Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Time	Event
8:48a	Writing science fiction; getting stuck on an off-the-wall science question; part two... This topic -- this prayer research story problem and its relation to science (as I understand the term) -- is so huge that I don't really know where or how to tackle it; I'm not going to be able to do more in this one post than just meander around its edges a bit. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained.... I've now compiled all of your comments/responses/suggestions about the prayer research story into an alphabetized file; that's step one in the science called linguistics. Step One: Compile and organize the data. Step Two: Look for patterns. A pattern that really leaps out at me is this one: Many of you have made excellent and ingenious suggestions for things that I could do to write the story and get out of doing what I am trying so hard to do. I'm trying to write the story of a nice clean little scientific experiment that would provide evidence for or against the hypothesis that prayer qualifies as an effective medical procedure. By a "nice clean little scientific experiment" I mean an experiment in which: a specific hypothesis is proposed and groups of research subjects are established; all the terms and concepts are defined in a fashion that makes them testable -- repeatedly testable; exactly the same thing is done to all the members of each group of subjects, although the thing that is done will differ from group to group; and the results of the research are statable without all the waffling I see going on in so many "scientific articles" today that I don't perceive as science at all. [It is -- in my opinion -- far too easy today to set up your experiment in such a way that the result you want is guaranteed in advance; I am too oldfashioned to consider that science.] [For a brief discussion of some research that I don't perceive as science, see "Why Harvard Wants You To Be Unhealthily Thin," at http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w070910&s=campos091107 ; my thanks to zarq for the URL. I've been complaining about the sorry uses which that Nurses Health Study is put to for more than a decade, and was delighted to see this article appear.] In the story I've been working on these past three years, the following conditions -- which I should have made more clear in the first place -- hold: 1. The scientists in the story are only interested in the sort of experiment I've described; they're not interested in finding a way to avoid having to meet those criteria. 2. The scientists in the story have no interest in exploring the theological aspects of the issue. Their position in that regard is that if there is a God, and if God is involved in the process of human prayer, and if human prayer can be proved to be an effective medical procedure, God would not be opposed to that. Perhaps they are wrong, but that is their position. 3. The scientists in the story have no interest in exploring occult or magickal aspects of the issue. Perhaps they are wrong in that as well, but that is their position. Roughly -- I'm trying to write a story that wouldn't be out of place in Analog. Another pattern in my file of your comments/responses/suggestions is a consistent claim that background prayer isn't really a problem because (a) it will affect all the groups of research subjects equally, "averaging out," and/or (b) statistical procedures exist that will let the scientists adjust the results of the experiment in ways that allow for background prayer and make it irrelevant. I am, frankly, puzzled by (a), given the current absence of any mechanism whatsoever for tracking and measuring background prayer; and neither I nor the scientists in my story would be satisfied with (b). [Nor would I be satisfied with the hypothesis that background prayer can be measured by self-reporting, using questionnaires.] I need a fictional scientific theory that includes a unit of measurement -- in the sense that calories and ergs and centimeters are units of measurement -- for human prayer. So that doses of prayer -- and placebo doses -- can be made uniform. I need a fictional scientific theory that specifies what sort of force prayer is, so that the question of what might block it can be responsibly posed. I need a fictional scientifically-respectable mechanism for doing that blocking -- in the way that lead can be used as a blocking mechanism for some forces, for example. And I need a way to portray those items in my short story that is either based in existing real-world science or can plausibly be extrapolated from existing real-world science. I know this post is Woefully Inadequate, but perhaps it is a start. And I thank you again for all your help. (52 Comments | Comment on this)
11:20a	Writing science fiction; getting stuck on an off-the-wall science question; part three... I had said that I needed a fictional unit of measurement for prayer analogous to the calorie or the erg or the centimeter; and crossfire commented: "What if the scientists were to produce a...'prayer scale'... based on prayer's easily measured physical capabilities, and use it to calibrate their healing experiment? For example, they could produce a scale where they note that 1 person praying with prayer P for duration D can move a weight of mass M a distance X in time T (I am deliberately dissociating the duration (D) of prayer from the time (T) it takes to move the object, but you wouldn't have to if that doesn't make sense in your world). They could easily come up with a Standard Unit Of Prayer -- the 'Mary,' if you will -- which could be defined using these observations: 1 Mary is the amount of prayer it takes to move a mass of 1 gram a distance of 1 meter in 1 second. (Or whatever makes sense for your world.) Then, they could apply this scale to their healing experiment... ... " And then ... "Actually, a better definition of a Mary would be this: A Mary is the amount of prayer needed to exert a force of 10 Newtons. I suppose some people might be extra good at praying, and may therefore be able to produce more Marys of prayer. The healing experiment could take that into account by 'calibrating' each of the people praying in a lab to determine what their Mary output is." This is a useful and interesting comment; thank you, crossfire. However, I would suggest that there are at least these three problems with the proposed name for the unit of measurement: 1. Calling the unit a "Mary" would be a disastrous public relations move, because so many devout individuals of various religious faiths would consider it disrespectful. For scientists who'd like to have any hope at all of getting additional funding for their research, getting their research articles published, keeping their jobs at their universities and research institutes, persuading dubious medical professionals to accept the results of their research -- and other real-world goals of that kind -- it would be a very bad choice. 2. The scientists in my story are determined to keep their research separate from the theological issues associated with it; calling their unit of measurement a "Mary" would link it permanently with theology and religion, defeating their purpose. 3. Calling the unit of measurement a "Mary" would link it with particular religious faiths, ruling out all others by implication, even if that was not the scientists' deliberate intention and was due only to Tin Ear Syndrome on their parts. Since there's no way to know the faith-origins of background prayer, this would be a serious error. The scientists need a name for crossfire's "Standard Unit Of Prayer" that is free of these encumbrances -- and one that doesn't turn out, phonetically, to mean something in another language that brings the same (or worse) baggage with it. The acronym SUOP [ehs-you-oh-pee, roughly] comes to mind... (42 Comments | Comment on this)
1:47p	Recommended link; naming.... It may be that all of you already know about this, but I'm mentioning it just in case, based on all your comments about naming the standard unit of prayer [and all your long-ago comments on naming the standard unit of hostility, which I have certainly not forgotten]. Recommended: The Naming Newsletter site, at http://www.NamingNewsletter.com . (3 Comments | Comment on this)

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