see if a gold object or a baseball trading card gives the same effect
Nice point. I think that anyone trying this technique should use this as a litmus test. It is very common for people to only look at positive results for known targets of interest. If you put a baseball card in the ground and get the same results then you've definitely shown that your technique is suspect. You can make a chart of the possibilites (there are actually 8 of them) to try and show whether or not a result is desireable and helps prove that the technique works.
1) Unknown target of non-interest with a negative result - This is desirable. You didn't want to find the item and you didn't.
2) Unknown target of non-interest with a positive result - This is undesirable. You had a positive hit on something you didn't want to find.
3) Unknown target of interest with a negative result - This is undesirable. You had a negative result on something you wanted to find.
4) Unknown target of interest with a positive result - This is desirable. You found something you were looking for.
5) Known target of non-interest with a negative result - This is desirable. But because the location is known the data point is not entirely conclusive.
6) Known target of non-interest with a positive result - This is undesirable. You had a positive hit on something you didn't want to find.
7) Known target of interest with a negative result - This is undesirable. You had a negative result on something you wanted to find.
8 ) Known target of interest with a positive result - This is desirable. But because the location is known the data point is not entirely conclusive.
So if you look at the eight possibilities above you'll see only two that really matter in proving this theory: 4) and 1). In both cases you are dealing with an item whose presence is unknown. In one case you find something you are looking for based on a positive result. In the other case you don't find something based on a negative result. The former being the true measure of the value of the proposed theory. After all, we can spend all day not finding something that we don't want. I don't need IR photography to do that.
So this long winded explanation is really just a ridiculous way of saying that the only real test of the theory and usefulness of the technique is going out and finding something unknown that you were hoping to find.
