From: casper@vxcrna.cern.ch (CASPER,DAVI./PPE)
Subject: Re: same old same old
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 16:03:00 GMT

In article <Bw111q.Ity@csn.org>, lmpm@teal.csn.org (L. M. P. McPherson) writes...
>casper@vxcern.cern.ch (Dave Casper) writes:
>>lmpm@teal.csn.org (L. M. P. McPherson) writes:
> 
>In rn, type "g rec.org.mensa"; once in the group, type 
>/Astrology: Scientific Research/h

I checked but I'm afraid it has vanished by now.  I was amused to find you
("L. McPherson") confused with the swimsuit model ("Elle MacPherson") in
rec.org.mensa though...

>There may well have been some problems with the way Gauquelin
>conducted that study, but they could not have been too serious
>since the effect in question (the "Mars effect") has been
>replicated at least five times since then, once by Gauquelin
>on an American sample, and four times by skeptics' groups.

That it has been replicated 4 times by skeptics groups was not so clear
after reading the other material you posted after this.

>I will post separately articles by Jim Lippard and Suitbert Ertel
>that appeared some time ago on sci.skeptic. I think these will 
>address adequately your worries about the Gauquelin Mars-athletes
>data. I will also forward a recent posting from sci.skeptic which
>presents a new data analysis by Ertel.

The business of shifting all the birthdates and still seeing a Mars effect
tells me something fishy is going on.

>>I deferred comment on most of the metallurgical material you posted
>>some weeks ago.  It seemed to me that, despite all the graphs, this
>>was referring to an extremely subjective phenomenon which might well
>>appear or disappear according to the state of mind of the
>>experimenter.
> 
>So what exactly did you find subjective about the measurement of
>concentrations of precipitate in the filterpapers performed by Dr.
>Benbow of the City University and by a scientific officer at the
>Government Chemist of England using the spectrophotometry method?

Is it not the case that at least some of the criteria involved subjective
judgement of the shapes of patterns?

>>In addition, crystal formation is affected by a large
>>number of conditions like temperature and air pressure, motion in the
>>container, etc., which were not controlled during the experiment.
> 
>If we were discussing "the experiment," this would be a problem.
>I think it unlikely that these variables, by some odd series of
>coincidences, varied systematically with planetary aspects in each of
>the hundreds of repetitions of the experiment by various researchers.

It is entirely possible that the results were selected after the fact (through
willful fraud on the part of the experimenters or not).  Repeating a flawed
procedure hundreds of times does not necessarily insure a better result.

>>Despite these shortcomings, I would like to see these experiments
>>repeated, since they are more amenable to confirmation or rejection
>>than most claims put forward by astrology.
>>
>>I often find the level of a person's credence in a statement
>>proportional to the amount of money they are will to stake on it. If
>>these metallurgical experiments were repeated under controlled
>>conditions so that the influence of the planets was the only
>>variable,
>>how much money would you be willing to bet that the effect would be
>>seen? 
> 
>How much would you be willing to bet that the effect would not be
>seen?

Considerably more than $1000...

>The idea of betting on the outcome of a scientific experiment is
>distasteful to me. I have only encountered such a thing once.
>A young academic, a graduate student, convinced by the conclusions of
>one poorly-designed study, disagreed with the theory and predictions
>of one of my studies. He was so convinced that my results would be
>negative that he offered to buy me and my supervisor a beer if the
>study worked the way I thought it would. When I obtained stunningly
>clear results in favour of my hypothesis, he couldn't find it in his
>heart to believe that the data were valid, and he refused to buy
>us the beers. So it is not just skeptics of astrology or the
>paranormal that behave this way!

Well in this field it is quite common to bet (a beer or a case of wine being
common stakes), and reneging would not be tolerated.

>But because I am quite fond of you, Dave (note to astrologers: he has
>Jupiter conjunct my Moon, Pluto/Sun/Venus on my IC, and his Uranus
>and Pluto form a close Grand Trine with my Venus and Mars), I will
>put aside my distaste for betting on scientific studies and make you
>an offer.

Well, I wasn't suggesting a real bet, just trying to measure the level of
confidence you place in these strange results.  I see it is quite high.

>Given that you work at a large research facility that must surely have
>rooms in which temperature and humidity can be controlled (and since
>few people would have access to such facilities; I am not even at a
>university at the moment myself), you are in a rare position to carry
>out these experiments.

I'm afraid CERN is not that kind of lab - most all the experiments are done
with electronics, and any medium university chem lab would probably be better
equipped.  I have not seen a test tube in over a year of working here.  So I
am hardly in a better position than you.  In particular, I doubt I can find a
room with a controlled environment since few of the buildings here are even
air-conditioned (most of the buildings at CERN date from the 50's and 60's and
are rather spartan.)

>If you will carry out a series of carefully
>controlled experiments, following Kollerstrom's methodology or
>supplementing his procedures with more sophisticated measures of the
>amount of precipitate in the filterpapers, then I will bet you $1000
>that the experiments will replicate the effects obtained by
>Kollerstrom and others. I say *series* of experiments because these
>metal-planet effects vary in size from experiment to experiment, as
>most effects in nature do.

I will look into the possibility of doing this, but there are a lot of
obstacles.  First of all, to do it right, a real chemist would need to be
involved.  Despite what you might think, chemistry and physics do not have
much in common, and this kind of experiment might be affected by trace
impurities or other details that would escape my untrained eye.  On the other
hand, this sort of problem should not produce false correlation with the
planets.  I am certain things cannot be ready for the next moon/mars, but
if I could get things set up by the winter break then we could have 6 or
7 moon/mars hits before the mars-saturn event.

>If $1000 is too rich for your blood, then feel free to choose some
>smaller amount that you can afford to lose (and lose you will, 
>dear sir; these effects have been repeated hundreds of times).

How many times by people who were not expecting to see them though?

>As this is no small sum of money I offer, I feel entitled to specify
>certain conditions on the methodology.  [...]

No apparent problems, but I am not clear on how the amount of precipitate is
to be measured - wouldn't drying out the filter paper and weighing it be an
obvious way?

>Because you are a highly biased observer, certain precautions will be
>necessary. [...]

Despite all your precautions, unless you want to keep a videotape running
24 hours a day for 7 months, it is obvious the solutions could be changed or
tampered with while the camera was off.  Or I could re-set the camera clock
to a different time and perform the experiments off-aspect.  I think there is
no way to prove there has been no cheating if you will not take my word (or
possibly a local referee) for it.  Hence the $1000 bet may have to wait until
I return to the America.

>You may not be keen to conduct the experiments because you might have
>to get up in the middle of the night if that is when the aspect
>occurs, but many researchers have to run studies at odd hours (e.g.,
>physiological psychologists running rats in experiments), so this
>complaint would not seem justified, especially given your publically
>stated interest in seeing evidence in the domain of astrology. 

Having been woken up four times last week between 3 and 4 am to deal with a
problem in my experiment's data acquisition system, I do not see this as a
problem.

>Perhaps you will find it impossible to convince your superiors at CERN to let
>you enter the premises at any time of night, or to let you use the
>facilities for this research. That would at least be a reasonable
>excuse. 

The main problems are: 1) do we have the facilities and 2) is there someone who
has the skills in lab technique to do the experiment right.  Also, I would
want to be careful about embarrassing the lab or myself by doing experiments
in fringe science.  If the results in question are published in some journal,
it would make my life much easier (hell, I might even get a grant...).  I am
sure that the above caveat will elicit howls of derision, proving how close-
minded scientists are, but CERN is operated by the governments of Europe to do
particle physics, which this ain't.  They even get retentive about making local
phone calls on the office phone around here.  I will ask around, but it would
be infinitely easier at a university.

>>>But the demands for scientific proof are just rhetoric. No amount of
>>>evidence would sway them. 
>>
>>How much evidence contrary to the claims of astrology would sway you?
> 
>>That argument cuts both ways.  There are plenty of studies, many done
>>by your friend Gauquelin or astrologers like Geoffrey Dean which show
>>quite convincingly that most if not all of astrological theory just
>>doesn't bear out with the facts.
> 
>Quite convincingly to whom? If you have read Geoffrey Dean's
>compilation of astrological research ("Recent Advances in Natal
>Astrology"), then you know that most research in this field is very
>poorly designed, including the studies that do not get a positive
>result. What about the studies that do show a positive effect and that
>do not appear to have any serious weaknesses, and what about the
>effects that have been replicated?
> 
>Same old tactic: Ignore the studies with positive results. 

While your tactic is apparently to call the negative results poorly designed
while the positive ones are above reproach.

>Let's be conservative and say one millenium. Please provide
>references for scientific studies conducted in or around the year 8
>B.C.

I dunno.  When was the distance to the moon and sun measured? That in itself
begins to evidence (i.e. these bodies are extremely far away).

>if any of *my* comments disturb you to the point of anger, please
>examine your feelings and try to determine why they bother you so.
>Please do not repress or otherwise filter from consciousness any
>information I provide that does not fit neatly into your system of
>beliefs about the universe.
>Maggie

Maggie dear, the only thing of yours which has ever disturbed me is your
smilies, but's a different story...


Dave

Newsgroups: alt.astrology