madrid@auvax (Roslyn Madrid) (07/18/83)
What follows is based on my recollection of an article
on CBC's radio program "Quirks and Quarks". I'm very sorry
that the details are fuzzy, but so is my memory. (If you
are so inclined ... The program in question occurred within
the last couple of months. The CBC does have a facility
for providing transcripts.)
A psychologist (Belgian, I believe) did a study of the
time of birth of superior athletes. Apparently, there was
a significant number of them born under the sign of Mars.
It seems that the experiment has been sucessfully repeated
using other data. (As long as one deals only with the
"creme de la creme". It does not seem to work with athletes
who are merely excellent.)
What I (and the writers of the article) found interesting
was the response of an organization (sorry I don't remember
the name) which has as its function the debunking of pseudo-
science. Some of its members seem to feel that the response
of the organization to this particular issue was over-zealous,
and that rather than fostering scientific inquiry, it was
functioning to defend Science as dogma. Some members have
tendered their resignations.
Can anyone provide more information?
R.
auvax!madridmmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (07/20/83)
It is not too surprising that more superior athletes (or anything else) should be born under on "sign" than another, since these normally represent roughly months of the year. Several attributes, including IQ, seem to vary as a function of the time of year of birth, probably because of the different activities of the mothers as the year progresses. Active mothers are probably healthy mothers with healthy children. But it is not at all clear what that has to do with astrology. Martin Taylor
FtG@rochester.UUCP (FtG) (07/21/83)
The problem with the study relating athletes and their horoscopes is that it is a classical example of the raindrop effect. You take a small sample, consider a lot of possible relationships, and voila! At least one surprising relationship will correlate. Magicians do this all the time by asking an audience member to name a card and presto, he pulls a sealed envelope out of his hat/ coat pocket/ shoe/ etc. that contains exactly that card. Since he never said ahead of time where he was going to get the envelope, he's free to pick the right one. It's amazing how much psuedo-science can be explained with very little knowledge of stage magic. FtG
debray@sbcs.UUCP (07/21/83)
>> A psychologist (Belgian, I believe) did a study of the >> time of birth of superior athletes. Apparently, there was >> a significant number of them born under the sign of Mars. >> It seems that the experiment has been sucessfully repeated >> using other data. (As long as one deals only with the >> "creme de la creme". It does not seem to work with athletes >> who are merely excellent.) For the study to be convincing, it would have to document not only that a significant number of superior athletes have been born under the sign of Mars, but also that the *proportion* of good athletes born under Mars is, statistically, *significantly* higher than the proportion of people from the general populace born under Mars, i.e. that the difference is unlikely to be due to sampling errors. Does anyone have any details about the study? Saumya Debray SUNY at Stony Brook