What do you think?
Rate this book
The Tenacious Mars Effect
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 2, 2008
This book traces the contentious debate regarding the so-called Mars Effect in astrology. In the 50's, two French researchers discovered a correlation between sports champions and the position of the planet Mars in a person's birth chart. Several noted skeptic organizations then claimed to have tried to duplicate the researcher’s efforts and failed. Close examination of the duplicate studies, however, revealed sloppy work that did not fit the established protocol, and in several cases, the skeptic organizations were shown to have been deliberately misleading in their reporting of the results. Studies that were done in accordance with the protocol established by the original researchers have all confirmed the researchers' initial findings.
I only read the first section of this book, which outlines the various studies and the controversy surrounding them. The rest of it more closely examines each individual study and the controversial issues involved, and was thick with notes, charts and statistics.
The Mars Effect as it's outlined is so minor I'm not sure it can be used to make a case for the validity of astrology as a whole. But the evidence presented for its existence is significant enough to remain an unsolved mystery. Mostly, however, I found this book fascinating because of what it revealed about human attachment to dearly held beliefs. One would think skeptical organizations, dedicated as they are to getting to the bottom of things, would be above the kind of behavior they exhibited in these studies. Unfortunately, that did not seem to be the case.
P.S. I read an interesting essay recently that pointed out that, even in the original researcher’s data, the Mars Effect declined in direct relationship to the rise in hospital births. The author's theory was that accurately-recorded birth times eliminated the Mars Effect because home-birth parents may have been trying to give their kids an edge by fudging birth times to better match favorable planetary placement, information that was widely available in almanacs of the time.
I only read the first section of this book, which outlines the various studies and the controversy surrounding them. The rest of it more closely examines each individual study and the controversial issues involved, and was thick with notes, charts and statistics.
The Mars Effect as it's outlined is so minor I'm not sure it can be used to make a case for the validity of astrology as a whole. But the evidence presented for its existence is significant enough to remain an unsolved mystery. Mostly, however, I found this book fascinating because of what it revealed about human attachment to dearly held beliefs. One would think skeptical organizations, dedicated as they are to getting to the bottom of things, would be above the kind of behavior they exhibited in these studies. Unfortunately, that did not seem to be the case.
P.S. I read an interesting essay recently that pointed out that, even in the original researcher’s data, the Mars Effect declined in direct relationship to the rise in hospital births. The author's theory was that accurately-recorded birth times eliminated the Mars Effect because home-birth parents may have been trying to give their kids an edge by fudging birth times to better match favorable planetary placement, information that was widely available in almanacs of the time.
Displaying 1 of 1 review