Researchers at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in

Toronto

did a fun study using data from 10 million

Ontario

residents looking for associations between various health problems and....their astrological signs. And they actually found associations! In fact, each of the twelve astrological signs had at least two medical disorders associated with them.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference this weekend, lead researcher Peter Austin, Ph.D., senior scientist with the Institute for Clinical Sciences, a nonprofit organization in Ontario which evaluates the evidence for health care services, explained their study.

Their point was not to validate star signs but to illustrate that when researchers dredge through a database looking for patterns, they are sure to find them. That doesn’t mean the associations mean anything, however. These researchers went on to test their initial results in a second group of people and were not able to reproduce them, adding a second caution for us about not believing the conclusions of any single study.

The Statesman of India reports: