New Study to Show Prayer Works

[Dardedar]

From Bob Parks excellent weekly newsletter (joining info at the bottom)



***
WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 24 Mar 06 Washington, DC

1. MIRACLE MEDICINE: WASH POST HYPES PRAYER STUDY ON PAGE ONE.
Today, in a major front-page story, staff writer Rob Stein tells
us that "the largest, best-designed study of intercessory prayer"
is being published in two weeks. What does it say? The secret
is guarded as tightly as the Academy Awards. However, as I write
this, the world population clock reads 6,505,424,096. Most of
them pray. A bunch of them pray 5 times a day. They pray mostly
for their health, or that of loved ones, making prayer by far the
most widely practiced medical therapy. It's a wonder anyone is
still sick. No one doubts that personal "petitionary" prayer
benefits believers. Optimism is good medicine. To the believer,
prayer is a stronger placebo than sugar pills. Stein, however,
has his facts wrong. The controversy (if there ever was one
among scientists) was settled in 1872 by Sir Francis Galton when
he published "Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer."
Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, recognized that remote prayer
by strangers would be blind to the placebo effect. Since the
Order for Morning Prayer of the Church of England includes
prayers for the health and long life of the monarch and the
archbishop, he compared their longevity to that of the general
population and found no difference. So who is doing this new
study? Herbert Benson, founder and president of the Mind-Body
Institute, who touted the health benefits of prayer in his 1975
bestseller "The Relaxation Effect." It would be a miracle if he
now discovers there's nothing to it. It's in our hands now, we
have two weeks to pray that the study turns out to be objective.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
---
Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org
What's New is moving to a different listserver and our
subscription process has changed. To change your subscription
status please visit this link:
http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBE ... atsnew&A=1

[Doug]

1. MIRACLE MEDICINE: WASH POST HYPES PRAYER STUDY ON PAGE ONE.
Today, in a major front-page story, staff writer Rob Stein tells
us that "the largest, best-designed study of intercessory prayer"
is being published in two weeks. What does it say? The secret
is guarded as tightly as the Academy Awards.

DOUG
I would guess from the secrecy that the results are negative, OR that they are fiddling with the numbers to hide the negative result and plan on keeping vital data secret.

[Savonarola]

DOUG
I would guess from the secrecy that the results are negative, OR that they are fiddling with the numbers to hide the negative result and plan on keeping vital data secret.

If it's a real scientific paper, the raw data will be in the results section. If the discussion looks like it's been spun, we'll go back to the results and see for ourselves.
If it's not a real scientific paper, it has about as much validity as creationist claptrap.

One thing we can rarely trust mere journalists to do is accurately interpret scientific papers. At the Fall 2004 National Convention of the American Chemical Society, they devoted an entire seminar to dumbing down-- er, I mean, explaining study results in language that the press can understand and use.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

The Man from Galilee explained spiritual healing & it is the greatest placebo effect ever. "Your faith has made you well." It not only explains why there are only 60+ "authentic" miricles at Lourdes, it puts lack of healing firmly on the head of the sick person - no faith, no health.

[Doug]

DOUG
OK, the results are in, and guess what? I have psychic powers! I predicted that the results of the study would be negative!

==========
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 31, 2006

Praying for other people to recover from an illness is ineffective,
according to the largest, best-designed study to examine the power
of prayer to heal strangers at a distance.

The study of more than 1,800 heart-bypass patients found that those
who had people praying for them had as many complications as those
who did not. In fact, one group of patients who knew they were the
subject of prayers fared worse.

The long-awaited results, the latest in a series of studies that
have not found any benefit from "distant" or "intercessory" prayer,
came as a blow to those hoping scientific research would validate
the popular notion that people can influence others' health, even
if the sick do not know that someone is praying for them.

The researchers cautioned that the study was not designed to test
the existence of God or the benefit of other types of prayer, such
as praying for oneself or praying at the bedside of friends or
relatives. They also did not rule out that other types of distant
prayer may be effective for other types of patients.

"No one single study is ever going to provide an answer," said
Jeffery A. Dusek of Harvard Medical School, who helped lead the
study being published in the April 4 issue of the American Heart
Journal.

Although many studies have suggested that praying for oneself may
reduce stress, research into praying for others who may not know
they are the subject of prayers has been much more controversial.
Several studies that claimed to show a benefit have been criticized
as deeply flawed. And several of the most recent findings have found
no benefit.

The new $2.4 million study, funded primarily by the John Templeton
Foundation, was designed to overcome some of those shortcomings.
Dusek and his colleagues divided 1,802 bypass patients at six
hospitals into three groups. Two groups were uncertain whether
they would be the subject of prayers. The third was told they
would definitely be prayed for.

The researchers recruited two Catholic groups and one Protestant
group to pray "for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy
recovery and no complications" for 14 days for each patient,
beginning the night before the surgery, using the patient's
first name and the first initial of the last name.

Over the next month, the two groups that were uncertain whether
they were the subject of prayers fared virtually the same, with
about 52 percent of patients experiencing complications regardless
of whether they were the subject of prayers.

Surprisingly, 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being
prayed for experienced complications.

Because the most common complication was an irregular heartbeat,
researchers speculated that knowing they were chosen to receive
prayers may have inadvertently put the patients under increased
stress.

"Did the patients think, 'I am so sick they had to call in the
prayer team?' " said Charles Bethea of the Integris Heart
Hospital at Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, who helped
conduct the study.

Skeptics said the study should put to rest the notion that
distant prayer has any effect.

"I would hope that these results, combined with similar recent
findings, would encourage scientists to stick to science and
stop dabbling in the supernatural," said Bruce Flamm of the
University of California at Irvine.

Even some supporters of incorporating more spirituality into
medicine said they hope the findings will put an end to such
research.

"It's time now to redirect resources towards supporting studies
that try to understand how religious faith influences people's
health and well-being through understandable mechanisms," said
Harold Koenig of Duke University.

But proponents of such research said the work is important
because so many people believe in prayer.

"I would hate to have premature closure based on a handful of
studies," said Marilyn J. Schlitz of the Institute of Noetic
Sciences in Petaluma, Calif. "We just don't know enough about
this to close the door."

The findings are unlikely to change the minds of the faithful,
several pastors said.

"We welcome and appreciate the involvement of scientists
researching faith," said Rob Brendle, associate pastor of the
New Life Church in Colorado Springs. "But this is just one
study. We believe wholeheartedly that prayer changes things.
So many of us have experienced that in our lives."

===========

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

The study is not only not likely to convince the faithful, it is likely to escalate the "science is anti-religion" war - and in "bible belt" areas, to lead to even less science being tolerated in the education system. Me, I'll take a blessing from anybody - it does no harm, and if it works, great - but I really don't like being prayed over. It's sort of like the Mormans inducting all your deceased relatives into LDS when you go to them for geneological help - doesn't really make any difference, but it's irritating.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Didn't a Jewish group sue the Mormons for baptising all of the holocaust names they could get a hold of?

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I don't remember whether the Jewish group sued the Mormons or not, but they certainly weren't happy. Heck, they could have avoided the entire Holocaust by getting baptised (and pretending to be Americans - the males were circumcized & only American christians do that) - so you can see why the survivors would be angry about those who hadn't survived being summarily and posthumously baptised.

[Dardedar]

Shermer had a good article on this issue. From his e-skeptic newsletter:

***
Prayer & Healing
The Verdict is in and the Results are Null

by Michael Shermer

In a long-awaited comprehensive scientific study on the effects of intercessory prayer on the health and recovery of 1,802 patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery in six different hospitals, prayers offered by strangers had no effect. In fact, contrary to common belief, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications such as abnormal heart rhythms, possibly the result of anxiety caused by learning that they were being prayed for and thus their condition was more serious than anticipated.

The study, which cost $2.4 million (most of which came from the John Templeton Foundation), was begun almost a decade ago and was directed by Harvard University Medical School cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson and published in The American Heart Journal, was by far the most rigorous and comprehensive study on the effects of intercessory prayer on the health and recovery of patients ever conducted. In addition to the numerous methodological flaws in the previous research corrected for in the Benson study, Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of the forthcoming book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine, explained:

The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion.

The 1,802 patients were divided into three groups, two of which were prayed for by members of three congregations: St. Paul’s Monastery in St. Paul, Minnesota; the Community of Teresian Carmelites in Worcester, Massachusetts; and Silent Unity, a Missouri prayer ministry near Kansas City. The prayers were allowed to pray in their own manner, but they were instructed to include the following phrase in their prayers: “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.” Prayers began the night before the surgery and continued daily for two weeks after. Half the prayer-recipient patients were told that they were being prayed for while the other half were told that they might or might not receive prayers. The researchers monitored the patients for 30 days after the operations.

Results showed no statistically significant differences between the prayed-for and non-prayed-for groups. Although the following findings were not statistically significant, 59% of patients who knew that they were being prayed for suffered complications, compared with 51% of those who were uncertain whether they were being prayed for or not; and 18% in the uninformed prayer group suffered major complications such as heart attack or stroke, compared with 13% in the group that received no prayers.

This study is particularly significant because Herbert Benson has long been sympathetic to the possibility that intercessory prayer can positively influence the health of patients. His team’s rigorous methodologies overcame the numerous flaws that called into question previously published studies. The most commonly cited study in support of the connection between prayer and healing is:

Randolph C. Byrd, “Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population,” Southern Medical Journal 81 (1998): 826–829.

The two best studies on the methodological problems with prayer and healing include the following:

Richard Sloan, E. Bagiella, and T. Powell. 1999. “Religion, Spirituality, and Medicine,” The Lancet. Feb. 20, Vol. 353: 664–667; and,

John T. Chibnall, Joseph M. Jeral, Michael Cerullo. 2001. “Experiments on Distant Intercessory Prayer.” Archives of Internal Medicine, Nov. 26, Vol. 161: 2529–2536. www.archinternmed.com

The most significant flaws in all such studies include the following:
Fraud

In 2001, the Journal of Reproductive Medicine published a study by three Columbia University researchers claiming that prayer for women undergoing in-vitro fertilization resulted in a pregnancy rate of 50%, double that of women who did not receive prayer. Media coverage was extensive. ABC News medical correspondent Dr. Timothy Johnson, for example, reported, “A new study on the power of prayer over pregnancy reports surprising results; but many physicians remain skeptical.” One of those skeptics was a University of California Clinical Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics named Bruce Flamm, who not only found numerous methodological errors in the experiment, but also discovered that one of the study’s authors, Daniel Wirth (AKA “John Wayne Truelove”), is not an M.D., but an M.S. in parapsychology who has since been indicted on felony charges for mail fraud and theft, for which he pled guilty. The other two authors have refused comment, and after three years of inquires from Flamm the journal removed the study from its website and Columbia University launched an investigation.
Lack of Controls

Many of these studies failed to control for such intervening variables as age, sex, education, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, marital standing, degree of religiosity, and the fact that most religions have sanctions against such insalubrious behaviors as sexual promiscuity, alcohol and drug abuse, and smoking. When such variables are controlled for, the formerly significant results disappear. One study on recovery from hip surgery in elderly women failed to control for age; another study on church attendance and illness recovery did not consider that people in poorer health are less likely to attend church; a related study failed to control for levels of exercise.
Outcome Differences

In one of the most highly publicized studies of cardiac patients prayed for by born-again Christians, 29 outcome variables were measured but on only six did the prayed-for group show improvement. In related studies, different outcome measures were significant. To be meaningful, the same measures need to be significant across studies, because if enough outcomes are measured some will show significant correlations by chance.
File-Drawer Problem

In several studies on the relationship between religiosity and mortality (religious people allegedly live longer), a number of religious variables were used, but only those with significant correlations were reported. Meanwhile, other studies using the same religiosity variables found different correlations and, of course, only reported those. The rest were filed away in the drawer of non-significant findings. When all variables are factored in together, religiosity and mortality show no relationship.
Operational Definitions

When experimenting on the effects of prayer, what, precisely, is being studied? For example, what type of prayer is being employed? (Are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, and Shaman prayers equal?) Who or what is being prayed to? (Are God, Jesus, and a universal life force equivalent?) What is the length and frequency of the prayer? (Are two 10-minute prayers equal to one 20-minute prayer?) How many people are praying and does their status in the religion matter? (Is one priestly prayer identical to ten parishioner prayers?) Most prayer studies either lack such operational definitions, or there is no consistency across studies in such definitions.
Theological Implications

The ultimate fallacy of all such studies is theological. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, He should not need to be reminded or inveigled that someone needs healing. Scientific prayer makes God a celestial lab rat, leading to bad science and worse religion.

***
eSkeptic is a free, public newsletter published (almost) weekly by the Skeptics Society. Contents are Copyright © 2006 Michael Shermer, the Skeptics Society, and the authors and artists. Permission is granted to print, distribute, and post with proper citation and acknowledgment. Contact us at skepticssociety@skeptic.com. | Subscribe to eSkeptic by sending an email to join-skeptics@lyris.net. Unsubscribe by sending an email to leave-skeptics@lyris.net. | Browse, search, and read the eSkeptic archives online. Read other articles, order books, cds and dvds, browse announcements of events, and subscribe to Skeptic magazine at www.skeptic.com.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Ah, but what if god/s isn't/aren't omniscient and omnipotent, but just entities with abilities to move through space and time - mostly off setting off "big bangs" in other dimensions but periodically checking in on the ones that have already "banged" and maybe giving a helping hand if the situation is dire enough? Sort of like parents who periodically check in on their adult children, and lend a helping hand if their house burned down. That would resolve the problem of unanswered prayer - god/s was/were "out of pocket" or decided "the kids" should handle their own problems.

Since I regard death as my exit from "Jurassic Park" - I have never cared for "theme parks" especially ones that specialized in scaring people - I don't count death itself as a particular evil - just preventably painful ones (starvation, torture, etc.)

[Doug]

Ah, but what if god/s isn't/aren't omniscient and omnipotent, but just entities with abilities to move through space and time - mostly off setting off "big bangs" in other dimensions but periodically checking in on the ones that have already "banged" and maybe giving a helping hand if the situation is dire enough? Sort of like parents who periodically check in on their adult children, and lend a helping hand if their house burned down. That would resolve the problem of unanswered prayer - god/s was/were "out of pocket" or decided "the kids" should handle their own problems.

DOUG
If there were beings like that, they would be unusual, and have capabilities we don't have, but it is not clear why we should feel inclined to call them "gods."

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Same reason people without sophisticated technology call sophisticated technology "magic".