Editing Mars effect (section)

=== Statistical explanation ===

Some researchers argued that Gauquelin did not adjust the statistical significance of the Mars Effect for [[multiple comparisons]] and did not address the issue in his publications. Simplified and illustrative showcase argument is explained here: There are 10 celestial bodies and 12 sectors for them to be in. Furthermore, there are 132 combinations of sector pairs and thus 1320 different combinations of a planet with two sectors. There is about a 25% chance to find at least one such combination (of one planet and two sectors) for a random dataset of the same size as Gauquelin's that would yield a result with apparent statistical significance like the one obtained by Gauquelin.<ref name=Panchin>Alexander Y. Panchin. The Saturn-Mars Effect. ''Skeptic Magazine'' Vol 16 #1, 2010</ref> This implies that after adjusting for multiple comparisons, the Mars effect is no longer statistically significant even at the modest [[significance level]] of 0.05 and is probably a false positive. But the multiple comparisons argument is countered or weakened if it is proven that an effect shows up in more than one study. Some argue that the latter is the case.

Geoffrey Dean has suggested that the effect may be caused by self-reporting of birth dates by parents rather than any issue with the study by Gauquelin. Gauquelin had failed to find the Mars effect in populations after 1950. Dean has put forward the idea that this may be due to increases in doctors reporting the time of birth rather than parents.<ref>{{cite book|last=Smith|first=Jonathan C.|title=Pseudoscience and extraordinary claims of the paranormal : a critical thinker's toolkit|date=2010|publisher=[[Wiley-Blackwell]]|location=Malden, MA|isbn=9781405181235}}</ref> Information about misreporting was unavailable to Gauquelin at the time. Dean had said that misreporting by 3% of the sample would explain the result.<ref name=Dean>{{cite web|last=Dean|first=Geoffrey|title=The Mars Effect & True Disbelievers|url=http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-04-06/|accessdate=25 October 2012|date=2011-04-06}}</ref>