Astrology:
Claims and Realities

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In yet another instance of their repeated attempts to gain scientific respectability, one hundred and fifty astrologers have issued a statement appealing for the recognition of astrology as a science and the introduction of degree courses in astrology.

Such attempts by astrologers to present themselves as practioners of a scientific discipline have become disturbingly frequent in recent years. A few years ago, an astrologer managed to obtain an award from the Indian Science Congress for his contributions to astrology. On the occassion of the last total solar eclipse there were a number of aggressive media statements by them challenging the established scientific viewpoint on eclipses.

Undoubtedly these attempts continue because of the general belief in astrology among the public at large. Part of this is clearly due to the traditional practice of astrology. However there is also considerable confusion even among the educated with regard to the status of astrology as a science. In the latter category must be included the Union Finance Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram, who at a recent astrology conference in Bangalore called for the development of astrology on a ``modern scientific basis''.

It is true that some astrologers use fairly elaborate calculations of planetary positions as part of their work and sometimes the naive may incorrectly infer that the astrologer's predictions are the result of ``calculations''. Others are taken in by the claims of astrologers that planetary bodies exert their influence on human beings through the agency of mysterious ``forces''. Such ``forces'' are often described by misappropriating the language of science ( ``magnetic'' forces is a popular term) or are simply postulated as forces unknown to science.

The best argument to debunk such claims is undoubtedly the obvious one. Setting aside for the moment the reasons why astrology works, does astrology work at all? How accurately, for instance, can the character of an individual be predicted from the knowledge of his or her horoscope? However it is not widely known that precisely this question was tested several years ago in a scientific experiment and the results found astrology falling far short of its claims.

The experiment, reported in a brief paper in the journal Nature in its issue of 5 Dec. 1985, described a double-blind experiment that tested the hypothesis that astrological charts based on the time of birth of the individual can be used to describe accurately the personality traits of individuals. The experiment, conducted by physicist Shawn Carlson, at that time member of the Dept. of Physics of the University of California at Berkeley was noteworthy for the close involvement of both scientists and astrologers in the experiment.

The experiment required astrologers to pick out the correct personality profile of a subject whose horoscope they were given, from among three such personality profiles given to them, including the correct one. If the ability of astrologers to select the right one was no better than pure chance then they would get it right one-third of the time. Astrologers on the other hand predicted that they would get it right at least half of the time. The personality profile was assembled by administering a detailed standard questionnaire that was then used to grade subjects for eighteen personality attributes ( known as the California Personality Inventory test).

The experiment was conducted with the active co-operation of the National Council of Geocosmic Research, an American organisation of astrologers who nominated advisors to the study, prepared the horoscopes for the test and further provided a list of astrologers they felt were suitably qualified. The advisors interacted closely with the project and several of their suggestions were incorporated. The California Personality Inventory Test was chosen for instance, because astrologers judged the attributes to be the closest to those discernible by astrology. Nor was any subject included in the study who could not provide evidence of his time of birth accurate to within 15 minutes.

The study in the end covered 116 subjects with about 28 participating astrologers. The astrologers were sent the horoscopes, together with the personality profiles. A notable feature of this carefully designed experiment was the use of double-blind procedures to make absolutely sure that no biases against astrology or for the scientific viewpoint intervened in the experiment. The method was decided upon before the data was collected and the experimenters had no access to the subjects' identities during the period of data collection, and they were referred to only by their assigned code numbers.

The interpretation of the data was also done in several ways to make the conclusions as unambiguous as possible. Not only were the astrologers asked to pick the right choice of personality profile that matched the horoscope, they were also asked to make a second choice and also a ranked choice( on a scale of 1-10) for each personality profile, indicating how well it matched the given horoscope. While the astrologers had no definite prediction for these other cases as to the number of correct results, the scientific viewpoint predicted that one-third of the results would be correct even for the second choice as well as the ranked choices.

The result was a spectacular vindication of the scientific viewpoint. In all the categories only one-third of the choices, upto statistical fluctuations, were in fact correct. It was clear that astrological predictions scored no better than random chance. In the concluding words of Dr. Shawn Carlson `` the predicted connection between the positions of the planets and other astronomical objects at the time of birth and the personalities of test subjects did not exist.''

It is clear that when astrology fails such a test, the more fanciful claims of astrology to predict world events, political happennings or particular catastrophes are even less credible. A similar test of such claims versus the facts would undoubtedly expose this fact. As the late Carl Sagan pointed out, it is sufficient to simply scan all the predictions that are published for the same zodiacal sign to pick up wildly contradictory predictions.

The problem with astrology today in India is somewhat similar to the one with creationism in the United States. There is a determined effort by its proponents to give it the status of a science, a goal that is sought to be acheived by a sustained campaign aimed particularly at obtaining political support. While the lessening of the belief in astrology among the lay public will undoubtedly take some time, it is necessary to ensure that astrology is not sneaked into school and college curricula.



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T. Jayaraman
Mon Mar 17 09:22:04 GMT+05:30 1997