From: kring@efes.physik.uni-kl.de (Thomas Kettenring)
Subject: Re: Re: newspapers
Organization: FB Physik, Universitaet Kaiserslautern, Germany
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 20:38:52 GMT

This is rather a quote orgy; sorry.

In article <28AUG199216275437@vxcrna.cern.ch>, casper@vxcrna.cern.ch (CASPER,DAVI./PPE) writes:
>In article <1992Aug28.125521.12223@rhrk.uni-kl.de>, kring@efes.physik.uni-kl.de (Thomas Kettenring) writes...
>>[..] As far as I know, it has been tried to
>>reproduce the Gauquelins' Mars effect, but it didn't show up a second time.
>>Are there any Mars effect statistics I don't know about?  I want them!
>
>If memory serves (the books are at home) the Committee PARA, working together
>with the Gauquelins reproduced the effect (much to their embarrassment) and

The Belgian Comite Para only tested Gauquelin's mathematics, they didn't
use separate data.

>then later in a fairly controversial epsiode, some of the people who went on
>to found CSICOP did a study which also reproduced the Mars effect.  This was
>controversial because (according to advocates of the effect) the investigators
>added a large chunk of "less eminent" data at the end of their study which made
>the effect go away.  An article by a guy named Ertel(?) in a recent (Winter?)
>issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (which Thomas David Kehoe of this group was
>kind enough to send me) discussed the results and showed that the strength of
>the Mars effect in this study increased with the eminence of athletes.  There
>was also a reply to that article in the same issue.
>
>The CSICOPesque study generated a lot of bad feelings between the
>investigators, since one of them was convinced that certain checks were not
>being made properly, and that the agreed procedure was being violated, and
>(depending on who you believe) went on to either expose the shoddy behavior of
>his colleagues or attempt to cover-up his own malfeasance with money, time, and
>authority to represent CSICOP.  The charges were exchanged in two articles
>called "sTARBABY" and "CRYBABY".  sTARBABY appeared, I believe, in the
>astrology magazine called Fate, while CRYBABY appeared in either SI or Zetetic
>something-or-other, I can't remember. 

Zetetic Scholar, I think.
I didn't read Ertel's article but I read "sTARBABY" and "CRYBABY".

From _Crybaby_:
>Belgian Comite Para,  as it is
>called,  confirmed Gauquelin's calculations. But it questioned
>his
> statistical assumption "that the frequency distribution of the
>hours of birth during the day (the nych-themeral curve) is a constant
>distribution. . . ", i.e. that there is an equal probability of a
>person being born during any hour of the day.
>[..]
>   Because of the issue raised by Comite' Para, Kurtz
>consulted statistics professor Marvin Zelen who in turn proposed a
>control test that could resolve the statistical issue raised by
>Comite' Para.

The result of the Zelen test was that the Mars effect was still there
after this corrections.  This is not independent reproduction, it's
confirmation, using the same data.

As regards the second test, here is an article by Jan Willem Nienhuys,
Tue, 18 Feb 92, sci.skeptic:
>In article <17FEB199213430019@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu> lippard@rvax.ccit.arizona.e
>du (James J. Lippard) writes:
>>
>>The effect is only supposed to work with natural births, not drug-induced.
>>That's why he only collected births before a certain year.  Prior to the
>>CSICOP test of American athletes, Gauquelin said that he hadn't found the
>>effect for basketball players, and so they shouldn't be used in the test.
>>They were used anyway.  I don't believe Gauquelin ever placed any restrictions
>
>More precisely, G. said *after* the CSICOP test that he could have told
>that basketball players were unsuitable, because he had bad results with
>Italian basketball players.
>If one examines the sportsmen he included in his own 2088 sportsmen, you
>will find there enormous amounts of Italian sportspilots (many of them
>military), you will find quite a few Basque pelote players (pelote is
>a kind of ball game only played by Basques) but no (repeat: no)
>basketball players.  So he decided to leave them out after he had seen
>their Mars sectors.
>Now if you know that just about 15 less `Mars' sportsmen would have
>made the difference between significant or not (in the physics sense,
>namely with a 3-sigma level), and if you know that after the CSICOP
>test (which wasn't perfect) he indulged in an quite a lot of post-hoc
>sample splitting and claiming that only just about Olympic Gold Medallists
>are good enough (his own samples having no compunction about several
>instances of two or three brothers), than it is not hard to
>understand why a certain amount of skepticism seems justified regarding
>G.'s data gathering technique. It need not have been intentional, but
>more a case of `making up the hypotheses as you go', but then those same
>2088 sportsmen should not have been presented as proof.
>This leaves exactly two tests of G.'s hypothesis: one with the Belgians,
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>one with the Americans, one positive, one negative.
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'll read the Ertel article if I find it (which is improbable).  Thanks...

-- 
thomas kettenring, 2 dan, kaiserslautern, germany
Definition:  Idiot-proof  -  you are idiot-proof when you NEVER flame anybody.