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Critical comments
on Valerie Vaughan's Re-bunking the Debunkers

Ivan W. Kelly
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
July 2000

An expanded version of an article in Skeptical Inquirer 23(6), 37-43, Nov/Dec 1999

Abstract -- The US astrologer Valerie Vaughan is a prominent debunker of articles critical of astrology. Her usual ploy is to ignore the many informed critiques, dismiss the rest as uninformed, ignore negative evidence, and promote the rest as huge support for the grandiose claims of astrology. In other words she manages to behave exactly like the worst of the critics she condemns. When these deficiencies were pointed out in a response to an earlier Vaughan article, her reply (which is the article reviewed here) again failed to address informed critiques, again ignored negative findings, and again overstated the support from supposedly positive findings. Her article is better referenced than is usual among astrologers (Vaughan has a Masters degree in Information Science), but otherwise it adds nothing to the debate. 25 references.