Is there No Mars Effect?

Author: Ertel, Prof. Suitbert
Abstract: The French skeptics (CFEPP) attempt to replicate the Gauquelin Mars effect used a sample of 1,966 sports champions taken from two biographical sources. They reported an insignificant surplus of births in Mars key sectors upon which they concluded that a Mars effect was non-existent. The surplus became larger but remained insignificant when the CFEPP’s own critic, Dr, Nienhuys, mathematician at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, at my suggestion corrected the CFEPP’s wrong expectancy. However, Nienhuys missed an opportunity to correct another flaw, namely the CFEPP’s inclusion of cases that were not eminent enough to meet the requirements of “supreme eminence”. A Mars effect becomes manifest only with eminent professionals. On the one hand, the CFEPP rightly argued that champions listed in both biographical sources were more eminent on average than those listed in only one course. But they did not use this criterion for all 36 sports disciplines except for two that lacked appropriate records of successes. When all double sources (= more eminent) champions out of the CFEPP’s total were picked, a significant Mars effect (p = .02) resulted. In addition, the Mars effect for double-source champions was significantly (p = .04) larger than that of single-source champions, whose proportion of births with Mars in key sections did not deviate significantly from chance. In order to remove doubts of critics, a number of competent and independent researchers were invited to scrutinise the counts of the CFEPP’s published data as well as to analyse them using their own procedures. Six of them replied and all confirmed the counts. Four confirmed the significance of the Mars key sector deviations. Three confirmed the conclusions without reservation and one with some reservation. Two considered the CFEPP data and methodology as inappropriate which view is shown to be untenable.
Keywords: Mars effect, Gauquelin, champions, eminence
Notes:
Publication: Correlation: Astrological Association Journal of Research Into Astrology
Issue: Volume 17 Issue 2
Dated: 1998/99
Pages: pages 4 – 23