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The myth that lunar phases spawn erratic behavior and drive people to lunacy has burrowed deep into the human psyche for thousands of years.

Farmers plant crops according to lunar phases, some women believe they menstruate by the moon, while some religious groups plan ceremonies around it. The concept has been around since Babylonian stargazers were plotting everyone’s fate under night skies. Even a hundred years ago, murderers in England could bargain for a lighter sentence if they did their killing under a full moon. One of those lucky son of a guns was Charles Hyde, who inspired a well-known book by Robert Louis Stevenson. And don’t forget the “Son of Sam” serial killer David Berkowitz, who murdered five out of his eight victims under a full moon.

With an avalanche of cultural history like this, there has to be something to the ancient superstition. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully. With all the free press media give the moon, one might expect the cops and hospitals to have press kits ready and waiting. Not exactly. Richland EMS spokesman George Rice says he’ll be just as busy under this full moon as a new one, and that there isn’t much talk on his crew about the moon. “We’re always responding to a large number of incidents,” he says. “On some occasions, we’re even busier during the day than we are at night.” Richland coroner Gary Watts says he’ll expect business as usual. “I wish the case was that we were only busy on full moons,” he says, adding that he’d heard of the urban legend but never put much stock in it.

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 Hard science

Dozens of psychologists, astronomers and even astrologers have plotted the moon’s influence on everything from homicides to dog bites. While some new territory lies in studying the moon’s gravitational pull on chemicals in the brain, everything has been done and done again.

One study sparked controversy in the ’70s. Dr. Andrew Lieber, a psychology professor at the University of Miami, claimed there was an infallible correlation between lunar phases and homicide rates. He and his colleagues gathered 15 years’ worth of murder reports from Dade County, Fla., and plotted them alongside a lunar calendar. Their experiment showed a rise and fall of murders consistent with the waxing and waning of the moon, with a peak in homicides during a full moon.

Lieber developed a theory fit for an episode of the “X-Files.” The human body consists of about 80 percent water, he said, and therefore it undergoes its own biological tide under a full moon.

In street language, psychos in waiting might go overboard due to the moon’s gravitational pull. Lieber espoused this theory in a book entitled “The Lunar Effect,” first published by Bantam Doubleday in 1978.

But critics tore the book apart, pointing out statistical errors and illogical leaps in the theory.

In reviewing a revised edition of the book, Florida International University professor James Rotton points out that Lieber hid his failed experiments. Out of 48 of Lieber’s tests, 45 of them showed no correlation at all between homicide rates and lunar phases.

Rotton and two colleagues, Ivan Kelly and Roger Culver, conducted a study on all the moon experiments out there in 1996 and found that most had failed to produce results. The few that produced positive ones had gross errors.

Lunatic dogs

Even if people aren’t more likely to break the law under a full moon, Fido might be more prone to sink his fangs into someone.

So says a study published in the December 2000 issue of the British Medical Journal.

Researcher Chanchall Bhattacharjee and colleagues at the Bradford Royal Infirmary in Bradford, England, took a look at 1,621 victims of animal bites and found that a Brit was twice as likely to be attacked by an animal under a full moon.

Ironically, Australian scientists published a similar study in the same issue that found no correlation between lunar phases and dog bites.

Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney, who is the author of the study, told National Geographic that he had no idea why the studies arrived at different conclusions.

Maybe British dogs are more in touch with their inner werewolf.

Finding a pattern

Most psychologists agree that any correlation between the full moon and erratic behavior has less to do with the gravitational pull and more to do with the amount of light it gives off. When people can see better, they act recklessly.

Some scientists blame journalists and sensational filmmakers for perpetuating the full moon myth, because such links are naturally more interesting than reports that say something like, “There was a full moon last night. There were no strange murders.”

So why is it that so many of us are convinced the full moon causes spikes in crime and weird behavior?

“One reason is that people have selective memories,” says Eric Chudler, a psychologist at the University of Washington, also quoted in National Geographic.

Nurses, doctors, firemen and police officers relate full moons and busy nights because they’re more apt to remember full moons. It’s a result of the human mind’s need to seek out patterns. It’s also a product of the dozens of werewolf and vampire movies.

All the tests and studies might be trying to do, as Watts puts it, is “Give some kind of explanation for the exploitation and carnage we see every day. Maybe people would like the moon to blame it on instead of each other.”