Mryntu

It seems that astrological predictions are trials and error method? Can someone please give some examples that make sense? I have seen many people who are trained to read patris make mistakes which are very basic.

No, astrology would not be considered scientific. For something to be considered scientific, it would have to be based on the methods and principles of science which astrology is not.

In particular:

1. astrological hypotheses are non-falsifiable.


2. astrological experiments, interpretations, and conclusions do not follow the scientific method.
   
   
   • E.g. There are significant biases in astrological practice (selection bias, observational bias, confirmation bias etc.)
   
   

Note: I am not passing judgement on whether or not astrology or specific astrologers are right or wrong. I am just saying that it doesn't pass the criteria to be called scientific.

No, astrology, Indian or Western, especially the part that deals with predictions, has no scientific basis. The scientific community considers it as pseudoscience i.e., it resembles science but is based on fallacious assumptions.

From An Indian Test of Indian Astrology by Jayant V. Narlikar:

Our Experiment

Our experiment was performed in the university city of Pune (formerly
Poona) about 160 km (100 miles) southeast of Mumbai (formerly Bom­bay)
in the state of Maharashtra, which is the second-largest in population
and third-largest in area of India’s twenty-five states. Pune itself
has a population of about
3.5 million.

For the experiment I was assisted by Professor Sudhakar Kunte from the
Department of Statistics at Pune Uni­versity, Narendra Dabholkar from
the Committee for the Eradication of Super­stitions, and Prakash
Ghatpande a former professional astrologer who has subsequently turned
into a critic of astrology.

Indian astrologers claim that they are able to tell intelligence from
a person’s horoscope. So volunteers from the Committee for the
Eradication of Superstitions went to different schools and collected
the names of teenage school children rated by their teachers as
mentally bright. They also collected names from special schools for
the mentally handicapped. The destinies of these cases could hardly be
more different, so they were ideal for testing the above claim. From
the collected data we selected 100 bright and 100 mentally handicapped
cases whose age distribution is shown on the next page.

Birth details were obtained from their parents because birth
certificates are rare in India. Professional Indian astrologers
routinely assume that birth details provided by parents are correct,
so our procedure followed the norm. Each horoscope (birth chart) was
calculated by one of us (PG) using commercial astrological software.
All horoscopes were coded and stored in safe custody by Professor
Kunte at Pune University, so that neither the experimenters (our group
of four) nor the astrologers could know the identities of the
individuals.

Conclusion

Our experiment with twenty-seven Indian astrologers judging forty
horoscopes each, and a team of astrologers judging 200 horoscopes,
showed that none were able to tell bright children from mentally
handicapped children better than chance. Our results contradict the
claims of Indian astrologers and are consistent with the many tests of
Western astrologers. In summary, our results are firmly against Indian
astrology being considered as a science.

From Shawn Carlson's A double-blind test of astrology:

CONCLUSIONS

...

We are now in a position to argue a surprisingly strong case against natal astrology
as practiced by reputable astrologers. Great pains were taken to insure that the
experiment was unbiased and to make sure that astrology was given every reasonable
chance to succeed. It failed. Despite the fact that we worked with some of the best
astrologers in the country, recommended by the advising astrologers for their expertise
in astrology and in their ability to use the CPI, despite the fact that every reasonable
suggestion made by the advising astrologers was worked into the experiment, despite the
fact that the astrologers approved the design and predicted 50% as the "minimum" effect
they would expect to see, astrology failed to perform at a level better than chance.
Tested using double-blind methods, the astrologers' predictions proved to be wrong.
Their predicted connection between the positions of the planets and other astronomical
objects at the time of birth and the personalities of test subjects did not exist. The
experiment clearly refutes the astrological hypothesis.