# debunking astrology using Presidential birthdates **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 18, 2009, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873 "2009-05-18T17:10:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/21 "2009-05-19T09:48:04Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Leaving out the mechanism of how such a thing would work, we can look for factors that could indicate there is ‘something going on’, such as seeing if professions chosen by people have any correlation to the month they were born. Didn’t Gauquelin come up with some interesting data along these lines, or was he just a ‘cherry-picking’ pseudo-scientist? Well, there is evidence for variation in personality traits depending on the season of birth (check [here](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V9F-47PG7HB-5&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0a628268adc789f4c1aefd5db344d544) for a quickly googled up study), but that doesn’t actually lend any credence to astrology (which is thoroughly debunked by the realization that star signs, drawn up quite a while ago, are by now out of whack by something like a month due to the precession of the equinoxes, so the sun was actually nowhere near the sign you’re said to have been born under when you were born) – though of course it does link one star’s influence to personality traits, namely that of the sun, being what creates seasons and the associated changes in nature and thereby, in biology. Specifically, what appears to have been somewhat consistently found are differences in levels of monoamine neurotransmitters, a group which includes, for instance, serotonin, which is known to play an important role in the regulation of mood, anger, and aggression. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/22 "2009-05-19T11:36:35Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Didn’t Gauquelin come up with some interesting data along these lines, or was he just a ‘cherry-picking’ pseudo-scientist? He was probably mistaken. His results aren’t replicated. I don’t know about cherry picking etc. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/23 "2009-05-19T11:44:31Z")
Though if you believe this: [http://www.skepsis.nl/mars.html](http://www.skepsis.nl/mars.html) He was probably deliberately distorting results. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/24 "2009-05-19T11:45:18Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > There have only been 43 different presidents. That’s such a small group that you could never statistically expect that each of the 12 signs would have exactly 3.58 presidents. I have always thought a better group to analyze would be the CEO’s of the Fortune 500. ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/25 "2009-05-19T12:30:02Z")
In my high school physics class, we calculated the gravitational effect in play if all 7 outer planets were aligned with the Earth. We then calculated the gravitational effect of the pediatric doctor in a delivery room. Guess which was larger? ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/26 "2009-05-19T13:10:12Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > When our brains are known to run on a form of electricity, and magnetic pulses from the sun can affect electrical circuitry on our planet, I don’t see why it is so outlandish that this may cause some formative process in our brains that determines the type of person we might turn out to be. That’s not what astrology does. Astrologers don’t ask when in the sunspot cycle a person was born. They look at the position of the sun and planets in the zodiac. The sunspot cycle has an average length of 11 years. No planet returns to the same place in the zodiac every 11 years, so there’s nothing in what astrologers look at that would correspond to the sunspot cycle. What’s more, the sunspot cycle varies in length, which the orbits of the planets don’t. If the sunspot cycle does affect people’s brains, the effects wouldn’t be correlated with anything that is going to appear in a horoscope. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/27 "2009-05-19T20:17:16Z")
The article I read implied that there was some sort of field generated by the sun that was affected by the positions of the planets, somewhat alike two stones being dropped into a pond and their ripples interacting. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2009, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/28 "2009-05-19T20:54:16Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > The article I read implied that there was some sort of field generated by the sun that was affected by the positions of the planets, somewhat alike two stones being dropped into a pond and their ripples interacting. Yes, that’s called gravity. The sun’s mass bends space-time and that affects the other planets, just as their mass affects the sun, albeit to a much tinier amount. Nothing to do with electromagnetic radiation or their relatives positions at any time in your life. ---
**Author:** ![rocking\_chair](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocking_chair/32/2918_2.png) [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2009, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/29 "2009-05-20T22:39:27Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > But even twins have different time of birth. The astrologers I was talking about would come up with something like “At 9:03 am, Mars was at the zenith, so twin 1 was aggressive and successful. But by 9:15 when the second twin was born, Mars was descending and Saturn had moved into the next quadrant, so we’d expect a more passive and easy-going personality.” > > When the position of every constellation, planet, comet, etc. continually changes through the day, they can cherry-pick the data. Something’s always going to be different. perhaps conjoined twins who were separated when they were a year or so old? usually conjoined twins are born at the same moment by cesarian. ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2009, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/30 "2009-05-21T09:07:52Z")
_Ivan_, I guess your references make my point for me? One article? Gauquelin’s lone research? After centuries of opportunity and actual research? Is this what the pattern of research findings would be expected to look like if there was something in this? There is a tendency to privilege “new” work in the rhetoric of supporters of woo-woo. As in, “A new study now shows…”, as if to imply that all of history to this point lived benighted in error, the new work said “Let there be light” and all those who support the idea reign forever in the kingdom of the righteous. Sometimes, new work can radically alter thinking in a particular subject, particularly at the edge of knowledge in a new field. The problem here is that we are not at the leading edge of a new field. We are not confirming the existence of the Higgs boson against a background of enormously well-established work over decades in particle physics, set against competing guesses as to what is just out of view. We are still bogged down in the most basic question - does astrology work? Any new work on this basic question has to compete with all the old work done on the _same basic question_ showing it doesn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2009, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873/31 "2009-05-21T14:08:19Z")
How many of you read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers? He has several examples where success and birth month are heavily correlated. Happily, there’s a common sense reason why that has nothing do with astrology. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debunking-astrology-using-presidential-birthdates/496873.md?page=1)