Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [94]
On the basis of these passages in Gittelson's book, it is obvious that the biorhythm theory can be made to fit any situation.
The author devotes several pages to a claim that major industries in the United States have used biorhythm, or at least have investigated the phenomenon. He writes that Procter & Gamble experimented with it but adds that they deny both the experiment and its successful results. He tells us that United Airlines, U.S. Air, Continental, Pan American, and Trans World Airlines have explored the biorhythm theory, and that they all disavow their experiments or interest. But United has done much more than that. In its October 1977 edition of Executive Air Travel Report (published well before the quoted edition of Gittelson's book), United says officially that researchers found no correlation between the negative phases of any or all biorhythm cycles and an increase in the number of aircraft accidents. Furthermore, no cycle—physical, emotional, or mental—could be assigned a role in causing accidents. The Gittelson book tells us that "United... pilots have not yet received charts." Actually, some 4,000 pilots received charts in this study!
Gittelson himself quotes some opinions that are critical of the biorhythm concept. Says Dr. Franz Halberg, of the University of Minnesota Medical School, who has written about genuine biological rhythms, "[George Thommen] is talking of immutable, fixed rhythms.... As to any similarity with my own work, it's like Smith and Schmidt. We have only the name in common." Says Dr. John Hastings of Harvard: "This is not a serious subject being studied by serious scientists." Professor Colon Pittendrigh, who looked into the subject at Stanford University: "I consider this stuff an utter, unadulterated fraud." The National Institute of Mental Health describes biorhythm as "a mythology." However, Douglas Kelley, of the National Safety Council, says, "When chemistry was at the state where biorhythm is today, it was called alchemy. But alchemy became chemistry, and within fifty years research may do the same for biorhythm." Nonsense. Alchemy was dedicated to a search for the Philosopher's Stone, which would change base metals into gold. The Stone was never found, and peripheral facts discovered during the search were later incorporated into the true science of chemistry. The only future for biorhythm is to become an abandoned quest, and the case histories of poor logic and research that remain from its wreckage eventually may well be incorporated into the study of abnormal psychology.
Gittelson also quotes Robert W. Bailey, of Bell Labs in Piscataway, New Jersey, as saying, "If there's something to it, I haven't found it yet." The author then points out that Bailey's work is "still in its early stages" and has "covered fewer than 300 employees." When interviewed by phone, Bailey was aghast at the reference.
Bailey, who works with the Human Technology Division of Bell Labs, told me that "many thousands of individuals" were charted on the basis of biorhythm theory and that "an intensive investigation" was carried out four years ago—well before Gittelson's book was published. "It became very clear to us," he said, "that after having translations made of the original Fliess/Swoboda writings on the subject, it turned out to be a system of pure guesswork based on numerology. We looked at it as carefully as anyone has, and we found not one reliable fact in it."
Surely advocates of biorhythm cannot summon up the old excuse that parapsychologists often use—that scientists are unwilling to look at the evidence they present. Bailey and his colleagues carried out a definitive, proper, and well-documented investigation into not only the roots of this so-called science, but its performance as well.
It simply does not work.
Currently available are some very precise and reliable methods of applying computer technology, not for the purpose of generating biorhythm charts—which any mathematical