Astrology is a hoax and not a science!

Indian Hindutvadi fascist Prime Minister Modi is making fuss these days about the Vedic sciences. He is promoting astrology as a science. The facts are quite the opposite. There is no basis to such assertions by Modi and his brain-dead fascists.

According to Professor Narilkar, astrology came with Alexander when the later conqurered north-western India. 

To prove his case about the hoax of astrology, he conducted a test by collecting astrological info on 100 scholarly students and 100 intellectually disadvantaged students. He then prepared two sets of 40 random samples of each group and sent the data to 53 famous astrologers asking them to separate - from astrological data - the scholarly group from the disabled group. Knowing that there is a 50% chance of being right or wrong, he said that they would have to score a minimum of 70% to pass the test. Only 27 of the 53 astrologers sent their answers back. None of the famous astrologers in India could come close to matching that figure. The best scorer had 60% right answers (24), and most others had scored lower than 50% (average was only 17 out of 40). Narilkar stated, "The test demonstrated the hollowness of the basic claim of astrology."

Per my own statistical test, it can be seen that the beta risk for the test was 0.27 (=1-0.733 or 26.7% chance of making a type 2 error of accepting the alternate hypothesis when it should have been rejected). 

Power and Sample Size

Test for One Proportion

Testing p = 0.5 (versus ≠ 0.5)

α = 0.05

Results

Comparison p	Sample Size	Power
0.7	40	0.732953

[Note: for a nominal beta risk of 20%, the test would have required 47 samples, and not 40.]

Power and Sample Size

Test for One Proportion

Testing p = 0.5 (versus ≠ 0.5)

α = 0.05

Results

Sample Size	Power	Comparison p
47	0.8	0.699243

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World-renowned astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar has expressed serious concern at the rising trend among people to get married after the matching of horoscopes.

He has said that Indian society needs to worry about this trend, along with its fascination for superstitions like Vastushastra and Feng Shui, which have never passed scientific Scrutiny.

Blind belief in the divine powers of spiritual godmen is another area of concern, said Narlikar. He was speaking on ‘scientific temper’ at the two-day 6th national conference of the Federation of  Indian Rationalists Association (FIRA), Which started on Friday. The Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana College at Wagholi, off the Pune-Ahmednagar highway, is the venue of the conference.

Narlikar observed that he had come across many couples, who themselves had married without matching horoscopes. Their children, however, were more than willing to go for a horoscope match to find some sort of an assurance.

“We have to worry about this,” Narlikar said. He also called for an investigative approach, involving scientists, journalists and professional magicians, in exposing claims by spiritual gurus of possessing divine powers.

The scientist pointed out that horoscopic astrology was borrowed from the Greeks (post Alexander’s visit to India) and the Arabs. “Prior to the Greeks and Arabs, there is no mention of horoscopic astrology in our literature  and Vedas, but for the odd mention of omens,” he said.

“We have borrowed and imported  superstition and have improved upon it. We have a big job ahead to change this mindset,” Narlikar said. To bring about this change it would be better to concentrate on school children rather than adults, he added.

Narlikar also expressed unhappiness at the Union government’s attempt nearly seven years ago, to legitimise studies in astrology by way of University Grants Commission (UGC)-funding for separate astrology departments at Indian universities. 

“There is no one at the UGC willing to give straight answers to the move, which we have strongly opposed,” he said.

The meet was inaugurated by N.D Patil, leader of the Progressive Farmers’ Front, who lamented the state government’s apathy towards introducing an enactment to curb black magic and sorcery. “For a government that never stops calling Maharashtra a progressive state, the delay in bringing about the enactment is unfortunate,” he said.  Patil  also called  for  efforts at the primary and  secondary  education level to counter superstition.

Narendra Dabholkar, president of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti, which organised the meet, FIRA president Narendra Nayak, G. Vijayam,   executive director of the Atheist Centre, Vijayawada, and others spoke on the occasion

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“People should first test the credibility of the predictions made by the astrologers by using the yardstick of statistics and scientific approach,” said Narlikar. He was speaking at the symposium on Experimental Test with Astrology’ at College of Engineering Pune (CoEP) on Wednesday. The event was organised by ‘Eyes on Ison’, a nationwide campaign to track comets. He said that matching horoscopes by astrologers and the predictions made by them is not accurate and hence people should not depend on them. 

“I was close to Dr Narendra Dabholkar, who was spearheading the anti-superstition movement, Along with him, we exposed several astrologers by conducting scientific experiments,” said Narlikar.

Speaking about one such experiment, he said that he, along with Dabholkar and two more associates, collected 100 horoscopes of some scholar students and 100 of some mentally retarded students and gave it to some astrologers. However, the predictions given by them were contradictory. “Astrologers were not found during the Vedic age. They were a part of Alexander’s contingent and stayed back after he invaded India,” he added.