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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.
This article is from
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