Debunking Astrology besides newspapers Sun Signs

[Pixel42]

Why don't you tell me what you think it claims to be and what you think it's practitioners think it is, so we can figure out whether you are objecting to it based on some understanding of it or simply because it does not fit your world view.

I have to say I agree with Garrette. You seem to be saying that all the dozens of studies that have been done so far were a waste of time because they didn't test what astrology really is, despite the fact that they all tested claims made by real astrologers. In that case you need to tell us what you think astrology really is, and point to the studies that show those claims really do stand up.

By evidence, I assume you mean a formal objective study and the answer is that to the best of my knowledge there is no objective evidence for or against it. I think it should be studied, best place to start would be India. You could identify a dozen experts in the US, but that would take some work.

There is (apparently) a lot of evidence that newspaper astrology ("you are a kind person who likes people") is useless, and I think it would not be too hard to conclude that the majority of astrologers working in new age havens like Sedona, AZ are useless. Studies based on such people are also useless.

There is observational evidence that astrology works, though perhaps not for what is often referred to as western astrology. There are different kinds of astrology. I'm not very familiar with western astrology.

"Observational evidence" is what convinced astrologers and their clients that the claims already tested were true; they weren't. The perception that they were was erroneous, an artifact of our cognitive biases. What leads you to think that claims which have not yet been tested will be different?

ETA: Indian scientists on Vedic astrology

2009, Vol 96(5), 641-643
A statistical test of astrology
The first statistical test of astrology made in India. Indian astrologers claim they can tell your intelligence from your horoscope. But 27 astrologers failed to perform better than chance when given 40 horoscopes of bright children and retarded children. J.V.NARLIKAR et al, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune. Further details, other failures by Indian strologers, and more on the UGC (by 2001 grants to establish university departments of astrology had been approved for 20 out of 45 applicants) are in Narlikar's An Indian Test of Indian Astrology, Skeptical Inquirer 37(2), 45-49, March/April 2013.

 

[sphenisc]

Your argument would be more effective if that were the only time that this experiment had ever been performed. In fact it has been performed many times, with many different audiences. I've done a slightly modified form of it myself, with exactly the same result.

It's a long shot, but do you happen to have any notes on the wording you used to introduce your subjects to the test and what they're supposed to do?

Thanks

 

[Garrette]

With all due respect, you might wish to tell us precisely what you think astrology is. What input does it require, and what output does it provide. Then perhaps you could tell us whether you feel there is e idence in support of it and precisely what it is.

>what you think astrology is.

Why don't you tell me what you think it claims to be and what you think it's practitioners think it is, so we can figure out whether you are objecting to it based on some understanding of it or simply because it does not fit your world view.

No, though I could do so to a degree you would probably find surprising yet still to a degree that makes me far less than an expert. I do not go seeking astrologers' claims to rebut; I look at evidence -- pro and con -- for the claims that are made, and many have been made here and elsewhere.

If there is no claim that you are defending -- or at least referencing -- then there is no claim for me to investigate. I will not define the claims for you.

By evidence, I assume you mean a formal objective study and the answer is that to the best of my knowledge there is no objective evidence for or against it.

There is certainly no objective evidence for it that withstands scrutiny (granted that Gauquelin's research might be stretched to fit it, but it would be a stretch and would also require dismissal of the criticisms against it). Objective evidence against it is another matter. You might begin with Carlson's paper in Nature, A Double-Blind Test of Astrology. Of course, you might dismiss it in a manner similar to how you dismiss Forer's study and the informal replications afterward. Or perhaps you will dismiss it because it isn't the right kind of astrology. Since you call astrology an "it" and not a "them," I suspect the latter is the case. And since you do call it an "it," I wonder about your apparent reticence to lay out what it is.

I think it should be studied, best place to start would be India.

Vedic, then. It's been discussed repeatedly here, and at one point we had a resident expert (skeptical expert to be sure but one whose knowledge of the systems was not bested here).

You could identify a dozen experts in the US, but that would take some work.

Or, more appropriately, those who claim legitimacy for the field could identify their own experts and conduct their own studies to demonstrate its efficacy.

There is (apparently) a lot of evidence that newspaper astrology ("you are a kind person who likes people") is useless, and I think it would not be too hard to conclude that the majority of astrologers working in new age havens like Sedona, AZ are useless. Studies based on such people are also useless.

Useless how? If they are appropriately conducted the studies would provide evidence for or against; that has value. More to the point, you seem to dismiss this system of astrology with less evidence than we have against it and for which you criticize us. Where does your knowledge of the uselessness of Sedona astrologers come from?

There is observational evidence that astrology works,

There is observational evidence that the Loch Ness Monster exists which is on a par with any formally presented evidence that astrology works. Is this observational evidence separate from or included in your earlier statement that so far as you know there are no formal studies supporting astrology?\

though perhaps not for what is often referred to as western astrology. There are different kinds of astrology. I'm not very familiar with western astrology.

And yet you dismiss it. Why is that?

 

[Garrette]

You're not a large gasbag who distorts the truth and can't think clearly?

A few minutes in a chart can make all the difference in the world. It can be sufficient to change the rising sign of the chart, the most significant aspect of any chart, a signification that changes every two hours. 7:50 sure looks like a rounded number. When my son was born the clock in the hospital room was off five minutes.

You would have to establish that you had Rush's birth time accurately recorded. To say nothing of your own. Big if. Rush has given this information out on his radio show? That surprises me. I've seen different birth times for John Lennon and Bill Clinton, they can't all be correct.

I've never encountered anything remotely like what your experience has been. I don't know much about so called western astrology, but it is goofy beyond all measure to have someone take issue with your time if it is correct within a few minutes (usually) and location is never an issue, even off by 20 miles.

You might wish to check for consistency here.

 

[steenkh]

I've never encountered anything remotely like what your experience has been. I don't know much about so called western astrology, but it is goofy beyond all measure to have someone take issue with your time if it is correct within a few minutes (usually) and location is never an issue, even off by 20 miles.

So what do astrologers say to customers who cannot determine their birth minute or even their birth hour? Are they rejected and told that no horoscope can be constructed because it would be off by too much?

 

[Garrette]

So what do astrologers say to customers who cannot determine their birth minute or even their birth rate? Are they rejected and told that no horoscope can be constructed because it would be off by too much?

Setting aside Frank McLaughlin's inconsistency for the moment, this is an excellent question.

The implication of his posts is that all legitimate astrologers (of the Vedic kind) acquire reliable information of this sort. I sincerely doubt that they actually do even now, but let's assume that today all clients of Vedic astrologers either provide accurate birth information or are turned away by the astrologer due to insufficient data to provide an accurate chart. How did the astrologers determine the accuracy needed?

Go back decades or even one century. Who at that time had birth data accurate to within a few minutes? Who, as adults in rural India, could guarantee even a guaranteed birth date, or if they could do that, could guarantee even a segment of day such as morning, afternoon, evening, or dark of night? And if they could not do so, then the readings are suspect, yes? And if such accuracy was not required then, what has changed to make it required now? Systems change and are refined, there is no doubt; it is, in fact, a mark of maturity and reliability that systems adapt to new information, but where is the information that spurred the changed, and who abides by it and who doesn't?

 

[Foolmewunz]

It does seem we're heading towards a No True Astrology(er) argument.

 

[Garrette]

It does seem we're heading towards a No True Astrology(er) argument.

Indeed it does, though I've tried to avoid labeling it as such to this point. It may also turn out to be more than that. I say "may" because Frank McLaughlin may come back with legitimate arguments.

Not only is anything tested so far not a representation of real astrology (or at least of skilled astrologers), according to Frank McLaughlin, the one astrology that is real ("Indian," by which I assume he means Vedic) is real although it has no more evidence for it and just as much evidence against it as the astrological systems Frank McLaughlin says are not real.

 

[Magrat]

Whenever I use the videos by Sagan, Randi, etc, to debunk astrology, I get replies that "Sun Signs" are nonsense, real astrology is not about that, but about the so called "Natal Charts".

Unfortunatelly, most debunking I was able to find on the internet is always about Sun Signs.

Obviously, Natal Charts made no sense anyway, since they are based on stuff invented by ancient babylonians, who thought Earth was flat and the stars and planets were fixed on a celestial abode.

But it would be interesting if someone could provide me with directions to better, more general debunking of astrology besides the usual Sun Sign debunking (which is after all just general mass media astrology, while astrologers claim Natal Charts are made for individuals and specific and personal)

here is the link for a video where I am arguing with a astrologer named Gae Xavier, and she got all irritated by the debunking of Sagan and Randi against newspaper Sun Sign and started with the old "Sun Sign is not real astrology, I make star maps and Natal Charts for decades and they are always right"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y84HX2pMo5U

My mom was and still is a firm believer in astrology and occult. As a kid, I also believed in this stuff, and in fact I had a computer program for creating natal charts.

I have made hundreds and hundreds of these things, before I learned better. They absolutely are not made for individuals...my windows 3.0 computer in the early '90s wasn't capable of regressing the stars or anything that would be necessary to even determine where the stars were when you were born, let alone what that might mean.

A natal chart takes a defined date and allocates the planets and the sun into "houses" that do not bear much relation to what you see in the sky. There is some correlation; if you were born 12/24, in the northern hemisphere, Capricorn is in the sky.

The houses are the zodiac signs, and the one that appears in the general area of the sun when it rises is your star sign. The place the other planets (meaning mercury, Venus, mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, and the moon, because the people who made this stuff up didn't know about Neptune or Pluto or that new planet they just discovered) raise at nightfall gives you different traits. Ie a moon in Leo, Saturn in Ares, etc... And this does take into account the time and place you are born, meaning, your natal chart is supposed to reflect what was actually in the sky above your place of birth at that moment.

Okay so first of all, you can't see all of the zodiac constellations (which have changed through time) all year, so how can we say Uranus is in Leo if we can't see Leo? Second, they were guessing, because even with the best astrological tables they could make they didn't have telescopes. Third, why do only some planets impact our lives, and only some constellations? Fourth, some zodiac signs that were originally used have been dropped, without any apparent impact on the "viability" of prediction. Fifth, what about twins?

In a related note, I was born at the same time and in the same hospital room as a boy named Adam. We went through school together. Not only do we have opposite personalities, but he became a drug addict and dropped out of school in 11th grade. I have a master's degree. Where in our natal chart, which is identical (I ran it) does it show this variability? Where was my spinal cord injury and severe disability predicted?

Unless the individual talking about natal charts has the ability to regress the stars and tell you the coordinate position of the relevant planets in the zodiac houses at the time and place of his or her birth, and can prove some sort of impact that they aren't causing themselves in their belief, all they are telling you is someone charged them about $50 to print an exceptionally long horoscope for them. That's it.

 

[Magrat]

http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~frosales/html/zodiac/

This is what I was referring to, that the constellations don't reflect the zodiac as created, and some of the original ones are missing.

 

[steenkh]

The implication of his posts is that all legitimate astrologers (of the Vedic kind) acquire reliable information of this sort. I sincerely doubt that they actually do even now, but let's assume that today all clients of Vedic astrologers either provide accurate birth information or are turned away by the astrologer due to insufficient data to provide an accurate chart. How did the astrologers determine the accuracy needed?

I have heard about astrologers solving this by asking for information about life events of the customers, and then backtracking their charts to find the "real" birth data.

 

[Garrette]

I have heard about astrologers solving this by asking for information about life events of the customers, and then backtracking their charts to find the "real" birth data.

I have heard the same, but only as a rationalization after, and it lends itself quite well to testing, were they amenable to it.

 

[AdamSK]

I have heard the same, but only as a rationalization after, and it lends itself quite well to testing, were they amenable to it.

How would you put together a protocol to test this?

 

[Garrette]

How would you put together a protocol to test this?

In broad outline and certainly open to adjustment by those with better credentials than I possess:

Three pools of agreed upon astrological experts (recognized by the community of practicioners of the tested system):

Phase 1

1. Pool 1 is provided with the biographies of famous, deceased individuals whose known birth details are known in general only.

2. The experts use the biographies to determine birth dates, times, and/or locations (depending on what they claim they can decipher from bios).

3. The results are compared for similarities.


Phase 2

1. The resulting birth dates and times are blinded in that they are de-linked from the famous names.

2. Pool 2 uses the de-linked birth information to create astrological charts. They also create charts for fictitious birth information (without knowing which information is fictitious).

3. Pool 3 reviews Pool 2's charts and attempts to correlate them with the list of famous names.


That's exceptionally rough, but you should get the idea.

 

[arthwollipot]

And this experiment establishes what? That if you get a bunch of impressionable 18 year olds in a room and provide instruction from a recognized authority figure, you can manipulate them into accepting foolish ideas? For starters, in the experiments you site, as far as I know, the "reading" consisted of a lot of vague psychological statements that most people would find true.

In the case of the modified version that I performed, I had only one subject. She was not 18, she was not a student, and I was not an authority figure to her. I got her to give me her birth date, time and place, and then I went to three different astrology sites on the internet, plugged in random dates, times and places (completely ignoring the data she gave me) and copied random parts of the three sets of results into one document.

She said that it was the most accurate reading anyone had ever done for her.

 

[dropzone]

Did that encourage her to sleep with you? Because there's a lot of opportunity there.

 

[Fudbucker]

Maybe it amounted to heresy but it was not unsupported from the beginning. It had been apparent for some time that there was something wrong with Newtonian physics. Einstein had to fiddle around with his equations until they matched the orbit of Mercury that did no longer fit Newton with sufficient accuracy. In other words, Einstein had evidence that something needed to be done, and he came up with a theory that fitted the old and the evidence.



Completely wrong. Nobody came up with the idea out of thin air. Dark matter was observed through the movement of galaxies, and we know exactly where it is. A few years later, astronomers were able to map dark matter from the effect on light. We have seen it, we know where it is, we know how it acts, but we do not know what it is.

ETA: Scientific theories do not get created from nothing, but are the result of observations. Astrology is created solely from what the customers want to hear. There is not a single observation behind anything astrologers come up with. When Pluto was discovered, astrologers were able to include the effect of it in their charts immediately. They had not noticed that something was missing before.

Quibble: Dark matter was inferred from observations. Not everyone is convinced dark matter even exists. There are scientists working on modified gravity theories (MOND), but they are very much the minority. If dark matter continues to mystify, I imagine MOND theories will become more popular. No one likes an unsolvable mystery.

On the astrology side, my wife is heavily into it and always bridles when people talk about planets (or the sun) having some sort of influence on us. In her mind, they are simply markers affected by some force that permeates the universe (and, I guess, affects us at birth) and the planets and sun are only important in inferring a statistical correlation (not a causation) between the position of the planets at time of birth and a person's personality. I don't know if that's a standard astrological view or not. I try to pin her on what this force might be, but she could care less about that side of it. She is just convinced it's there, it affects everything, and is a factor in determining personality.

The Natal charts she makes are extremely complex and make pretty specific predictions. She told my sister that since she has "a lot of water in her chart" (whatever that means, I don't follow much of it) there's a good chance she could/does have problems with alcohol. This prediction would have failed completely, had my sister not been the problem drinker that she is.

Of course, one correct prediction does not validate an entire field, but I read the chart she did for me, and compared it to the one she did for my sister and they were nothing alike. I would never have believed my sister's chart matched my personality, had she told me it was mine: I'm not into status, I'm not a workaholic (quite the opposite), I'm a slob, not a neat-freak, I don't care about material possessions, money is not a driving force for me, etc. These are all things that are true about my sister, however.

And no, she won't do charts for people who aren't specific about when/where they're born.

 

[arthwollipot]

Did that encourage her to sleep with you? Because there's a lot of opportunity there.

She was a colleague at work. It would have been improper. Also, she gave me no indication that she was remotely interested.

 

[lpetrich]

I've never seen a horoscope that was "feel good platitudes."

I looked at some astrological predictions, and they seem very vague and general. Predictions like at Free Horoscope Predictions and Astrology Forecasts - Free Horoscopes Astrology

I remember a woman who discovered that because she was a Pisces, she was supposed to be dreamy and mystical. But she's a hard-nosed rationalist and skeptic.

I've never seen a horoscope that dealt with personality traits. I understand that they exist. I see it in my daily paper (not the great NY Times). Of what use would it be to provide someone the traits of their own personality?

Horoscope, Todays Horoscope for you, Free Horoscope Online | Astrospeak.com discusses personality traits associated with each Sun Sign.


Croesus^WP -- a little before 547 BCE, King Croesus of Lydia, what's now western Turkey, was thinking of attacking the Persian Empire. He asked for advice about it from the Oracle of Delphi in Greece, and the oracle told him that a great empire would fall if he did so. Expecting to defeat the Persians, he did so, but the Persians won. The great empire that fell was his.

Alexander of Abonoteichus^WP -- Some time around 166 CE, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was fighting the Marcomanni and various other barbarians at the Danube River, and he asked AoA for advice. He responded that if you throw two lions into the Danube, a great victory would result. Marcus Aurelius ordered that, but it was the Marcomanni who won the great victory.

When AoA was asked about that, he stated that the god that he channeled did not specify who would win the great victory, something that chronicler Lucian of Samosata compared to that infamous prediction by the Oracle of Delphi.

Can astrologers do any better than the Oracle of Delphi and Alexander of Abonutichus in those infamous incidents?

 

[Frank McLaughlin]

I have to say I agree with Garrette. You seem to be saying that all the dozens of studies that have been done so far were a waste of time because they didn't test what astrology really is, despite the fact that they all tested claims made by real astrologers. In that case you need to tell us what you think astrology really is, and point to the studies that show those claims really do stand up.

How have you (or the studies' authors) determined what constitutes a "real astrologer?" How about you define that scientific term? Is someone an astrologer because they say they are or do you have a criteria?

I have a friend who took a one month course on astrology in Hawaii, came home, read some books moved to Sedona and now is one of the leading astrologers at that new age location. Another, who took the same course, runs an 800 astrology number out of Melbourne, FL.

The point is anyone can put a sign claiming to be an astrologer. India takes that to the ridiculous. Every time you step into a taxi the driver offers to take you to the home of Delhi's "greatest astrologer" to help you get lucky in love. If you agree, the driver asks personal questions during the ride, and the answers you feed him get repeated to the "astrologer" who uses that information during the reading.

Whether you want a medical cure from Ayurveda, a discussion on enlightenment, the experience of inner consciousness or a jyotish (Vedic) astrology reading, India has a million fakes for every one who knows something.

The studies you have pointed me to are a waste of time because no attempt was made to determine, at least observationally, the skill of the astrologer.

"Observational evidence" is what convinced astrologers and their clients that the claims already tested were true; they weren't. The perception that they were was erroneous, an artifact of our cognitive biases. What leads you to think that claims which have not yet been tested will be different?

You are telling me astrologers in India made predictions and their clients reported that those predictions came true, but in fact they didn't come true, and the discrepancy is an "artifact of cognitive bias?" What? An astrologer tells me my mother will die this fall. Fall comes, and I think my mother is dead, but she's not. It's just my cognitive bias. I report to the western scientists looking to conduct an objective study that this astrologer is qualified...but he's really not cause my mother didn't really die.

You are losing me.

I see no evidence an attempt was made to find competent astrologers. It is easy enough to do if the attempt is to be objective instead of supporting the prevailing paradigm (which is what a lot of science is really about).