From Electromagnetic Man
pgs 40-41

Lieber (1979) published a collection of many studies purporting to show a reliable lunar influence on various areas of human behaviour, although Rotton and Kelly (1985), using meta-analysis, have fiercely contested this claim. However whereas studies of social behaviour can be easily criticized for neglecting a variety of contributing variables, biochemical studies, like those of Rounds (1975), who has found a lunar periodicity in the concentration of neurotransmitter-like substances from human blood, are more difficult to refute. Lieber suggested a theory of gravitational ‘biological’ tides as the possible mechanism of effect but the accumulated evidence indicates that an electromagnetic link is far more plausible.

The Moon is known to modulate the earth’s geomagnetic field during its monthly 29.5 – day phase (synodic) cycle (Bigg, 1963). Bell and Dufow (1966) showed that this influence tends to peak at the Full Moon; the closer the Full Moon is to the plane of the elliptic (the plane of the Earth’s orbit round the Sun; i.e. to there being a lunar eclipse), the greater the effect. The celestial latitude of the Moon varies up to 5 degrees north and south of the elliptic, in what is termed its 27.5 – day ‘nodal’ cycle, after the two points of intersection, or ‘nodes’. Bell and Defouw showed that when the Moon’s position in its nodal cycle is within 1 degree of the elliptic at the Full Moon (phase cycle), the effect on geomagnetic activity reaches its peak, and declines uniformly as it moves toward 5 degrees north or south of the elliptic. Thus, any claim on human behaviour or other phenomena, for example, post-operative haemorrhaging (Andrews, 1961), may well vary in its intensity according to the Full Moon’s celestial latitude in any given phase cycle. The conflicting results obtained in human lunar cycle investigations to date may be due to the neglect of the Full Moon’s celestial latitude (nodal cycle position) and the actual geomagnetic variation produced by the Full moon in each individual cycle phase under study….The findings of Bell and Dufouw suggest that one should compare the effects of Full Moons within 1 degree of the elliptic with those of Full Moons at more than 4 degrees from the elliptic. One likely biosensor for any such effects is the pineal gland, which has found to be extremely sensitive to changes in magnetic field and to ELF.