i am sure you all recall the oft quoted ‘fact’ in arguments against astrology that the midwife exerts a greater gravitational force on your birth than all the planets out there. It’s a lie!
http://onemonkey.org/midwife.htm
Well I did a few calculations and this turns out to be false. my standard fallacy falsifier is itself fallacious.
In fact, she has about the same order of magnitude of influence as Mars, but much less than Jupiter, the Sun or the Moon. (Assuming spherical midwife and baby moving at non-relativistic speeds.)
I don’t quite believe it myself, but you may check the calculations for yourself here..
Update:
I happened to glance at a european survey, the Eurobarometer on european attitudes and beliefs about science and technology. One question they asked was to rate how scientific certain things were on a five point scale. Just for laugh they threw in astrology.. it got a worryingly high 3.1. Fortunately, they also asked about horoscopes which got a far more appropriate 1.9. Showing that people are more confused than they are gullible
