Results of a research study that skeptics have used for more than two decades to debunk and deride astrology “violated the demands of fairness and common norms of statistical analysis,” an article in the current issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration concludes.

What’s more, in his critique, author Suitbert Ertel of the GEM Institute of Psychology in Gottingen, Germany, argues that the study organized by researcher Shawn Carlson and known as “A Double Blind Study of Astrology” followed a faulty, piecemeal analytical approach to the wrong conclusions.

A statistical expert, Ertel is Professor Emeritus at Gottingen University and the author of numerous research articles. The Tenacious Mars Effect, a book he co-authored with American Kenneth Irving, defended the statistical credibility of astrological effects reported by French statistician Michel Gauquelin.

The Carlson study is widely viewed by skeptic groups as the test that successfully demonstrated the inability of professional astrologers to correctly match individual birth charts with personality profiles generated by a standard psychological personality test. The three-part study also has been cited as evidence that individuals don’t appear to know themselves all that well, and can’t distinguish between their own and other birth charts (horoscopes) interpreted by professional astrologers.

The controversial study published in the prestigious science journal Nature in 1985 and is referred to today by more than 400 internet pages listed on the Google search engine, which is more than any other research paper of its kind.