News Flash: Distant Strangers Talking to Themselves Fail to Save Lives
I just read a Washington Post article (which I found out about at God is for Suckers!) about a new study on the healing power of prayer. Guess what. It doesn’t work.
The study of more than 700 heart patients, one of the most ambitious attempts to test the medicinal power of prayer, showed that those who had people praying for them from a distance, and without their knowledge, were no less likely to suffer a major complication, end up back in the hospital or die.
This study is especially interesting because it’s the only one I’ve heard about that avoids the placebo effect because the patients involved don’t know whether or not people are praying for them. Study subjects were broken into four groups. One group received prayer. Another received prayer combined with music, imagery and touch (MIT) therapy. A third got only MIT. The last group received neither. The study showed no benefit from prayer.
But the Rev. Raymond J. Lawrence, director of pastoral care at New York Presbyterian Hospital, disputed any suggestion that the study disproved the power of prayer. “Prayer can be and is helpful,” Lawrence said. “But to think that you can research it is inconceivable to me. Prayer is presumably a way of addressing God, and there’s no way to scientifically test God. God is not subject to scientific research.”
Am I crazy? How is prayer “helpful” if it doesn’t work? If people who pray for something and people who don’t have the same odds of getting what they want, maybe, just maybe, no one is listening. Furthermore, maybe the people who are praying for the sick could use the time to take up knitting or something. That way, when they die anyway, they’ll have a nice sweater in which to be buried.
~I AM~
July 19th, 2005 at at 2:05 am
It’s interesting they took the approach of not informing the patients of whether or not they were being prayed for. Usually I read of the patient who does the praying and then has a miraculous recovery. That approach has some merit to it. If someone is a true believer and prays to a god they feel comfort in and trust, it seems reasonable that stress should decrease and with it hypertension, blood pressure, etc. An increase in appetite, the will to live, and the immune system might also be possible.
The blind approach to patients not knowing about the praying has obvious intentions, though. It tests the true reason for praying. That is because of the perceived spiritual connection with god, and ultimately proof of his existence-if praying is proven to be a real link with recovery and miracles, that is. Too bad it ain’t!
July 19th, 2005 at at 2:34 am
Haha, thanks for posting about this, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have heard about it. I’ve always heard people claiming this (with studies) but the people always knew people were praying for them. As boywonder said, prayer can work, but not because of a god or anything, just the comfort of knowing people want you to continue living is, I’m sure, something that can help out.
July 19th, 2005 at at 7:15 am
Agreed. I think prayer draws from the power of encouragement. If you know people are thinking about you and are concerned with your condition, its almost a feeling of letting them down by failing or dying. I would say people can survive injury and illness better with a positive mentality due to the fact that emotions and mindset are linked to the body in general. While I don’t know how powerful the connection, I think it could explain a lot of things when it comes to prayer and illness.
July 19th, 2005 at at 12:00 pm
Dont forget that the last study that SUPPORTED the effectiveness of prayer ended up in a big scandal because the data was manipulated and tampered with, and the supposed author of the study wasnt even aware that the study took place.
Funny that these religious people continue to count hits and ignore misses. If a study comes out that supports prayer, religious people will champion it. But it a study comes out that criticizes prayer, they will dismiss it as “you cant test God”.
What they mean of course is, you cant test unfalsifiable beliefs based on unevidenced faith.
July 19th, 2005 at at 1:26 pm
God has a strange reaction to being tested. It seems as if anytime someone wants to prove that he exists, he makes it appear as though he doesn’t. I think that this actually precludes him for ever taking any action. For example, let’s say that the devil’s menions are terrorizing the earth, eating all christians. I simply tell a few of my friends “alright guys, this should prove if god exists or not, if he helps he clearly exists but if he doesn’t then that suggests that perhaps he doesn’t”. God, being all-knowing as he is, will know that I said this and will recognize it as a test, and will thereby not do anything.
July 19th, 2005 at at 1:28 pm
Point being all you would have to do to undermine god’s power is to reformulate the problem in the form of a test, and he will be powerless to act. I think I’m going to sell this secret to the devil, perhaps making it a package deal with my soul.
July 19th, 2005 at at 1:42 pm
If one day we could obtain enough facts to prove the existence of a supernatural deity, scientists would accept it, eventually. In contrast, if we could prove that such a god did not exist, theists would still balk.
July 19th, 2005 at at 6:08 pm
Hey Delta, I have an idea based on your post. We could do some sort of denial-of-service attack on prayer. We could run a nation-wide study on the effects of prayer for the next 50 years. The study would cover every hospital in the US. God will be powerless to help people for the next 50 years because he won’t want to give himself away
“Prayer can be and is helpful,” Lawrence said. “But to think that you can research it is inconceivable to me. Prayer is presumably a way of addressing God, and there’s no way to scientifically test God. God is not subject to scientific research.”
Umm, I don’t follow the logic here. If prayer works, then you should be able to measure the positive effects. Maybe it is possible for God to make it look like prayer didn’t work (in order to screw up the study’s results) but yet really answer the prayer? But I don’t get how God could do this. For example, if your mother was dieing from breast cancer and you prayed to God every day that she would get better, but she died anyway. How could God make it look like she died but yet she doesn’t really die?
July 19th, 2005 at at 9:25 pm
I read that. Incredible. You can’t test god? Excuse me but why is that? I must be missing something. Also there was a prayer study a few years back ( I’ll Find it for you ) the woman in charge of the study at the time contracted some form of cancer and died. No joke. You’d think their god would throw em a bone from time to time. I used to believe, ahh well kinda, but now I’m free. remember Armageddon has been cancelled pass the word. JIM
July 20th, 2005 at at 10:37 am
Jim:
It was Elizabeth Targ:
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/07/prayer_still_us.html
…it’s at the end.
July 20th, 2005 at at 11:33 am
Skeptico. Thanks. I remembered this from the Skeptical briefs Vol.13 no.3 Sept. 2003. I’ve just reread it, amazing. She contracted the same form of brain cancer she was trying to heal. Dead at 40. What amazes me even more is how the believers continue to believe in spite of the truth of such results. Imagine what would happen if these people would in fact take a real science class and work toward real effects.
February 10th, 2007 at at 7:03 pm
[...] That’s odd – prayer doesn’t work?? 22 July 2005 Filed under: theism — Super Admin @ 3:00 pm From the Evangelical Atheist: News Flash: Distant Strangers Talking to Themselves Fail to Save Lives. [...]