As one might imagine, experts have a dim opinion of the practice with the National Ground Water Association declaring that dowsing is "totally without scientific merit." To that end, hydrogeologist Timothy Parker observed that his work locating water involved using a variety of sensitive high-tech instruments "compared to dowsing, which is a person with a stick." For his part, Thompson dismissed the scientific skeptics, arguing that "they don't know the facts" and claiming that "I'm rarely wrong."