J,
<font color=blue>Science deals with fact, verifiable and reapeatable. </font color=blue> Except when it comes to evolution and events that occured millions or billions of years ago that we did not witness, but we won't touch that one /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif
The study(ies) that was done that you refer to, was it in regards to deep wells or shallow water? If it was deep wells I can understand that. But I've personally witnessed too many instances of shallow water being found to write it off. I used to view water witching, as you call it and I used to call it, as total nonsense -- until I saw it being done repeatedly with amazing results.
Harv gave the illustration (don't mean to drag you into this Harv, but you did post publicly /w3tcompact/icons/eyes.gif) where he saw it work and had some results then did not work for him later. This would support your lack of repeatability claim. Was that lack of repeatability due to lack of training or just the nonsense factor? Of course you would argue that it was nonsense, but how would you explain the engineer's ability to tell Harv how the irrigation pipes were laid out?
Now before you totally write me off, may already be too late for that, let me say that I like science. Was raised by a couple engineers. I like to be able to explain things in terms that are verifiable and repeatable. However, I have learned over the years that science is limited. Western medicine, one of the great bulwarks of science, cannot solve many issues. Some for lack of time, resources and knowledge but other things because the healing lies outside of science. The human will and emotion. Scientists usually find a way to discredit anything that does not fit into the narrow box of science, like using the "that treatment did not help you, it was the placebo effect". Is the "placebo effect" bad? Many of our greatest modern medicines work only slightly better then placebos (some around 50%), yet they are hearalded as great scientific achievement. Hmmm, repeatable? I think not.
Science changes its mind as new knowledge comes to the forefront. What is adamantly defended as truth today may be relegated to the "learning" pile tomorrow as we learn new things. Should we then toss out something just because we don't understand?
Of course you feel that <font color=blue>there is no, I repeat, no phenomena to investigate</font color=blue>. That's fine. Just wish that you would be able to see some of the results that I've seen. Maybe then we could explore why.