EoR's Starsign is Star Trek

The World Today on ABC radio reported yesterday on a new study that disproved astrology. Yes, I'm sure you, just like EoR, is shocked and appalled at such a finding.

EoR hasn't gone looking for the study yet (in which, reportedly, 15,000 cases showed not one correlation to personality or intelligence - apparently not even a random correlation - but then reporters tend to simplify, exaggerate and misrepresent scientific studies) but the report itself makes amusing reading.

The reporter begins by arguing that astrology has come a long way since the, unspecified, days of sun worship. As an example of this "progress" a recording from a phone-in astrology service is given:

For a recommendation of the best numbers to play in the next lottery draw, press nine.

Of course, astrology hasn't progressed at all, apart from the occasional fumbling in the darkness as astrologers run around like headless chickens every century or so when a new planet is discovered.

But astrologers say they're used to every jibe in the book, and the new scientific study debunking their craft is telling them nothing they didn't already know.

What? You mean astrologers have known all along that they've been promoting bullshit? Surely not? Brian Clark, from something called the Chiron Centre (presumably a think tank and research centre of some sort) provides the astrologer's defence:

With another study coming out it's like reinventing the wheel and probably astrologers would just go: "Ho hum."

Which, presumably, either means astrologers do already know that it's all bullshit, or they're just not interested in evidence and reason. Of course, a third option is that both answers are true.

Mr Clark then goes into some amazing verbal gymnastics to claim astrology as both a science and something else:

Well, there is a scientific basis. But you talked about scientific proof, which I think is different than a scientific basis. Because what happens is we deal with a scientific basis, but then there is an imagination applied to it. So, you know, in some way what you could say it's more of an intuitive science based on reason. It's not necessarily a rational science.

Yes, EoR thinks those statements are rambling as well. To summarise: astrology is a science that has no proof; it's an imaginary story based on a scientific basis; oh, and it's not rational. Well, there's nothing there that EoR would disagree with to any great extent. Except he'd just give it the simpler term science fiction.