From: lmpm@teal.csn.org (L. M. P. McPherson)
Newsgroups: alt.astrology
Subject: The Gauquelins' "Mars Effect": Articles from sci.skeptic
Date: 12 Oct 92 21:07:16 GMT
Organization: Colorado SuperNet, Inc.

Here are three articles which were posted earlier in the year in
sci.skeptic. They address criticisms of work on the Mars effect
by various researchers.


From: lippard@uavax0.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Mars Effect (Re: "Crybaby")
Date: 21 Jan 92 04:06:00 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona

Not too long ago, a copy of Philip Klass's article, "Crybaby" 
was posted to sci.skeptic and the BITNET SKEPTIC mailing 
list.  This article is an unpublished response to allegations 
made by former CSICOP executive council member Dennis Rawlins 
in his October 1981 Fate magazine article, "sTARBABY," in 
which he accuses CSICOP of a "cover-up" regarding Michel 
Gauquelin's "Mars Effect."  The impression that appears to 
have been given to some people by Klass's article is that 
CSICOP really did nothing wrong, but Dennis Rawlins did.  It 
has also been pointed out that Fate magazine refused to print 
Klass's article, but I have also heard that the Skeptical 
Inquirer also declined to print it.
     I have recently taken the time to re-read the materials 
which I possess (a partial list is given at the end of this 
article) on the "Mars Effect" controversy, and I think that 
this impression is quite mistaken.  I do not wish to defend 
Rawlins against some of the attacks in "Crybaby," but I do 
wish to point out that a number of Rawlins' charges in 
"sTARBABY" are not addressed by Klass, and these charges do 
amount to wrongdoing on the part of CSICOP members.
     I do think that (with the publication of Abell, Kurtz, & 
Zelen's 1983 "Mars Effect" reappraisal) CSICOP has admitted 
most of this wrongdoing and (with the publication of Suitbert 
Ertel's "Mars Effect" article in the latest issue of the 
Skeptical Inquirer) is now on the right track regarding fair 
and open discussion of the "Mars Effect."

There were two tests that CSICOP had involvement in:  the 
Zelen test (which began before CSICOP and was published in 
The Humanist but involved a number of CSICOP executive 
council members and fellows) and the U.S. champions test 
(which was conducted by CSICOP and published in the Skeptical 
Inquirer).  In this message I address only the former.

The Zelen test was proposed by CSICOP fellow Marvin Zelen in 
order to test a possible objection to Gauquelin's "Mars 
effect."  The test was conducted by Gauquelin and showed that 
the critique failed (i.e., that the "Mars effect" still 
stood).  Klass writes, "The only way in which CSICOP, or 
persons affiliated with it, could be guilty of Rawlins' 
charges would be if they had refused to publish Gauquelin's 
results or had intentionally altered the data in his report.   
NEITHER OCCURRED.  Nor did Gauquelin accuse CSICOP or its 
members of trying to 'cover up' his results or altering the 
data of this first test whose calculations he himself 
performed, although there were some differences of 
interpretation of the implication of these results."  Klass 
goes on to say that Gauquelin did accuse *Rawlins* of 
"distortion and misrepresentation."
     All of this ignores what Rawlins actually charges on pp. 
6-11 (esp. pp. 10-11) of "sTARBABY":  That Kurtz et al., in 
their critique of Gauquelin's results in the Zelen test, 
misused and misrepresented the statistics in order to claim 
that the test did NOT eliminate the objection to the "Mars 
effect."  (Kurtz et al. recanted, at least partially, in "The 
Abell-Kurtz-Zelen 'Mars Effect' Experiments: A Reappraisal" 
in the Spring 1983 Skeptical Inquirer.)
     Klass points out that Kurtz et al. criticized Gauquelin 
on the grounds that "the 'Mars effect' only appears in Paris, 
not in Belgium or in the rest of France," but fails to point 
out that this post-hoc division of the data resulted in two 
parts, "one very small and [therefore] very unreliable; and 
one consistent with a Mars effect, but a little too small to 
achieve significance."  (The quotation is from Eric 
Tarkington in an astrological publication, Phenomena vol. 2 
no. 2; quoted in Curry (see refs. below).)  This division of 
the data was also criticized by Elizabeth Scott, a 
statistician for the skeptical side, and by Rawlins, who had 
been opposed to the Zelen test for some time.
     Klass also fails to point out that Kurtz et al. dropped 
female sports champions (there were 9) from consideration in 
their critique of Gauquelin's results, without a clear 
rationale for doing so.  Of those 9, 3 demonstrated the "Mars 
effect."
     Rawlins asked for CSICOP corrections to these errors, 
but they were not forthcoming until two years after 
"sTARBABY" was published.  This is what his talk of a "cover 
up" refers to.

Partial list of sources
Rawlins, "sTARBABY"
Klass, "Crybaby"
Patrick Curry, "Research on the Mars Effect," Zetetic Scholar 
     #9 (Feb/Mar 1982):34-52.
Richard Kammann, "The True Disbelievers: Mars Effect Drives 
     Skeptics to Irrationality," Zetetic Scholar #10
     (December 1982):50-65.
Jeremy Cherfas, "Paranormal-watchers fall out over the Mars 
     effect," New Scientist 92(29 Oct 1981):294.
Michel Gauquelin, "Mars effect," New Scientist 93(7 Jan 
     1982):40.
Paul Kurtz, "Mars effect," New Scientist 93(11 Feb 1982):395-
     396.
Patrick Curry, "Mars effect: last word," New Scientist 93(4 
     Mar 1982):601.



Jim Lippard              Lippard@RVAX.CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZRVAX.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721



From: lippard@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Ertel's "Update on the 'Mars Effect'" and Kurtz's response
Date: 9 Feb 92 22:45:00 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona

Those of you who read the Skeptical Inquirer may have noticed Suitbert
Ertel's article, "Update on the 'Mars Effect,'" in the most recent issue
(Winter 1992).  He describes various tests he has made of Michel
Gauquelin's data showing correlations between the position of planets
at the times of people's births and their eminence in various fields.
He also describes a test he performed on the data from the CSICOP
American sports champions test of the "Mars Effect," which was
presented by Paul Kurtz, Marvin Zelen, and George Abell as a failure
to replicate Gauquelin's results.  Gauquelin claimed that this test
actually *did* support him, if the "less eminent" sports champions
in the test were removed from the sample.  (It also appears that there
were two samples taken in the "U.S. test," as it is generally known,
and the first supported the "Mars effect" and a second sample was
subsequently added to the first.)
   Anyway, Ertel's test of the "U.S. test" data involved the use of
some 18 reference works of sports champions.  He looked up each of
the athletes in the U.S. test in each work, and categorized them
by number of citations--low eminence (no citations), medium eminence
(1 citation), and high eminence (2 or more citations).  The results
appear in his article as table 1:

     Eminence       N = 408               N=349
                    #    %                #  % 
     Low           216  18.1              98 21.4
     Medium        107  21.5              89 21.3
     High           85  25.9             162 30.2
     Expected           22.2                 22.2
     p of trend        .06                  .05

The left set of data is from the CSICOP-conducted U.S. test, the right
set is a group of additional U.S. athletes collected by Gauquelin which
he used in his response to the U.S. test (also published in the Skeptical
Inquirer).  The numbers and percentages indicate which athletes were
born with Mars in one of the "key sectors" predicted by the "Mars effect"
hypothesis.

So what Ertel has shown here is that by an apparently unbiased procedure
of determining eminence of athletes, the U.S. test *does* support Gauquelin's
"Mars effect" hypothesis.

Immediately following Ertel's article is a one-page response by Paul
Kurtz, titled "A Dissenting Note on Ertel's 'Update on the Mars Effect.'"
In it, Kurtz criticizes Ertel's procedure for determining eminence,
writing that "Ertel now supports Gauquelin's evaluation because he does
not find U.S. football and basketball players cited often in European
'who's whos.'  (See Ertel's note 7.)  But this post-hoc criterion is
questionable.  American football and basketball players reach high
eminence in the United States, but these sports were not popular in
Europe when these sports who's whos were written.  Thus I do not
think that Ertel's analysis sustains Gauquelin, at least in regard to
the American sample."
   This is more or less the same response which Kurtz made to Gauquelin's
criticisms of the U.S. test.  However, in this case, Kurtz has simply
made a mistake.  The reference books which Ertel used were *not*
"European who's whos."  Note 7 in Ertel's article describes how the
sample in the U.S. test was collected--from *U.S.* _Who's Who in ..._ books.
According to Ertel, his 18 reference works were a mixture of American
and European books, none of which contains "Who's Who" in the title.
(A list of Ertel's works is in his article in the Journal of Scientific
Exploration 2:53-82, but I don't have that source.)
   Kurtz implies that there is a European bias to Ertel's 18 reference
works, which Ertel admits may be the case, but even if so, that doesn't
explain why the athletes with more citations are more likely to show
the "Mars effect."

In short, the mystery of the "Mars effect" remains an unsolved one.

Jim Lippard              Lippard@RVAX.CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZRVAX.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721


From: lippard@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Ertel's "Update on the 'Mars Effect'" and Kurtz's response
Date: 11 Feb 92 18:21:00 GMT
Organization: University of Arizona

In article <9FEB199215452548@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu>,
lippard@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) writes...
>Those of you who read the Skeptical Inquirer may have noticed Suitbert
>Ertel's article, "Update on the 'Mars Effect,'" in the most recent issue
>(Winter 1992).

Here's some additional information posted by Prof. Ertel on the BITNET
SKEPTIC list:

Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1992 15:04:32 MEZ
From: suitbert ertel <SERTEL@DGOGWDG1.BITNET>
Message-id: <01GGDV6KFWZ88WWCLI@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU>

Reply to Jim Lippard

Thanks for your giving a message to sci.skeptic about my
"Update" article and for initiating discussion about it.

I find my position regarding the two former U.S. studies well understood.
But let me go into the matter once again and draw your attention
to an important information provided by the Table:

     Eminence       N = 408               N=349
                    #    %                #  %
     Low           216  18.1              98 21.4
     Medium        107  21.5              89 21.3
     High           85  25.9             162 30.2
     Expected           22.2                 22.2
     p of trend        .06                  .05

Look at the numbers of Low, Medium, and High eminent athletes
in the Kurtz-Zelen-Abell (KZA) sample (left) and compare them
with respective numbers in the Gauquelin sample (right). You
may notice that in the KZA sample the proportion of Low
eminence athletes (no citation) is greatest, in the Gauquelin
sample High eminence athletes (two or more citations) is
greatest. This shows that Gauquelin was right in saying that the
average eminence of KZA athletes was poor und therefore not suited
to test the Mars effect. The overall low proportion of
KZA athletes born with Mars in key sectors might now be explained
by KZA`s overall low  eminence level. KZA`s empirical argument
for doubting the existence of a Mars effect has thus been removed.

Kurtz` criticizes the sample of reference works (N=18) that I
used to obtain citation counts ("European" bias).
But by using these books the predicted increase of key
sector proportions from Low to High subsamples (according to
corresponding citation frequences) was clearly obtained.
Kurtz should not have said that I obtained support for Gauquelin
_because_ I assessed eminence by some biased sample of books (at
least this is what the reader will probably think what he
means), rather he should have said that I obtained support for
Gauquelin`s hypothesis _even though_ I assessed eminence using a
biased sample of books (if it was biased). The positive
correlation between level of eminence and key sector proportion
(i. e. the more citations in a sample of athletes, the greater
is the proportion of Mars key sector cases), present in both,
KZA` and Gauquelin` sample of athletes, cannot logically be due
to any features of the reference books used.

Kurtz`s argument might apply for a quite different situation.
Suppose Gauquelin, after KZA`s publishing their low
key sector proportions for U.S.athletes (no Mars effect),
had collected birth data for a sample of _European_ athletes.
After analysing these data he might have reported a
Mars effect. Suppose Gauquelin had also contended that the
difference between his (positive) and KZA`s (negative) results
was due to a difference in eminence: KZA`s U.S. athletes were
mediocre, his European athletes were eminent. My role then might
have been to decide the eminence contorversy by looking up the
names of KZA`s and Gauquelin`s athletes in those 18 reference
books. Suppose I would have reported that KZA`s athletes were cited
less often in these books than Gauquelin athletes: In that case
Kurtz might rightly suspect that my sample of reference books
was biased to the disadvantage of U.S. athletes.

But the actual situation is quite different. Both, Gauquelin`s
and KZA`s sample consists of U.S. athletes. Any "European" bias in my
sample of reference books, if present, would affect eminence
assessment equally for both samples. The difference between
KZA`s and Gauquelin`s sample regarding eminence that was
actually obtained is thus unrelated to the hypothetical bias.
In addition, and more importantly, bias of that sort could never
explain the observed difference among subsamples of eminence
(within the KZA and within the Gauquelin sample) regarding key
sector proportions.

Puh, so many words for a plain thing like this! But Kurtz`
DISSENT needed that much of disentanglement.

Not yet clear enough?

Suitbert