Talk:Biorhythm

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[edit] Protoscience or pseudoscience?

This is not a protoscience becasue it has not changed much since it's inception and it Does not follow scientific protocolsGeni 11:02, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

It's clearly a pseudoscience. All the books I read about it are written by completely innumerate proponents. All the evidence they propose is based on math errors that give wonderful stories if you want to amuse mathematicians. The concept itself is a magical and numerological idea. --Hob Gadling 18:53, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rhythm length

I changed "lasts around 23 days" to "lasts 23 days; same with 33 and 28. The reason:

If the first rhythm were 23.01 days (about a quarter of an hour more than 23 days), 100 rhythms (about 6 years) would take 2301 days instead of 2300. So, after 60 years, the rhythms would be 10 days off, and all the anecdotes used to defend biorhythms would be worthless. So it really has to be 23 days, plus/minus only very few minutes. Otherwise the whole body of "evidence" is inconsistent. Not noticing this is one of the many innumeracies of biorhythm proponents. --Hob Gadling 19:30, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Too much content

Do we really have to have the fully "calculation method" in an encyclopedia? It should be removed if a good reason is not stated not to. --80.221.13.43 20:52, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Biological ryhthms do exist in plants, animals, bacteria, humans, etc, (it's basically chronobiology) but the science is NOT what is described in this article (which is pseudoscience or numerology). This needs to be re-written with scientific content.

I think the calculation method is worth including for the simple fact that all information is of value, unless it is mis-information. However I have concerns about the neutrality of this article.

[edit] external links need to be cut down

Wikipedia isn't a link directory nor a place to advertise sites, so it's not really appropriate for an article to have 20+ external links, much less 10 nearly identical ones linking to different biorhythm calculators. --Delirium 13:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks like it was taken care of; thanks! --Delirium 00:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Study Shows Body Clock Affects Arthritis Pain

  • "NPR.org Audio Article" Arthritis sufferers often feel more pain in the morning than in the evening. A new study explains these fluctuations are driven by the body's internal clock. Sydney Spiesel, a Yale Medical School professor and contributor to the online magazine Slate, talks with Alex Cohen. --Travisthurston 06:20, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
  • This is evidence of the Circadian rhythm affecting pain, not of the concept of biorhythms. The circadian rhythm relates to chronobiology, not this article. --Interested2 17:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pseudoscience

Hi,

I am adding back the point in the intro about it being a form of pseudoscience. Biorhythms are obviously controversial and as such we should try to present a neutral point of view in the article that describes all opinions on the subject. The purpose of the introduction to the article is to give an overview of the subject, and as the question of its scientific accuracy is an important part of the article, I think it's relevant to mention the debate there. fraggle 07:51, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

In the section on plausability, the following sentence occurs: "The plausibility of biorhythmics is contested by mathematicians, biologists and other scientists." This is very vague, considering that the Biorhythmics section of the Research publications lists 3 papers specifically discounting "biorhythmics". In addition, the reference to chorobiology seems to largely exist to link biorhythmics (which seems to be a pseudoscience) with chronobiology (a recognised field of science). I think the distinction needs clarifying. pvanheus 21:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)