Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, by Richard P., Ph.D. Sloan
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Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, by Richard P., Ph.D. Sloan

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Pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. Surgeons who pray in the OR. Pro-life clinics and end-of-life interventions, intelligent-design activists and stem-cell-research opponents. Is this the state of modern medicine in America?
In Blind Faith, Dr. Richard P. Sloan examines the fragile balance and dangerous alliance between religion and medicine—two practices that have grown disconcertingly close during the twenty-first century. While Sloan does not dispute the fact that religion can bring a sense of comfort in times of difficulty, he nevertheless believes, and in fact proves, that there is no compelling evidence that faith provides an actual cure for any ailment. By exposing the flawed research, Sloan gives readers the tools to understand when good medical science is subverted and, at the same time, provides a thought-provoking examination into the origins and varieties of faith, and human nature itself.
Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, by Richard P., Ph.D. Sloan - Amazon Sales Rank: #1668074 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-11-03
- Released on: 2015-11-03
- Format: Kindle eBook
Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, by Richard P., Ph.D. Sloan From Publishers Weekly Thanks to some studies and to accounts by physicians, patients and theologians, it has become popular to believe that prayer can heal the sick and that attending religious services regularly can extend one's life. But does the evidence for a link between religion and health hold up? Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia, probes the matter in this sometimes provocative but often prosaic book. Reports of the relationship between religion and medicine, he says, are greatly exaggerated and detrimental to both. He writes that dissatisfaction with contemporary medicine, uncritical media stories about religion and health, and advocacy groups that promote a link between religion and health have encouraged patients to seek alternative treatments that exploit that connection. Sloan examines the thousands of reports that prayer has been the key element in healing and finds many are based on anecdotes rather than systematic data collection. Even scientific studies on the healing capacities of faith and prayer do not always prove what they are purported to prove; some, for instance, touch only peripherally on the role of religion in health. For Sloan, attempts to connect religion and medicine can jeopardize patients' lives by giving false hope. Although repetitious, Sloan's book offers clear challenges to patients and medical professionals who embrace prayer as a means of healing. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist Sloan contends that the recent upsurge of allegations that prayer and religious affiliation can cure or prevent illness dishonors both religion and medicine. The claims--indeed, the majority of so-called studies most often cited--are at best of dubious validity; at worst, blatantly misleading. Despite which, of course, the reports and anecdotes persist, perpetuating misinformation that Sloan feels is dangerous because it fosters relationships between doctor and patient, and between good health and illness, that disrespect the unique qualities of science and faith. God and faith shouldn't have to endure scientific scrutiny, and to remain viable, science mustn't be compromised to prove religious points. Doctors shouldn't inquire about patients' religious beliefs, Sloan says, for then they may be tempted to abuse their authority to influence them. Sloan's argument is good as far as it goes but overlooks the need for physicians to know patients' religious beliefs to address possible faith-based impediments to such procedures as, for example, blood transfusion. Donna ChavezCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review "If one were to believe the popular media, the efficacy of faith-based therapies is well established. Even in the professional medical literature, there are those who assert the health benefits of prayer, attendance at religious services, and other religious activities. Richard P. Sloan, PhD, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University, has written extensively on the relationship of medicine and religion and takes issue with this current trend.Blind Faith is his attempt to answer the following questions: "1. Do the efforts to link religion and health represent good science? 2. Do they represent good medicine? 3. Do they represent good religion?"(p 10). This readable, well-reasoned book critically examines these issues and cites many of the recent important research papers on the subject. There is a 13-page index and a 13-page bibliography with more than 200 citations.Sloan begins with a brief historical sketch of the transition of medical practices from magical methods to scientific therapies. He discusses some of the social, commercial, political, and religious reasons why present-day medicine has turned back to more subjective and irrational practices. There is an excellent presentation of the important differences between anecdotal, observational, and experimental studies, which the layperson would find helpful.Sloan's discussion of the evidence for claims that religious practices promote health is thorough and accessible. He identifies serious flaws in studies that show a positive association between religious practices and improved health. These consist of failure to adjust for confounding variables; poststudy changes in hypothesis to fit the study results; confusion over exploratory vs confirmatory studies; nonvalidation of outcome scales; and failure to adjust the significance level for multiple comparisons. In addition, he disputes the assertion that there is a large body of scientific literature addressing the health consequences of religious activities.Sloan evaluates the current literature and concludes, "Overall, the evidence linking religious involvement and health outcomes remains weak and inconclusive"(p 155). He points out that attempts to establish links are problematic in observational studies owing to the difficulty of adjusting for myriad confounding variables, issues of self-presentation bias, and problems relating to the use of surrogate indices for religious involvement. Furthermore, he presents evidence that the demand by the public to introduce religion into medical practice has been seriously exaggerated.Some therapies, such as remote intercessory prayer (IP), require mechanisms that are unknown to the physical sciences. After citing and analyzing the relevant literature, Sloan writes, "Every major IP study reporting a positive outcome has serious methodological flaws . . . we have no evidence of the health benefits of intercessory prayer . . . we shouldn't revise our current understanding of consciousness and the universe" (pp 176-177).Subsequent chapters provide insightful discussion of the ethical and practical problems resulting from the inappropriate association of medical and religious practices, including the real psychological and physical harm that can be inflicted on a patient. Adverse effects include diverting the patient from effective treatments; fostering a sense of guilt if religious efforts are unsuccessful; encouraging unrealistic expectations; manipulation of privately held beliefs; and coercion. There are also potential serious adverse consequences for society, such as misallocation of health care resources and the fostering of sectarian conflict, which might evolve from recommending certain religious practices over others.Finally, Sloan outlines his view of the appropriate relationship between religion and medicine. Akin to Stephen J. Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria," Sloan states, "religion and science represent different approaches to knowledge, wisdom, and truth. . . . Science and religion exist as largely independent domains"(p 264).Sloan seems genuinely protective of the religious domain and appreciates the inspirational nature of religious belief. He is harsh with those who suggest that the Divine would submit to an experiment and, for example, grant or withhold health because of the presence or absence of prescribed prayer. Such an approach, he feels, trivializes religion. He believes that the attempt to understand religious experience by scientific reductionism is misguided and harmful.There are many articles scattered in the professional literature dealing with issues of religion and medicine. Sloan has performed a valuable service by assembling and evaluating in one volume the most important of these. Written primarily for the layperson, Blind Faith is also highly recommended for the physician, clergy member, and scientist and will become an important resource for anyone interested in these issues. It serves as a no-nonsense scientific assessment of the alleged benefits of religious practice on health outcomes, providing a welcome dose of skepticism and exposing overinflated and unsubstantiated claims. At the same time, it recognizes the support that religion offers many people in times of illness and suggests that patients are best served when medicine and religion function within their appropriate spheres."--Journal of the American Medical Association "Sloan (Behavioral Medicine/Columbia Univ.) takes a close look at the growing encroachment of religion in yet another sphere of American life: medicine. In a series of well-argued, well-documented chapters, Sloan first addresses the medicine tradition in which ill health and disease were linked to moral turpitude and the displeasure of the gods. Disturbingly, he sees signs of a return of this anti-scientific attitude in the rise of religious fundamentalism and New Age touchy-feely behavior. Next, he addresses the "research" purporting to show that religiosity pays off--that going to church and praying or having prayers said for you are good for your health and lead to lower mortality rates. His arguments here form a neat summary on how science works, and on the pitfalls that can beset the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of a clinical trial. For example, the research suggesting that regular attendance at church services (as opposed to even sporadic attendance) was associated with lower mortality rates totally ignored a confounder: People who are sick or disabled are not likely to be regular churchgoers. Other egregious examples include making multiple comparisons after a trial to search for some secondary outcome measure or for a subset of patients where the findings appear statistically significant. (Chances are that such a finding is indeed by chance alone.) Finally, the author deals with the many ethical issues that arise when doctors are encouraged to take spiritual histories, ask their patients to pray or otherwise promote religion. Issues here involve the white-coated authority vs. the vulnerable patient, the lack of training of physicians in areas of religion, the trivializing of faith and even the potential for studies that would explore whether Christian prayer is more healthful than Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist. Sloan has done well to sound the alarm, while providing an excellent primer on how medical evidence should be collected." --Kirkus Reviews, STARRED Review "In Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, Dr. Richard P. Sloan Ph.D., has written an important book that should garner the attention of medical practitioners, clergy and the faithful alike. He offers an honest and unsentimental assessment of one of our cultures most powerful shibboleths - that combining religion and medicine represents the highest standard of health care. This carefully reasoned study will give attentive readers pause about the many ethical and professional issues at stake when physicians make faith a subject of their medical practice. Bolstered by a thorough grasp of the extant research Dr. Sloan probes the deeper consequences of an easy acquiescence to what seems to many to be a panacea at best, or a harmless bit of bedside manner at worst. He makes the case that it could be much more serious than that to patients and the society as a whole." -Reverend Robert Edgar, General Secretary, National Council of Churches, USA "Reason has regained its voice. Richard Sloan speaks the truth in Blind Faith. It is an eloquent description of the scientific method, and a condemnation of those who pander to a superstitious public with shoddy and deceptive studies that purport to show that religion is good for your health. Professor Sloan explains the statistical tricks that opportunistic researchers use to deceive the public, and does not spare the media for telling the public what it wants to hear. This book should be read by everyone that loves truth."--Robert L. Park, author of Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud "In Blind Faith, Richard P. Sloan has written a provocative, yet judicious and timely book based on meticulous scholarship. This major study comes at a moment when there is vigorous, ongoing national debate and widespread concern about the growing influence of religion and religiosity and their impact on science, medicine, health and patient care. In his balanced consideration of these issues, Professor Sloan has provided an in-depth examination of key questions including how to preserve the coexistence of faith and science without violating the sacred domain of religion and the necessary autonomy of science and medicine."--Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation

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35 of 42 people found the following review helpful. Shoddy Work Done By These "Researchers" By The Spinozanator Does the practice of religion bring health benefits to the faithful? Not likely, says Richard Sloan. He has been simmering for years about the poor research that says otherwise, prompting him to co-author a literature review for "Lancet" in 1999 and now this book. Much of the research reviewed in "Blind Faith" has been supported by advocacy foundations that think religion is good for your health and don't mind using the tools of science to prove it. Relentlessly, they misuse these tools and an uncritical media propagates their invalid conclusions.Suppose you want to see if religion influences health. Since it's not feasible to randomly assign half your group to be religious and half irreligious, the groups are "self-selected" by church attendance surveys. Never mind that church attendance is known to be over-estimated in face-to-face interviews and that attendance doesn't necessarily measure devoutness - those details are routine hazards of epidemiological research.In five years your data shows the mortality rate to be higher for non-church-goers. Should that be proof of a health benefit or is it more likely that people too sick to attend are also the ones more likely to die. What about the influence religion might have on smoking, drinking, drug usage, and a hazardous life-style? Is resultant better health the direct effect of religion or is a byproduct of a healthier lifestyle - called a "confounder"? Observational studies of this type are all that's available in much of epidemiology. Confounding is a serious problem, subject to biased interpretation. A randomized, double-blind experiment is much preferred.Ideally, all studies would be randomized and double-blinded - you take a group of people, randomly divide them into 2 groups, apply the variable to one group and a give placebo to the other, without the researchers or either test group knowing which group is which. Then you compile and evaluate the results. Standard methods are used to minimize bias and statistics are applied to see if the differences are significant. Many randomized and double-blinded studies intend to show that intercessory prayer (IP) improves surgical outcome. Most of them have significant methodological flaws, commonly misusing the data. The researchers are looking to prove their stated hypothesis, but dozens of outcome variables may be incidentally measured. If you measure enough variables, some will achieve significance. These should be identified and researched with another study. Instead, a biased researcher might say, "Eureka! The prayers were answered." This is called the "sharpshooter's fallacy" - drawing the bull's eye on the barn after the arrows have reached their mark.The following things good researchers take great care not to do:1. Use anecdotes2. Ignore confounding factors3. Confuse correlation with causation - Factors associated with health outcomes may be markers but not causally related4. Scientific conclusions cannot be based on the sharpshooter's fallacyThe authors writing articles about the religion/health issues are guilty of all these things and more. As a result, their articles are almost always published in the same group of sub-par journals, released as abstracts, or leaked to the press without peer review. They are then restated inaccurately in religious periodicals until they reach the myth stage.The best part of this book is Part Two: Reading the Evidence. It is a well-done expose of religion-inspired efforts to skew data. The rest of the book (rightfully) takes to task those Doctors who want to evangelize while they practice medicine, but I don't see this as the burning issue Sloan does. Throughout the book, he questions the validity of doing these studies at all - because it trivializes religion. Religion shouldn't get this free pass and I eagerly welcome the few well done studies - the poor ones are not going to disappear. There is much to be said for relentless application of the scientific method - no other method has ever worked so well in uncovering the truth. If certain myths fall by the wayside, so be it.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful. Religion & Medicine By Marilyn Clark Fast read, non-technical. Good overview on how to evaluate the quality of studies, medical journal reviews, and the process of scientific experimentation. The third section of the book seemed to bog down and become more "opinion-based" rather than fact- or statistically-based.
15 of 20 people found the following review helpful. A Hard Look at the Facts By Christina Fixemer There is a growing movement to incorporate religion into the practice of medicine. Proponents claim that hundreds of studies have shown the benefits of intercessory (distance) prayer, energy healing, and so on. Anecdotal stories of miraculous interventions abound. The media has been glutted with supporters of various religious links to healing and medicine.But is it true? Does solid, empirical evidence really exist to prove these claims?Richard Sloan, Ph.D. and behavioral medicine professor at Columbia University, disputes the validity of these findings. In his new book, BLIND FAITH: THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE OF RELIGION AND MEDICINE, Sloan examines the impact of religion on healthcare. He not only takes a critical look at the sources of supporters' research, but at the mental, spiritual, and physical effects of blending religious ideals with medical cases. In addition, he raises the concern that sponsoring such research is harmful to religion; that to take something transcendent and try to make it scientific is to trivialize it. Toward the end of the book, Sloan posits:"Recognizing the effort to bring religion into clinical medicine as bad science, bad medicine, and bad religion is not a critique of religion at all. In fact, it's an effort to protect religion against the trivialization of being simply another part of the scientific enterprise."Ultimately, Sloan does not dismiss the importance of religion to patients and some doctors. However, he uses this platform to expose the dangers of mingling religion and health in inappropriate ways."But recognizing that religious and spiritual concerns arise in times of illness doesn't mean that doctors should take these concerns on as part of their responsibility," Sloan writes. "... doctors lack the time, the training, and the experience to engage in spiritual interactions with patients."This book is an important look at a growing movement. Sloan's voice needs to be heard above the din, lest the system goes completely awry.Reviewed by Christina Wantz Fixemer10/17/2006
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