An amusing reaction to some research

I was going to bypass the findings below until I saw the reaction to them.  The finding is that churchgoers live longer, which has actually been found several times before.  The study was reported in JAMA, a major medical journal.  And it is a very strong study.

But JAMA also published in the same issue a controlled but obviously furious article arguing that we should take no notice of the study.  You can read it here.  The author clearly HATED the finding. One imagines that he is a Left-leaning atheist.  The things he says  about the limitations of the study are perfectly correct but such limitations are to be found in most of the medical and social science literature.  If we applied similar strictures to all academic articles, 95% of them would vanish without trace. Which could be a good thing, of course.

But the point is that the critic lacks balance. In most of life we have to make decisions on the basis of limited evidence.  And we do it.  So by ordinary criteria, we should at least initially conclude that Christian beliefs are good for you. Heh!



Association of Religious Service Attendance With Mortality Among Women

Shanshan Li

ABSTRACT

Importance:  Studies on the association between attendance at religious services and mortality often have been limited by inadequate methods for reverse causation, inability to assess effects over time, and limited information on mediators and cause-specific mortality.

Objective:  To evaluate associations between attendance at religious services and subsequent mortality in women.

Design, Setting, and Participants:  Attendance at religious services was assessed from the first questionnaire in 1992 through June 2012, by a self-reported question asked of 74 534 women in the Nurses’ Health Study who were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer at baseline. Data analysis was conducted from return of the 1996 questionnaire through June 2012.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  Cox proportional hazards regression model and marginal structural models with time-varying covariates were used to examine the association of attendance at religious services with all-cause and cause-specific mortality. We adjusted for a wide range of demographic covariates, lifestyle factors, and medical history measured repeatedly during the follow-up, and performed sensitivity analyses to examine the influence of potential unmeasured and residual confounding.

Results:  Among the 74 534 women participants, there were 13 537 deaths, including 2721 owing to cardiovascular deaths and 4479 owing to cancer deaths. After multivariable adjustment for major lifestyle factors, risk factors, and attendance at religious services in 1992, attending a religious service more than once per week was associated with 33% lower all-cause mortality compared with women who had never attended religious services (hazard ratio, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.62-0.71; P < .001 for trend). Comparing women who attended religious services more than once per week with those who never attend, the hazard ratio for cardiovascular mortality was 0.73 (95% CI, 0.62-0.85; P < .001 for trend) and for cancer mortality was 0.79 (95% CI, 0.70-0.89; P < .001 for trend). Results were robust in sensitivity analysis. Depressive symptoms, smoking, social support, and optimism were potentially important mediators, although the overall proportion of the association between attendance at religious services and mortality was moderate (eg, social support explained 23% of the effect [P = .003], depressive symptoms explained 11% [P < .001], smoking explained 22% [P < .001], and optimism explained 9% [P < .001]).

Conclusions and Relevance:  Frequent attendance at religious services was associated with significantly lower risk of all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality among women. Religion and spirituality may be an underappreciated resource that physicians could explore with their patients, as appropriate.

JAMA Intern Med. Published online May 16, 2016. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.1615

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