Stupid People Tricks

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Debunked: People are much loonier (e.g., shoot, screw, etc.) during a full moon.

From the screenplay of Friday 13th: SGT. TIERNEY Not bad enough it's a Friday the 13th, but there's supposed to be a full moon tonight. We keep statistics. We have more accidents, more rapes, more robberies, more homicides, more of everything when there's a full moon. It upsets people, makes 'em nuts.

The paragraph above neatly encapsulates the conventional wisdom, and it's particular version may even have been responsible for the current belief that the ancient moon madness connection - "lunacy" -

Do things get crazy when the moon is full? http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_337.html "That's pretty much been the story with all lunar-effect claims--when you look at them closely, they fall apart."

Just to make sure about all this, a pair of admittedly skeptical scientists (Rotton and Kelly, 1985) did what they called a "meta-analysis" of 37 studies of the moon's effect on things like psychiatric admissions, suicides, crime, etc. They found that the moon accounted for no more than 3/100 of 1 percent of the monthly variation.

A new twist was recently given to lunar-effect theorizing by the discovery that positive and negative ions in the atmosphere have an effect on behavior (negative ions usually favorable, positives the opposite). It turns out that positive ions are more abundant when the moon is full. However, the effect is slight compared to major sources of positive ions like air conditioning and air pollution.

"So how do we explain all those cops and emergency room nurses who believe in the lunar effect? Easy. Nobody notices when there's a full moon and nothing happens--you only notice when something does happen. In other words, heads I win, tails don't count. Case closed."

Full Moon Madness http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/virtually_gardening/10703

The Moon in Folklore http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/folklore/10667

Moonlight Madness - a 'special event' collection of links to lunatic articles http://www.suite101.com/event.cfm/27

LUNAR LUNACY Full Moon Myths Fade Under the Light of Scrutiny http://www.stats.org/statswork/lunacy.html "Does a full moon really make more people act loony? Or do we just anticipate or remember the loonies during a full moon.

Statistics bear out the latter. Full-moon madness is a myth."

"Isn't That Interesting?" Two Ways That Urban Myths Creep Into Conventional Wisdom http://www.stats.org/spotlight/interesting.html

Does the full Moon really get animals riled up, or is that an old wives' tale? (scroll down to the last entry) http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/0999/199909wild.html