Stars and Skeptics : Putting Astrology to the Scientific Test

You had a choice at the Airport Marina Hotel over the weekend. You could go to a psychic fair in one conference room or you could go to a meeting of skeptics just down the hall and hear scientists explain why they think horoscopes are hooey.

The psychic point of view was represented by purveyors of crystals said to have healing powers and self-styled readers of auras and Tarot cards. The other point of view was represented by people like Paul Kurtz, chairman of the Buffalo, N.Y.-based Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), who spoke at a weekend seminar on astronomy and pseudoscience that attracted a hundred people who never ask, “What’s your sign?”

Unlike singer Dionne Warwick, who urges viewers to call the Psychic Friends Network she promotes on television, Kurtz thinks astrology is pseudoscientific bushwa that serves only to separate people from their money.

“It has no basis in fact,” said Kurtz, a professor emeritus of philosophy at State University of New York at Buffalo who has been promoting skepticism and critical thinking for more than a decade.

“Astrology has been carefully examined scientifically, and it’s been found to be a myth system,” Kurtz said. “We have an open mind about whether ESP or precognition or telekinesis exist, but so far there has been insufficient evidence that they do.”

As for people who claim to be psychic, he said, “any time we’ve examined people with these alleged powers, the results have been negative.”

The program on astronomy and pseudoscience was one of two sessions offered at a winter seminar sponsored by the Institute for Free Inquiry, an educational institution devoted to increasing public awareness of critical thinking and the scientific method. (There also was a session devoted to the scientific examination of religion).

A recurrent theme of the astronomy session was that authentic science is so fascinating, why would anyone waste time on astrological charts and other activities of dubious scientific value? Speaker David Morrison, chief of the space science division at NASA’s Ames Research Center near San Francisco, talked about Mars, for instance.

As Morrison explained, there is a small but vocal minority of people who believe that a face-like formation that shows up in a 1976 photo of Mars taken by the Viking spacecraft is an artifact left behind by an alien civilization. “There are so many interesting things you can say about Mars, it’s a shame to get hung up on this one,” Morrison said.

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As an example of how intriguing real science can be, Morrison said that the new Mars observer spacecraft will probably be able to determine whether there were once lakes on the red planet, as some astronomers have speculated. If there were, there may have been life on Mars as well. Although such life was probably in modest, microscopic form, confirmation that life developed independently on another planet would be a stunning breakthrough.

Andrew Fraknoi, educational consultant for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in Northern California, said he thinks astrology continues to cast its spell, despite its lack of scientific credibility, because it offers simple answers to complex questions.

To the thorny question of whom to date, for instance, astrology’s life-simplifying answer may be: stick to Leos. Moreover, Fraknoi said, astrology “smells a little like science. That’s why a good astrologer--you should excuse the expression--will tell you that this is an ancient science.”

Fraknoi also suspects astrology has grown in popularity as traditional religion has lost some of its following.

Fraknoi has found an effective device for illustrating how scientifically hollow he and fellow skeptics believe astrology to be. He has invented his own science called jetology. Unlike astrology, which claims that a person’s future is influenced by the heavens, jetology says that your love life and destiny are determined by the position of the world’s jumbo jets at the moment you were born.

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To interpret jetology’s complex aviation charts, Fraknoi explains, “you need a professional jetologer. Franchises are still available.” Fraknoi says that when people hear about jetology, they usually respond: “Why should the position of jumbo jets have anything to do with my destiny or love life?” Which is, of course, the point.

While some skeptics are horrified at the popularity of newspaper horoscopes and other evidence of astrological credulity, Edwin Krupp is fairly sanguine about it.

Krupp, director of the Griffith Park Observatory, regards dedicated believers in star signs as members of just another religious faith. He would be happy if more people thought more critically about the world around them, but he sees belief in astrology as simply an individual choice, though a scientifically unsophisticated one.

“I don’t really believe you gain a lot by arguing against people’s religion,” he said.