I like to read science blurbs in the news. Sometimes I learn more about the people around me than any new an interesting scientific fact. Today for instance, in Yahoo News, a team of scientists reports that enduring heart surgery on a full moon has no different outcome than enduring heart surgery on other days. They had statistics and everything. And they looked at the outcomes of 18,000 people. At the Mayo Clinic.

The cynical part of me wonders who funded that Einsteinian project--because who looks at the lunar charts before agreeing to surgery? I mean, there must be someone out there who does, but I've never met him or her.

The fact that real scientists thought to ask this question--and spent time and money to answer it--makes me wonder if I'm walking around in a haze of unawareness. It's not impossible. For example, in the 1980's, my mother didn't know who Michael Jackson was. Every other song on the radio was by Michael Jackson, and my mother didn't know this. Maybe I'm as out of touch as that.

I don't think so. In my defense, I know who Beyonce is, after all. And Kanye West. And Taylor Swift.

On the other hand, the more generous part of me is a bit more open minded about the research. Maybe the scientists were on to something potentially important. Maybe they were thinking something like, "Well, the moon is strong enough to affect tides, so surely it could affect blood flow, and heart surgery is a delicate thing so…"

It could be true.

Really.

But it wasn't.

I've come to the cynical conclusion that the Mayo Clinic and the other researchers who participated in the project were really out to prove that month of surgery and time of surgery weren't important indicators of the surgery's outcome. The moon stuff was just attention-grabbing malarkey.

Why, you ask? I think someone suggested that avoiding surgery in August would be a good idea because that's when the doctors-in-training come into their own on the knife-holding end of things. Maybe someone said, "Don't have surgery in the middle of the night because everyone is tired." Tossing the full-moon variable into the statistical analysis of time and date of surgery would be cake.

And the whole full-moon thing caught the media's attention. It IS sexy. And the graphic of a full moon is much prettier than the graph of an exhausted doctor-in-training. (And as it turned out, neither time of surgery nor month affected the outcome, statistically. So you don't have to worry about avoiding new doctors, at least at Mayo.)


So maybe today, what I learned wasn't so much about the moon affecting medicine or even how the scientists at Mayo think. Maybe what I learned today is that when I'm avoiding my manuscript, I can really overthink a Yahoo News blurb.

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When she isn't mooning about the scientific state of things, Lucinda Betts is a writer of spicy paranormal romances. If you don't believe that, check out Moon Shadow, which Road to Romance called, "...one of the best fantasy books this year."

Leave a comment. She'll be giving away a copy of What She Wants to one random commenter next Wednesday.