Friday, May 18, 2018

Full Moon and Other Myths

Ask any number of cops or emergency room nurses, if business picks up under a full moon, and they will quickly confirm your suspicion.  Try telling any of your friends or neighbors that this is not true and you are looking for a fight.  

It’s surprising (and distressing) how many people will strongly defend this kind of information even though they have never done or seen any research presenting evidence one way or another.  They just know it because they know it and believe that it is true.  They will swear by it because something happened to a friend or relative that confirmed it in their mind. Anecdotal evidence is given undue power.

Critical thinkers stand no chance in these situations.  They can’t carry around in their pockets information like the following:  “‘Published [research] does not confirm that there is a change in the amount of violence, reported crimes or aggressive behavior during a full moon,’ Eric Chudler told ABC News. Chudler, a research associate professor in bioengineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, has studied more than 100 research papers on the purported effects of the full moon on human affairs.”

Even presented with this real evidence, people would continue to believe in the power of the full moon.  (Even though they may reject the idea of werewolves.) Other studies have found that some of the strongest proponents of this myth, that nights with a full moon are prone to result in a higher crime rate and more cases of trauma, turn out to be nurses and police officers. 

But doctors at the Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh studied the data on health-care myths and one did a study involving area nurses. He said he found that 69 percent of surgical nurses in his study believed that a full moon led to more chaos and incoming patients that night.  The myth persists, just because people expect to see such patterns and can easily convince themselves that they exist – “See, it’s the full moon. Get ready for a busy night.”

Endorsement from such authority figures and the sympathetic newspaper stories about a lunar effect provide fuel to perpetuate the belief that the phase of the moon affects behavior.  But scientific, statistical evidence, real studies looking for any relationship, and there have been many of them, show no link between phases of the moon and abnormal or unusual behavior.

Some people, including veterinarians, tend to believe that cats and dogs act strangely on full-moon nights and “studies do show an uptick in emergency room visits for cats and dogs during a full moon and in the days before and after.”  It’s doubtful that the moon has any influence beyond the fact that the nights are brighter and people might allow their pets to stay out longer, increasing the potential for them to injure themselves or otherwise get into trouble.

The main problems with this and other myths are confirmation bias and an over-tendency to look for patterns. These are stressed in several recent books in the field of behavioral economics.  When people see an example of something they believe, they tend to embrace it.  When they see a counter example, they tend to dismiss it.  Few look at it as a research problem where the first step is to gather data, count and compare occurrences.

The second problematic tendency is to look for patterns even where none are present.  The familiar is more comforting than the strange.  Along those lines, it is tempting to assign some cause to an effect, even if the supposed cause is some supernatural or paranormal phenomenon, gods or ghosts.  When The Oprah Show revealed a very unusual meeting or situation, she and the audience would gasp – “What are the odds?” But it’s almost certain that with over 300 million people in America, those working for the show could easily find several examples of unlikely occurrences with odds greater than one in ten million.  It’s not a miracle or synchronicity, it just happens somewhere almost every day.

But don’t try to argue that with Oprah or a full-moon believer. They will blow you away!

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