... and that can be possible even if we are biased, as long as we are not so biased that we proceed to make assumptions that prevent testing our hypotheses.
A very significant point. What scientist or scientific assistant would openly admit to being biased?
This is why many say that today's science has acquired a sacrosanct status, according to which the concept of fact is used like sliced bread, and compare this with previous dogmatic views such as those of ecclesiastical sovereignties.
That being said, science alone, based on empirical data, is not the holy grail it is stylised to be. Analysis is not everything in life. Knowledge has limits and someone who does not want to humbly acknowledge this is not a good scientist in my eyes.
Apart from measurable fields, rays, frequencies, etc., etc., there are tangible experiences in the human context, such as those I described, which are based on singing, movement and music and about which you have said nothing so far. The arts (anything in the realm of spiritual consciousness) are, in my view, relegated to their own corner from school and university life and are not really considered (or their work published or funded) by natural scientists as influencers of health and disease (or more generally, "consciousness").
To put it bluntly and in terms of a stylistic exaggeration: art students go to an MRI and have themselves examined, they undergo surgical procedures, get on aeroplanes and use modern technologies. But do science students also go to a séance, have a phenomenological family constellation done, try the effects of LSD, hypnosis, are curious about metaphysics, philosophy?
All of them. Honest people should acknowledge they have bias. I follow Dark Horse on Odysee, the Weinstein's. I distinctly recall them noting that researchers need to ensure their research is reproducible, because that enables bias to be overcome. Different researchers have different biases in many respects, and these biases can be compensated for through undertaking the same specific actions to conduct experiments - or are universal and shared between all that conduct the experiment.
There are certain biases that are universal to humanity, and are therefore difficult to overcome experimentally, which limits the ability of the scientific method to advance in ways such biases preclude.
There are scientific means of measuring the health benefits of the arts. Both prayer and music (and probably more) have been shown to be beneficial to health through experiments that quantify health outcomes and contrast control groups with groups that use prayer or listen to music. However, this does not mean that artists' feelings about their art, nor religious dogmas, are verified. Experiments that differentiate and can falsify specific predictions have not been able to be designed for those purposes, AFAIK.
I doubt you would be able to conduct experiments that seek to falsify such dogma today in any academic environment. People get stabby over such things. Ask Salman Rushdie.