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Astrology: Is there anything to it?

Let’s look at the science…

Shefali O'Hara
3 min readNov 27, 2019
Photo by Anastasia Dulgier on Unsplash

When I was born, my parents paid for a professional astrologer to do my horoscope. Not because they believed in such things but because it’s a custom in India, like giving out cigars when a baby is born used to be a custom in the United States, at least if 1950s sitcoms are to be believed.

As a child reading the morning paper in our NYC apartment, I saw daily horoscopes. I wondered about that and looked up my sun sign. Then, being a scientifically oriented kid, I decided to find out if this stuff actually worked.

There are two separate issues to consider. The first is — does your astrological sign actually describe your personality? The second — does your horoscope predict your future?

For the latter, it would have been helpful to have a copy of the horoscope from when I was born, because I could go down the list of predictions and figure out if any of them had come true. But my parents, not being true believers, never bothered to pack it when the moved to America.

For the former — I did some research. I looked up studies done by scientists and I did my own impromptu studies with my friends. Granted my sample sizes were fairly small since this was back before I had many friends.

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Shefali O'Hara
Shefali O'Hara

Written by Shefali O'Hara

Cancer survivor, Christian, writer, engineer. BSEE from MIT, MSEE, and MA in history. Love nature, animals, books, art, and interesting discussions.

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