Skyscript Astrology Forum

The problem with research is that it is often biased.See the posts below:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 114255.htm

Hah!!! This is a typical "Western scientific" study. They don't even know what kind of things they should be researching.

A few years back, a major Finnish newspaper publicized a chart of official police calls/incidences correlated to moon phases. The journalist wrote that the chart disapproved the whole idea. I looked at the chart and saw how it exactly confirmed the reality of "moon madness" - only the journalist didn't know what to look for. Only a scientist, who him/herself suffers of moon phase influence, is able to study what is relevant - but why has this not happened?

I realized already early on in my life that my energy cycles correlated with moon phases. Later on in my different jobs I learned that people take note of moon phases, when the job has to do with dealing with groups of people (for example restaurants and nightclubs). The effect of moon is clear, but it doesn't necessarily show up in official charts, because there is no reason to call the police for this behaviour.

P?ivi (who once again, like in the last over 50 years, spent the nights around full moon without sleep)


Hi Paivi

There is nothing wrong with that research as such.
But the conclusion they take from it is questionable.
And, as is not rarely the case, the journalist who wrote this piece for popular science website, is not very neutral in his reporting.
If you go to the site where the research itself was published, then the conclusions reads a bit different already:
http://www.ghpjournal.com/article/S0163 ... 9/abstract

Quoting:
"Significant seasonal effects were observed on panic and anxiety disorders, with panic more frequently encountered during spring [odds ratio (OR)=1.378, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.002?1.896] and anxiety disorders during summer (OR=1.586, 95% CI=1.037?2.425). Except for one significant finding, no significant effects of lunar cycles were observed. These findings encourage ED professionals and physicians to abandon their beliefs about the influence of lunar cycles on the mental health of their patients. Such unfounded beliefs are likely to be maintained by self-fulfilling prophecies."

***

So, they found significant seasonal effects (which doesn't even get mentioned by the journalist), and they had one significant finding for lunar effect (which gets brushed under the carpet).
There is of course a problem with brushing the significant finding for lunar cycle under the carpet by saying that 32% less anxiety in last quarter must be some coincidence. How do they know?
The proper conclusion would have been that more research will be needed on that effect.
Now they are effectively saying: when we negate the significant lunar effects, then there are no significant lunar effects.
Which is a classic example of begging the question.
If we negate the rain and the wind, then one can also "prove" that Britain has a pretty good climate. Heheh?

Further observations:
1) this was a limited study on 771 people with a very specific chest pain.
Even if it had showed a completely negative result for lunar phase effects (which was not the case), they cannot extend that result to all people.
If I study a village of 771 people and cannot find a single thief, then it doesn't lead to the conclusion that the entire country has no thieves.
That would be the logical error of generalization.

2) The seasonal effects they found are quite interesting.
Panic is connected to imbalance of the element Water. In spring season Water gets drained by the growing Wood, and this study shows increased panic attacks in spring. Nice. They also find more anxiety disorders in summer. Restlessness is a characteristic of Fire, so stronger Fire in summer leads to anxiety and also keeps Water weak. Anxiety disorders usually come with panic attacks. So this all fits the 5 element theory quite well.
Metal and Water are known for a calming effect, so less panics in autumn and winter.
What they fail to notice is that the last quarter of the lunar phase cycle happens to be the Metal-Water part of that cycle (because New Moon = Water/ Rat, see the Moon pillars in my software).

***

Both parts of their study thus found the same calming effect in seasonal cycle and in lunar cycle. People are more calm in the Metal/Water part of these cycles (= last quarter and days around New Moon).
Anxiety/panic increases in the Wood and Fire parts of these cycles ( = 2nd quarter and Full Moon)

As it happens, that is also what I found in my LunaticTrader stock market research. Investors have been more anxious in 2nd quarter and days around Full Moon for over 60 years (and counting...).. An effect that has been confirmed by various researchers.
So much for there being no lunar phase effect..

***

Now, it's easy to criticize this as "typical" Western scientific research. But it is a known fact that there is a lot of "bad" scientific research. More than half of the scientific research papers get little or no cites by colleagues. When wrong conclusions are made, then it gets refuted and the paper gets forgotten,.. or may lead to better hypotheses and better research. This is all part of the normal dialectics that go on in scientific research.

It is that dynamic that is lacking in fields like astrology.
When was the last time that astrologers agreed to discard one of their methods/theories after it was refuted within the field?
That never seems to happen.

SGFoxe wrote:The clock gene has been discovered ... it goes back 700 million years ago. Basically circadian -- light/dark sensitivity. Apparently no genomic evidence discovered so far of the 28 day lunar cycle link to 28 day menstrual cycle however. But there are clocking mechanisms for lunar cycle and annual earth/sun cycle.

The distance between chronobiology & Ebertin's cosmobiology is one small step for (wo)man but a large one for humankind -- perhaps a cosmobiologist could construct a convincing presentation -- there being genomic structures that time death -- like a fatal disease kicking in at a particular time that hypothetically is triggered by a cosmic event like an eclipse aspecting the anareta (or some such)

and presto chango the amazing randi's fortune is ours!

It would be better to say a clock gene, since the molecular mechanism you're alluding to (involving a set of genes, not just one) applies to circadian rhythms only and is simply the first clock mechanism discovered. As you note there are also annual and monthly clocks/rhythms, and although chronobiologists can't yet spell out the molecular feedback loops that comprise them I assume comparable mechanisms exist to time and reset those clocks also. And if astrological effects exist in nature and not just in our fevered imaginations there must be timing and reset mechanisms for periods corresponding to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn et al as well. I cover this possibility in my article After Symbolism, in Part 3. A Mechanism for Astrology, albeit there are other implications, covered in other parts of that article, that the proponents of chronobiology in this thread seem not to have considered. One implication is that an astrology that makes sense is one in which motivations, not things that happen to us, are the events that correspond to changes in the heavens. I approached astrology this way before I saw its explanatory utility because it doesn't conflict with free will and better fits observation than events "out there", but it's also an astrology that can plausibly exist in the world as opposed to the magical beliefs tacitly espoused by most astrologers.