While Pamela's away at the American Astronomical Society meeting, we brought in a special guest to help debunk some of the pseudoscience that people mistake for astronomy. Dr Steven Novella from the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe gets to the bottom of astrology and UFOs, and why they're not real science.

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I once heard an astrologer whitter on about reasonance being a mechanism. It was all seductively deceptive and a load of rubbish

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Van Rijn's original Invisible Elf was running for the North Carolina Senate, but dropped out of the contest after the paparazzi snapped him with a cute pixie just outside Disney World in Florida. Now he has settled down with her as they await their first child, writing his biography of life in Van Rijn's backyard, - Now you prove me wrong

I like Skeptic's Guide and appreciate all that Steve Novella does - but Pam's voice is soooo much sexier. Great fundraising idea for the show - voiceover work!!!!

I posted on the General Science board about rumors that the Higgs boson has been found at the Tevatron at Fermilab (in Batavia, IL). I hope Pam has some good gossip on this (and other subjects) from the AAS meeting for next week's show.

Bob Lazar posts moved to Conspiracy Theories.

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I liked this episode, even though I miss Pamela.

I kept waiting for Steve to cuss.

I'm not quite sure how logic is thrown into astrology because i can't see any science involved. Being a young and relatively new member to the astronomy community, my friends ask me about astrology because they think that i'm interested in it instead of astronomy and i tell them that astronomy and astrology are two completely different areas. It gets annoying having to explain the differences but this episode cleared up some of the "facts" about astrology. I greatly enjoyed Dr. Novella's strong opposition to astrology!

If for nothing else... you should be glad that astrology existed.... or we wouldn't have astronomy today.


The mysteries of the cosmos created our wonder, and the basis for science.

I didn't bother to listening to this podcast. It felt off-topic to me from the start. I have LOVED every episode previous, but felt this had little to do with science or astronomy.

off topic doesnt mean its not good. I though it was an interesting topic, and something that tends to get lumped in with "those astronomy nuts" all too often.

-=Identity 4=-

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If my head got too full of stuff, would it collapse and stop at neutron-degenerate matter, or go all the way to a singularity??

The show was actually right ON-topic.

Carl Sagan delt with these two subjects also in his book and series "Cosmos".

Explaining scientifically why the ideas are not scientific. ...huh?

Frasier and Steven did a great job handling such touchy subjects.

Am I the only person who really hated that show?
The speaker harped on about bad science and pseudo science and then continued to state almost categorically that absence of evidence was evidence of absence.
Allow me to state, categorically, I believe in astrology slightly less than I believe electricity is caused by enormous intangible invisible pink elephants. However, he relied almost exclusively on appeal to ignorance (you know the logical fallacy that says, well I can't see how it works so it doesn't).

The effects of Electricity you can see, hear, feel, taste, smell, measure and power your PC with.
You can observe it's underlying physical laws and proove them.
And you can replicate the results whereever you like.

Pure scientific evidence, no belief involved here.

You definitely weren't the only one who hated that episode. Notice the episode on white holes and time travel had the host emphasing that 'we aren't making fun of this', just because it vaguely has to do with science. Yet the idea that stars could have an individual effect on humans is considered ludicrous.

Studies have been done on full moons, and as anybody in law enforcement or in a hospital will tell you, when that happens, people get weird. We KNOW that, I just read yet another study on it. We can observe a full moon, then measure the effects. Perhaps its true that there are other factors, but these are things we just don't know. So why not study it, why ridicule it? Are you that ****ed off at having been a geeky nerd in school who was ostracized? If the moon CAN have an effect, then perhaps stars can have an effect. Science has made its largest leaps forward when people finally started asking the questions that the majority of scientists were taking for granted..or considering ludicrous. For a long time alchemists were ridiculed, imagine wanting to change one thing into another, now of course, its done as a matter of routine. Who's have thought the alchemists would be right.

That's one of the reasons why scientists have such a hard time getting people involved. Not only is there a reliance on jargon, there's also this condescending attitude that 'we are sooooo much smarter than you rubes". Even though some PHD's I know are about the dumbest people I've ever met.

Meanwhile of course, we find out that nobody KNOWS anything. The woman even admits that a mathematician can come up with anything, in the show about, I forget, the beginning of the universe maybe it was. Yet is there a show talking about how mathematics is pseudo science?

We all know that a scientific theory is 'valid' if it 'works'. In other words, so long as it reasonably explains things then it becomes 'fact'. Meanwhile of course, all the things that aren't explained are said to be 'in the works'.

When all those 'very smart people' are making hypotheses about what happened before the big bang are they called charlatans? No, they are just 'really smart people', who , by the way, are making up utter nonsense. We might also add all the topics through the shows that the narrators say are "fun to think about", even though there is no evidence one way or another. Are those considered pseudo scientific? Not at all.

I just got an ipod and have been going through all kinds of pods while I work and this is one of my favourites. However, what is next? How about taking books from the Talmud and Bible and holy books and talking about why they are utter rubbish. Actually, thats not bad, the history of astronomy is just filled with good stuff. If you look for shows, there is a big fountain. But the part about belittling was just a joke.

The only other beef I have is that the show often IS NOT "how we know what we know". I can't count the number of times that Pamela has said "well, this happens and then this and this" without any reference to how we know those things.


So yeah, keep to science. When you want viewers its always a good idea to not go out of your way to insult people. If the full moon makes people a little nuts, then there's something to astrology. As for the details, well, maybe you just haven't looked at the details. How do you know there aren't 'metaphysical laws' within the astrology movement. After all, physical laws are pretty arbitrary, and lots of physical laws have fallen by the wayside. The effects, again, are very measurable at the hospital.

Once again a great show!

I've been meaning to ask whether you guys (Fraser, Pamela and Steve Novella) would go into more depth with regard to cattle mutilation.

I, myselft, suspect that its explainable by modern day human activities, but I would be interested to hear how steve explains how it can't be caused by UFO's, in another show, seeing as there was only so much time to discuss the various topics in this episode.

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By whom?

Carl Sagan - "We are made of star stuff."

Whether it has a daily effect on our lives is yet to be proven, but to say that stars have had no impact on our lives is the thing that is ludicrous. We wouldn't be here at all without them.

I "hope" you realize that astrology proponents are not talking about the fact that we all are made up of atoms which were formed in distant supernova explosions (as Sagan spoke of).

No...they are talking about positions of stars and planets actually effecting people in a most personal way, ie. Jupiter is in "such and such" quadrant of the sky, so it's a good time to invest money.

There is absolutely no mechanism to these ideas, so your idea that astrology is "yet to be proven" is putting the "cart before the horse".

Astrology does nothing but make vague "predictions" which can apply to almost anyone. It is worse than useless, it is a waste of time.

What study? There might be slightly more activity because there is more light, but the correlation is slim at best. Of course, anecdotes aren't evidence.

From here:

http://www.livescience.com/strangene..._bad_moon.html

Our expectations influence our perceptions, and we look for evidence that confirms our beliefs.
[snip]
researchers Ivan Kelly, James Rotton, and Roger Culver, in their study "The Moon was Full and Nothing Happened" (published in the book "The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal," 1991) examined more than 100 studies of alleged lunar effects and found no significant correlation between phases of the moon and disasters, homicide rates, etc.

But, yes, light from the moon may have an effect on behavior, but so does artificial light. This isn't terribly astonishing.

Aside from the sun, there is no obvious mechanism. And, no effect has been demonstrated in controlled studies. If you think it deserves more research, by all means, do it.

They were? Nuclear reactors and particle accelerators have as little to do with alchemy as modern flight has to do with ancient dreams of magical flight.

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I understand that there is no science behind astrology, and that it is useless today.

What I was trying to point out is that without astrology, there would be no astronomy today. Astrology begat Astronomy. Therefore it was NOT useless.

Oh...and one more thing...

If astrology was so useless... then how do you explain every star map?

What constellation? What star? Where?

All your astronomy books use astrological names for places in the sky.

EvilEye...yes, astrology was the precursor of modern astronomy, and some very famous astronomers were also astrologers basically because the pay was better for casting horoscopes.

However...

It has been a LONG TIME since astrology was considered an actual science.

...and I didn't say "was" useless, I said is useless. There is a difference.