Sometimes going out looking for one thing finds you another.
I have spent a disturbing amount of time recently just flicking through scientific papers. There is something very exciting about just looking at data*, wondering about connections, and sometimes finding something brilliant. This evening was one of those times.
I happened to be reading about prayer healing and came across a bunch of studies. Check out Wikipedia's experimental evaluation of prayer page. Here you'll find details of a double-blind study (Byrd, 1983) that shows small but statistically significant positive effects of distant prayer groups (they pray based on the patient's 1st name and ailment).
However this is my favourite thing. A researcher, named Leibovici, later conducted another double blind study. Sending out the first names and ailments of a bunch of patients who were already either dead or cured to almost 3,500 prayer groups. He found that prayer on these out of date patient records showed a statistically significant improvement in their retroactive conditions.
I absolutely had to track down a copy of this paper and found the following page, which contains two awesome things:
clicky for readable
Firstly Leibovici starts being facetious and suggests that, since God is independent of both space and time, retroactive prayer should be used in clinical practice (yay statistics!).
Secondly a serious journal, the BMJ, has published a picture of some cells in the shape of a reindeer. I find it hard to imagine ApJ or MNRAS doing the same.
Oh, and for those of you (like me) that don't know what squamous cells are - "cell type often seen in areas exposed to significant irritation or trauma - eg skin. (www.uwo.ca/pathol/glossary.html)"
Mmmmmmm.... the funny side of skin cancer.
*Yes. If you are wondering I do indeed lead a pathetic and empty shell of a life
I have spent a disturbing amount of time recently just flicking through scientific papers. There is something very exciting about just looking at data*, wondering about connections, and sometimes finding something brilliant. This evening was one of those times.
I happened to be reading about prayer healing and came across a bunch of studies. Check out Wikipedia's experimental evaluation of prayer page. Here you'll find details of a double-blind study (Byrd, 1983) that shows small but statistically significant positive effects of distant prayer groups (they pray based on the patient's 1st name and ailment).
However this is my favourite thing. A researcher, named Leibovici, later conducted another double blind study. Sending out the first names and ailments of a bunch of patients who were already either dead or cured to almost 3,500 prayer groups. He found that prayer on these out of date patient records showed a statistically significant improvement in their retroactive conditions.
I absolutely had to track down a copy of this paper and found the following page, which contains two awesome things:
clicky for readable
Firstly Leibovici starts being facetious and suggests that, since God is independent of both space and time, retroactive prayer should be used in clinical practice (yay statistics!).
Secondly a serious journal, the BMJ, has published a picture of some cells in the shape of a reindeer. I find it hard to imagine ApJ or MNRAS doing the same.
Oh, and for those of you (like me) that don't know what squamous cells are - "cell type often seen in areas exposed to significant irritation or trauma - eg skin. (www.uwo.ca/pathol/glossary.html)"
Mmmmmmm.... the funny side of skin cancer.
*Yes. If you are wondering I do indeed lead a pathetic and empty shell of a life
