MAVERICK Talk June 13, 2027 |
5pm Eastern / 4pm Central / 3pm Mountain / 2pm Pacific
The Gauquelin Heredity Effect - a Confounder that explains the failure of the 3rd study
Graham Douglas
Email: ondastropicais@protonmail.com
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Synopsis:
The success of the first Gauquelin Heredity study of natural births in hospitals in the Paris area seemed to herald a physically plausible explanation for the results previously established, extending them to ordinary non-eminent subjects, and connecting the Gauquelin Effect (GQE) to the fields of genetics and solar or geomagnetic activity. The second study showed much less correlation between key-sector planets at the births of parents and children, and the third completely failed to replicate. This led to the belief that the first successful test was invalid, despite the apparently identical conditions of data collection. There was one difference between the first and later studies, however - the years in which the births occurred, which potentially explains why this makes a difference. I propose that there is a confounding factor which became more important by the 1930s when the last experiment was conducted: the popularity of birth control techniques among the French population.To understand this, we need first to consider that the GQE always involves more than one planet, those not in the +-zones, so restoring a natural birth time free of hospital routine, only works if the date of birth itself has not been determined by other factors. Astrological tradition never tried to divorce birth time from birth date either. I will also reconsider Geoffrey Dean’s proposed ‘social effects’ to include birth control and secular trends and suggest that Directed Acyclic Graphs developed by Judea Pearl are useful thinking tools for mapping the web of causes in play.
Biography:
After studying Chemistry at Imperial College, London I worked in biophysical research and then moved to school teaching.
I found out about the work of the Gauquelins in1977 and have been studying astro-research ever since. In recent years I have become interested in the possible involvement of longevity, since it has been correlated with solar activity cycles by several researchers, and specifically with the possibility that 27.3-day variations in birth data that exist in samples of Gauquelin professional birth data and other data, might originate in the solar rotation cycle rather than the lunar orbital period.