French psychologist Michel Gauquelin gained notoriety in the 50’s after publishing data showing that sportsmen were born in a non random fashion when considering the movement of planet Mars, the nicknamed Mars Effect has been the core of passionate discussions over its statistical validity since then but, beyond whether this effect truly holds or not, there are many reasons why genuine statistically significant data can be found in the astrology world, so we’d do better not to ignore planets and stars entirely.

We humans develop efficient strategies in our daily life that are useful for most situations, for example, if we see dark clouds and a few moments later it rains we associate dark clouds with rain and, voilà, next time we see dark clouds we take measures. The problem begins when we break a leg right after seeing a black cat, our association machine, a.k.a brain, does its magic and next time we see a black cat we take measures too. But you know what? The brain is right!

What is not so right is human difficulties to removed associations once they are set in our brains, a.k.a stubbornness. We humans develop all sort of strategies too keep our associations alive and demand extraordinary amounts of evidences to break them yet, even when those evidences are presented, we keep fighting them by doubting the methodology or the honesty of the persons bringing them up. There might be evolutionary advantages explaining why we create associations so easily but cannot break them with the same ease, but whatever the reasons are the problem only worsens when in some cases our stubbornness makes the associations come true! And that is what astrology is all about. These are a few examples of how astrology makes spurious associations come true: Continue reading →