Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

dead wrong.

MOON MADNESS

The basic idea behind the lunar effect—or “moon madness” or the “Transylvania Hypothesis” as some more lyrical writers term it—is that the moon in its different phases exerts a strong influence on human behavior. It is especially held that the full moon accentuates or increases the probability of all sorts of odd and troublesome behavior. Suicides, admissions to mental hospitals, arrests for public drunkenness, and crimes of various sorts are all said to increase when the moon is full (Lieber 1978). It is also widely believed, especially among maternity ward personnel, that more babies are born when the moon is full than during the other phases of the moon (Abell and Greenspan 1979). The moon’s gravitational influence is usually the mechanism used to explain the alleged effects of the full moon. After all, proponents say, the moon’s gravity influences the oceans, which are largely water. Therefore, since the human body contains a great deal of water, the moon’s gravity must also influence the human body. This, in some unspecified way, results in moon madness. But in fact the moon’s gravitational influence on the human body is infinitesimal—equivalent to the weight of a single mosquito being added to the weight of a normal individual. Gravity is a weak force. As you hold this book, you are outpulling the entire planet Earth.

Campbell and Beets (1978), Abell (1981b), and Rotton and Kelly (1985) have reviewed the considerable number of studies that attempt to link the phases of the moon, especially the full moon, to human behavior. All three reviews conclude unequivocally that the phase of the moon does not influence human behavior. For example, Abell and Greenspan (1979) studied all the births that took place at the University of California Hospital, Los Angeles, from March 17, 1974, through April 30, 1978. During this period there were 11,691 live births, of which 8,142 were natural in that neither drugs nor caesarean section were used. There were 141 multiple births among the live births and 168 stillbirths. Analysis of this huge number of births showed no effect of phase of the moon in any of the four groups of births (all live births, natural births, multiple births, and stillbirths).

Studies of other variables have also failed to find any effect of the full moon. Rotton and Kelly’s (1985) paper reviews numerous published studies that showed the full moon did not influence (1) homicide rate; (2) other criminal offenses; (3) suicides; (4) psychiatric disturbances; or (5) psychiatric admissions to hospital.

Occasionally, of course, a study will report some sort of relation between the full moon and some variable. These studies require close examination. Under such examination, methodological or statistical flaws have appeared that invalidate the conclusions. Templer, Veleber, and Brooner (1982) found that highway accidents at night were more frequent when the moon was full. But their data showed no effect of the phase of the moon on daytime accidents. They devised a rather fanciful explanation of these results based on the effect of moonlight on the human pineal gland. However, as Rotton and Kelly (1985) point out, “a disproportionate number of full-moon nights fell on weekends” during the period studied by Templer, Veleber, and Brooner (p. 292). Templer, Brooner, and Corgiat (1983) reanalyzed their data and, this time, took into account such variables as weekends, holidays, and such. They found that the supposed effect of the full moon on accidents disappeared. Thus, their original finding was due to the effect of weekends on accident rates, not to any effect of the full moon.

Arnold Lieber (1978) has been a strong proponent of the reality of lunar influence on human behavior. He claims to have found a relationship between homicide rates and the full moon in Dade County, Florida, and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, with more homicides taking place when the moon is full. However, Rotton and Kelly (1985) point out a fatal flaw in this data. In attempting to find an effect of the full moon, Lieber and Sherin (1972) conducted ninety-six different statistical tests on their data. They tested the effect of the moon on homicide rates by looking at these rates for, among others, “the three days before and after, the three days before, the three days after, two days before and after, two days before, two days after, one day before and after, one day before, one to two days after, and one to three days after full moons” (Rotton and Kelly 1985, p. 293). Of the ninety-six analyses, three reached the accepted “.05” level of significance, meaning that such a result would be expected by chance only 1 time in 20, or 5 times out of 100. But, if one conducts ninety-six statistical tests, one would expect that 4.8 of them (96 x .05) would reach the .05 level by chance alone. Lieber and Sherin’s (1978) data would provide evidence for the reality of lunar effects on homicide rates only if about ten of their ninety-six different tests showed a significant result. Sanduleak (1984–85) analyzed all 3,370 homicides that took place in Cuyahoga County from 1971 through 1981. He found no lunar influences.

The data on the lunar effect, then, shows overwhelmingly that the moon’s phases have no effect on human behavior. Why do so many people continue to believe that “moon madness” exists? A clue can be found in a study by Angus (1973). This study revealed that nurses who believed in the reality of the moon’s influence on behavior made more notes of patients’ “unusual” behavior when the moon was full than did nurses who did not believe the moon influenced behavior. Nurses who believed that the moon influenced behavior knew when the moon was full and at those times expected, looked for, and, not surprisingly, found more noteworthy behavior. Other nurses, who did not believe that the moon influences behavior, did not search for incidents to validate their belief.

BIORHYTHM THEORY

According to biorhythm theory, three fixed and immutable rhythms, set at the moment of birth, cycle throughout human life and influence almost every facet of human behavior. There is a twenty-three-day physical rhythm, a twenty-eight-day emotional rhythm, and a thirty-three-day intellectual rhythm. The rhythms are usually depicted as changing over time in a sinusoidal fashion. Days when a given rhythm is above the baseline are referred to as “up” days and are supposed to be good days for engaging in behaviors related to the rhythm in question (Gittelson 1982). On the other hand, days when a particular rhythm is below baseline are “down” days and are thought to be poor days for engaging in behavior related to the rhythm in question. For example, athletic performance would be expected to be better on days when the physical rhythm is above baseline and poorer on days when that rhythm is below baseline. Similarly, scores on examinations should, according to the theory, be higher on intellectual “up” days than on days when the intellectual rhythm is below baseline.

There is another aspect to biorhythm theory. This concerns the critical day, a day on which one of the rhythms is changing from the up to the down phase, or vice versa. These days, according to the theory, represent “our weakest and most vulnerable moments” and are when “we can expect ourselves to be in the most danger” since “at these points the rhythms that guide our lives become unstable” (Gittelson 1982, p. 15). The worst of all possible days is the much-dreaded triple critical day, when all three rhythms are changing phase. On such days, biorhythmists will tell you, you should stay in bed. Critical days (including double and triple critical days) make up only a little more than 20 percent of all days.

The basics of biorhythm theory were developed around the turn of the century by Viennese physician Wilhelm Fliess, a friend of Sigmund Freud. By any standards, Fliess was a world-class crackpot. He believed that all humans were basically bisexual; that being left-handed meant that the other sex’s characteristics determined, in large part, one’s personality; and that the sexual organs were represented on certain areas of the membranes in the nose. Fliess’s contribution to biorhythm theory was to invent the twenty-three-and twenty-eight-day cycles that, in line with his theory of bisexuality, he termed the “male” and “female” cycles. The thirty-three-day intellectual cycle was invented in the 1930s by Alfred Teltscher, an Austrian engineer (Wernli 1961; Thommen 1973). Martin Gardner (1966) has described the history of biorhythm theory in detail.

On the face of it, biorhythm theory is unlikely to be true. It requires an extremely precise type of biological timekeeping that does not exist. While it is certainly true that there are many biological rhythms—as distinct from “biorhythms”—known to affect human, animal, and even plant behavior (Moore-Ede, Sulzman, and Fuller 1982), these rhythms all have a feature strikingly absent in the alleged biorhythms: variability. Real biological rhythms are variable; their period changes over time. Even the best-known human biological rhythm, the female menstrual cycle, varies greatly from one female to another and from one cycle to another within the same female (Matsumoto, Nogami, and Ohkuri 1962). Further, the menstrual cycle has a very small effect on cognitive abilities and skilled performance (Sommer 1973). Unlike known biological rhythms, however, biorhythms are said to be absolutely