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Interesting, but how do you account for the group only achieving 60-70 of % success? You can't use the 'lack of faith' argument in the case of the same group. You can only use the 'God had some reason to say 'no' argument. So, accepting the results (and don't forget that in other tests the results have been otherwise), we have a prayer -positive result. So if prayer works, why and how? It is a leap too far to claim that it proves that a god answers prayers. Just that prayer appears, to have a better success ratio in this study.
Trans, I will let Wardendresden and others respond to the underlying substance of your question, but just wanted to clarify your interpretation of the data. The Crawford paper cited, which was a review of literature (i.e., a paper about other papers) did NOT show a 60-70% success rate, as in "prayer worked 60-70% of the time" or "prayer worked for 60-70% of patients." Rather, Crawford examined 90 published studies, and found that 62-71% of the STUDIES reported something positive. For example, in a group of 45 publications describing lab studies, 28 of them (62%) showed positive outcomes and 15 (33%) showed negative outcomes. In other words, those percentages are just a headcount of number of articles, and it wouldn't necesarily take much to get a checkmark in the plus column. Still interesting, but much different than saying prayer worked X% of the time.
Of course, the same review by Crawford warns the reader: "Major methodological problems of these studies included adequacy of blinding, dropped data in laboratory studies, reliability of outcome measures, rare use of power estimations and confidence intervals, and lack of independent replication." ...which are some pretty big problems, for anyone trying to draw conclusions!
With that, I return you to your regularly scheduled debate.
Last edited by HeelaMonster; 04-18-2019 at 01:11 PM..
Trans, I will let Wardendresden and others respond to the underlying substance of your question, but just wanted to clarify your interpretation of the data. The Crawford paper cited, which was a review of literature (i.e., a paper about other papers) did NOT show a 60-70% success rate, as in "prayer worked 60-70% of the time" or "prayer worked for 60-70% of patients." Rather, Crawford examined 90 published studies, and found that 62-71% of the STUDIES showed something positive. For example, in a group of 45 publications describing lab studies, 28 of them (62%) showed positive outcomes and 15 (33%) showed negative outcomes. In other words, those percentages are just a headcount of number of articles, and it wouldn't necesarily take much to get a checkmark in the plus column. Still interesting, but much different than saying prayer worked X% of the time.
Of course, the same review by Crawford warns the reader: "Major methodological problems of these studies included adequacy of blinding, dropped data in laboratory studies, reliability of outcome measures, rare use of power estimations and confidence intervals, and lack of independent replication." ...which are some pretty big problems, for anyone trying to draw conclusions!
With that, I return you to your regularly scheduled debate.
Thank you. I did gather that Crawford examined other studies rather than carried out his own study (or hers).
Rather than start casting nasturshiums on the validity of the studies (letting the believers scream 'hypocrisy'),
I bit the bullet and looked at the conclusions, IF the study of the studies was right. Bottom line is - the believers want to leap straight to 'God'. The right answer is 'We don't know why this works'. Just same with NDE's. Just the same as Instinct, before DNA was discovered.
P.s I also noted another claim - a prayer -healing that is going viral amongst the Faithful desperate for some Proof. It has been noted that there are some fishy aspects, and not just that this misguided doer of harm could ever be a valid focus for a god answering prayers. But something more than just doubts and questions will be needed to deal with the present Catholic clamour and the 2nd miracle needed for the canonization of this apalling woman.
Thank you. I did gather that Crawford examined other studies rather than carried out his own study (or hers).
Rather than start casting nasturshiums on the validity of the studies (letting the believers scream 'hypocrisy'),
I bit the bullet and looked at the conclusions, IF the study of the studies was right. Bottom line is - the believers want to leap straight to 'God'. The right answer is 'We don't know why this works'. Just same with NDE's. Just the same as Instinct, before DNA was discovered.
Understood. My point was only about the suggested "60-70% success." For all I know (without going to look at each of 90 papers), it could be that prayer worked in only 10% of actual cases (if, for example a hypothetical positive study involved only 10 patients while an equally hypothetical negative study involved 900 patients, and so on). In any event, your point is the more important one... carry on!
Understood. My point was only about the suggested "60-70% success." For all I know (without going to look at each of 90 papers), it could be that prayer worked in only 10% of actual cases (if, for example a hypothetical positive study involved only 10 patients while an equally hypothetical negative study involved 900 patients, and so on). In any event, your point is the more important one... carry on!
I can't find out much about this paper on a group of studies. but the Big one was a long one funded by the templeton foundation and which did not produce the results that it would have liked. This is the one (2007) that skeptics usually refer to when claiming that studies on prayer show that it doesn't work.
That is of course prayer that produced a statistically improved response that COULD have happened naturally. Not something miraculous like an arm growing back.
Wiki has this:
Meta-studies of the literature in the field have been performed showing evidence only for no effect or a potentially small effect. For instance, a 2006 meta analysis on 14 studies concluded that there is "no discernible effect" while a 2007 systemic review of intercessory prayer reported inconclusive results, noting that 7 of 17 studies had "small, but significant, effect sizes" but the review noted that the most methodologically rigorous studies failed to produce significant findings.[1][2]
What's not reasonable is foregoing treatment and relying on prayer...that just seems crazy! Although I know treatments are exhausting and expensive.
You need to go back and read the post and think about what is actually says, rather than how you wanted it to sound so you could make excuses.
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