Time Twin Study Discredits Astrology

Originally tracked as part of a different medical study, data on a group of 2,000 people born within minutes of each other demonstrates that claims about power of astrology are false. Followed for several decades, information about their occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading were recorded. The results?

Scientists failed to find any evidence whatsoever for consistent similarities. The Telegraph reported:

Dr Dean said the results undermined the claims of astrologers, who typically work with birth data far less precise than that used in the study. “They sometimes argue that times of birth just a minute apart can make all the difference by altering what they call the ‘house cusps’,” he said. “But in their work, they are happy to take whatever time they can get from a client.” ...

Dr Dean said the consistency of the findings weighed heavily against astrology. “It has no acceptable mechanism, its principles are invalid and it has failed hundreds of tests,” he said. “But no hint of these problems will be found in astrology books which, in effect, are exercises in deception.”

It is unlikely that these results will have much impact upon the astrology industry, considering how profitable it is:

Some of the most popular figures in the field, such as Russell Grant, Mystic Meg and Shelley von Strunckel, can earn £600,000 or more a year. A single profitable astrology website can be worth as much as £50 million. When the Daily Mail discovered that its expert on the zodiac, Jonathan Cainer, was about to leave the newspaper in 1999, it reportedly offered him a £1 million salary and a £1 million bonus to stay. He still preferred the offer at the Daily Express: no salary but all the money from his telephone lines.

Astrology isn’t science. Astrology isn’t even close to science — reading chicken entrails will provide you with the same quality of information about a person’s future and character (curious that no newspapers have “chicken entrails” sections or that there are no pay-per-minute phone lines where someone will read chicken entrails for you). There is, however, a great deal more money to be made in reading stars than in reading entrails, so I guess that’s why the one has survived but the other is a lost art.

 

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