Title: “The Tenacious Mars Effect”
Author(s): Suitbert Ertel and Kenneth Irving,
with a Foreword and an Appendix by Jim Lippard.
Pub: London: the Urania Trust, 1996. Hardbound; Pps appr. 180;
Price £9.95 Sterling. ISBN 1 871 989 15 9
This book I would suggest is an indispensable read for all psychologists,
as well as for “hard” scientists, philosophers, sociologists, and anyone
interested in science. It qualifies for such praise on three grounds. In
the first place, it summarizes the available evidence on the so-called
“Mars Effect”, i.e. the hypothesis that outstanding sportsmen and women are
significantly more likely than other people to be born when Mars is just
rising or overhead. The effect is not very large, and of no practical importance,
but it is totally unexpected on scientific grounds, and at present at least
impossible to explain rationally. As George Abell, and astronomer initially
very critical of the phenomenon wrote: “The Mars effect, to be real, would
require new physics beyond anything that science can at present
understand.” As the book makes clear, the evidence for the Mars effect is
now so strong that it seems impossible to deny; hence this is a phenomenon
of great scientific importance. It may of course be possible in due course
to understand it along traditional lines, but this possibility does not seem
to rest on very strong foundations.
What then is the evidence? It was originally produced by Michel Gauquelin,
a French psychologist, and his wife Françoise, a statistician. Comparing
large samples of sports champions and ordinary people, they found strong
and statistically significant evidence in its favour. Publication of their
results ran into a storm of criticism, much of it ill-informed and patently
prejudiced. I was allowed (as were many scientists interested in the phenomenon)
to go over their results, and could find nothing wrong; none of the critics
bothered. Three large replication studies were set up by highly critical
groups in Belgium, USA and France, in an endeavour to find evidence against
Gauquelin; all failed, as this detailed account, which includes re-analyses
of all the published data, makes clear. We thus have four independent,
large-scale studies, three of them carried out by self-confessed sceptics
and enemies of the hypothesis, which give very positive answers to this question:
Does the Mars Effect exist? It is difficult to think that it does not; hence
the scientific interest in this book.
The second point of interest is in the detailed presentation of the incredible
shenanigans to which the three hostile replication groups resorted when to
their horror results of their studies turned out favourable to Gauquelin.
These accounts really have to be read, savoured and appreciated by anyone
who believes that hard scientists are concerned with facts, truth, evidence.
Findings are kept secret and not published when results are not as clear
as might be desired, for reasons as discussed in this book. The other interest
is related to the reception of the message that the Mars effect is a reality
by people with a scientific training. Readers are invited to try it out!
Just tell your scientific friends what the facts are. They will squirm, put
up all sorts of irrational objections, argue that the facts can’t be true
-- and finally refuse to look at the facts! Nothing has changed since
Aristotelian astronomers refused to look through Galileo’s telescope to see
the four moons of Jupiter. This too is an interesting psychological phenomenon
we might well investigate.
Let me add that Ertel, who had access to all the data from all these
investigations, both published and unpublished, is a well-know psychologist
and statistician, completely impartial (he found many errors in Gauquelin’s
data, and is critical of several of his findings), and absolutely reliable
as far as re-analyses are concerned. He is devoted to objectivity, and translated
Gauquelin’s statement that the more famous the sportsman, the greater the
Mars effect, into an objective and testable hypothesis. If you do not believe
a word I have said, read the book; it will be a revelation. I should perhaps
add that as one of the first to come out in favour of Gauquelin, I have been
accused of favouring astrology, of having a non-scientific attitude, of believing
nonsense. Guilt by association! The evidence for the Mars effect is better
than for most of the “facts” you will encounter in your psychology textbooks,
and incomparably stronger than that for psychoanalysis; yet Freud figures
in all our textbooks, Gauquelin is not mentioned! This may tell us something
about psychology as a science. H.J.Eysenck, Ph.D, D.Sc., Professor Emiritus
of Psychology University of London
From Personality and Individual Differences
© PAID, 1996. Reprinted with permission
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