The other day I wrote a blogpost about en example of bad science, in which I explained that a common misconception that people have about scientists is that they dismiss anything that they can't explain. The idea that everything has to have an explanation and until that explanation is found it is completely rejected is fundementally untrue. The problem here lies in confusing the word "explanation" with the word "evidence".
I think that an excellent example of this is this video that I saw a few weeks ago on TheYoungTurks about a study on the effectiveness of prayer in curing AIDS
This kind of study is one that left many non-science minded people scratching their heads. Prayer? But that's bullshit! How can mumbling some words about someone help their sickness in any way? What a waste of time and money! Well yes, it is bullshit, but how do we know it's bullshit? By doing a study.
Our logic tells us this doesn't work, but what if it does? If the study were to demonstrate that people who were prayed for were statistically more likely to get better we would have evidence that prayer might work, even if we wouldn't necessarily have an explanation as to why it works. The topic would be pursued and an explanation would be searched for, but many scientists would stop their scoffing and take a look at what might be going on. To do this, prayer would have to pass the same test that any other drug would: a double-blind random placebo-controlled study. Placebo-controlled meaning that people would not know what group they are in, therefore you control for the placebo effect. The double-blind part ensures that the researchers/doctors that collect the data for the study also do not know which patients are in which group, minimizing their own (conscious or unconsious) bias in collecting the data. Random so as to ensure that any patient has an equal chance of being placed in either group, to avoid (consciously or unconsciously) placing people that are doing slightly better in one or the other. If prayer passes this first hurdle then there is evidence that prayer might help, and the subject is pursued further. Problem: it hasn't.
It is not a useless waste of money. It is a valuable demonstration that prayer does not work. When scientists say that prayer doesn't work it is because there is no scientific evidence that it works, not because they simply can't figure out how it could therefore dismiss it offhand. Although there will always be people that refute evidence and believe whatever they want, studies like these keep logically minded people informed and hopefully further from the hands of scheming faith healers and con artists.
Don't be afraid to demand the same evidence of "spiritual" or "supernatural" phenomena that you would anything that comes out of a lab. At the same time, don't spit on studies like these that thoroughly debunk these phenomena as "too obvious to waste money on". Believe it or not scientists do have a very open mind, they are open to the possibility that these things could work, the only problem is that there hasn't been a single supernatural phenomenon to pass the first basic scientific tests. That is why scientists (most, of course) do not believe in this crap - not because they don't want to, but because they have no good reason to.
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