Believers will have to rely on faith

March 31, 2006

For people who are devout and committed to their faith, I doubt this will matter, but the results are pretty conclusive.

[tag]Prayers[/tag] offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited [tag]study[/tag] has found.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether [tag]prayer[/tag] can [tag]heal[/tag] illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.

The study monitored 1,802 coronary-bypass patients at six hospitals, with cooperation from three ministries who were responsible for delivering the prayers. The patients were broken up into three groups: one third was not prayed for, one third was prayed for but not told about, and one third was prayed for and told about it. The congregations were told that they could pray in their own ways, but they were instructed to include the phrase, “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.”

As the NYT explained, “Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the researchers found no differences between those patients who were prayed for and those who were not.”

I have a hard time understanding exactly why a study like this was conducted in the first place. For non-believers, the results were obvious and could have been (indeed, were) predicted well in advance.

For believers, the results are irrelevant. For them, worship has never been about objective, double-blind academic research; it’s about faith. The fact that prayer offers no measurable benefits for post-op patients only goes to show that God “works in mysterious ways,” and “helps those who help themselves.” Those who want to keep praying and find comfort in doing so will be unswayed by the study.

In this sense, it’s just more grist for the mill.

next time i’m in the hospital, this atheist is looking forward to telling people NOT to pray for me for medical reasons.

here’s a poll: which legal drama will feature a minister accused of wrongful death for praying for a person in their community who didn’t want their prayers and who died from complications after surgery?

  • PZ Meyers had an amusing take on this “studying prayer scientifically” chestnut here.

    This whole “intercessory prayer” business does at least make specific predictions, unlike creationism, so I can sort of see how they might be able to bamboozle some funding for it. You can design a protocol to evaluate any outlandish claim, and you could even design it competently.

  • It is sad that such a study needed to be done, but I think it was necessary, and it needed to be definitive, so that people can’t keep revisiting the issue with “what if’s?”. I agree that the results were predictable beforehand and that true believers won’t be convinced, but if it’s as good a study as advertised, then it may provide protection for otherwise cowardly politicians against calls for funding faith-based medical research and the like, and it likewise provides a level of cover for doctors and judges against the increasing intrusion of religious intervention into medical decisions.

  • Ohhh i hope Pat “The Charlaten” robertson speaks about this. It will be intresting to hear how god wanted the results to be like this. Can you imagine what a sham science would be if it adjusted its questions to fit its findings?

  • CB wrote: “I have a hard time understanding exactly why a study like this was conducted in the first place.”

    The whole point behind science is to have evidence. Sure, the outcome could have been predicted. But without evidence, our prediction is simple speculation and neither more nor less useful than any other plausible prediction. Because we have scientific evidence now, whenever we hear superstitious nonsense about the “power of prayer,” those advocating it are in a much weaker position–the burden of proof is on them to show that prayer actually does work (apart from generating tithe money for the churches, that is).

  • This is reality? What. The. Hell. Is. Wrong. With. These. People? Don’t they know that God loves to stick His fingers into science in order to obfuscate His cosmic order? By studying the effects of prayer the scientists brought about needless pain that could have been averted if the PP (prayer power) had been left to do it’s work.

    What is with the trick question “What color is an Orange?” I only get it right half the time (I leave an orange on my desk and it turns a little green eventually)

  • I’m amazed that patients get so wound up about being prayed for that it had a negative effect on their recovery.

    These people just don’t know how to take all the love.

  • Dang, Xeroman, you’re right!

    Just like how God put those dinosaur bones in the ground just to fuck with us and make us more likely to get sent to hell without our supper.

  • There have been some interesting studies on the power of positive visualization and how patients that visualize their bodies healing themselves have better results than those that don’t. I can see this study being an extension of that.

    My guess is that these results will lead to a scrubbed report or a sudden cut in research funding by the Bush administration. I’m sure Bush is praying real hard on the Iraq war, maybe that explains the results there.

  • Fascinating. Long overdue. I’m amazed that the
    efficacy of prayer hasn’t long ago been subjected
    to rigorous scientific scrutiny.

    The vast majority of Americans spend an awful
    lot of time praying, and are exhorted to do so
    shamelessly by politicians, public figures and
    clergy alike. About time somebody devised an
    experiment to see what effect these billions of
    hours of prayer have on the natural world.

    This won’t change anything, of course. But that
    simply serves to prove what we already know,
    too – people are wildly irrational, superstitious,
    and won’t accept facts and evidence that
    contradict their beliefs.

    That’s why we’re stuck with Bush.

  • To Xeroman at #7,

    The Lord is subtle but he is not malicious. Albert Einstein.

    While Einstein’s use of the word god or lord in quotes such as this has resulted in much speculation about his religious beliefs, most, if not all, of these quotes retain their meaning if all references to a deity are replaced with the word nature.

    I think akaoni at #3 makes a good point. I would like to see a study in which different gods were prayed to. If praying to one of the gods showed a higher rate of positive results, then the religion representing that god could take out advertising claiming that, for example, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has proven clinically effective in …..

  • As a newly aware, born again Neo-Pagan I would just hope to awaken from my anesthetized state to find a couple of cute wood nymphs sort of hiding behind a small potted fir tree. That would make me feel quite a bit better I think.

    It might not be an answered prayer but it beats “mysterious ways”. Hopefully, I could then “help myself”. As it were.

  • The study did give itself an out by saying that none of those praying actually knew the person.

    But personally, I like the interpretation that this is proof that God doesn’t exist. Or at least, doesn’t listen to prayers. Maybe we’ve been going about this all wrong with our evolution plot to bring down God. We just need to do a few more studies of actual religious practice….

    Did you notice how people who knew they were being prayed for actually did worse? So at the very least, the study’s recommendation should be that people who pray should keep quiet about it. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  • The whole idea that God will help you based on whether someone prays for you, or if more people pray for you than the other person, is kind of sickening.

    There have been other studies in this vein, but none have been conclusive either, despite many religious groups claiming that intercessory prayer was working.

    Clearly God, if he exists, does not listen to or respond to prayer. Certainly there have been hundreds of priests begging God in prayer to take away their lust for children, and God appeared to have completely ignored those prayers. If he ignores those prayers, exactly what do you suppose he DOES respond positively to?

  • You know, there’s no need to assume that all church-goers lack rational processing capable of digesting this study and feeling doubt.

    There would be no need for the religious community to care about evolution if they were incapable of rational thought.

    Just because there are so many faith salesmen out there, doesn’t mean that the people buying their stuff can’t sometimes wonder if they’re gonna get what they paid for…

  • hark (#12),

    The effect of prayer has in fact been studied, long ago. One of the founders of the modern field of statistical analysis, Francis Galton, published a paper entitled “Statistical Inquires into the Efficacy of Prayer”. It appeared in The Fortnightly Review, vol LXVIII – New Series, August 1, 1872.

    Every Sunday the Anglican church prays (or, at any rate, used to pray) for the members of the Royal Family, and for the safety of their missionaries abroad. Galton compared the longevities (life spans) of members of such groups with that of the general population and found that prayer had either no measureable effects or, in some cases, even negative effects.

    As the Carpetbagger implies, however, the worlds of scientific measurement and religious belief have absolutely no impact on one another. I present Galton’s study only to show that this recent one is in no way new.

  • Ed’s right–the religious already have their sophistry worked out. Xeroman’s #7 snark above is just one illustration, more generally referred to as “special pleading.”

    Another out that I thought of was one that my old statistics teacher taught me. That one can use God to explain “unexplained variance” or random error. So the Christers can dismiss the fact that prayer, on average, didn’t help anyone and instead say that it was God’s plan to listen to some prayers but not others (and in an apparently random fashion). Again, this is special pleading.

  • Well, Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson had no trouble explaining the fact that God allowed or cheered on the violent deaths of innocents here on 9-11 because of our gays, feminists, abortionists and others who offend the Christian Taliban creed. I don’t think they will have any trouble using the indifference of God to prayers in this study as a benign form of more of the same. Until things move along and we have, maybe, President Brownback and some good, new Constitutional amendments and stop our war on Christmas, I guess we’re all at the mercy of medical science.

  • Hey, if someone wants to believe in something, _and through such believe poses no immediate threat to me_ (i.e., part of their belief system doesn’t involve the “convert or kill” doctrine), hey, let ’em do whatever they want.

    I mean, there are belief systems, and there are belief systems… One young fellow at work told me (while standing in the middle of a buncha us old farts) that he didn’t “believe in guns.” Wow. I responded that I don’t believe in fairies, and feel myself to be FAR more grounded in reality. He seemed to think that a firearm had only one use, which seemed to involve a liquor store and unauthorized appropriation of funds… Then again, maybe that’s just the way that _he_ thinks…

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