But sometimes you hear stories of healings that normally seem to be impossible. These seem to be strong evidence, and yet, these stories are often heard from somebody else. I'm supecting that these stories are often blown up, also because the placebo effect could have something to do with it. I also heard sometimes people think something is healed, but it already was almost healed, or it didn't turn out to be healed at all.
There are many reasons for this. The average person doesn't have much medical knowledge. Bursts of adrenaline and the placebo effect can cause temporary relief from pain or discomfort, and not all health problems even cause constant discomfort from which one can feel relief in the moment. I've heard many instances of "faith healer" victims who
believed they were healed to their very cores, to the point that they stopped taking medicines or listening to doctors, and
died from their still-present cancers or diseases or what have you.
The fact is that
anecdotes are worse than useless: they prey upon a cognitive flaw in human reasoning called confirmation bias. The human mind by default looks for evidence in support of a hypothesis and discards counter-evidence. It takes training and effort to counteract this bias, and that means that a few simple anecdotes can "prove" a hypothesis to someone even if those anecdotes are themselves false, misleading, or simply not representative of the statistical whole.
On top of this, many faith healers have been solidly proven to be con artists. Just look at Peter Popoff - back in the 80s it was revealed that he used a radio earpiece to let his wife feed him information taken from "prayer cards" that appeared to give him "miraculous" knowledge of a guest's name, address, ailment, and other information.
I personally know a "reiki healer" who honestly believes
herself that her spiritual "healing" actually has a real effect...even though she would readily admit that she would be unable to support such a claim with actual evidence. She simply has a rationalization for every possible counter-argument, thought up ahead of time: she doesn't "heal" the broken leg any faster or stronger really, she simply "improves the gracefulness of the person's aura such that the patient will be less likely to fall again." In other words, she admits that she isn't actually doing any healing, describes her actions in such general terms that no evidence or counter-evidence could ever be established, and claims to have had a positive effect with great confidence despite no reason to do so.
Fortunately, my friend also always counsels her "patients" to seek medical attention in addition to her services.
For me, I'll believe in faith healing when I see a double-blind study that shows it is effective, not a series of anecdotes. That, or documented evidence of faith healing performing the impossible, like an amputee regrowing a limb.
Has that ever bothered you? It bothers me - if "god" or whatever mystical force is so amazingly omnipotent, why has it never chosen to heal an amputee and cause a lost limb to regrow? Ever?
Absence of evidence is not
proof of absence, but an absence of
expected evidence is
evidence that a hypothesis is false.
I
have seen multiple double-blind studies on the effectiveness of prayer on the recovery of various types of patients. Thinking one is being prayed for seems to have an effect (whether the prayer actually happens or not), but in the absence of the patient's knowledge, prayer seems to have no correlating effect on recovery chances or speed compared to the absence of prayer, across multiple denominations and religions.
In any case, positive faith healing anecdotes arise from a variety of sources, from misinformed hopeful victims being conned to "true believer" healers who honestly think they're having an effect despite never ever even once trying to
test their effectiveness against doing nothing.
The prevalence of these stories and the prevailing myth that faith healing is effective, however, is simply the result of confirmation bias.
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