Posted: May 06, 2012 11:28 am
Spearthrower wrote:So there's a perfectly normal article on the 'supermoon' visible at the moment.
It talks a bit about the phenomenon and perigrees and the like; has a quote from the Royal Astronomical Society... and then suddenly, for no apparent reason whatsoever, it devotes a paragraph to informing the reader that:Scientists have dismissed the idea the perigee could cause strange behaviour - like lycanthropy - or natural disasters.
link
I really have no idea where that came from or who decided that was an appropriately useful factlet to round off the article!
It's still a pretty wildly held belief, and there seems to be many who think it has been scientifically verified. On the psychiatric ward where I work, when the patients are particularly difficult to manage I'll often hear one of the staff saying, in earnest, "Must be a full moon."