Simms, Maria Kay. Twelve Wings of the Eagle: Our Spiritual Evolution Through the Ages of the Zodi-
ac.San Diego: Astro Computing Services, 1988.
STA RPATTERN
A star pattern is a horoscope arrangement in which the planets are organized into
four, five, or six clusters that form symmetrical angles with one another.
STARBABY
The “sTARBABY” incident was a scandal in which the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) inserted nonrandom, biased
astrological data into a statistical test of astrological influence. The effect of the extra
data was to transform test results that verified a particular astrological relationship
into test results that appeared to negate the relationship. The unusual name
sTARBABY, which was the title of the principal article exposing the fraud, alludes to
the Uncle Remus children’s tale in which Br’er Rabbit tries to force the Tarbaby to
release him—only to become more deeply entrapped.
In the mid-1970s, Paul Kurtz, a professor of philosophy at the State University
of New York at Buffalo, collected 186 scientists’ signatures in support of an antiastrolo-
gy statement. This document, “Objections to Astrology,” was published in the Septem-
ber-October 1975 issue of the Humanistmagazine, of which Kurtz was the editor. The
tone of the statement was harsh: It portrayed astrology as irrational superstition and
called astrologers charlatans. “Objections to Astrology” was also released to the press,
and it received widespread publicity. This unexpected publicity encouraged Kurtz and
others to found CSICOP, an organization dedicated to debunking “pseudoscience.”
“Objections to Astrology” was published in the same issue in which Lawrence
E. Jerome’s “Astrology: Magic or Science?” appeared. This article attacked, among
others, the highly respected French scientists Michel and Françoise Gauquelin. The
Gauquelins had undertaken sophisticated statistical tests of astrological claims. These
tests largely failed to support traditional astrology, but they also uncovered a few statis-
tically significant correlations. These correlations formed the basis for further studies,
and eventually the Gauquelins concluded that they had discovered certain astrologi-
cal relationships. Michel Gauquelin refuted Jerome’s article and intimated possible
legal action against the Humanistfor misrepresenting his views. The Gauquelins’s
response in combination with the publicity generated by “Objections to Astrology”
prompted CSICOP to undertake an empirical refutation of astrology—a refutation
that focused on the work of the Gauquelins.
Of the various correlations uncovered by the Gauquelins, the strongest was the
so-called Mars effect, the correlation between athletic achievement and the position of
Mars—a planet traditionally associated with physical energy—in certain influential sec-
tors of the sky (e.g., close to the eastern horizon and near the zenith) at the time of
birth. Confident that any genuine test of astrological influence would disconfirm such
correlations, the Humanistissued a challenge to the Gauquelins to subject their original
findings on the Mars effect to an empirical test. The original research had compared the
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sTARBABY