Oh FFS: from http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstor...name_page.html
EXPERTS: 'NO TRUTH IN STARS'
BEFORE you get carried away about your stars today, consider this... scientists reckon astrology is nonsense.
Teams from Germany and Denmark studied 15,000 people and said the position of planets on your birth date has no influence on your character.
They wrote: "The study provides no evidence of relationships between date of birth and individual personality.
"The survey found no independent effects of sun signs and yields no support for the claims of astrology."
But Mirror astrologist Debbie Frank branded the report "ridiculous".
She said: "If astrology works for the person whose chart is being read, if they derive benefit from it and they believe it works, then it works."
Doh! It just gets woise and woise ...
ROT'S IN THE STARS
Scientists say horoscopes are all nonsense
By Laurie Hanna
BEFORE you get carried away about what your stars have in store for you today, consider this. Scientists reckon astrology is nonsense.
No surprises there, you may think, but now researchers claim to have proof predictions in sun signs such as Aries and Gemini are worthless.
Teams from Germany and Denmark studied 15,000 people and came to the conclusion that the position of Jupiter or Uranus on the day of your birth has no influence on your character whatsoever.
The scientists wrote: "The study provides no evidence for the existence of relationships between birth date and personality.
"If there is some truth to astrology then some general effects of prominent astrological factors like sun signs should be detectable.
"The survey found no independent effects of sun signs and yields no support for the claims of astrology."
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But Mirror astrologist Debbie Frank branded the report "ridiculous" and said astrology should not be treated as a science.
She added: "The tyranny of science says that nothing exists unless it is provable. That means love and beauty don't exist.
"If astrology works for the person whose chart is being read, if they derive benefit from it and they believe it works, then it works."
TV star gazer Russell Grant insisted "proper" astrology was valid.
He said: "Astrology is based on where all the planets are at the exact time of someone's birth, and that has been used for thousands of years."
l.hanna@mirror.co.uk
Well if they're desperate enough to wheel Russel Grant out, I feel rather sorry for them.
Hubby said an astrologer on Radio 5 today was trying to say the study was flawed because many of the subjects were soldiers and soldiers are trained to supress their personalities.
Not at all insulting, not at all.
Edited to add: you can listen to the show again on the Radio 5 website, it's the Morning Phone In, 27th April.
I haven't had chance to listen yet but hubby informs me the astrologer's 'prediction' of the professor's personality is just hilarious.
I like this one: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/...861490053.html
Ms Ayers was unable undertake a reading for the Herald yesterday due to an unforeseen problem with her hot water, but she said: "There was a lot of planetary activity in my fourth house so I did see something of that nature, a domestic upheaval. But it can manifest itself in many different ways. I'm trying to ring a plumber now."
And she's dissing tarot and palmistry. Whatever happened to woo solidarity?
Oh boy.
I emailed Laurie Hanna (I'm not going to cut and paste the email because it's huge) about the article, going into detail about why astrology is bunk.
I wonder if I'll get a reply?
And that folks in a nutshell explains what's wrong with this country :(Originally Posted by Blue Bubble
Ms Frank isn't a creationist too by any chance??
The Independent, of course, also feels obliged to defend astrology in a piece just as bad as their recent one about sCAM.
For Pete's sake, they've even put it under "Science and Technology"! >:(
Mystery of the planets: It's in the stars. Really
Is it worth writing to them pointing some of the errors in this?A study of 15,000 people claims there is no scientific basis for astrology. The faith of horoscope fans, though, is unshakeable. Terry Kirby explains why they may just be right, after all
There is one very simple answer that those who accept the principles of astrology give to sceptics who condemn it as a load of mumbo-jumbo: don't look at the stars for an explanation, go to the coast and look at the sea.
The massive power of waves and the tides that cause them are, it is universally accepted, a direct consequence of the gravitational influences of the Moon and the Sun upon Earth. We also know that the Moon sometimes determines animal behaviour and has long been linked with aspects of our lives as diverse as a women's menstrual cycle and mental disturbance, hence the word lunatic.
Is it, astrologists argue, therefore completely impossible that the other planets also exert influences on our lives and personalities, to greater or lesser degrees and in varying combinations? And that, having been around in various forms since the ancient Babylonians first began to describe celestial omens 4,000 years ago, astrology deserves more respect than the derision commonly accorded it by the rational scientists and the established churches.
That, for example, because of the inverse square law and the distance to the planets, the midwife (and, I suspect, the father if he happens to be present at the birth) exerts more of a gravitational force on the newborn than the planets do;
that there is nothing to suggest that anything special that could be influenced by the position of the planets happens at the time of birth, as far as the formation of character is concerned, and nothing to suggest how the particular positions of the planets at the time of birth could have any more influence on future events than their positions at any other randomly chosen time;
that waves (apart from surge waves such as the Severn Bore) are caused by the action of wind on the water surface, not tides;
that while the menstrual cycle in humans is roughly the same as the period of the moon's orbit this is a coincidence (menstrual cycles for other mammals are not the same, e.g. mouse: 5 days, cow: 21 days, elephant: 16 weeks, dog: 6 months);
and, of course, the fact that something has been believed for a long time does not mean that it is actually true...
Yet more signs that there's a general trend moving away from science. It seems to me that science is gaining a negative image while all this hocus pocus stuff is being widely promoted even by the 'big guns' who really should know better. I'm convinced that we're heading into some sort of Dark Age! :(
Nice to see Bad Astronomer Phil Plait giving astrology a good going over at
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc...logy.html#harm
I'm thinking of sending the email I sent to the Mirror reporter to Terry Kirby as well.
Really interesting discussion about astrology guys, but I fear this thread should be retitled "It’s time to take UK Skeptics off-topic" :(
Any newbie dropping into this site won't be able to see any of the excellent links, quotes and comments above, and having so few posts in the public areas makes the forum look 'dead' from their point of view. We need to encourage people and make ourselves look alive 8)
John, can you move this bit of the discussion into a more appropriate and public place?
Astrology sucks!!!!!
It was a detestation of Russell Grant (along with dear old Eric von Daniken) that got me into skepticism in the first place.
Another good skeptical examination of Astrology is at http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2...trology_c.html.
My sisters are fraternal triplets, all born within an hour. Identical astrological charts, of course, since few natal horological astrologers pretend anything more than an hour's granularity. Amazingly enough, they have completely different lives -- indeed, they're completely different people.
How can this be?!
You've got to be impressed by the birdcage liners' eagerness to support the concept, though. (And the Independent ... so pompous, so self-righteous, yet they still lend aid and comfort to astrologers AND Robert Fisk.)
What tickles me is that astrology sort of assumes there are only 12 types of people in the world.
Sometimes I go between finding that funny because everyone is so damn different, and finding it funny because everyone is so damn similar.
So, when they insist that they don't just work on 12 signs, but want to know to the minute when you were born, you can just sort of innocently ask whether that means there are as many types as there are minutes in the year. Makes their eyebrows twitch :)
I understand this, I'm a twin and I have 7 minutes on my brother.
At the moment he's got the spare bedroom in mine and my girlfriends house, his boss is looking at making him redundant and re-employing him part time, because the business insurance will cover that, and he's divorced.
I on the other hand am buying the house with my girlfriend, we've lived together for eight years and I have a reasonably paid (but boring) job that's steady...
Could an astrologer choose between us reliably?
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