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By Root 995 0

any popular delusion, one often discovers damning evidence that is seemingly so tidy and convincing that very little further argument is needed. While watching a self-proclaimed biorhythm expert perform his wonders on paper not long ago, I was impressed with the fact that he invariably accepted "critical" intersections of the curves when they fell a day ahead or behind. To those who are experienced observers of the operations of pseudoscience and interpretations thereof, this occasions no surprise. What's a day between friends? The excuse given for such laxity seems logical enough, however. The proponents argue that since the grand cycles start at the moment of birth and continue inexorably and precisely throughout life, there only seems to be an inaccuracy; that if, for example, such an apparent error occurs in the case of a person whose birth date is given as the seventh of the month, it is because birth occurred just after midnight (almost on the sixth, don't you see) or perhaps just before midnight of the seventh (therefore almost on the eighth).

But here is where the biorhythmists have killed, cooked, and eaten their own goose. The literature claims that though only 20 percent of all calendar days are "critical" ones, 60 percent of researched accidents fell on what were found to be critical days! If this is so, it appears that biorhythm techniques have shown that three times as many accidents occur on predicted days as chance would dictate. But as biorhythm proponent Bernard Gittelson writes in his book Biorhythm—A Personal Science, we must also consider "half-critical" days (those just before and just after an actual "critical" day), as my expert was doing when I observed him. And 3 x 20 = 60, an inarguable fact. The biorhythm theorists have simply demonstrated that mathematics works as it always has. Biorhythm accounts for no more accidents than chance would indicate. (Incidentally, my calculations indicate that 22 percent—not 20 percent—of all calendar days are "criticals," but I'll forgive the "experts" the minor 2 percent, since the theory doesn't work anyway. But with 66 percent of the days in a year predicted as dangerous days—counting "half-criticals"—things begin to look pretty ominous in the perilous world of biorhythm.)

The "definitive" book on biorhythm theory is George Thommen's Is This Your Day?, and well over 100,000 copies have been sold to the unsuspecting. It is loaded with case histories—very carefully selected—presented in an attempt to prove the theory by showing that deaths and other calamities, as well as great victories and accomplishments, happen at biorhythmically determined times. These examples benefit from bearing the names of personalities such as Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Pope John XXIII, and General Douglas MacArthur. Those unfamiliar with the techniques of selective sampling and unaware of proper statistical methods tend to believe that such case histories confirm the point to be proved.

The Thommen book refers to a mass of data ("eight trunks of research documentation") that, according to psychology professor Dr. Hermann Swoboda, fell into the hands of the Russians in Vienna during World War II and is thus unavailable. What a pity! (One wonders what the Russians did with it.) Since the theory at that time featured only two of the marvelous cycles, Thommen also has to account for the lack of data to support the third (intellectual/33-day) cycle introduced by Teltscher, and he claims that he has had to rely on secondhand information for that purpose. Hence, no significant documentation, including the "massive" original data so highly valued and touted by the "experts," is presented.

A book frequently referred to by biorhythm fans is Biorhythm—A Personal Science by Bernard Gittelson. In the introduction to this book we are told that George Thommen (to whom the book is dedicated) appeared on "The Long John Nebel Show" on radio station WOR in New York in November 1960 to warn of a possible critical day for actor Clark Gable on the sixteenth of that month. Gable had suffered