Testing Out Astrology

Get your science fix here: research, quackery, activism and all the rest
Post Reply
User avatar
Gfamily
Light of Blast
Posts: 5603
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:00 pm
Location: NW England

Testing Out Astrology

Post by Gfamily » Sun Aug 11, 2024 5:00 pm

Does astrology work? We tested the ability of 152 astrologers to see if they could demonstrate genuine astrological skill.

Here is how the study was designed and what we found...
https://x.com/SpencrGreenberg/status/18 ... 7145972105

For people not on twitter, they asked astrologers to read profiles of people and then pick their birth chart (time, date. position of planets etc) from a choice of 5 - one based on the actual birth date, 4 using other dates.
Not surprisingly, they didn't do significantly better than random guessing.
Further detail in the thread.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
Meta? I'd say so!

User avatar
Martin Y
Stummy Beige
Posts: 3214
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:08 pm

Re: Testing Out Astrology

Post by Martin Y » Sun Aug 11, 2024 5:43 pm

Reminds me of a blowhard "true" astrologer over on ISF/JREF who insisted that, given a person's time and place of birth, a true astrologer could accurately predict when the person would die. Of course it would be unethical to tell people when they would die so, alas, no true astrologer would be so low as to be tempted by the cash of the JREF million dollar challenge and prove their paranormal ability.

I suggested they could easily be tested with a list of the birth details of people who had already died and it went a bit quiet.

Post Reply