When the Full Moon rises over the Sunshine State: A Quantitative Evaluation of Queensland Police Calls

Abstract

Police officers are amongst the strongest believers in the lunar hypothesis-the belief that the full moon affects human behaviour, yet most research fails to support this proposition. This paper examined eight years of calls for service data from a large metropolitan policing district in Brisbane, Australia. Between 2004 and 2011 data from more than 908,000 service calls were examined to determine if police received more requests for service during the full moon. The study found no support for the lunar hypothesis. It concluded that there was no statistically significant relationship between calls for service and the full moon.