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The 1970s were a decade packed with real scientific breakthroughs; NASA launched Voyager 1, Intel revolutionized computing with the first microprocessor, and JVC introduced the VHS. At the same time, some more -- shall we say -- outside-the-box ideas also started quietly gaining traction, ideas like biorhythms. Promoted as a scientific way to predict your physical, emotional, and intellectual highs and lows, biorhythms captured the public's imagination... but were they really all that?
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The 1970s were a time of scientific innovation
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NASA launched Voyager 1, Intel launched the world's first general microprocessor, and Honda launched the Civic
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So it didn't strike many as cause for skepticism when some science-y seeming types
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started talking up the power of biorhythms. And if you're wondering what those are
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well, today we're taking a look at the strange life algorithm that ruled the 70s
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What do we mean when we say biorhythms? Well, let's start with what we don't mean
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Stay with us now. Biorhythms are not, as the root words might suggest, biological rhythms
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The most well-known example you might have heard of being circadian rhythms
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These kinds of rhythms are actual biological processes, things that happen within our bodies that occur over and over
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So, for example, humans have a diurnal circadian biological rhythm, which means we're active during the daytime and sleep at night, over and over
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Got it? Good! Because again, that isn't what biorhythms are. Biorhythm comes from the Greek root words bios, which means life
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and rhythmos, which means a regularly occurring movement or motion. That's right, it's all Greek to me is not just a corny joke
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Anyway, biorhythm theory posits that human lives are influenced by repeating cycles in various spheres of existence
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And these cycles can be explicitly plotted and tracked. There is a 23-day physical cycle, a 28-day emotional cycle, and a 33-day intellectual cycle
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And if you're a bicycle courier who wakes up from a coma to find that society has been destroyed by a zombie-making rage virus, that's the 28-days-later cycle
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Okay, technically they're not zombies, but you get the idea. Biorhythm theory suggests our hormones, psychology, and physiology all move like a sine wave
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These cycles ostensibly start from a person's birth, and their rhythms are steady from the jump too
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So if you put these rhythms on a chart, you can calculate exactly when your prowess in each ability
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will be at its peak or its valley. And we mean calculate literally
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This next part might remind you of that nightmare where you have to take a calculus test and didn't study
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but there are constant mathematical formulas you can use to deduce your own biorhythmic cycle
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Now brace yourself, because here comes the math. Imagine the variable t as the number of days since your birth
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Now, to determine your physical cycle, take the sine of 2 pi t divided by 23
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For emotions, replace 23 with 28. And for intellect, that last number becomes 33
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Put these results on a graph and you can allegedly start to see when you peak
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That is, when your number on one of these days is at plus 100%
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You can also tell when you crash, when your number is at minus 100%
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And you can tell when you're totally average, which is when the number is at 0%
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And while this next bit isn't really part of a biorhythm theory, we think doing stuff on 69% days would be pretty funny
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69! Nice. The concept of biorhythms didn just emerge organically from nothing That would be too well biological Instead we have a few people to thank for developing these ideas German otolaryngologist Wilhelm Fliess
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who was a homie of Sigmund Freud, is considered the father of biorhythm theory
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While diagnosing his many patients with various maladies of the ear, nose, and throat
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Dr. Fliess began organizing research that supported his theory that humans fell into 23 and 28-day rhythmic cycles
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In particular, he found that the arrival of certain illnesses in children coincided with these rhythms
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and he believed that was no coincidence. Dr. Fleece published many of these ideas in the 1906 book Der Ablauf des Lebens, or The Course of Life
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though his peers and critics mostly found the book confusing and bordering on pseudoscience
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Fleece's other fascinations included the idea of inherited traits and their social meanings
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So, for example, left-handed people being more artistic and the idea that everyone is a little bit bisexual
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So if you're annoyed with your friend who has a long-term boyfriend but insists she's bi, we're sorry to inform you that Dr. Fleece agrees with her
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Other figures in the biorhythm movement include University of Vienna psychology professor Hermann Swoboda
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whose independent research came to a similar 30-ish day period conclusion. He published his work after Fleece, which intrigued University of Innsbruck engineering professor Alfred Telcher
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Telcher began observing his students and felt that their academic performances coincided with a 33-day period
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effectively inventing the mental biorhythmic period. Absolutely mental, innit? Sorry, no more accents, we promise
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Anyhow, if you search the internet, you'll also see a bunch of sources that claim the first academic book on the subject of biorhythms
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was 1923's Rhythm, Life, and Creation by the Estonian geneticist Nikolai Parna
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But as far as we can tell, Parna wasn't actually writing about Fleiss' biorhythms
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He was referring to biological rhythms, which he called chronobiology. If you're starting to get confused, we can't blame you
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because all these vaguely similar but slightly different terms are confusing. And predictably, that confusion has benefited more than a few folks who rely on it
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to distract people from the lack of evidence at the core of some of their more questionable claims
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And now we're going to take you through the news, culture, sports, entertainment, and all that was
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weird in 1970, because this is Timeline. Oh, wait, wrong weird history video. But still
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we are going to have to time travel back to the 1970s
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a time of beloved popular movies like Jaws, Star Wars, and Superman
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Beloved popular presidents like Nixon, Ford, and Carter. And most importantly of all, the New Age movement
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But what constitutes New Age isn't exactly easy to define. According to religious scholar Darren Kemp
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participants in the New Age movement call it a revolutionary period of history dictated by the stars
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Christians and other mainstream religious types call it a cult, and psychologists call it a form of narcissism
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But there is one thing all of them would probably agree on which is when discussing the New Age you must bump Yanni and you must bump Enya For our purposes we can hastily define the New Age as a collection of spiritual and humanistic
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beliefs derived from sources as varied as physician Franz Mesmer, from whom we get Mesmerism
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and the 1960s counterculture movement, from whom we got Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
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which is not quite as good as Yanni. This movement, nooks, crannies, and all
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proved to be a perfect fermenter of biorhythm theory. Capitalizing on this was Bernard Gilson
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a businessman who used to be the president of a PR firm before he was alleged to have bribed a city official
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for a parking meter contract. If that sounds like the kind of guy you trust with scientific theories
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then we recommend you check out his books, Biorhythm, A Personal Science
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and Biorhythm Charts of the Famous and Infamous, both of which were published when he pivoted from PR to NA
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which we're now saying stands for New Age. Gittleson, ever the businessman, also founded a company called Biorhythm Computers
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Inc., which sold customers biorhythm calculators and charts so they, too, could figure out their cycles and when to act in accordance with them
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He even published a book called Biorhythm Sports Forecasting that taught people
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and we swear we're not making this up, how to predict and bet on sports games
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using the lessons of biorhythms. Alas, it didn't work, though we do have to give him credit for coming up with the most imaginative
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how-to-win-at-gambling method prior to the release of Back to the Future Part 2
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Even though Gittleson's claims were largely proven false, they helped spur the popularity of biorhythm theory
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Also helping was George S. Tommen, whose book, Is This Your Day? How Biorhythm Helps You Determine Your Life Cycles
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was so influential that world-renowned heart surgeon Dr. Christian Barnard, literally the guy who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation
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wouldn't operate on patients until he charted out their biorhythms to see if they could handle it
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An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but only if that apple falls into the negative percentile of a biorhythm chart, apparently
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At his peak, Tommen would regularly appear on radio and television talk shows to discuss his theories
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ensuring that people across the United States could hear them and be swayed
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So what were Tommen's medical bona fides to deserve this influence? Well, he was a championship skier, and then he worked in banking
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importing, the movie business, and even fly fishing. And if all that added up doesn't make you a doctor
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what the heck kind of world do we even live in? Whatever the case, it worked
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And biorhythm theory became so popular that arcades and amusement parks started offering patrons
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a chance to stick a few coins into a machine that printed out biorhythm charts after entering your birth date
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Sure, those machines are likely just as accurate as the machines that tell you whether you're hot stuff
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after squeezing a lever for five seconds. But what do you expect from a medical exam you bought for 25 cents from a machine at a carnival
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As if that wasn't enough, there were also biorhythm programs made for the then-developing personal computer
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And beyond Gittleson's calculators, well-known companies like Casio built and sold their own devices for folks to chart their cycles
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Were they cool? Sure. But could you spell a funny word by typing numbers like 8008135 on them Checkmate biorhythm calculators Boobies As for the modern day well there are still plenty of online biorhythm calculators and apps available on your phone right now proving there are many folks still interested in the
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theory and what it can do for them. And all of this is totally great and wonderful, except for one small thing
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None of it is real. Sorry, biorhythm myths. You're about to get busted
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If you're the kind of person who always skips right to the TLDR summary
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then straight up, there is not a single shred of scientific evidence to support biorhythm theory
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If you like a fuller explanation, then when it comes to biorhythms
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it's best to look at them as an entertaining way to think about life on par with astrology or tarot readings
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But it cannot and should not be a legitimate method for plotting out your life
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And with all due respect to Dr. Christiane Barnard, they definitely shouldn't play any role in determining anything even remotely related to
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heart surgery. But don't take our word for it. In 1998, researcher Terence Hines published a paper
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in the Psychological Reports journal called Comprehensive Review of Biorhythm Theory. His comprehensive review was basically, nah bro. More formally, after surveying 134 studies on the
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subject, Hines deduced that biorhythm researchers were propagating null hypotheses, which means that
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there is fundamentally no effect on the subjects that cannot be explained by coincidence. As for
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the ones that had any kind of positive conclusion, well, they were riddled with methodological or
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statistical errors, which made said conclusions void. And you thought you wouldn't use the
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scientific method past high school chemistry. Additionally, in his 1997 book, Numerology
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or What Pythagoras Wrought, mathematician Underwood Dudley wrote of an example showing
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biorhythm theory to be nothing more than the culmination of logical fallacies. Dudley described
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a magician who gave a spectator her biorhythm chart, saying it would predict key elements of
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her life. Later, she told the magician just how accurate the chart was. Just one problem
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the magician purposefully gave the woman a biorhythm chart for the wrong birth date
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When he copped to this, she asked for another one, which he gave her, and she later said this
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one was even more accurate. And well, you don't have to be M. Night Shyamalan to know this chart
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was also for the wrong birth date. The point is, the human mind is a very powerful and very
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suggestible thing. It makes psychological sense that when someone predisposed to believe in
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something is told, those beliefs are true. They will move through life in a way that makes those
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things true. Call it confirmation bias, call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, just don't call it
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proof that biorhythm charts are real. Still, there are plenty of people, new age or otherwise
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who believe in biorhythm theory, despite the empirical evidence debunking it. As a result
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this theory is categorized by most as pseudoscience, the kind of belief or practice that
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claims scientific veracity, despite not being provable by the scientific method, nor accepted by the scientific community at large. In other words, biorhythm theory is about
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as helpful to your life as snake oil is to your bald spot. And if you still believe in it, well, we've got a bridge we'd like to sell you
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just as soon as it lines up with our chart