Yesterday the UK Sunday Telegraph reported a scientific study which gives "definitive proof" that "astrology is rubbish".

The basis of their story is a 24 page report by "Dean and Kelly", published by "The Journal of Consciousness Studies". This weekend, I downloaded it from their website at a cost of £15.87 plus VAT. What a load of rubbish.

I should have been suspicious as soon as I saw the authors' names. Geoffrey Dean has been knocking astrology for as long as I have been practising it. His favourite trick is to "misunderstand" what it is that astrologers do and then (surprise, surprise) "prove" that this is not what they are doing at all! He has now teamed up with a sceptical psychologist called Ivan Kelly. Their latest shock revelation is based on a flawed experiment that Dean conducted... 18 years ago!

He gave some personality tests to volunteers. He then asked some astrologers to predict how shy or outgoing those volunteers would turn out to be. So far, so good. But in questionnaires like this, people are notoriously naughty. They will tend to say what they think makes them sound good. So liars will describe themselves as honest, show-offs will say that they really do not seek attention and bigots will call themselves fair minded.

Such tests are dangerously unreliable as many observers, in the last 18 years, have been pains to point out.

Dean and Kelly though, don't care. They just gleefully report that the astrologers got it wrong... because they described what the subjects were ACTUALLY like instead of predicting how they might try to paint themselves in the personality test.

The study contains another old chestnut involving "time twins". They looked at the lives of 2,000 people all born in early March 1958. They grouped each of these up into "pairs" and sought similarities between their levels of intelligence, anxiety, weight and height. They didn't find many. This, they say, disproves astrology yet again.

It sounds impressive till you realise that the pairings were made arbitrarily, without any cross-referencing to the wider group. The "tests" were performed only at the ages of 11, 16 and 23. And ALL the participants were Piscean. Hardly a fair test of the whole zodiac!

Once again, it turns out to be an experiment rigged to make astrology look silly, whilst cheekily claiming to be extra fair.

This though, is nowhere near as wicked as their next trick which involves testing astrologers for clairvoyance!

Hang on! Most astrologers claim no such power. Why would we go to all the trouble of calculating an accurate map of the sky, full of complex symbols involving multiple layers of meaning to be interpreted according to strict guidelines passed down for millennia... only to let our minds go blank and say the first thing that comes into our heads?

Ah, say Kelly and Dean, "But some astrologers DO claim to be psychic."

Sure guys. And some scientists claim to have a truly open mind.

The sorry truth though, is that most scientists hate astrology with a vengeance. Academics who ever dare to remotely suggest a finding in favour of astrology have their work torn to shreds, their lectures met with howls of derision and their grants mysteriously "cut off".

No wonder the only scientists who come near are the ones with a wrecking agenda!

One day the intellectuals of this world will drop their petty prejudices. Till then, be careful what you read in the Sunday broadsheets. A lot of it is hopelessly over-sensationalised!

Every day next week, I'll say more about what these changes may entail. Join me for the first amazing prediction, tomorrow. Meanwhile, my esteemed colleague Bernard Fitzwalter is going to say more about why what's going on in the sky now is so very special. To read the article click on Astronews.

HOW RARE IS THIS?
Every 15-17 years, Mars comes a little nearer to Earth than usual. Mars though, is about 35 million miles away and, as we don't have a tape measure that stretches quite that far, scientists argue about exactly how near it actually is getting. But they all agree that Mars is now as close as it can ever get. Most think this last happened 73,000 years ago, some say 60,000 and others say it might have last done this as recently as 10,000 years ago.

TO SEE THE COSMIC SHOW...
No matter where you happen to be in the world, just look in the sky towards the southeast. Mars will rise over eastern horizon around 11pm and slowly cross the sky to be due south by about 1am. Unless there is a lot of cloud, you won't have much trouble spotting it. It looks like a distant flare or firework. Only the Moon is brighter and bigger.

WHY IS MARS NOW SO BRIGHT?
Is Mars so bright now because it is so close? Yes and no. The closeness is part of the answer, but in fact Mars has no light of its own, so what you are seeing is reflected sunlight. The light from the Sun goes out past Earth, to Mars, and is then reflected off Mars back to Earth. Those sunbeams do a round trip of about 170 million miles just to reach us! This process works best if the Sun and Mars are exactly opposite each other with the Earth in the middle, and that's what's happening right now.

As Mars makes its close approach, it will be in the sign of Pisces. Pisceans, over the coming twelve months, will start to get the chances they have been dreaming of for years.

One in particular, born Feb 20, 1951, will be getting a very important job. His name is Gordon Brown, currently Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK. And his time is finally about to come.