God Help Us: Rita

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Originally Posted by moeur

This should be a very easy thing to investigate. Get 200 cancer patients, have 100 pray for survival, 100 not pray. How many survive from each group?

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This is not verifiable.

If there is a God, then how can you verify that it was His assistance/lack of assistance that provided a result?

To verify that a prayer is effective you will need to demonstrate that

(i) The prayer was a righteous one.
(ii) There is a God to listen to the prayer
(iii) That God heard the prayer
(iv) That God acted upon that prayer.
(v) The patient was cured directly because of i,ii,iii,iv.

I think that apart from (i) which still extremely subjective and will thus be subject to some form of morality test, none of others are verifiable one way or the other.

I do not think that there is a test that can verify the effectiveness or otherwise of prayer.

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Originally Posted by moeur

This should be a very easy thing to investigate. Get 200 cancer patients, have 100 pray for survival, 100 not pray. How many survive from each group?

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But attitude can impact cancer survival, so how do you control for that?

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

But attitude can impact cancer survival, so how do you control for that?

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Yeah: it's even worse than that. Most cancers exhibit completely different DNA signatures (by their very nature) Therefore the proteins that the cancerous cells are spitting out will have a different effect on each person in the group.

So how do you split the control group effectively in order to make the test valid?

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To verify that a prayer is effective you will need to demonstrate that

(i) The prayer was a righteous one.
(ii) There is a God to listen to the prayer
(iii) That God heard the prayer
(iv) That God acted upon that prayer.
(v) The patient was cured directly because of i,ii,iii,iv.

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Not at all. All you care about is whether the group that prayed had higher survival rates.

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But attitude can impact cancer survival, so how do you control for that?

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Better yet, select two groups of cancer patients and two groups of prayers/non-prayers. One could pray to God for cancer group A and and one to the devil for cancer group B if you want. The patients need not know that someone is praying for them. Also, standardize the praying to avoid questions about whether the correct prayer was said.

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So how do you split the control group effectively in order to make the test valid?

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Collect your cancer patients based on similar prognosis. Then if the sample is large enough (100 is large) the small variations will average out.

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Originally Posted by moeur

Better yet, select two groups of cancer patients and two groups of prayers/non-prayers. One could pray to God for cancer group A and and one to the devil for cancer group B if you want. The patients need not know that someone is praying for them. Also, standardize the praying to avoid questions about whether the correct prayer was said.

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Interesting.

What would you determine if the targets of those that prayed to the devil had a higher cure rate than those that prayed to god, but both had a higher cure rate than those patients that had no prayers said for them at all?

Or...

What would you determine if the targets of those that prayed to god had a higher cure rate than those that prayed to the devil, but both had a higher cure rate than those patients that had no prayers said for them at all?


Or...


hmmm, abc, acb, bac, bca, cab, cba ???

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Originally Posted by moeur

Collect your cancer patients based on similar prognosis. Then if the sample is large enough (100 is large) the small variations will average out.

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Even similar prognosis can have large variations in results. You'd need a much much larger sample.

Also you'd need to do significance tests on the group that were prayer. A simple chi-squared test should tell you if there's any significance (once all the variables are included) to the group that prayed.

I'd bet money that the results were inconclusive.

http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/co...p?sitearea=ETO

It's not conclusive - but I'm glad I haven't been to the bookies :eek:

That's a great site. I had heard of some of those studies, so I'm glad you went and found it, as I would have been too lazy, and would just have told Moeur: Good idea, it's been done, I'm sure of it.

Unfortunately, some patients were aware that they were being prayed for and there were other problems with these studies
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-05/prayer.html

To draw a conclusion, this test needs to be repeated under more controlled conditions.
Here a report of another study. Conclusion: no benefit from prayer beyond the placebo effect.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/health/0...lig-249660.htm

Have there been any studies done on praying for restraint to not get caught up in a meaningless discussion concerning praying?

Everything is meaningless. Didn't you know?

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Originally Posted by moeur

To draw a conclusion, this test needs to be repeated under more controlled conditions.
Here a report of another study. Conclusion: no benefit from prayer beyond the placebo effect.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/health/0...lig-249660.htm

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What were they ill with? I see that they weren't talking about survival rates, eh? They were talking about recovery rates; implying they expected every patient to get better.

Why would God feel the need to intervene if we could manage it on our own?

Actually scrub the above: I didn't read the link properly. Whoops :eek:

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Originally Posted by moeur

Not at all. All you care about is whether the group that prayed had higher survival rates.

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I hope for your sake, and the company you work for, you do not carry out research on a large scale. To simply have two groups and conclude on one set of results from 100 people is absurd. There are too many variables to result in a conclusive result.

As yrywddfa pointed out, there would be no way to prove that the praying was actually responsible for the survival of a person so the research would be pointless from the very beginning. Also, with any research the research group has to be more than 100 people, a more respectable sized group would be 1,000 or 5,000

100 people is a large sample for narrow distributions. I don't know what kind of distribution we would get with the illness we would measure but we could simply choose a larger sample if the distribution is broader.

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there would be no way to prove that the praying was actually responsible for the survival of a person

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If this were true, then there would be no point in doing any kind of study on illnesses because you can never prove that the effect is caused by the variable you are monitoring. However, if you take measures to control or eliminate the effects of other factors you can draw conclusions about the effects of prayer with a high degreeof certainty.

On another point, I would not vote to fund such a study since I see no scientific basis for the study. I put it into the same category as all the New Age health nonsense such as homeopathic remedies.

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Originally Posted by moeur

On another point, I would not vote to fund such a study since I see no scientific basis for the study. I put it into the same category as all the New Age health nonsense such as homeopathic remedies.

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You seem to feel quite happy to say 'nonsense' with no empirical evidence whatsoever (unless you call the lame link you provided as empirical evidence?) So called scientists with little or no regard for the scientific method. And I believed you were secular, once, too. It's amazing how badly you can read some people.

If you had any regard for the scientific method your response would be 'It is an NP hard problem. There is no evidential test I can provide, no statistical method nor mathematical regime that I can support, no proof that leads to empirical certainty that will guarentee a postive outcome on one side or the other'

If you wanted to be entirely honest with your audience you would probably say 'I can see no evidence supporting either one case or the other so it is therefore my position that I'm undecided'

If we were talking about the existence of a creator you would be duty bound to say 'I cannot preclude the existence of a creator'

But you don't, you can't or perhaps you won't.

I guess you've watched too much telly, too.

I was not referring to any of the studies we discussed above, but simply that there is no reason to investigate the effects of prayer since I cannot show a linkage between prayer and health. It is not a hard problem but a simple one.

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If we were talking about the existence of a creator you would be duty bound to say 'I cannot preclude the existence of a creator'

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I cannot preclude the existence of a creator
I cannot preclude the existence of alien intervention
I cannot preclude the possibility that we we actually dreaming.
I cannot preclude the existence of fairies, goblins, the Easter bunny or Santa Claus.

No, I am not a religious person. I know many people who are and derive much benefit from their religion. I don't understand however, how a rational logically thinking person could actually hold, what appears to me to be superstitious beliefs.

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Originally Posted by moeur

I was not referring to any of the studies we discussed above, but simply that there is no reason to investigate the effects of prayer since I cannot show a linkage between prayer and health. It is not a hard problem but a simple one.
I cannot preclude the existence of a creator
I cannot preclude the existence of alien intervention
I cannot preclude the possibility that we we actually dreaming.
I cannot preclude the existence of fairies, goblins, the Easter bunny or Santa Claus.

No, I am not a religious person. I know many people who are and derive much benefit from their religion. I don't understand however, how a rational logically thinking person could actually hold, what appears to me to be superstitious beliefs.

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In which case I apologise; it appears I might have somewhat got the wrong end of the stick :blush:

BTW you probably can prove that the Easter Bunny, fairies, goblins and certainly Santa Clause are works of fiction; they probably have a definite non-contested author for a start.

As for the other three points you make - I agree: there is no proof either way.

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Originally Posted by moeur

100 people is a large sample for narrow distributions. I don't know what kind of distribution we would get with the illness we would measure but we could simply choose a larger sample if the distribution is broader.

If this were true, then there would be no point in doing any kind of study on illnesses because you can never prove that the effect is caused by the variable you are monitoring. However, if you take measures to control or eliminate the effects of other factors you can draw conclusions about the effects of prayer with a high degreeof certainty.

On another point, I would not vote to fund such a study since I see no scientific basis for the study. I put it into the same category as all the New Age health nonsense such as homeopathic remedies.

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100 people is a large sample? You're joking right? 100 people is nowhere near enough for an accurate result.

No point doing this kind of study? Definitely not.
Imagine the situation. A doctor informs his cancer patient that they are currently undertaking a study to see if prayer is effective in cancer treatment. To gain an unbiased result has to be taken off ALL scientific remedies (chemotherapy, drugs, surgery etc) and rely only on prayer. How many do you think would take up that study? None, because they know that modern science is the best chance they have of survival.
Ask yourself, would you encourage a loved one (Wife, Daughter, mother, father etc) to refrain from surgery or drugs for a scientific experiment that will likely be inconclusive? Of course not.

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Originally Posted by Valleysboy1978

None, because they know that modern science is the best chance they have of survival.

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A skewed, bias, subjective start to any study.

There is no empirical evidence that this is the case. There may be some minor inductive evidence - but certainly rationalisation, however; [edit]that is that there has been significant success in the past, and the result is more known than that of prayer[/edit]

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100 people is a large sample? You're joking right? 100 people is nowhere near enough for an accurate result.

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As I stated above, 100 samples is very large for narrow distributions. You have suggested (and I agree) that the cancer distribution is probably very broad and requires a larger sample.

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No point doing this kind of study? Definitely not.
Imagine the situation. A doctor informs his cancer patient that they are currently undertaking a study to see if prayer is effective in cancer treatment. To gain an unbiased result has to be taken off ALL scientific remedies (chemotherapy, drugs, surgery etc) and rely only on prayer. How many do you think would take up that study? None, because they know that modern science is the best chance they have of survival.

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OK, let's not choose cancer but another disease for which there is no treatment. Also don't inform the patients of the study.

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Originally Posted by moeur

I don't understand however, how a rational logically thinking person could actually hold, what appears to me to be superstitious beliefs.

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I have to presume, as it's an anthropological phenemenon, that you too hold beliefs that you have little or no evidence.

The obvious (but cliche, and obvious) example is evolution. Now, evolution is a good (very good) description of how to describe gradual complexity of life through mutation/crossover of the genepool - as sort-of observed in the fossil record.

But is it provable? If you understand the scientific method as that proof is the observation of a theory (very very succinct) then you can see that not one person who apparently sees evolution has actually observed it. Not one person has been alive to witness enough events to conclude the theory must be true.

Also, Heisenburg's uncertainty principle clearly show that what ever you observe you also change. This cross-correlated with . . . .

But hey - this is going too far, perhaps a need for new thread. This has nothing to do with Rita, whatsoever.

:)

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Originally Posted by yrwyddfa

But hey - this is going too far, perhaps a need for new thread. This has nothing to do with Rita, whatsoever. :)

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What I really mean is that why oh-why do always end up debating from this particular corner :(

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Originally Posted by moeur

OK, let's not choose cancer but another disease for which there is no treatment. Also don't inform the patients of the study.

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Such as AIDS?
So the researchers wouldn't inform the patients? Well they couldn't guarantee the patient is praying on a regular basis. Also it would be highly unethical, not to mention illegal, to inform a patient they are receiving treatment when they are not. The doctor would effectively be killing his patient in the name of research, which would be going against their hypocratic oath.

Actually, the patient is not the one praying.
There is no treatment so that they patient would not be expecting any treatment.

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Originally Posted by moeur

Actually, the patient is not the one praying.
There is no treatment so that they patient would not be expecting any treatment.

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In this context, is it not praying for one's own salvation that we are talking about?

Actually there IS treatment for AIDS. There isn't a cure, but there are many drugs that slow the disease to a point where they have many years of normal life. I'm sure that the person suffering from AIDS wouldn't stop the treatments so as to see if prayer is effective, they would stick with the drugs that may extend their life expectancy by 10 years.

Evolution is provable.

The Theory of Evolution is not.

The two are not the same.

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Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker

Evolution is provable.

The Theory of Evolution is not.

The two are not the same.

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What's the difference? Is it:
(i) Evolution is the mechanics of cellular mutation
(ii) The Theory of Evolution is the idea that (i) gradually increases suitability to the environment.

??

the difference between how and why methinks.

Well, 'how' is about genetics, and cell biology. I wouldn't call that evolution which is why I'm surprised that a distinction has been identified.

Not related to previous posts, but related to the title:

I find really stupid that US news did not mention the name of that island Rita passed by...

I was in Cuba on vacation when Rita passed right above Cuba (That nameless island!).

While I was there, I was watching the news, CNN (I think), and they did not mention Cuba at all, and while showing the map the island was not labeled at all... it was showing just a green piece of earth.

I admit that the eye of Rita did not pass through Cuba, but it passed a little above Cuba, and being there I can tell you, it was pretty bad...

I wonder, if US hides Cuba for everything (news, schools...), I wonder how many of the US people can name that island ?

But from my experience, some US people don't even know where Canada is... so I think I already know the anser to that question.

I am really dissapointed in US... they can do better... really...

Well, I am not dissapointed in the US people perse... but in the goverment system (or whoever is in charge to make those stupid choices, on what to tell the world and not...)

Well... One lesson about the US: The government does not tell the News what to tell the world. Just the opposite if the media sees the government trying to tell them what to say, they will purposely refuse to say it.

As far as the people knowing where Canada and Cuba are, you might be right. Most school children cannot find any country on a map.

Of course most adults know where Mexico is, that is where all the illegal aliens are coming from, and some even know Canada because that is where we have to go to get cheap prescription drugs and Cuban cigars!