Bring in a bunch of atheists and give them a placebo painkiller that they know is a placebo. Then put their hands in ice water and record the pain response. Send the control group home, but ask the experimental group to believe as hard as they can in the Flying Spaghetti Monster for the next week. A week later, give everyone another placebo painkiller and another pain test. Hypothesis: intentional religiosity increases the strength of the placebo effect.
Faith might be like a muscle. And it might be possible to deliberately cultivate faith for beneficial purposes.
ignoring the elephant in the room that the study of anyone other than white males is rare, people don't talk about the obvious. We don't write it down.
Gravity took FOREVER before someone went "wait why?" and there's tons of stuff we don't even think about, like the 'new shape' that people just didn't think to talk about because it's just so simple
To be fair Plato said that earth and water elements want to go down in order to be near the other earth and water. That's his explanation for the phenomena of gravity. Newton's explanation is rather less intuitive and requires an understanding of orbital mechanics.
Luckily builders would set aside space in buildings just in case someone had an idea for how to move between floors without a ladder. Made retrofitting stairs a breeze. You can't even tell that they were added later most of the time.
Meanwhile in Alabama, things are so backwards there they haven't even figured out shoes yet! It's not like they prefer sandals or they're too poor to afford shoes. They all go around barefoot, because the idea of shoes just has never occured to any of them. Most buildings instead have special brush ledges so you can scrape the dirt and blood off your feet before you walk in. Again, they're just a hopelessly backwards people. So backwards, they haven't even figured out shoes yet. Their cousins over in Mississippi are a bit further along. MSU currently has a study going where they're experimenting with wrapping feet in ziplock bags, secured with rubber bands.