Moon affecting behavior

Just commenting on one of Cecil’s old articles. He is wrong (a rarity but it does occur). He seems to conclude that the moon’s effect on human behaviour is a myth but it is not. In Britain in the late 70’s (I think 1978) crime rose 16% on the full moon. Not only that but I know several people who work in mental asylums and they often bring in overtime for the full moon.
Sorry Cecil but I must disagree with you here.

Welcome to the boards firespinner, and may I be the first to say:

CITE?

You say the people who work in mental institions often work overtime at the full moon. How often, exactly? 3 times a year? 4? 8? How often do they not work overtime on the day of the full moon? How often do they work overtime when the moon is new or crescent? All of these numbers need to be compared with the overtime they work at full moon to see if there’s actually any significance to that claim. As to the crime rate increase, if it was going to happen, wouldn’t it happen every month?

I’m not saying people don’t act weird during the full moon. People act weird all the time. It may even be that some people use the full moon as an excuse to be weird, consciously or unconsciously, as a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. But there’s no physical reason why the moon being full would corelate with in increase in unusual behaviorl, criminal or otherwise.

Here’s another site that discusses this phenomenot.

Well, approximately 50% of all crime happens within one week of a full moon. But then, 50% of everything happens within a week of a full moon.

Welcome to the SDMB, firespinner.

When you comment on one of Cecil’s online columns, it is appreciated if you provide a link to the same. Doing so can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_337.html

Firespinner, this may seem like a rude beginning, but you happened to make your first steps on a couple of sore points. First, this subject comes up often enough that many of us know the evidence is always anecdotal. Sure, you’ll hear bartenders, cops, and ambulance drivers say that things get weird at the full moon. However, if you check records, the story doesn’t hold up.

The other sore point is calling out Cecil. His work is the foundation this board was built on. Once in a great while, he does make a mistake. However, if you call him wrong here, you’d better be ready to show some evidence.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050729.html

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_047.html

Both of these columns are unrelated to this thread, but both do cite a phenom referred to as “The van is always on the corner” and they were the first two links that came up when I Googled that phrase and I took that as a half-way decent omen. I offer that perhaps the same thing is going on here, maybe we only notice the behaviour when the moon is full because we only look for it when the moon is full.
Sheesh, I may be a nube as well, but at least I know better than to take on the Big Guy without doing a little leg work first :smack:

Right. Basically it’s a normal human tendency to remember the “hits” and ignore the “misses.” Not the same as ignoring the mrs., but often just as risky.

Commonly called “confirmation bias.”

http://www.skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

See also: lunar effects (full moon) The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

I will try to reply to some of your comments now.

  1. When I said they often bring in overtime I mean everytime. (I’m from Ireland so we don’t have that many but we have enough). Every full moon they are brought in on overtime because of the full moon.
  2. I meant no disrespect to Cecil. This is one of the coolest (if not the coolest) sites that i’ve found on the web. I was merely disagreeing with one particular article. (I am one of those sad people who complain about unrealistic movies).
  3. The article is at http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_337.html (thank you bibleophage)
  4. I fully acknowledge that I have no scientific explanation for the moon’s effect (and i’m not one of those people who believes in creationism or reiki). I have seen so much evidence from statistics and rational people that I think it cannot be explained away so simply as confirmation bias.
  5. The evidence cited against it is done by sceptics. I have met sceptics and have never met such virulent, venemous people. They make fire ‘n’ brimstone bible bashers look tame.(I don’t mean all sceptics but I have encountered some who considered anyone who believed in god to be “of lesser intellect”) Thus I am always suspicious of sceptic produced research.

To be honest I don’t know one way or another but I do not feel that it can just be dismissed out of hand.
P.S. Once again I mean no offence to Cecil.

Well, thanks for the compliment. :dubious: I’m a skeptic myself, but I have never been termed virulent or venomous. In my experience, it’s not generally a good idea to go about making blanket characterizations of any group.

IMHO if we are to come up with ideas and explanations that have any chance of being valid, we must start out being skeptical, then examine the data and question the conclusions, looking for support of the proposal and looking for flaws in the reasoning. Otherwise, we risk being like the rooster that thinks he makes the sun rise.

I meant no offence. I would be not be very credulous myself. I was talking about Skeptics like the ones who run www.quackwatch.com . I was reffering to those who find the idea of anything more unusual than a proton offensive. They are the kind of people who could be brought back from the dead by jesus and would still be convinced that it was a parlour trick. They take scientific disbelief to illogical extremes.
There is nothing wrong with being a sceptic as long as you keep an open mind.
(I love the rooster metaphor)

When the moon is full, the van on the corner is more easily visible…

What?

Actually, the article I linked to on Skepdic.com refers to study performed in 1996 by three respected college professors—Ivan Kelly, Roger Culver and [/url=http://www.fiu.edu/~rottonj/pubs.htm"]. All three of these guys hold Ph.D’s; two in psychology and one in physics. If you review the professional writings of these three guys, you’ll see that most of them are juried articles published in the major scientific journals which are most widely read by their peers. I think labeling them as skeptics and summarily dismissing their work is a bit hasty.

Also, merely because the management at the psychiatric institutes in Ireland bring in additional staff during full moons, nothing substantive is necessarily proved. All that datum shows (If it is indeed a true datum; all we have to go on is your personal observation. To prove it conclusively we would need to see the staffing records and determine the correlation of staffing peaks with full moons. And then demonstrate that the causative factor for any correlation found. At this point it doesn’t rise above the level of anecdote.), is that the asylums in Ireland have more staff members on hand at certain periods. The staffing peaks could perhaps be caused simply because the management of these institutions hold a belief identical to yours.

The very definition of a skeptic is someone who keeps an open mind. A skeptic is equally opposed to the person who immediately and without reason concludes that an idea is wrong, as to the person who immediately and without reason concludes that an idea is right. Keeping an open mind means being open both to the possibility that you’re right, and to the possibility that you’re wrong.

Crap. Make that:

Ivan Kelly,
Roger Culver and
James Rotton

I think you have a misplaced notion of what a skeptic actually is. I also think a discussion of the subject would make a poor hijack of this thread, but a darn fine Great Debates thread. I’d cheerfully weigh in there if you chose to start a new discussion.

In short, though, as a skeptic, my credo is this: If you ask me to believe something, you must be able to repeatably and empirically prove and/or demonstrate the something. If you can’t do this, I can’t accept your assertion. I won’t believe something just because it feels right or ought to be true or would be cool if it were real. And in this case, despite many, many years of effort, and many, many studies, the assertion that stuff be wack during a full moon has never been shown to be objectively, measurably true.

And if you have evidence to the contrary, I’d love to see it.

I was referring to CERTAIN self-proclaimed sceptics. If you are open-minded then you are not one of them.
I have just discovered that the irish overtime thing has stopped (we are trying to get rid of our asylums etc. obviously we have to keep the prisons).
I must admit I followed the links and the data looked professional (although the website seems a little dodgy - you can see by what they say about alternative medicine, I don’t think that they know the difference between traditional and modern acupuncture)