticks you are totally confounded. three for three!!!
I was told that Queensland alone has a currently uncultivated land with the potential to grow biomass (sugar, indeed) which stretches the same distance as Denmark-Italy. The fact that Australia doesn’t mandate bioethanol use as fuel or fuel additives (in a similar manner to Brasil) means that there is no incentive to increase the output of such biorenewables. We collaborated on a couple of transnational projects funded by CSIRO, it is obvious that the organisation has been severely damaged by the recent cuts – their biofuels research was basically shut down. I’m told that they basically aren’t renewing researcher contracts, and something like 1300-3000 staff (including support staff) will lose their jobs.
The low priority given to science funding is very evident. Queensland is currently offering a total pool $4.25m for the 2014 Accelerate Partnerships (up to 500k per project for two years), which is a very small sum indeed given the number of research institutions in the state.
Unfortunately, as I’m sure you know, it’s a lot easier to destroy a scientific institution, or a beautiful or useful part of the natural environment, than it is to repair them. I guess CSIRO is being punished both because it shows how excellence can flourish in the public sector, and because it has carried out much admirable environmental science exposing the dangers of unrestricted capitalism.
I really believe that all science degrees must include one course on magic, one course on frauds and cons, and one course on Magic Thinking and Confirmation Bias. Just simple prophylactic measures which would greatly decrease the number of instances of professional scientists being gobsmacked by the most obvious of frauds and/or sloppy thinking.
Forget dowsing: scientists need to figure out how the little people get inside my television set. I’ve no idea how they do it.
Drowsing. Without first reading the important Health & Safety Warning.
Sorry. Larry Marshall’s family might be from Queensland, but he is a born and bred Sydney-sider. Not only that, the University of Queensland often ranks better than the University of Sydney (e.g. http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html). Specifically, Dr. Marshall received his BS from Macquarie University in Sydney (which has an even lower rank). Sure, Queensland ‘claims’ Ken Ham and Sir Joe, but Sydney, you made Tony Abbot – yes, Usyd Alumni.
QLD FTW!
Anyway – dosing for water? Thats enough stupidity for an entire continent, especially the smallest continent. I’m going off to hang my head in shame.
You mean to say, #15, that anyone Down Under is willing to claim Ham? Poor sods.
How is it even dowsing anymore if you’re using machines?
Given that the conservative Tony Abbott government is working hard to out-Harper the Harper government in Canada when it comes to shutting down science and shutting up scientists, this shouldn’t surprise anyone. When you put conservative wingnuts in government, you end up with conservative wingnut governance. The Aussies have got to learn the same hard lessons the Canadians have been learning in that regard.
Follow the money. If someone claimed you could find gold by smearing a puree of rhino horn on a cat and then following it and digging where it first stops to wash itself, well… there would be several brands of pureed alleged-rhino horn and kitten farms with specials on shovels.
One fraudster in the UK made multiple millions selling “electronic drowsing” equipment — nothing more than a golf-ball detector — to various countries, including Iraq, as “bomb detectors” for around 800 (GBP?) a pop. He sold thousands. (He’s now in prison, albeit, last I recall reading, the useless kit is still being used (in Iraq), and another fraudster has sold similar kit to Thailand.)
@blf: I’d heard about those. I was talking about machinery that actually works, but I suppose Dr. Marshall might not be using such mundane, utilitarian criteria.
Anyone up for water dowsing in minecraft? It’s 80% effective.
Naked Bunny with a Whip, those “bomb detectors” do work — they made the fraudster (and the politicians / officials he very probably bribed) wealthy. The machines might even detect golf balls (albeit obviously not by drowsing). Bombs, not so much, other than by nudging one and making it explode prematurely.
Doesn’t actually need government support. I’m sure people can hold a twig and fail to find water on their own.
dust bowl
polishing up apples
rotten cores
There is a reason I’m postdoc-ing overseas. It’s hard to get perspective when you grow up in a CSIRO family and see the neglect, infighting and mis-management destroy it from the inside and out. But I can now say that it looks even worse from the outside, with galahs such as Abbot and other scientific illiterates as entrenched as ever, we are becoming a laughing stock. It is an unscientific study, but from within my cohort of colleagues, few (read none) are positive about future careers in natural sciences, or the state of Australian science in general. The probably clever ones have already left, the rest of us are still having out spirits broken.
@Bernard Bumner (#10) true, QLD has plenty of potentially arable land, but we shouldn’t exploit it just because it’s there! As with much of Australia, it is dry (hence the water divining crap) but also beautiful and irreplaceable. We should look at reducing use entirely before trampling over native habitat to offset a dependence on fossil fuel. Besides, Australia has a horrible record with carving out great resource utilization schemes that fail spectacularly. It was tried IN QLD by Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen with wholesale slash and burn of now endangered habitat, but see also the Argyle Dam project and selling off Tasmanian wood chips at a loss…
PZ, John Wilkins taught in one of the Gold Coast universities for a while. He does not have flattering things to say about the inhabitants.
It’s not for nothing we call Queensland the Deep North. The legacy of Joh lives on. (Not that he was solely responsible or anything like it, but he does stick in the memory.)
That Hyena Bloke @3, yeah, that lot are closing down everything they can, aren’t they? Even the government printing service, that puts out things like the Queensland tide tables and the Australian Small Ships Manual – essential information. As my former boss used to tell people trying to buy the tide tables, “They don’t have tides in Queensland anymore. Campbell Newman cancelled them.”
The CSIRO has been warning about increasing soil salinity for decades. And I understand that using aquifer water radically increases the problem.
Ahhh, right. I know the solution – shoot the messenger and maximise those short-term profits. Who cares if the land will become unusable for generations, and “some cleared catchments would not see recovery within normal human timescales”.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/salinity/
Dowsing? My husband knows it works. He was working at various times in a copper mine. The guy who operated the winch excitedly waved to the miners waiting for their turn to go below.
He’d learned dowsing! He had a twig that was twitching! There’s water down there! Water! This is fantastic!
Not really. The mine used a pump to get rid of a quarter million gallons of water a day. Not only did the miners already know there was water “down there”, they’d nearly drowned in it a couple of times when the pumps failed.
In downunder Texas people will believe anything, including the theory that dumping dredging spoil for increasing coal exports won’t harm the Great Barrier Reef. Our esteemed federal treasurer even claims our coal is cleaner than most.
We are ruled by fules.
Lofty got it right, Queensland is the Texas of Australia. When the neocons got into power here, they merged a number of government departments into the Department of Science, Information Technology, Innovation and the Arts, colloquially known as the Department of Shit the Liberal National Party Don’t Give a Fuck About. (By way of comparison, roads have their very own department… they are what the LNP believe “infrastructure” to be).
As a Queenslander, I was appalled when the LNP was voted back in, given they had a fascist-like stranglehold on the state for decades. They immediately started dismantling services, while simultaneously undermining 600+ years of legal reforms (I wish I was being hyperbolic). The the rest of the country followed our lead in the federal elections after twelve months of seeing exactly what this assholes stand for is something I’ll never fucking fathom for as long as I live.
Matthew Trevor @30
I ask myself this every fucking time the LNP gets back in. Never thought I’d see a PM I loathed more viscerally than I did Howard.
2kittehs @ 31
When people around me whine about how they voted LNP not realising how bad they would be, I always say “If only there’d been an example their shitbaggery in living memory for you to draw upon…”
As much as I hate it, right now Australia has the politicians it deserves.
There’s a term for it in Queensland – going tropo.
Matthew Trevor @32, you nailed it.
All true, and I wouldn’t advocate unrestrained use of the land. But even though those fields of sugar cane can seem endless when you drive through them, only a very tiny percentage of the potentially arable land is utilised (and QLD is still the third largest producer of sugar globally). The water problem is also one of infrastructure.
Australia has a transport fuel supply problem, and as I’m sure you know even the Great Barrier Reef park is threatened as a result. Reduction has to be a major part of policy, but you also have to displace some of that fossil technology. Queensland, given suitable investment in infrastructure, research, and government mandates for alternative technologies, could sustainably (and profitably) produce biorenewables, and at an acceptable environmental cost.
Currently, Australian natural resources are a hostage to politics, and sensible voices in organisations like CSIRO who advocate responsible development of alternative, lower impact resource usage are simply not heard. Queensland is currently seeing much more investment in mining than sustainable technology and efficiency – which is much more of a blight and more environmentally damaging, whilst also using huge amounts of power and water.
The impression I have is they are being heard, and fired (terminated) for making noise and attempting to distract from
conversationsmud-slinging of “grown-ups”.Jim McCormick invented a successful dowsing detector called the ADE 651 that was capable of finding bombs, drugs, and illegal ivory. Apparently, it able to distinguish between that and legal ivory. It worked so well that he was able to sell $82,000,000 worth of them to Iraq.
I’m sure that when he finishes his 10-year stint in prison that he’ll be more than happy to modify it to find water in Australia.
Meanwhile, Queensland police are living up to their well-earned reputation:
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/21/brisbane-police-shoot-man-in-head
“Comply, or face the consequences”
gondwanarama
To play on his words, when hasn’t Queensland been that state – a police state?
2kittehs
On a scale of Fitzgerald to Bjelke-Petersen, we’re almost back to full Bjelke-Petersen.
I’ve lived in Brisbane for 25 years now and I can’t recall a single pleasant experience with the police. I’ve been gutpunched by a cop in the heart of the city for jay walking. I’ve had a cop pull a gun on me for reporting someone taking photos of the neighbour’s children playing in their yard. I’ve had one pull his car over to ask me what the fuck I thought I was looking at.
Queensland has always been full of thugs and bully boys.
Seconded.
Hi Guys,
I grew up with Larry in Sydney, not Queensland, and he has a PhD in physics. I’m not sure where this story is comming from. The Melbourne Skeptics doesn’t attribute it. Knowing Larry he could have set it as a toss around but he is a pretty firm science minded guy.
Here is the source for the quote http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-20/new-csiro-head/5827432 He’s just shooting the breeze in response to a question.