If dowsing is a real thing why can it never be demonstrated accurately under controlled conditions? ?

dowsing you with a bucket of water , can you see that , i can lol

maybe it isn't real, but if it is, nobody has any idea what conditions should be controlled.

Mirages (or as we Dutch call it: airmirrorings) do exist, but noone has ever reproduced them in Europe or inside a forest

As I said in a recent answer, there's a simple explanation for the apparent successes of those who do this. Water is just too easy to find. With all due respect to the late James Randi, his experiment that supposedly debunked dowsing was criticized by Arthur C. Clark, who said that if the results for WATER  dowsing were considered separately they made dowsing look interesting.  Clarke did not say he was convinced. He said he'd like to see an experiment with more data to consider.

It is reliable enough to be used by road and highway crews to find pipes, drains and wires,  Cemetery workers use it to avoid digging up unmarked graves and soldiers use it to find tunnels---If it didn't work it would not be used in such practical cases.

I have not heard of any tests where it was tested properly---Those carrying out the tests had no clue what dowsing was about---by burying jugs of water or looking at the Rods  themselves, etc.-----and NOT examining the actual reason being the natural human sensitivity to the local magnetic field variations, and the unconscious muscle responses to the same.  The spring sticks or swing rods only serve to make the muscle reactions visible.  As a Geologist, I can say that what is detected by dowsing, is identical to what we can do with the Photon Magnetometer.---only a bit less reliable, owing to the varying state of nervous stress in the individual, that might mask a response.

There is of course a superstitious aspect to dowsing also----there are claims it can detect the sex of unborn children, lead people to buried treasure and other things----This is where it gets really unreliable.----Its a carry over  from the pre-Scientific days when it was thought DOWSING could find anything, as folks didn't understand why it COULD find some things mentioned above.

Randi is one example of those "skeptics" who didn't understand it, or knew what it could do or could not.  He likely knew little more than regular folks--a few tales, stereotypes and stories.  He obviously did not test it.  He did not know what to test for.

Dowsing is not real.  James Randi explains it.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqoYrSd94kA

It definitely isn't real in the sense of just detecting water. I have read several controlled studies that failed to show any evidence for it. The first one I read about was in Germany years ago and it had quite a lot of media attention in the build up, then "as it became apparent the experiment was not going to find evidence, the media just drifted away and nothing was reported". If they can't even spin the story they want, they don't report it.

It is possible that some people are capable of locating natural water or utility pipes from subconscious environmental cues and use the dowsing rod to amplify the ideomotor reflex.

The basic problem is usually that if there is any water at all underground in a region, then it is everywhere.

Edited-

The usual excuses include:

- It just doesn't work under rigid test conditions;

- Interference by electronic gadgets;

- The tests were designed to fail;

- Too much negative energy from the skeptics.

Edit: @Tom, Randi certainly did test it.  And what does it matter if he "understood" it? The dowsers could not do what they said they could do, under controlled test conditions.  They failed miserably.  See: https://www.skeptics.com.au/resources/articles/aus...

It isn't - it can't

When did you ever try to demonstrate dowsing under controlled conditions? 

You answered your own question!  It's because it's NOT a real thing.