Researchers put 152 astrologers to the test with a new study that they helped design themselves

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Does astrology really work? We put 152 astrologers to the test.

INTRO: Recently, we ran a study testing whether astrological sun signs (like Scorpio and Capricorn) can predict any of 37 facts about a person’s life, such as their educational level, and number of close friends. We found that whereas some personality tests had a reasonable ability to predict many of these facts, zodiac signs couldn’t predict a single one of them.

When we released this result, a number of astrologers were angry at as. They pointed out that sun signs are just tabloid astrology – real astrologers use much more complex systems involving a person’s entire astrological chart.

And they were right! Inspired by this critique, we enlisted six astrologers to help us a design a new study to test astrology itself, as practiced by astrologers, rather than the silly, tabloid version of it. And to make the challenge more interesting, we offered a $1000 prize to the first astrologer who could perform sufficiently well on our test... (MORE - details)
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It's funny, because "sun sign astrology" seems to be the only form that could hypothetically make sense, i.e. there could be developmental effects that arise from what season you are born in. (this would mean that, if you included Australians in a study, you would need to reverse them six months, e.g. consider February Aussie babies as equivalent to August babies in the N hemisphere.) I think a Canadian group did a study along this line and found the only discernible effect was that children whose birthdays made them the oldest in their classroom (October-December births, where the age cutoff date is Oct. 1) tended to get more encouragement going into team sports. In early grades, being almost a year older than the youngest classmates gives one an edge in size and strength and more likelihood to receive positive attention for athletic pursuits. So by high school, Scorpios and Sagittarians are disproportionately represented on athletic teams. Within that study's very limited domain, a seasonal birth effect proved genuine.

Anyway, those results are no surprise. Pseudoscientists who boast of the "complexity" of their systems are usually covering up the reality that they have no causal explanations that make the slightest sense. It is not like they are ever going to empirically demonstrate a "ray" coming off of, say, Mars, which will affect you at the moment of birth and have more effect than say, the EM field in the supply lines inside the walls of the birth room, or a passing truck, or a burst of pollen through an open window.
 
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