Here’s the story, folks. In early January, the BBC ran a live television program over 3 nights called Stargazing Live. It was a great show, hosted by hilarious comedian Dara O Briain and mega-brain particle physicist Professor Brian Cox. It was a kind of introduction to amateur astronomy, encouraging viewers to go outside and look up. It rated quite well, too, with 3.6 million viewers.
But during one segment, explaining the orbits of the planets, an off-the-cuff joke potentially got the presenters in hot water. After joking around by aligning all the planets in a line on their model solar system, Dara cleared the air and said “Let’s get this straight once and for all, astrology is rubbish” still laughing at Dara’s mucking around, Brian replied, “in the interests of balance, because we’re on the BBC, I should say that indeed Dara is right, astrology is nonsense!”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucfpaqR6EtA&w=640&h=390]
This passing joke – clearly an unscripted, throwaway line – went largely unnoticed by, well, everyone. Except, of course, astrologers. They were incensed at the vile attack on their pseudoscience. “I was furious with indignation,” writes ‘respected astrologer’ Angela Cornish. She wrote a very heated email to the British Astrological Association and The Advisory Panel on Astrological Education (APAE). You can read it here, along with a very detailed response from another astrologer, Deborah Houlding.
Why is Cornish so angry? She’s mad because Brian and Dara “had the audacity, on prime time TV, to try and discredit a subject they clearly know nothing about”. I’d have to say, though, that if “astrology is rubbish” is their attempt to discredit it, it’s a particularly piss-weak effort. I’ve made more of an effort to discredit astrology when I blogged here and called it a scam, and when I responded on Mamamia in the comments. Where’s my angry email, Angela?
What I love, though, is the conspiracy theory and media paranoia that Houlding suffers. She writes “[media outlets] are part of the desperate chase for promotion, seeking to profit from the exaggerated public attention that simplified horoscopic astrology attracts at this time of year”. Yes, she’s really suggesting that Dara’s comments were a deliberate plot to stir up controversy and increase viewers. Nevermind that, on a science program, they were simply stating the overwhelming scientific consensus. Deborah’s right in that every year TV stations and magazines trot out the same astrological claptrap – What Does Your Sign Say About This Year – and no doubt people eagerly pore over them to see if they will find True Love this year or strike it rich with Good Fortune. But to look at that clip in context and say it was motivated by that new-year astrological interest is imbecilic and ludicrous. “It is no mere coincidence … that Brian Cox made his outrageous and inflammatory remarks in a program which aired on the 3rd January,” she whines. The show aired in early January for a number of reasons, all of which were astronomical, not astrological. Uranus and Jupiter were in conjunction, there was a partial solar eclipse, and the Quadrantids meteor shower was at its peak. Even the BBC can’t change astronomic events just to take a vague stab at astrology.
To astrologers, the BBC has a clear agenda and Brian Cox is at center of it. Last year, during his excellent Wonders of the Solar System program also shown on the BBC, Cox was again talking about Jupiter:
Jupiter is so different to our planet – you know, a big ball of gas, half a billion kilometres away – it’s difficult to see how it could have anything to do with us at all. But despite the fact that astrology is a load of rubbish, Jupiter can, in fact, have a profound influence on our planet and it’s through a force that, well, surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together – gravity … Jupiter has the most powerful gravitational field of all the planets, and it’s the gas giant’s gravity that can directly influence the orbits of asteroids and other wandering space debris … it can deflect stuff onto a direct collision course with our planet.
That’s it – again, hardly worth making a fuss about. One little statement of scientific consensus – scientific fact – in a science program. But all this has got the astrologers so wound up, they’ve got a petition going. They’re trying to get as many believers as they can to click a button, or even write in to the BBC (with a copy-and-paste letter template) calling for ‘fair representation’ for astrology in the media. Again, I’m upset – where’s my petition?
Cos I’ll make it easy for all you astrologers. All you have to do is show me three scientific studies, in peer-reviewed scientific journals (proper science journals, not Astrologer’s Weekly), that prove comprehensively that astrology works. Three double-blind, randomized large-scale studies. If astrology is as good as you claim, that should be easy to do, right?
Astrologers, I’m waiting!