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peemil
Joined: 09 Feb 2003
Location: Koowoompa
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 Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 4:11 am Post subject: |
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You know what affects heart patients?
A clown suprising them by jumping out from behind a door.
Hilarity. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:28 am Post subject: |
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Yeah, fraud:
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,660053,00.html
http://www.valleyskeptic.com/Prayer_Study_Flawed_and_Fraud.html
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| He reported that in the years following publication of the prayer study, Wirth and an accomplice had been indicted on felony charges, including 13 counts of mail fraud and 12 counts of interstate transportation of stolen money. The two men have since pled guilty, and face fines and prison terms; Wirth is refusing to talk to the press. |
I think the OP's study was done in response to Columbia's widely touted yet crippled study which suggested prayer was efficacious.
Science and religious belief are two separate domains. However, when members of a faith make testable claims, be it prayer is efficacious in the healing process or in the case of the Mormons North American Indians are descended from the Jews, you actually CAN test that claim.
DNA tests contradict Mormon scripture. The church says the studies are being twisted to attack its beliefs. |
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Porter_Goss
Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Location: The Wrong Side of Right
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:32 am Post subject: |
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"Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
-Ambrose Bierce |
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Porter_Goss
Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Location: The Wrong Side of Right
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:36 am Post subject: |
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I've been praying that the
"phpBB : Critical Error
Could not connect to the database "
message will go away... so far to no avail. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:38 am Post subject: |
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| rapier wrote: |
| Firstly, there are many cases of Christians being healed of all symptoms etc after prayer. Doctors/science etc cannot explain this so far. |
Curiously there are many cases of people with no religious beliefs being healed of all symptoms without prayer. The body heals itself, even disease doctors would assign a high probability to being incurable.
| rapier wrote: |
| Secondly, Studies have shown Christians live longer than non-christians. Contributing factors include: they usually don't smoke/drink: they lack the stresses common to non-christians..etc. side issue I know but maybe of some relevance. |
Also don't forget there's a strong correlation between the strength of Christian faith and child abuse. That is, states and counties where the majority of citizens are hard core Christians, they also wildly beat and molest their children. So what's your point? |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:48 am Post subject: Re: Study: Prayer doesn't affect heart patients |
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Let me start by reminding you I'm a hardcore atheist.
This sort of study's been around for a long time. I recall studying it in first-year sociology, which must have been in 1998. It had been duplicated several times under varying procedures by a variety of different scientific groups, and they all reached the conclusion that prayer did have an effect. This new study is at odds with what's previously been done.
Science and religion may not overlap, but that's just because science isn't powerful enough yet. If there is a real God then science will one day prove it. If God doesn't exist then we'll never know. A true Christian (or any other religious person) should be confident that prayer will work under laboratory conditions.
Another thing I remember reading about is that the type of prayer has been varied in different studies, with some praying to Jesus, some to God, some to whoever. The conclusion: a general prayer not naming any particular deity is the most effective. |
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Porter_Goss
Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Location: The Wrong Side of Right
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:07 am Post subject: Re: Study: Prayer doesn't affect heart patients |
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| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
The conclusion: a general prayer not naming any particular deity is the most effective. |
"Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies"
-Voltaire on his deathbed, when asked by a priest to renounce Satan. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 6:28 am Post subject: Re: Study: Prayer doesn't affect heart patients |
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| RACETRAITOR wrote: |
| It had been duplicated several times under varying procedures by a variety of different scientific groups, and they all reached the conclusion that prayer did have an effect. This new study is at odds with what's previously been done. |
Got any references? |
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Harpeau
Joined: 01 Feb 2003
Location: Coquitlam, BC
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 7:27 am Post subject: |
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| I remember my days working in a large hospital as a resident Inter-faith chaplain (aka. Dr. death). We were told that studies were done on patients that had a chaplain visit them before surgery for prayer/meditation of various faiths and how it helped with them being more relaxed and their blood pressure. It's all very interesting. |
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tomato
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: I get so little foreign language experience, I must be in Koreatown, Los Angeles.
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 1:09 pm Post subject: |
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In a large sample of cultures throughout the world, neuropsychologist James W. Prescott found that cultures which show more physical affection toward infants have lower incidence of theft, murder, rape, physical punishment, invidious display of wealth, adult violence, abasement of women, and--get this--religious activity.
http://home.wanadoo.nl/ipce/library_two/files/prescott_en.htm
http://www.violence.de/prescott/ttf/article.html
In the less infant-affectionate cultures, "supernaturals (gods) are aggressive."
http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2006 10:57 pm Post subject: |
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This sort of thing doesn't seem much different than the placebo affect, i.e. you give someone a sugar pill and tell them it cures back pain and a surprisingly high number of patients claim the pill worked like a charm.
A study of Rogain (spray that makes your hair grow back) even found hair regrowth in men who were using the placebo!
It's funny how I don't hear anyone saying the results of this study prove that prayer just pisses off God so he makes the patient sicker. That's the logical conclusion, yet I hear no religious folks saying that. Maybe the Gnostics had it right all along.  |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 6:42 am Post subject: |
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| SirFink wrote: |
This sort of thing doesn't seem much different than the placebo affect, i.e. you give someone a sugar pill and tell them it cures back pain and a surprisingly high number of patients claim the pill worked like a charm.
A study of Rogain (spray that makes your hair grow back) even found hair regrowth in men who were using the placebo!
It's funny how I don't hear anyone saying the results of this study prove that prayer just pisses off God so he makes the patient sicker. That's the logical conclusion, yet I hear no religious folks saying that. Maybe the Gnostics had it right all along. |
Hair growth from a placebo can be attributed in two ways:
1) are the men using the drug or placebo self assessing? A very large sample it would be difficult and time consuming to get 1,800 people in and count hairs on a head. It's much easier to get men to judge their own hair regrowth. Men using a placebo might believe their hair was regrowing.
2) massaging something into the scalp stimulates blood circulation, exactly why they think Rogain works it increases blood to hair follicles.
I think the placebo effect wasn't even suspected until some doctor took a second look at a common operation for angina back in the '50s. Doctors would make incisions into the chest and tie off a couple blood vessels to the heart and people would report their pain diminished. The doctor had no idea why this should work and suspected it was all in a person's head. He conducted an experiment where some people got the incisions but no tying off. Others go the full operation. Both groups reported the pain went away.
So, placebo effect.
Regarding the efficacy of prayer, there have been studies that show an effect and show no effect:
Anti:
| Quote: |
| C. R. B. Joyce and R. M. C. Welldon, "The Objecyive Efficacy of Prayer: A Double-blind Clincal Trial," Journal of Chronic Diseases, 18: 367-377 (1965). Joyce and Welldon found no effect, and wrote: "In the area of intercessory prayer, we see people confusing anecdotal evidence with scientific research. In fact, many people were very eager to tell us why they think that intercessory prayer is therapeutic, but were quite disappointed (and occasionally quite distressed) when we told them that we were looking for evidence from controlled scientific studies. Such confusion should alarm not only scientists, but anyone concerned about the health and safety of others." |
Pro:
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| Collipp, P. J., "The Efficacy of Prayer: A Triple-blind Study," Medical Times, 97: 201-204 (1988). Collipp concluded that prayer works, but the number of patients invloved was too small to be judged statistically significant. |
Anyway, previous studies (that have shown an effect and not found an effect) have been criticized methodologically and the touted Columbia study as down right fraud. The OP's study was very large, well financed, and meant to address the short comings of the previous studies. And guess what? Nuthin' happened.
Remember not long after Ponns and Fleishmann came out with their cold fusion experiment, many people duplicated their results but others following their published procedure failed. When some people can duplicate an amazing claim but others fail, it's rather good to have a well designed, well financed study that both sides of the debate agree is a fair test.
Sure God might have been horked he was being tested and decided to prolong the pain of people in the study. Sweetie pants. But there in lies the futility of trying to test claims made by religious people and expect them to accept the results when the tests don't bottom out in their favor.
As in the Mormon DNA study, people can always write off a 100% disproof of their claims as "well, it's true on a deeper level."
As Penn Jillette commented "Geez, I wish when I failed all those high school math classes I could resubmit my paper and claim my answers were right on a deeper level."
Last edited by mindmetoo on Sat Apr 01, 2006 4:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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laogaiguk
Joined: 06 Dec 2005
Location: somewhere in Korea
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
As Penn Jillette commented "Geez, I wish when I failed all those high school math classes I could resubmit my paper and claim my answers were right on a deeper level." |
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out of context
Joined: 08 Jan 2006
Location: Daejeon
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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| they lack the stresses common to non-christians |
Non-Christians also don't have to deal with the stresses of Christians: worrying and feeling guilty that their thoughts and impulses are sinful, perhaps that their most private and victimless practices are being monitored and disapproved of by some supernatural presence; fostering negative energy toward (among other things) the values promoted in popular culture and the people who promote them; participating in the rituals such as marriage and child-rearing that many Christians feel duty-bound to participate in despite having no desire to do so; potentially having to wrap their minds around the fact that many events presented as truths in the Bible are impossible based on what we know about the laws of the natural world; and realizing that they've blown their hard-earned money on a large-scale study of the benefits of a spiritual world view that doesn't confirm the hypothesis that they set out to prove. To name a few.
Perhaps someday science can produce evidence of a power greater than what we observe in nature. But I'm not too confident that it can extrapolate further into a conscious and judgmental presence that can tweak the laws of nature at will, whether to accommodate particularly devout people or to confound people who sought to understand it more. |
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SirFink
Joined: 05 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 10:44 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| 1) are the men using the drug or placebo self assessing? |
Doctors actually marked off a square inch of the mens' scalps and counted each individual hair therein (on a weekly basis or so?). This was part of the study to get it FDA-approved. Did the doctors lose count? Possibly as there's a lot of hair in a square inch, but hey, they're doctors and are therefore geniuses who never screw up.  |
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