The Lunar Effect, A crank 'theory' from yours truly...

Ok, I've warned everyone that I engage in crankery from time to time. So without further ado, I shall espouse my own personal crank theory, defend it with bile and rhetoric from any who dare to point out my errors, ignore any evidence which contradicts my claims, and inform you all that I will soon be receiving a Nobel prize for my 'work', assuming one of you thieving bastards doesn't steal it and publish before me.

Well, okay... I'm not going to do most of that, but I am going to tell you all my own pet theory about the Lunar Effect. Feel free to debunk away, I'm not trying to convince anyone, just trying to start a new topic which can be twisted into yet another argument about whether cranks or skeptics are the more moral folk.

Ok, here's my 'theory'. Studies of the effects of the full moon on crime and accidents tend to be evenly divided between those which support the notion that the full moon makes weird things happen, and those which find no (or a negative) correlation between the two. Most skeptics take the position argued in the conclusion of those papers with negative results; namely that the very existence of the "The full moon makes crazy things happen," meme causes police and health care workers to unconsciously fall victim to the confirmation bias. They believe there's more accidents and crime on nights of a full moon, so they remember those criminal acts and accidents which occur on those nights better than those which occur on other night. They believe that the accidents and crimes which occur on those nights tend to be weirder, so their memories focus on the weird aspects of those events, while discounting or minimizing the weird aspects of events which take place on other nights.
I consider this extremely likely myself. I'm as close to fully convinced as I can be that confirmation bias and selective memory play a huge role in this common perception.

But to suggest that this idea explains the apparent Lunar Effect fully seems to be overreaching. My idea is this: This confirmation bias works not only on the police and health care workers in these cases, but on the criminals and patients, too. It's the same general principle: People believe that the full moon will make them act out, so they act out when they realize that there's a full moon out. Criminals get more brazen, partygoers get drunker, clumsy people get clumsier, crazy people get crazier and they all get a bit more whimsical.

So the end result if I'm right is that there is a small increase in the number of such incidents on full-moon nights, and that this small increase becomes a large increase in the minds of those most exposed to them.

Now, feel free to debunk, destroy, evince, counter-evince, complain, whine, hurl accusations of hypocrisy, homosexuality and immorality at me, whatever.

I'm most interested in the debunking tho... If anyone has a good link to blow my 'theory' away, feel free to share. If not, but you want to debunk anyways, I'll get you started.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_effect
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...21218_moon.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/820241.stm
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...08250070&Ref=AR
http://www.skepdic.com/refuge/bunk19.html

This post has been edited by MjolnirPants on Nov 3 2009, 04:15 AM

I've known lots of miscreants. I've associated with all too many of them closely. I'll confirm their awareness of full moon phobia; most every one I've known buy into it. Miscreants are typically very stupid folk. But because they believe the full moon myth, they generally tend to moderate their deviations out of fear versus it freeing their inhibitions. Even really dumb people who tend toward getting into trouble aren't actually looking for an excuse to get into trouble. If they're foolish enough to believe in "lunacy" they take it face value and try to behave. Those ones would tend to offset the ones you describe thus nulling the set.

Debunked and pwnd.

Not to take away from your most excellent pwnage (I shall, of course, consider myself thoroughly pwned), but aren't a propensity for getting in trouble and a desire to stay out of trouble two mutually exclusive attributes?

I've never met the miscreant worthy of the title who would do anything to reduce his or her odds of getting into trouble, unless that trouble was nigh inevitable and of a flavor most unpalatable to the miscreant in question (such as slapping a cop for the fun of it), and even then, only sometimes.




Oh wait, did I respond reasonably? I'm sorry, please forgive me. What I meant to say was...

"YOU STOOPID A-S-S-HOLE NOT NOW WHAT LUNAR EFFECT IZ!!!!!11 I IS VERY MUCH SMARTER THAN STOOPID A-S-S-HOLE AND WIN NOBEL PRIZE FOR MY WORK!!11!! ONE DAY ALL SCIENCE IKNOHLEGE MY GREAT CUNTRIBUSHONS!!!!11!!1"

or...

"I bet you think you're so smart, sitting there on your high horse like you're the prince of the world. Well, you're not. You're just another BULLY who likes to use fowl language like "pwnd" to try to suppress my freedom of speech. Well, we'll see how smart you are when I sue you for libel, you hypoicritical jerk."

take your pick. I like to cover all my bases.

This post has been edited by MjolnirPants on Nov 3 2009, 08:14 PM

My brother-in-law is an ER charge nurse. I'll ask him for some stats.

In the meantime, I agree that the 'knowledge' of the effect can cause behavior changes, but there may be a simple and logical basis for the effect's hold on folks: Criminals can see better to perpetrate during the full moon, but can't see well enough to get away, so they crash cars and get into gunfights with the police...

From personal experience, however, crime is best done in pitch-darkness... You have to feeel it.

Speaking of which, has anyone heard from poor Robin, or has Canada served him wrongly again?

Maybe you should also include people who start frothing at the mouth with irritation when the moon is full because they hate the crank idea that the full moon affects behavior.

What about the theory that more light at night causes more people to go out instead of staying inside? This would seem to be negated by the presence of street lights in places where wild behavior would occur.

What about the correlation between tide-strength and the body-moisture? This one seems like the farthest stretch, but maybe it causes just enough of a shift in osmotic cellular respiration in hormones, nerves, or other body systems to throw people's sense of stability a little off.

There, I gave your machine a few cranks of my own. Now what will it do?

Not bad.

An exception on your point #2, though:

Street lights are an 'avenue' that is always open. Moonlight provides a well-lit getaway for the 'perp' ...

The moon's gravitational effect on you during high tide is approximately the same as that of a mosquito landing on your skin.
It only effects the tide because the oceans, seas and large bodies of fresh water are so large.

B. Finger, B. Kane, B. Wayne. "Criminals -- a superstitious and cowardly lot." Det. Com. 1:33 (November, 1939).

What about the fact that the effect is on each cell in your body, as well as all your blood and neural fluid? That's a lot of mosquitos working together simultaneously and constantly.

Actually, I'm sure you're probably right that it's negligible, but what would really debunk the theory is what the difference is between gravitational effect on tides during a full moon versus any other phase of the moon.

Is there any difference it tides? It seems like there shouldn't since lunar fullness only has to do with how much of the illuminated surface is visible. On the other hand, the full illuminated surface can only be visible when the moon is opposite the sun, so would that have some kind of gravitational alignment effect, however small?

It seems like perigee/apogee would be more relevant in terms of gravity effects. I wonder if these somehow correspond with the moon phases with some kind of regularity. The must since they are non-random sequences. Could apogee/perigee full moons have an even greater moonlight-madness effect than full moons alone?

Actually, I think my post may be a product of moonlight madness. Better go check out the window. Oh no, I'm growing hair everywhere and howling!

Now you're being a dipshit.

It's still only equivalent to one mosquito. The gravitational force an object experiences is based on it's own mass, as well as the strength of the gravitational field. The average person weighs about the same as 21 gallons of water, and almost every natural body of water is many (many, many, many) times this.

A mosquito on your skin vs. a mosquito hovering nearby. Try to think about what is being said to you before you respond to it.

While that may be a lot of mosquitoes, it is a condition (the monthly variation in the direction of Luna gravitational attraction ) which has been a constant factor during the evolution of all life on earth . As such, it can be treated as a constant, rather than a variable.

OTOH, perhaps an increase in aggressive behavior on the part of human males once a month , coinciding with the high fertility periods of the human female, might be an evolutionary (reproductive) advantage. It has long been known that menstrual cycle is correlated to the moon's cycle.

Alexg beat me to it, but here is what i was going to post for laughs:

Its the women, they have thier 'full moon' cycle, which releases horromoans and we all go crazy.

I had actually considered that what you meant only had to do with the mass of a single mosquito relative to the mass of the human body. I was just playing a little with the idea that the effect of a mosquito on your skin has less to do with the force it exerts as it does the effect it has on your nervous system. A crumb with the same mass does not effect you the same as a mosquito does, nor does it feel the same.

My point by mentioning every cell in your body had to do with the idea that gravity produces a tidal effect on the surface tension of any body of water, I assume, from an ocean to a lake to a glass of water to a living cell. If this is the case, then I was saying to consider that this very slight effect on a cell would affect every cell, including nerve cells, lymph cells, kidney/liver cells, blood cells and plasma, etc. The effect may still be negligible but I wanted to point out the the gravitational effect would be uniformly distributed.

Is this still a 'dipshit' point, iyo?

Gravitationally, it sure does.

No, it wouldn't. It would be concentrated most highly in those cells closest to the mosquito.

Yes. It changes nothing, and asserts only that which is untrue.

I read a book called The Ion Effect a long long time ago. The full moon leaves the atmosphere slightly more positively charged than a new moon does.
I forget the details but that is the summary of it.

The book had lots of "such stuff" in it.
I didn't take it seriously untill I read a little blurb in a science magazine about how your body "knows" it's cut. One was the the body has a natural negative charge, and cuts have postive one.

Suddendly the book made a bit more sense because the problems it claimed were caused by positive ions could be explained by congestion.