Shawn Carlson

Shawn Carlson (born 1960) is an American physicist, science writer, and a STEM educator.

Education

Carlson graduated from U.C. Berkeley with Bachelor of Science degrees in both Applied Mathematics and Physics in 1981. He graduated from UCLA with a master's degree in physics in 1983, and with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics in 1989. As a post doc, Carlson ran the Leuschner Observatory for the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and was chief observer for the Berkeley Automated Supernovae Search.

Career

Astrology test While an undergraduate, Carlson carried out a double-blind test of astrologers' abilities to extract information about their clients from the apparent positions of celestial objects as seen from the places and times of their clients' births.

Carlson's experiment involved twenty-eight astrologers who were held in high esteem by their peers. They agreed to match over 100 natal charts to psychological profiles that were generated by the California Psychological Inventory (CPI), a standard and well accepted personality test, which the astrologers themselves identified as the scientific instrument that was best aligned with type of information they believed they could divine from their art. The astrologers agreed that the experimental protocol provided a "fair test" of astrology prior to taking part in it. He contributed to the columns "Science on Society" on The Humanist from 1990-1992, "The Amateur Scientist" in Scientific American from 1995 to 2001, In 2010, he launched LabRats Science Education Program, an organization that organizes activities for and encourages amateur scientists. He currently serves as Executive Director for the organization.

Selected works