ifriit said:
Posner, Gary P.,
God in the CCU?, Free Inquiry, Spring 1999. <
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gary_posner/godccu.html>
Ok, let's look at Posner's critique.
"Each patient's hospital course was given a severity score of "good," "intermediate," or "bad," based upon the degree of morbidity experienced by the patient. In addition, twenty-six categories of "New Problems, Diagnoses, and Therapeutic Events After Entry" were measured, and tested for statistical significance between the groups. These included such things as congestive heart failure, diuretics, hypotension, intubation/ventilation, pneumonia, and so on."
Posner has this backwards. FIRST the complications were looked at and the hospital course was "in addition". IOW, the general course was only done later at the insistence of the reviewers (Tessman and his discussion of Table 3, which is the general course). So, initially Byrd concentrated on objective measurements.
"Byrd says, "Based on these data there
seemed to be an effect [from IP], and that effect was
presumed to be beneficial" (emphasis added)."
Posner added emphases to try to water-down the data and make it look like the results are not as conclusive as they are. ALL studies use this tentative language. If we are to downgrade to dismissal studies who use this language, then nearly every primary article in the literature has to go, not to mention Darwin, who always used the most self-deprecating of langugae. All of science disappears.
"But what are those of lesser faith -- or of other faiths -- to make of this miraculous claim for the efficacy of prayer? Has the Judeo-Christian God been shown to exist, and to intervene in the hospital course of patients?"
Posner missed the point. God wasn't being tested. IP was.
"The most striking flaw in this study's methodology is one forthrightly acknowledged by Byrd. "It was assumed that some of the patients in both groups would be prayed for by people not associated with the study; this was not controlled for. . . . Therefore, 'pure' groups were not attained in this study." In other words, the focus of the study - prayer - was "not controlled for," except that three to seven intercessors were assigned to pray daily for each patient in the IP group, and none was assigned to the controls. Thus, although unlikely, it is nevertheless theoretically possible that the control group received as many prayers as did the IP group, if not more.
If "intercessory prayer" was not controlled, except that each IP patient was assumed to have received somewhere between X+3 and X+7 prayers daily, as opposed to X+0 for the control patients, what are we to conclude? That God is conditioned in a Pavlovian manner to automatically respond to the side with the greater number of troops, even though the assigned intercessors had no emotional ties to their patients, and even though the IP patients were otherwise no more worthy of healing as a group than were the controls? Does God not know that the side with fewer troops is in just as much need of assistance? Where is the evidence of his omnicience and compassion?"
Posner starts out with a supposed "flaw" in the methods and ends up discussing God and not the data from the methods.
What everyone wants, Ifriit, is something that will make an effect where there really isn't any. Will this do it?
You have an unknown number x praying for each patient. So, will that make a result of IP when there isn't any? NO!! What is more likely is that having x + 3 or x + 7 will NOT make a difference because x is already so large that adding a few more won't be noticed.
So, instead of saying the study is flawed, Posner has invalidly shifted the debate and tried to show GOD is flawed.
Posner is not discussing the study of IP, but the underlying hypothesis that it is God answering prayers and trying to show that this is not the case.
What is amazing is that, with only 3 to 7 additional intercessors, an effect could be seen at all!
Before I forget, what Posner and everyone else forgets is that Byrd used a TWO-TAILED test. That is, it looked at whether prayer made things better or WORSE. As Byrd wrote later, he really had no idea whether prayer really was beneficial because all the data was anecdotal and biased. Prayer COULD equally well have made things worse.
Now, meeting statistical significance on a two-tailed test is twice as hard as meeting it for a one-tailed test where you know the direction of the effect (if it is there). But Byrd erred on the conservative side. IF Byrd had used a one-tailed test (which Posner should agree to since he also thinks prayer should be beneficial), then instead of 6 categories being signficant, you now have 20 out of the 26 that are significant.
"But was this lack of significance truly "overcome"? One must note the interrelationships among these six categories: for instance, the development of congestive heart failure automatically leads to the need for diuretics; the development of pneumonia automatically requires the use of antibiotics; and the development of either would likely increase the risk of developing the other, of requiring intubation or ventilation, and of suffering cardiopulmonary arrest. "
None of these are true. Most pneumonias are VIRAL, not bacterial, and therefore don't get antibiotics. Congestive heart failure is not due to too much fluid and giving diuretics makes it worse because it makes the blood thicker and harder to pump. So Posner has misstated the medicine.
"In addition to the twenty-six categories previously described, three further variables were tracked during the study and tested for significance: "Days in CCU after entry," "Days in hospital after entry," and "Number of discharge medications." No significant differences between the prayer and control groups were found, despite explicit prayers for "a rapid recovery." Are we thus to conclude from all of the data derived in this study that although God may reflexively respond to the will of the majority, his manifestations are so marginal as to approach insignificance?"
First Posner doesn't like categories because they are interdependent but he wants these categories which are completely dependent on multiple variables. Can't have it both ways.
People only spent 2-3 days in the CCU and only 7 days in the hospital. Does Posner really think that these numbers -- gotten with material medicine -- can really be improved upon that much?
"The religious nature of Byrd's hypothesis may have been the attraction for the Southern Medical Journal, which is published in Birmingham, Alabama, in the heart of the Bible Belt. I assumed that the five-year gap between his study's conclusion (1983), and its publication indicates that a number of other journals had been approached prior to SMJ, but had failed to appreciate the historic nature of Byrd's alleged findings."
Notice that Posner now shifts from science to ad hominem. He has no evidence, but is assuming and damning based on that assumption.
"Byrd graciously responded to my inquiry on this point, informing me that he had received two prior rejections, which he called "the academic average. Perhaps the other two journals subscribe to the generally accepted axiom of science that extraordinary claims (particularly miraculous ones) require proportionately extraordinary proof."
Now we are back to that extraordinary claims thing again. Changing science. Once again, this is nothing but a rhetorical stick used to beat an idea that you don't personally like. I've seen it used THREE times in scientific journals, and all used the same way. The paper on evidence of life in the Martian meteorite was bashed because it was and "extraordinary claim".
I'm not sure what the average is. Most of mine have been accepted in the first journal submitted to, but maybe I haven't aimed high enough in prestigious journals. Lately I've been having 1 rejection per publication.
"This is not to say that studies purporting to demonstrate evidence of supernatural events ought not be published, as long as a journal's minimum standards of acceptability are met. Nature has published several such studies, but has historically accompanied them with statements expressing editorial reservations. (2) In contrast, Byrd's SMJ article was accompanied by a "Commentary" entitled "Religion in Healing," whose author says, "The paper by Dr. Byrd answers a question that has long been asked: Does prayer make a difference? His data say that it does." (3)"
Again, Posner is commenting on the hypothesis BEHIND the study. The Commentary is right on. Prayer makes a difference. Is that because God is answering prayers?? WE DON'T KNOW. Both extreme theists and extreme atheists ASSUME so. But Posner can't distinguish his assumptions from fact. If Posner assumes it, then it is fact.
The statistical re-analysis done by Cochrane's Review showed that Byrd did not influence the results at all. The results are "robust", which they would not be if Byrd had screwed up.
