hopeless". The British Psychological Society ranks graphology alongside astrology, giving them both "zero validity". Graphology was also dismissed as a pseudo-science by the skeptic James Randi in 1991. In his May 21, 2013 Skeptoid podcast episode titled "All About Graphology," scientific skeptic author Brian Dunning reports:In his book The Write Stuff, Barry Beyerstein summarized the work of Geoffrey Dean, who performed probably the most extensive literature survey of graphology ever done. Dean did a meta-analysis on some 200 studies: Dean showed that graphologists have failed unequivocally to demonstrate the validity or reliability of their art for predicting work performance, aptitudes, or personality. Graphology thus fails according to the standards a genuine psychological test must pass before it can ethically be released for use on an unsuspecting public. Dean found that no particular school of graphology fared better than any other... In fact, no graphologist of any stripe was able to show reliably better performance than untrained amateurs making guesses from the same materials. In the vast majority of studies, neither group exceeded chance expectancy. Dunning concludes:Other divining techniques like iridology, phrenology, palmistry, and astrology also have differing schools of thought, require years of training, offer expensive certifications, and fail just as soundly when put to a scientific controlled test. Handwriting analysis does have its plausible-sounding separation from those other techniques though, and that's the whole "handwriting is brainwriting" idea — traits from the brain will be manifested in the way that it controls the muscles of the hand. Unfortunately, this is just as unscientific as the others. No amount of sciencey sounding language can make up for a technique failing when put to a scientifically controlled test. Additional specific objections The Barnum effect (the tendency to interpret vague statements as specifically meaningful) and the Dr. Fox effect (the tendency for supposed experts to be validated based on likeability rather than actual skill) make it difficult to validate methods of personality testing. These phenomena describe the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. See, for example, Tallent (1958). Non-individualized graphological reports give credence to this criticism. Effect Size: Dean's (1992) primary argument against the use of graphology is that the effect size is too small. Regardless of the validity of handwriting analysis,