Beyond Belief Session 10—Richard Sloan

Richard Sloan seems to have done a lot of research on the relationship between religion and medicine. I was surprised that he discounted some of the evidence that he said was sound. He looked at 89 articles that were about the benefits of religion in terms on physical medical health. He came to the conclusion that only 4 articles had sound studies done without flaws in the research. However, he discounts these articles just because they are in the minority of the articles. What are in these 4 articles and what evidence so they show? Just because there are only a few studies that were done correctly, there is still the evidence from those well done studies. The evidence is still there and still valid.

This brings up the issue of the quality of science done. When you have some evidence pointing to the truth of something, although it may be a small amount of evidence, you should not discount the evidence. There should be more research done on these issues to find out what the truth is. The few studies that were done correctly should be repeated to see if the result is the same. You should not discount empirical evidence just because it a small amount of evidence. This is not good science.