I've been thinking about this subject a little in the wake of the JohnR debacle, so here is my proposal for what I think would be a valid test of the claims of Jyotish. I know that no one who is actually working in the field of Jyotish or astrology is ever likely to submit to this test, but wouldn't it be interesting if they did?
Others who know more about the scientific method and the design of research protocols are welcome to add to my list below: 1. Establish a truly impartial set of judges who have no stake in the findings one way or another. The test data defined in #2 and #3 below will be sent to these judges and held privately until all of the analyses of individual charts are submitted by Jyotishi and astrologers. Then their predictions will be weighed against the test data and the results evaluated. 2. The test data consists of at least ten sets of "blind" birth data. None of the people whose birth data is supplied can be famous, so that their charts cannot be looked up and the identity of the person gleaned from the many public caches of birth data accessible to Jyotishi and astrologers. The test subjects will not be identified by name, or even by sex unless the Jyotishi/astrologers specify that they "have" to know the sex of the subject before doing an analysis of the chart. NO personal data or description of the subject or their lives will be provided at all, other than their birth data. 3. For each test subject, there has to be at least one major, significant, and verifiable past event that happened in their lives that is to be identi- fied by the Jyotishi/astrologer group. Each event has to be *concrete* and not "hazy" in any way. In other words, "They had a successful, happy life" is right out. It has to be more like, "In 1996 this person gave birth to a healthy son" or "In 2004 this person was promoted to the presidency of a major company" or "In 2007 this person was diagnosed with cancer of a specific type and was successfully (or unsuccessfully) treated for it" or "In 1998 this person died, of this cause." Again, there can be nothing hazy or non-specific about each event, and each event must be so important in the life of an individual that it theoretically cannot be missed in a chart by someone who claims that such things are revealed there. In other words, for each chart there has to be a *major* event in that subject's life that to some extent stands out and tends to define that life. 4. The participating Jyotishi or astrologers have to spend time pouring over the charts themselves, with no other input, and then write up their anal- yses of the charts, trying to pinpoint what the major event in each subject's life was. The predic- tions have to be specific, using clear, no bullshit language. Multiple predictions are possible for each chart, but if multiple predictions are given, they will be "weighted" in the results such that a "scattershot" approach by the Jyotishi/astrologers in an attempt to "cover all the bases" will not be weighted as highly as a single prediction. 5. Each prediction has to include the year that the event happened, or at the very minimum, a three-year "range" of years in which it happened. Again, a gen- eralized prediction like, "This subject suffered some disease at some point in their adult life" will be regarded as the bullshit it is and given no points in the results. 6. At the discretion of the judges, extra points can be awarded for specificity. That is, a prediction that a subject was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease in 1996 can be weighted lower than a predic- tion that the same subject was diagnosed with cancer of the liver in 1996, along with the accurate results of the treatment of that specific disease. 7. All submissions to the panel of judges are final, and will be made public. None of the participating Jyotishi/astrologers have the option of changing their predictions later or claiming afterwards that "Oh, I really saw that but forgot to write it down." Claims like this will be regarded as the whining and sniveling they are, and the panel of judges may decide to "deduct points" from the Jyotishi or astrologer in question for trying to pull such a stunt. I'm sure that there are other protocols that could be specified, and I welcome others to specify them. The idea is to make the test FAIR to the Jyotishi and astrologers participating, but at the same time to remove ANY possibility of bullshit or hazy, non- verifiable predictions. Naturally, for obvious reasons, I would not participate in such a test as either a judge or a submitter of data, because whiners would claim that I was trying to trick them somehow by picking difficult cases. The same would be true of anyone submitting test data -- the panel of judges would have final say as to how fair a "test case" each submitted set of birth data is, and whether it should be included in the test. The way I see it, anyone who claims that Jyotish or astrology is a "science" should have NO PROBLEM with a test like this. In fact, it would give them the opportunity to establish, once and for all, their claims that Jyotish or astrology have a basis in fact and can be relied upon. But will they, or will they prefer to deal only with clients who already believe that the predictions they are going to receive are going to be accurate, and who are willing to pay big bucks for those predictions that they have decided in advance will be accurate?
