Even today many people think the mystical powers of the full
moon induce erratic behaviors, psychiatric hospital admissions,
suicides, homicides, emergency room calls, traffic accidents,
fights at professional hockey games, dog bites and all manner of
strange events. One survey revealed that 45 percent of college
students believe moonstruck humans are prone to unusual
behaviors, and other surveys suggest that mental health
professionals may be still more likely than laypeople to hold
this conviction. In 2007 several police departments in the U.K.
even added officers on full-moon nights in an effort to cope
with presumed higher crime rates. But there are at least three
reasons why this explanation doesn’t “hold water,” pardon the
pun. First, the gravitational effects of the moon are far too
minuscule to generate any meaningful effects on brain activity,
let alone behavior. As the late astronomer George Abell of the
University of California, Los Angeles, noted, a mosquito sitting
on our arm exerts a more powerf