Glossary
- Radiesthesia
- A practice of holding a pendulum or dowsing rods in the hope of detecting something or getting answers. The word was coined around 1927.
- Dowser
- A person who uses a rod to look for underground water.
- Pendulum
- A weight hung from a thread, held in the hand above a board or a map.
- L-shaped dowsing rods
- Two rods bent at a right angle, each held by its short arm.
- Board
- A sheet bearing letters, numbers and answer squares, over which the pendulum is moved.
- Ideomotor effect
- A tiny, involuntary muscle movement triggered by the thought of a gesture. It explains the movement of the pendulum.
- Confirmation bias
- The tendency to remember what confirms what we believe and to forget the rest.
- Blind test
- A test in which the person holding the object does not know the right answer.
- Double-blind
- A test in which neither the participant nor the person recording the results knows the right answer. It is the standard for serious tests.
- Chance
- What you get by guessing. With two choices, one right answer in two. A result only counts if it clearly exceeds chance and is repeated.
- Geobiology
- A related practice that claims to detect "energies" in houses. It is not validated by science.