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From: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy,net.sci
Subject: Re: Real CSICOP purpose belies name???
Message-ID: <13219@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 17-Apr-86 04:27:05 EST
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Posted: Thu Apr 17 04:27:05 1986
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In article <7207@tekecs.UUCP> keithr@tekecs.UUCP (Keith Rowell) writes:

>I came across an article in Fate magazine the other day that
>purported to be a debunking of a CSICOP effort to debunk French
>astrologer Michel Gauquelin's statistical study of birth date
>and occupation. (Fate is a small pulp magazine that specializes

>The article by Dennis Rawlins in the October 1981 issue of Fate
>is called sTARBABY.  Rawlins is "cofounder of [CSICOP] and
>served on CSICOP's Executive Council from 1976 to 1979.  Until
>1980 he was an Associate Editor of Skeptical Enquirer.

>"The bottom line is:

>"Every one of the Councilors [participating in the Gauquelin
>investigation] who say they know something about the sTARBABY
>[Gauquelin investigation] knows that it was a disaster.  Yet
>Skeptical Inquirer readers are given to believe nothing went
>wrong."


    Many of you may have heard about a recent research project
conducted here at Berkeley and published, I believe, in the 
December issue of Nature. This tested whether astrologers could
accurately determine the psychology of individuals from birth
information, and came up with a negative result. I went to a 
lecture by the fellow who did this research, and he *totally
trashed* the CSICOP investigation in *very strong* terms. So
more than one presumably informed opinion agrees that this
particular investigation was useless ("disaster" "disgrace"
and "coverup" were words I recall this guy using).

>Probably, Dennis Rawlins is just a disgruntled former CSICOPer
>and his reasons for writing the article are not at all what they
>seem to be, right?  Well, I'm not so sure about that...

   Having heard this lecture, neither am I.

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
ucbvax!weyl!gsmith            "When Ubizmo talks, people listen."