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Re: [Phys-l] God's reaction to prayers simply can't be explored by scientific study.

Hi all-
The revealed truth is that the gods were giggling all through the exercise, because the people involved had no knowledge of the proper sacrificial rituals. This is a systematic effect which whould have been taken into account at the beginning of the experiment.
Regards,
Jack


On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, John Clement wrote:

As I recall there was a study which found that faith-based interventions did
not have a better rate than some other good interventions. The intervention
may be the effect, rather than the type of intervention. The comparison
mentioned was between an intervention and no intervention. There certainly
will be ineffective interventions, and some of the faith based ones may be
among the more effective interventions.

There certainly can be large effects, but I don't believe the size of the
effect as quoted. Would a faith based group work for an atheist?

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


"I would certainly like to see the evidence for these statistics.
Intervention vs. non-intervention might well have such effects if
they are well designed, but I would question that such huge
differences would appear between faith-based and non-faith-based
interventions.

Hugh"


I was going to write that the important factor is attention, whatever the
kind.

bc, just believes this.

p.s. I obtained the news article from the current UnderNews.



Hugh Haskell wrote:

At 10:06 -0600 3/31/07, Brian Whatcott wrote:


I was interested to examine my reaction to this story. I noticed
that rationalizing the outcome was relatively fast for me.
And I laughed: people do indeed rationalize any result that gives
rise to conceptual conflict.



That certainly is a natural tendency, but I wouldn't say that it
always happens. If it did, how would anything new ever get accepted?



cut

Here's a less than scientific example of faith-based intervention.
It is found that drug-offenders (and others) who are exposed to
local faith-based support groups (driving them to Narc-Anon
meetings,finding them small easements etc...) have a better
recidivism rate than prisoners not so supported.
(The recidivism rate can be truly ruinous,
to them and to the rest of us: 80% and higher; the supported
recidivism rate can be surprizingly better, 15% and lower...)



I would certainly like to see the evidence for these statistics.
Intervention vs. non-intervention might well have such effects if
they are well designed, but I would question that such huge
differences would appear between faith-based and non-faith-based
interventions.

Hugh


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_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


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