REPLICATION OF THE 1966 STUDY "SELF-ANNIHILATION:
ASTROLOGICAL PREDISPOSITION TO SUICIDE
According to Williams and Williams (1998), suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States with over 30,000 Americans killing dying by their own hands every year. The seriousness and scope of the problem has served as the impetus for literally thousands of studies of suicide and related factors, and some of this research has been astrological in nature.
In one astrological study of suicide conducted by Timins (1996), it was found that suicidal indicators occurred more frequently in the natal charts of people who died through suicide than in the natal charts of those who died nonsuicidal deaths. Clearly, Timins (1996) findings support the notion that planetary placement may allow for a description of those most likely to commit suicide, thereby serving a predictive function in psychological research.
Although Timins' (1996) findings strengthen the knowledge base in the area of astrological indicators and suicide, it must be recognized that there is strong skepticism surrounding the entire field of astrology (Strohmer & Knutson, 1998). Further, it must also be noted that replication is one of the primary criteria of the scientific method (Carey, 1977).
Given the foregoing facts, it seems reasonable to suggest that Timins (1996) research should be replicated in order to establish the extent to which confidence can be placed in the validity of the observed findings.
The purpose of this research is to attempt replication of Timins' (1996) findings of association between suicide and planetary placements. In addition, in an effort to gain additional insight into the nature of the suicide/astrology relationship, the conducted research expanded Timins' (1996) work to investigate not only astrological indicators of suicidal death but also astrological indicators of long life.
Regarding indicators of ...