Would you be able to evaluate the study if you saw the data you mentioned? It's a learned skill. If you can and want to do so, you generally need to find the original study published in a reputable journal, where such data is provided
Your choices are these:
[1] Look at the original published study. Go to the methods and materials section, usually right after the abstract, and look at how the study was designed. Was it randomized, and controlled. Was it sufficiently powered (enough people studied) to achieve statistical significance? You'll need to know how to evaluate such data to do that, but you can come to your own conclusions and compare them to the study's conclusions. If available, you can review criticisms of the study if any (peer review).
[2] If you can't or don't want to do that, the next best thing is to identify trustworthy sources. If you know how to do that, and have accurately identified the experts, you can trust them provisionally. This is different from the genetic error, which judges the correctness of the conclusion of an argument by its source. You know that the conclusion may be flawed, but you also know that your expert's opinion is more reliable than your own, and if you are a good judge of who is trustworthy (even if not always correct), it is rational to decide that the experts are probably correct, as when you consult an attorney or physician. The genetic error says something like, "My doctor has the correct diagnosis because he's a good doctor" rather than, "My doctor is more likely correct than I am, and I will defer my judgment to the expert."
[3] Do neither of these things and just ignore the study, or accept or reject it on faith.
Let's look at a study at
Effects of intercessory prayer on patients with rheumatoid arthritis - PubMed :
Effects of intercessory prayer on patients with rheumatoid arthritis
D A Matthews 1,
S M Marlowe,
F S MacNutt
South Med J . 2000 Dec;93(12):1177-86.
Abstract
Background: Many individuals pray during times of illness, but the clinical effects of prayer are not well-understood.
Methods: We prospectively studied a cohort of 40 patients (mean age, 62 years; 100% white; 82% women) at a private rheumatology practice. All had class II or III rheumatoid arthritis and took stable doses of antirheumatic medications. All received a 3-day intervention, including 6 hours of education and 6 hours of direct-contact intercessory prayer. Nineteen randomly selected sample patients had 6 months of daily, supplemental intercessory prayer by individuals located elsewhere. Ten arthritis-specific outcome variables were measured at baseline and at 3-month intervals for 1 year.
Results: Patients receiving in-person intercessory prayer showed significant overall improvement during 1-year follow-up. No additional effects from supplemental, distant intercessory prayer were found.
Conclusions: In-person intercessory prayer may be a useful adjunct to standard medical care for certain patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Supplemental, distant intercessory prayer offers no additional benefits.
There's your data in the methods section. Forty people were studied. Their average age was 62, all white, 82% female. All had training and one-on-one direct prayer sessions for a total of six hours, but about half also had prayer from a distance. The abstract doesn't tell us if the patients knew this. Specific disease markers not named were measured four times over a year.
What do you think? Do these data support the conclusion? As I suggested, one ought to have some familiarity with doing this before saying, "Show me the data." Here's my assessment:
There is no control group for direct prayer. It is probably assumed that patients not in the study would be expected to be the same in six months, but maybe modern treatments make improvement over six months common anyway. Is forty people enough to reveal a difference between prayer and no prayer if you did include a control group? Statisticians generally provide those answers, which are generally included in the abstract, but not this time.
Although the study had no control group, those in the study were divided about evenly into those who received direct and remote prayer, and those that received only direct prayer. Is that enough people to conclude that the lack of effect of remote prayer was due to there being no effect? Perhaps if the study had been 2000 people, the groups would have begun to separate.
Look at how weak the conclusion is. Prayer might be useful. Wasn't that assumed before going into the study? If that weren't already believed to be possible, why do the study? Can we be sure that the second sentence in the conclusion is correct? I'd have preferred that it be worded that the remote prayer didn't lead to a detectable difference, not that it offers no benefit.
And what about the Southern Medical Journal? I'm a retired physician, and never heard of it, but that doesn't mean that it isn't reputable. I didn't find much on it, but it looks a little suspect to me. The Southern Medical Association publishes it, a professional organization said to be dedicated to educating clinical physicians
Judge for yourself:
Southern Medical Journal - Wikipedia and
Southern Medical Association (SMA)
I'll defer to the scientists present on RF who have actually been involved in published studies to tell you more if there is more to be said (I only read them), but I concluded that this study has no value and reveals nothing. Notice that this is me visiting the first category above, but putting myself into the second anyway, since there are several posters here on RF whose judgment I would defer to if they told me I had it wrong, but were unable to explain why in a way that I was prepared to understand.
Given your comments, I'd ask myself if I were really looking for scientific guidance or not. I hear so many people that I believe are simply more afraid of the vaccine than the virus that they just don't want it, but don't feel like that's an adequate answer. So, they give reasons to justify the choice, as if those reasons were what led the to dispassionately and rationally conclude that they should wait on the vaccine. They say they are waiting for more information, when there is enough information now to decide in favor of being vaccinated. Sure, there's a long shot possibility that in the end, more people will have died from an as yet unknown complication of the vaccine in five or twenty years than from the virus, but that is not a reason to choose to risk the virus unvaccinated instead.
Remarkably, nobody I know has died from COVID yet, but just now, there is one about to. He's an acquaintance named Howard, a retired attorney and expat living in Mexico like I do who I was in a play with a few years back. He's an eccentric and impulsive guy, on his fifth or sixth wife, third in the eight years I've known him. He didn't want the vaccine. He was waiting for more information, he said. He wanted to see how others did with the vaccine first. We were his guinea pigs, he thought, not realizing that he was in the "study" as well as part of the control group, the unvaccinated.
Howard and his Mexican wife Maria are now both gravely ill with COVID. Howard was medevac(k)ed back to the States yesterday in critical condition with coronavirus pneumonia. So tragic. So unnecessary. I'm sure that Howard has that extra information he was waiting for now, and wonders why he didn't just listen to those who already knew it.
What data are you waiting for?
