melika969
I dont know maybe my englsih is weak, but i really dont get your point in your posts! why should an astronomer even search about rate of cancer cure?!!
you mean people can pray and this will cure their disease? maybe you can be a minister of health in ahmadinejad's government!
shafique
I’m currently reading ‘Fooled by Randomness’, by Nasim Nicholas Taleb (whose other books include ‘the Black Swan’). A very enjoyable read and recommended – especially if you want to find out a bit more about the difference between correlation and causality ;)
Just an interesting fact I wanted to share. He points out that a number of cancer patients experience ‘spontaneous remission’ and that science simply does not know why this happens – but the occurrence does happen and its past frequency has been measured.
He then goes on to reveal:
Quote:
The late astronomer Carl Sagan, a devoted promoter of scientific thinking and an obsessive enemy of non-science, examined the cures of from cancer that result from a visit to Lourdes in France where people were healed by simple contact with the holy waters, and found out the interesting fact that, of the total cancer patients who visited the place, the cure rate was, if anything, lower than the statistical one for spontaneous remissions. It was lower than the average for those who did not go to Lourdes! Should a statistician infer that cancer patients’ odds of surviving deteriorate after a visit to Lourdes?
Pg 139
(Now, the statistical part of me is asking whether the cancer patients going to Lourdes are a skewed sample or not – eg. If they were on average sicker than the average cancer patient, then the comparison should be the cure rates of a group of patients who are as sick as those who go to Lourdes… but for what it is worth, I thought I’d share the quote.)
Cheers,
Shafique
shafique
- melika969 wrote:
I dont know maybe my englsih is weak, but i really dont get your point in your posts! why should an astronomer even search about rate of cancer cure?!!
you mean people can pray and this will cure their disease? maybe you can be a minister of health in ahmadinejad's government!
Sagan just looked at whether praying at Lourdes actually cured people with Cancer. He found that as a %, LESS people with cancer recovered after visiting Lourdes than recovered for no apparent reason.
The interesting fact is that some people just recover from Cancer - praying (at Lourdes in this case) does not seem to help at all.
Is there a vacancy in Tehran that I should apply for? :)
Cheers,
Shafique