Debunking the Debunker - Flawed Attempt to Disprove Astrology

When I went to do a search on Astrology on Youtube, one of the most popular posts comes from James Randi (260,000 plus views), well known for his million dollar offer to any psychic who can prove, under scientific restrictions set up by Randi himself, that the psychic phenomenon is valid.  Astrology is often one of Randi's whipping targets and his favorite test is one of the weakest and mostly discarded forms of astrological reading, the physical characteristics by sign (Aries have prominent foreheads, Virgo keep their appearance neat and groomed).  Some novice astrologer will be brought on to identify 10 random people by sign by looking at them.  As expected, they do no better than guessing (statistically speaking).  And Astrology, once again is debunked.  The video below is another technique for proving that astrology is smoke and mirrors; however, the "scientific method" applied is deeply flawed and I will explain why after you watch the video.



There are a number problems in the design of this experiment.  First, there is no control group.  A control group would include individuals who received actual astrology reports based on their actual information.  This way you could have members of the audience who could disagree with a chart and raise a much more profound problem for astrology than a vague chart that could be broadly applied into a particular life so that the reader could make the chart fit his or her circumstances.  This simplistic experiment does proves something, but nothing profound; it proves ignorant people are easily deceived.  Another way to strengthen this experiment would be to have 20 or so professional astrologers in the room and try to hand them the horoscope Randi handed this audience.  Again, this attempt would likely fail miserably because the astrologers would begin to ask what technical information was used to come up with the interpretations.  And, again, if he could pass the chart off on a professional astrologer successfully, then he would have a much stronger experiment and result.

Something interesting, but not intended, does emerge; two things actually.  One, I think it is interesting that you can provide 20 plus people with the same narrative and they all think it applies to them.  Does this say something useful about the human condition; maybe we are all more alike than different.  Would it have mattered if, among the people in the group, some were from different countries, especially ones that have a strong astrological tradition ... Middle Eastern or Indian.  Again, the group shown here is too homogeneous (in terms of culture) to really provide a good test result.  Second, is a question of the narrative provided and its level of generalization.  It's one thing to say, astrologically, "that this is a time of financial struggle" knowing that even in good times most people feel they struggle in some way financially.  It is another thing to say, astrologically, "that you will experience financial challenges in matters of personal concern and the formation of your identity; you may, at this time have to devote extra effort to the work that matters most to you and that helps you find your career path (Saturn transiting your 1st House)".  If you are retired or a homemaker or a teenager receiving the second reading you might have reason to raise your hand and say, "um, this doesn't really apply to me."

I think it would be possible with a certain kind of generalization to make the experiment about debunking the medical community by saying things like, "do you have trouble concentrating, finding you start projects you do not finish, perhaps trouble sleeping through the night."  If the group gave mostly 4 and 5's to this reading, they would all be diagnosed as ADD.  I'm sure I could find general language to make everyone in the group depressed too.  It's obvious that one thing the horoscope did NOT include was the most basic starting piece of information in any chart reading, Your Sun Sign is in X; therefore, you life path is guided by Y.  Had that information been prominent, several of the participants would have immediately sniffed out the ruse.  You could not make everyone the same Sun Sign and get away with it.  No professional astrologer of any note would leave this information out of a professional reading; it is the very way we put our selves on the line as practitioners.  We allow our clients to know the information we are using so they can verify it for themselves.

Additionally, I read through the comments of the people very much enamored of Randi and this particular experiment.  Among the comments was a personal favorite of mine that again shows misguided thinking, though it does sound rather damning.

@camij79 - astrology has not cured any diseases, or provided any means of improving sanitation or water supplies, has not assisted in exploration of our world or the cosmos, has not improved living conditions for anyone, has not provided any improvement to infrastructure anywhere, the list goes on.

Astrology has lined the pockets of astrologers and astrological pretenders, and preyed on the gullible.

Well, in point of fact, I would not hire an Astrologer to build a rocket ship, I would hire a rocket scientist; and I would not hire an Astrologer to operate on my appendix, I would hire a surgeon.  But it also follows that I would not hire a surgeon to provide me with spiritual guidance or psychological help.  Astrology does help people, individually, not collectively.  Science great contribution is its collective application.  Astrology's great contribution is its individual application.  Astrology, really, is all about you.  This point does lead me to a final topic that I am sure will challenge some Astrologers.  I do not consider Astrology a science, not even a "Cosmic Science".  I know it sounds good to throw "Science" in there because science has really made tremendous inroads into human life, almost as if Astrology can co-opt the word and get the benefits of "acceptance" or "success" or "reliability" that science offers (water boils as 100 degrees Celsius, a bridge designed with these materials and supports can handle a specified amount of weight). I do accept that we use science, specifically Astronomy, as an underpinning, but once we enter the realm of interpretation, we  enter the realm of imagination and narrative.  Astrology is a narrative psychology, a psychological art form, a creative dialogue between a client and astrologer.  It is humanistic, not scientific.  And I know its quite fun to talk about Astrology and Quantum Physics or theoretical science as the place the two merge, but let's be honest, when we throw Science into a title for an astrological text we can expect that it is being done (maybe by the editor and bookseller) to ride the coat tails of mechanical science and its "provability" and "repeatability", both of which are doggedly effective and, well, reliable.

And finally, the debate only really matters, or can matter if the scientists in question are spiritual and the spiritualists appreciate science.  Randi strikes me as the Atheist of the highest degree.  There is only this lifetime, consciousness is a product of chemical/electrical evolution, and death is nothingness.  People do not have a destiny, spiritual path, calling, or any other "woo woo" way through the world.  In that case, there's really nothing to prove to this man.  If he wants to take to task charlatans in our profession, I'm all for it.  But if he thinks the charlatans are the profession, then I feel compelled to write a blog entry like this one.  I think he would certainly think I am somehow a sophisticated delusional person,  if he would be willing to grant that I am intelligent, having earned a PhD and all.  And it does not help that some astrologer is willing to take on his badly designed "Astrological Test".  Maybe if Randi were to use a better methodology, I would be more inclined to think his conclusions worth considering.  In the end, I do want to respond because his video has 260,000 hits and Steven Forrest's excellent video on the current T-square has less than 3,000.  And here, I would say we have a case where the volume of hits does not necessarily reflect the quality of content.

A Very Rich Astrology Reading Experience

Astrology and Tarot are interesting practices, not only in and of themselves, but because of the way they are perceived and used in the world.  There is a constant round of narratives attempting to prove and disprove the validity or truth or science or effectiveness or accuracy (pick any word that equates to "its real") of these two and many other esoteric fields.  Some pieces of the narrative that are on the side of Astrology cause more trouble than help (daily Horoscope, Sun Sign only Astrology) and some skeptics prove invaluable to sharpening the thinking of the brightest Astrologers.  Ultimately, I believe and experience Astrology as a personal journey that enriches my life and, apparently, the life of my clients, who are very impressed with the usefulness and accuracy of their astrological readings.  Other narratives abound within the conglomeration of professional astrologers; namely, how each of us comes to accept and wear the mantle of "Professional Astrologer."  A very common and compelling narrative is the skeptic turned astrologer.  I am a mild version of that narrative.  The hard version is the person who set out to disprove Astrology, actively and aggressively "going after" Astrology with the starting hypothesis that "Astrology is bullsh*t."  I never had that as goal or my inroad to Astrology.  I approached it more from the view that I would like to see if Astrology could prove itself.  And, for me it has, many times over.  And yesterday was a shining example that I want to share with everyone.

Let me first provide a little more of a setting by way of the skeptics.  I have tried to track down the study I read in graduate school (way back in the early 1990's) that debunked astrology by giving a study group the same chart and interpreting the chart as the study member's chart.  In the study they were able to get all participants to believe the chart being "read" and interpreted for them was their own chart.  They did not change the interpretation of the chart, so each individual was essentially told the same thing about the chart and they all "believed" the chart to be "accurate."  The final coup-de-grace of the study came when the writers announced that they had used Adolph Hitler's chart for all the participants.  I have done my best to track down this essay, which I believe was published in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences.  As an former academic, I generally don't like to make references I cannot track down, but I think the spirit of the essay is pretty clear. I also think the conclusion is off; the study did prove something, but not about astrology.  It clearly proved that people can be deceived when they are kept ignorant.

For those of us who work with Astrology and clients regularly, we know immediately that the entire study group would need to be born under the sign of Taurus to even get this deception to fly at the rudimentary level of sun signs since Hitler's sun sign is Taurus.  You could have mixed signs among the group and press forward so long as your interpretation didn't begin with, "Ok, with your Sun in Taurus, your Life Path is guided by the energy of fixed earth ..."  The first non-Taurus participant would go, "Now wait a minute, my sun sign is Aquarius," even if you hand them a chart with their correct birth information and the incorrect output.  The interpretation instead began with, "You like to ..."  It's easy to debunk bad Astrological practice; there's plenty of it out there.  And its not much of a "win" for the skeptics when the research is so poorly designed.  Too much of the skeptical narrative goes after "low hanging fruit" or what I used to teach in my critical thinking classes as "the weak form of the argument."  Arguments and ideas have weak and strong forms, going after the weak forms is like plain old bullying, which is why debunking the daily horoscope is not really much of a challenge to the Astrological work of Robert Powell, Dane Rhudyar, Robert Hand, Demetra George, Richard Tarnas, Robert Blaschke, Jeff Green, Steven Forrest, and on and on.  When you have informed participants and Astrologers who are willing to give clients a solid foundation in the basics of the Astrological reading, the Hitler study does not even happen.

And so, here's my very rich experience with Astrology from yesterday.  Two of my regular clients (I see them yearly when they come into town to visit each other) came to see me for my Hot Spots Astrological reading.  Both of them are nearing their 2nd Saturn return and are past their Chiron return (so they are between 50 and 60).  They are highly intelligent, professional women.  Not easily deceived and not going into a reading doe eyed.  These are the clients you want because they can see through BS, so you'd better not be slinging any.  We started bright and early at 9AM and were cruising through the reading for about 20 minutes when we discovered that I had cast the chart wrong.  Instead of putting in her birth year as 1953, I had entered it as 1963.  What make the mistake embarrassing immediately was the fact that I had used the hardcopy of the chart I cast for her 2 years ago to get her birth information to reenter the data into Astrodienst, a great free online service.  I never even looked at the two charts side by side, which would have alerted me to the error before the reading began.  And, I skipped a step in my reading that I never skip with new clients, I didn't read the chart information at the very start of the reading (these are the kinds of errors that happen when you have an Aries Sun conjunct Saturn and a North Node ... I'm trying to learn how to be more precise in this life time; it does not come naturally for me, so its easy to have a slip from time to time).

So, how did we get so far into the reading before the error was discovered and how was it discovered since everything I had said up to the point of discovery was "dead on accurate."  Well, the only thing wrong was the birth year.  I had the date and time correct, which meant that the house placements and the Sun sign would be and were the same sign and house in the 1953 and 1963 charts.  And the first part of the reading dealt with the Ingress of all the outer planets we are experiencing right now, which meant I was talking about their movement along the line between the houses and signs (using the whole sign system, which I do, means they are the same line).  Once we moved away from the Ingress discussion the reading started to "fail."  When my client finally asked about relationships and children, the chart in front of us did not bear any resemblance to the chart used 2 years ago and then we started to struggle.  In part the struggle occurred because I kept reading what was in front of me and the chart in front of me had no energy points in the 5th and 7th houses (children and partnerships).  My client was doing her best to make sense of her previous experience and the current one and that's when she spotted the error on the chart (I always present my client with a copy of the chart and take them around it).

Two important factors helped us ferret out the error.  She asked about information that was dominant from her previous reading, which at that time we did verify all her information before we began.  And I did not try to read something into the chart in front of me about relationships that was not there.  If I didn't trust the chart and I wanted to "keep my client on the hook" I would have done some fancy mind work to make the chart work on the relationship issues.  That didn't happen.  Like a pilot who has to trust the instruments more than his "feelings," because certain kinds of spiral dives will not feel like the plane is out of control, I have to trust the tool.  In doing so, the reading created the situation where the error became obvious.  This experience was ... profound.  Fortunately, my clients were able to return later in the day after I recast the chart and redid the prep work.  We did the other client's reading before they left and when they came back we read the corrected chart, which now had Jupiter in the 5th house, and 8 energy points in the 7th and 8th houses.  Now were were on track.

I wanted to share this "mistake" with you because it shows the "strong form of the argument" of Astrology.  The best Astrology will have involved clients who are self-aware and the tool has to be trusted.  You have to read what is there.  If the 7th House is empty, then partnerships are not emphasized in this lifetime.  I give all my clients their chart, walk them through my process, and give them a couple of excellent beginning books as references in case they want to follow up behind me on their own or spend more time studying some part of the chart that I talked about (or did not talk about).  Most are happy to leave all the work up to me, but I want them to know that I'm using data they can verify on their own and not just riffing my way through a made up story.  An Astrology reading is a narrative journey, your narrative journey.  Its all about you.  And if you trust yourself and know yourself, you can even figure out when the Astrology is wrong.  Pretty amazing if you ask me.

Below are the two charts (without the name of the individual).  The first chart is the INCORRECT chart and the second cart is the CORRECT chart.