There are many reports about health symptoms apparently caused by geopathic stress-sometimes collectively known as “sick building syndrome”.
There is often a correlation with active zones detected by dowsers.

This paper aims to describe the story of a society of mostly scientists, founded in 1977, namely known as GFBG, whose aim it was to discover a purely scientific, objective method based on sensors to find a causal relationship between the symptoms and the agent causing them.

Dowsers with a proven record of success in finding sources of water, active zones were able to be localized and corresponding physically known signals (i.e. signals of electromagnetic origin) were analysed.
It was found that, whereas some dowsers could indeed identify sources of electromagnetic signals, the inverse relation was not true: Some dowsers could detect active zones even from within a faraday cage.

Some 30 year after the foundation of the society, it has become clear that the active zones have no clearly identified connection to any person suffering from geopathic stress. To identify such an active zone reliably, a trained dowser is required and can not be replaced by a physical instrument.

Unfortunately, empirically detected results which do not conform with a known scientific model are not easily accepted by many members of the scientific community, due to the prevalence of the physicalist/materialist assumptions.