Prayer has no therapeutic power: study shows

A new study on the therapeutic power of prayer from strangers has found that it does no miracle to the recovery of patients who have undergone cardiac bypass surgery, researchers reported Thursday in the American Heart Journal.

This finding is contrary to the long-cherished belief held by some people with Christion faith that prayers by good-willed strangers help patients recover.

The 2.4-million-dollar study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, a group dedicated to studying the intersection of spirituality and science, and the Baptist Memorial Health Care Corp.

The study was designed as a random and controlled trial, involving more than 1,800 patients, the largest ever to weigh the effectiveness of third-party prayer, also called intercessory prayer. The patients were studied at six hospitals across the U.S., including St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa.

Most patients did not know whether they were being prayed for. About 65 percent of these patients said they strongly believed in the power of prayer.

Two Catholic monasteries and one Protestant prayer group offered the prayers. The groups were given patients' first name and the first initial of their last name. The groups started praying the night before a patient's surgery and continued for two weeks.

The results showed that prayer had no beneficial effect on patients' recovery 30 days after surgery. Overall, 59 percent of patients who knew they were being prayed for had complications, compared to 51 percent of the patients who did not receive prayers, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Scientists have been trying for at least a decade to determine whether organized prayer at a distance can influence the outcome of medical studies. Some scientists hoped the results of the study would bring an end to the long controversy over therapeutic prayer.

Religious leaders questioned whether the prayers were appropriately worded and whether those praying were really moved by the spirit.

Father Dean Marek, director of chaplain services at the Mayo Clinic, said doctors naturally look at prayer differently than chaplains. They're looking for proven methods, and prayer isn't much different than "a pill or therapy that could be prescribed," he said.

Who knew ... :lol:

I found that out in college.

Experiment: Geena Fondriest had a lovely red set of panties. I tried to pray them off. Repeted trials showed the null result.

I'll look around for the published results.....I know I have the abstract somewhere......

jumpingrock Posted:

Grasping at straws! If it doesn't work you musta done it wrong! God won't help ya unless you speak the right words and REALLY mean them!

It's standard medical knowledge that prayer can be a benefit only when the party concerned is aware what you are praying for.

Overall, 59 percent of patients who knew they were being prayed for had complications, compared to 51 percent of the patients who did not receive prayers, but the difference was not statistically significant.

WRONG! Try reading the post next time.

It's standard medical knowledge that prayer can be a benefit only when the party concerned is aware what you are praying for.

Wow, clever people. So what your saying is after thousands of years someone finally figured out a way to test God (or God's power in prayer specifically). The supernatural was tested for the first time, amazing!!!!

I love that someone thought this publishable. They made several assumptions to draw the conclusion that prayer doesn't work (a whole lot of them when you think about it). That they had no business making. To begin i'll address it from the christian prayer philosophy as that is the one the article above seems to address. One big assumption is that if you pray, God will always answer your prayers the way you expect. This is not promised and is illustrated in the Bible. The second is that God wants to be tested and wants to reveal himself in a scientific way.

She knew....Me being on my knees with folded hands was a dead giveaway.

I'm no expert on statistics, but how can a 59 to 51 percent difference not be significant? Especially if it's experimentally repeatable. Let me put it this way: suppose we dropped people off cliffs to see what happened. Among the ones who don't pray 51 percent don't die, while among the ones who DO pray 59 percent don't die. In that caes you'd be an IDIOT not to pray. I'm not sure how long it would take for Darwin's natural selection to take effect, but afterawhile it seems quite probable that the praying population would begin to supercede the non-prayers.

Which could explain why we have so many goddamned religious fanatics around here!

Jackflash said:
I'm impressed with your distinction between the supernatural world and the process of science. I'll remember it the next time you're arguing in favor of ID. You're quite right: science has no ability to make conclusions about the supernatural, nor can it use the supernatural as a variable or investigate it any way.

However, your fears are misplaced. The prayer study did not investigate the supernatural. It investigated a natural action, humans praying, and its relationship to another natural act, improved health. No supernatural conclusions can be reached from this information however, for the very reasons that you mentioned. Perhaps God didn't answer the prayers because he didn't want to be tested, or perhaps he didn't find the recipients of prayer to be worthy enough. The supernatural always has a way out; for that very reason, it is not science.

Overall, 59 percent of patients who knew they were being prayed for had complications, compared to 51 percent of the patients who did not receive prayers, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Hey, B_S, remember the evening of the 2000 elections? Remember how it looked bad for Bush, then around 9 o'clock something very wierd happened???

Well, some friends and I happened to be watching and praying for a Republican victory that night and just at the darkest moment, when it looked as if all was lost, a miracle happened and somehow, someway, the hand of God intervened and W stole it!!!

WOW...that was somethin' to behold, baby! See...The power of prayer does indeed work :!:

To organic, not only have you proven that you are no expert on stats, but you have also proven that you don't know s--- about what "complications" are.

Complications are a bad thing, it means something went wrong and some poor bastard is either in a world of hurt or dead.


This means that people who got prayed came out worse on the average. Which means that your cliff analogy is backwards, the believers should be the ones splattered all over the ground while the nonbelievers just float away.

Hey, B_S, remember the evening of the 2000 elections? Remember how it looked bad for Bush, then around 9 o'clock something very wierd happened???

Well, some friends and I happened to be watching and praying for a Republican victory that night and just at the darkest moment, when it looked as if all was lost, a miracle happened and somehow, someway, the hand of God intervened and W stole it!!!

WOW...that was somethin' to behold, baby! See...The power of prayer does indeed work :!:

To organic, not only have you proven that you are no expert on stats, but you have also proven that you don't know s--- about what "complications" are.

Complications are a bad thing, it means something went wrong and some poor bastard is either in a world of hurt or dead.

That is the single most self-centered and delusional thing I've ever heard in my entire life.

What PTC said though sarcastic was very astute and you show your ignorance very much with your response, thanks for as they say "opening your mouth and removing the doubt".

Sarcastic or not, I see no logical way what he said could be construed as "astute".

Thanks for doing likewise.

Sarcastic or not, I see no logical way what he said could be construed as "astute".

I'm astute enough to know that we share similar interests...after all, both of us are attracted to women :wink:

I am 17, and apparently have a much firmer grasp of our language than you do, for what it's worth. You may want to work on that.

Through your logic, the hypothesis that prayer does nothing could never be proved.

:roll:

as if anyone buys that s---. we all know you like to get pounded in the ass and this whole ... "i'm attracted to women" crap is just a coverstory. sadly you only need to cover this up from yourself ... we'd accept you straight, gay, bi or any other way ...

and jules ... if you keep going at this pace you'll have me in love with you by the end of this thread ...

... s---, who am I kidding, you had me at "delusional."

Yes, nothing is proven through statistics. Things can only be inferred. How can anyone ever prove that prayer does nothing unless every prayer EVER was known and could have a proper cause/effect applied to it.

PS. what does this have to do with a grasp on the english language? Grasping for straws here aren't ya'?

Oh right, I forgot. It wasn't the RIGHT prayer.

My point is this: A result is statistically significant if it's unlikely to have come about due to chance. Therefore, a statistically insignificant result is likely to have been due to chance. It follows that statistically insignificant results lend credence to the null hypothesis: that prayer does jack s---.

If you discredit the results for being "statistically insignificant", you are effectively discrediting any results that could possibly support the hypothesis that prayer does jack s---, because statistically significant results--skewed one way or the other-- would always imply that prayer had SOME effect.

Is that better?


What does this have to do with my age?

Assuming you were trying to discredit my intelligence based on my age, then a) I should be able to try to discredit you based on your weak English skills, and b) the fact that mine are better than yours AND I'm 17 should discredit you even more.

Assuming you were just throwing it in there for the hell of it, then you are equally guilty of straw-grasping, and a hypocrite.

Many researchers get very excited when they have discovered a "statistically significant" finding, without really understanding what it means. When a statistic is significant, it simply means that you are very sure that the statistic is reliable. It doesn't mean the finding is important or that it has any decision-making utility.

I'm astute enough to know that we share similar interests...after all, both of us are attracted to women :wink:

PS: Whether you like it or not, English skills are often a good indicator of intelligence, or lack thereof.

PPS: I intend to respond to every post you make on this website from now on. You better killfile me now in preparation. Trust me, I've got a lot of time to kill.

PPS: I intend to respond to every post you make on this website from now on. You better killfile me now in preparation. Trust me, I've got a lot of time to kill.

C. you might want to read up on the definition of a joke

My point is this: A result is statistically significant if it's unlikely to have come about due to chance. Therefore, a statistically insignificant result is likely to have been due to chance. It follows that statistically insignificant results lend credence to the null hypothesis: that prayer does jack s---.

If you discredit the results for being "statistically insignificant", you are effectively discrediting any results that could possibly support the hypothesis that prayer does jack s---, because statistically significant results--skewed one way or the other-- would always imply that prayer had SOME effect.

....

Assuming you were just throwing it in there for the hell of it, then you are equally guilty of straw-grasping, and a hypocrite.

I really hate to burst your bubble on this, but the significance of many statistical results is that they are statistically insignificant, which in fact does lend credence to the null hypothesis. This is not to say that they in any way endorse the null hypothesis, simply that it is the only option left after other theories have been found lacking.

Let's take this someplace else for a minute, let's assume that we want to see if tanning beds cause skin cancer. If we find a statistically insignificant variation between the control group (those that did not tan in tanning beds) and the test group (those that tannedin tanning beds), it would be unlikely that there is a correlation between skin cancer and tanning beds.

Any one study is not likely to be the final answer, but this one did in fact show that it is unlikely that prayer had any effect on these patients.

backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal backpedal

PS. Sorry Jules!!!

13% of people atheist? I read something similar but it talked about individual countires and it said that a lot of european countries are like 40 - 60% atheist or agnostic. so if you figure most arab and afric countries are like 0.5% atheist it might be true.

I did a similar study to this one just now in my office. I checked whether my computer worked by testing whether it caused the sky to turn pink.

The sky remained largely blue, and so using the same rationale as this study cited, I was able to determine that my computer did not work.

yet another person who failed the analogy section on the SATs (or the European equivalent). Nobody has ever claimed that turning a computer on would make the sky pink, unlike the millions who claim that prayer can be used to cure the sick.

Your post also implies that prayer is good for something. Beyond any placebo effects what would you say it's good for?

How many claims does it take for it to count?

The experiment seems flawed from the get go. There is no scientific basis for it and the way they went about it was flawed. Some sugery types are inevitably going to have more complications than others. Seems like the study is pseudo-replicated which also kind of destroys it.

just significantly different from the non prayer receiving population?

WRONG! Try reading the post next time.

A large US study found that religious folk had lower blood pressure, less depression and anxiety, stronger immune systems and generally cost the health-care system less than people who were less involved in religion.

Similar results were produced by the University of California at Berkeley in a study of some 5,000 people aged 21 to 65.

Those who attended religious services at least once a week had a 23% lower risk of dying over the 28 years on which the research was based.

The thing about religion is most people desperately want to believe, evidence be damned. Because of this need to see the hand of god, I would not be convinced no matter how many claims were made.


I know very little about this study, so I can't claim that it was perfect. Just for the fun of it, what kind of experiment would you design to "prove" that prayer works or not? To say it another way, what evidence would prove to you that prayer doesn't make any difference?


this would be good enough for me.

Hey boondock. Since you obviously put so much faith in statistical studies, I'm sure you'll base your lifestyle on the following:
http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/health/401091.stm


So boondock, considering how you're so SCIENTIFIC, I would have to conclude you are an IDIOT if you don't start attending church immediately at least once a week. Or maybe you just want to be more sickly and DIE younger? Or maybe, like most people, you just don't base your life choices on a statistical study?

once again someone who doesn't understand cause and effect. Did you know that there is a high correlation between stork population and birth rates in Europe? OMG, BABIES COME FROM STORKS! WE PROVED IT!

Who is it that doesn't understand, Kubai? Dr Harold Koenig, from the Duke University Medical Center and his group who directed one of the studies? Or the Berkley group who directed the other study? How do think medical studies are done?

People who don't smoke and drink and have lots of friends are more likely to lead long healthy lives. People who regularly attend church are more likely to have lots of friends and avoid smoking and drinking. If I'm an anti-social alcoholic I'm not going to suddenly increase my life-expectancy by going to church, I'm going to increase it by cutting down on my drinking and making some friends.

Not even the original article you posted claims that church makes people live longer.

Dr Harold Koenig, from the Duke University Medical Center, said: "Participating in religious services is associated with significant health benefits in elderly people, even when you take into account the fact the religious people tend to start out with better health practices and more social support."

To organic, not only have you proven that you are no expert on stats, but you have also proven that you don't know s--- about what "complications" are.

Complications are a bad thing, it means something went wrong and some poor bastard is either in a world of hurt or dead.


This means that people who got prayed came out worse on the average. Which means that your cliff analogy is backwards, the believers should be the ones splattered all over the ground while the nonbelievers just float away.

EDIT *** This post should have been addressed to yanqui my bad.***

i just wanna know what crawled up yanqui's ass. "my precious study" wtf? it was just something I read and thought it was funny-- tehe people who got prayers ended up with more complications during recovery. based on that, i'd rather no one pray for me ...

the end.

Prayer does work according to a Duke medical study...

http://dukemednews.duke.edu/.../article.php?id=5056

Differences in clinical outcomes between treatment groups were not statistically significant.

I imagine the researchers, being from some of the world's best medical schools would have tried to juggle these factors into their analysis. The researchers are probably at least as clever as you are, Kubi. If they would have felt they had discovered that cutting down on drinking and making some friends increases life expectancy, I suppose they would have reported it that way.

i just wanna know what crawled up yanqui's ass. "my precious study" wtf? it was just something I read and thought it was funny-- tehe people who got prayers ended up with more complications during recovery. based on that, i'd rather no one pray for me ...

the end.

I have some questions for all the scientific experts out there.

Isn't it true that evolutionary theory implies that, through random gene mutation and natural selection, the traits which are an advantage to gene propagation will survive and evolve?

Doesn't scientific evidence suggest that religion has been a fundamental trait of human beings as far back as we can discover something about them?

Doesn't religious belief remain a prevalent, even dominant trait among human beings today? Whether or not it's very accurate, I'm looking at a pie chart now I found in google that claims about 3% of the people world wide are atheists and about 13% are non-religious (I suppose I would fall in that category). If this is anywhere near accurate, it means that more than 80% of the people world wide are religious.

Given this analysis, any 'true believer' in science and evolutionary theory would be forced to admit that being religious must be, or at least must have been an almost overwhelming advantage in the process of natural selection for human beings. So shouldn't all you scientific minded people be trying to figure out what that advantage is?

Even though I'm right next door to being an atheist, I can think of at least one case where I might turn to prayer. If, for example, my small daughter got a terminal disease. Or was kidnapped or disappeared. In a situation like this, I'm quite sure I could care less what the statistics of this particular study may or may not imply.

Another question for all the scientific experts out there: isn't the placebo effect a well established medical phenonmena? The obvious implication is that 'belief' can play a statistically significant role in at least some medical phenomena. All this study shows is that, in a VERY limited situation, the role of religious belief had no observable effect. This could be for various reasons and it almost seems a tad conterintuitive. But I really don't have the time to take a careful look at the study now.

bastard :lol: :lol: :lol:



someone should do a study on what effect curses have on people actually getting sick and recovering etc.

seriously organic, c'mon.

There we go. Tell you what, we should go get some grant money for this study. How does 4.5 million dollars sound to you? Do a little research, hit the crags, do a little more research, buy new climbing equipment, do a little more research,... I would quit my day job for that. :D

c'mon the other results weren't significant either! shouldn't that be like a double negative!

I'm not the best at typing but I'll try my best.
-All prayers aren't answered. Ask anyone that has prayed and they'll tell you that they haven't always received an answer when they have prayed.
-Many people have a hard time understanding what constitutes as an answer (someone already brought this up) because answers come in many different forms.
-To tell religon that prayer doesn't work because of a 'study' that someone conducted would be counter-productive. The reason that most of the people are IN a religon is BECAUSE their prayers were answered. You probably wouldn't find someone that believes that prayer doesn't work sitting in the church pew on Sunday (unless it was a teenager being forced to go by their parents).

Nobody has ever claimed that turning a computer on would make the sky pink

That study has shown that praying can actually have a negative effect on a person's health ... why is not the issue, it just is.

no I don't think it has ay effect either way, but the study does show that you're better of if people don't pray for you ...

Praying on the other hand, you can't throw a rock in any direction in this country w/o hitting at least 2 dozen people telling you to pray for something ....

Nobody here (except you) is claiming that you can improve your health by attending church.

Churchgoing improves life expectancy

Regular attendance at religious services has been shown to decrease death rates among old people

Participating in religious services is associated with significant health benefits in elderly people, even when you take into account the fact the religious people tend to start out with better health practices and more social support

For one, human evolution isn't really natural...people are killed more often by the action of other humans than by random natural forces. Therefore, standard evolutionary theory doesn't really apply.

Second, religion is not an inherited trait (at least, that I am aware of). I know of people that were raised by extremely conservative parents, and have (essentially) disowned them due to conflicting beliefs.

Perhaps it is natural to pray or hope to survive bad things, and perhaps prayer may even have a beneficial placebo effect. That does not change the fact that God doesn't exist, and that prayers aren't heard by Him.

You don't have to be religious to pray, or even believe in God. I suppose having a deeper belief would increase the placebo effect, but that does not change the fact that it is still a placebo effect

Why am I not surprised you still don't get the point of my posts? You must be HALLUCINATING because I never claimed ANYWHERE that attending church improves your health. One the other hand, the BBC says:

So boondock, considering how you're so SCIENTIFIC, I would have to conclude you are an IDIOT if you don't start attending church immediately at least once a week. Or maybe you just want to be more sickly and DIE younger?

Then it says:


Then Dr. Dr Harold Koenig, from the Duke University Medical Center says

Kubi, the fact you would directly misinterepret my posts without paying the slightest bit of attention to the facts plainly apparent RIGHT in front of your eyes shows me that people who think they are defending the 'rational' and 'scientific' standpoint can be just as full of s--- as supertitious religious fanatics.

Most patients did not know whether they were being prayed for. About 65 percent of these patients said they strongly believed in the power of prayer...

Overall, 59 percent of patients who knew they were being prayed for had complications, compared to 51 percent of the patients who did not receive prayers, but the difference was not statistically significant.

If I misinterpreted this quote of yours, I sincerely apologize.

The point in my posts was something different. People (including boondock and yourself) do not make important life choices, like the choice to join a church, or the choice to believe in and pray to a merciful God based on a statistical study. Does boondock's precious statistical study really show that believing in and praying to a merciful God is not some kind of benefit? Do the studies I produced really prove the believing in an participating in religious activities are a health benefit? If I should laugh at one, based on boondock's study, why shouldn't he join a church based on mine?.

one of my pet peeves is when religious folk attempt to twist science around to prove their point. I may have misinterpreted your posts, but I am fully aware of the facts of this study as outlined in the article you posted. All quotes and all data in the article support my point, the paraphrased assertions (by an obviously biased writer, see the last few paragraphs) are the only things that support yours

and one of my pet peeves is 'rational' and 'scientific' people who are more closed-minded and dogmatic than your run-of -the-mill superstitious religious fanatic.

All it takes is a brief look at the current state of physics, the most exact of all sciences, to see that almost everything is still mystery. So little is really understood about the structure, origen and evolution of the universe. Even a physicist as brilliant and lucid as Steven Weinberg has been willing to consider the anthropic principle.

How is this so different from Spinoza's claim that God chooses the best of all possible worlds?

Hell, it's even been proven that our mathematics is by it's very nature inconsistent or incomplete. This means, by the nature of our thought, we can't even answer the MATHEMATICAL questions within any fixed given logical structure (if that logic is sufficiently powerful to include the mathematics of the classical physics).

Maybe someday science will reach its limits, but at this point if there is something we don't understand we need to explore it and discover what is really happening, not just sit back and say, "fuck it, god musta done it."

Believing in the supernatural is not rational.

College kid, do you think this is the consensus among scientists who study evolution? That they reject 'standard evolutionary theory' when it comes to human beings? How does the special 'human being' evolutionary theory work? Since human activity isn't 'natural', what is it? Supernatural? Does 'standard evolutionary theory' only apply when 'random natural forces' act? For that matter, what are 'random natural forces'? Is gravity one? The weak and strong nuclear forces? The electromagnetic force? What is that makes these forces 'random'?

Like most human phenomena, religion must have both learned and genetic components. The fact that religion is ubiquitous throughout human history and throughout the plethora of cultures indicates that religion has a fairly strong genetic component. I suppose the current research is not very clear on the interelation of these two components, but I am aware of several recent studies which indicate an even stronger genetic component than might be expected.

collegekid, when it comes to your universal scheme of things, the fact you feel convinced God does not exist, I don't have the slightest desire to convince you otherwise. I just hope your mind is as open and undogmatic as you imagine it to be. I also think you might study up a bit on evolutionary theory, because your current knowledge wouldn't get you through an introductory class.

I never claimed otherwise. Although I might take issue with the your use of the word 'fact'.

If prayer doesn't help, then neither will meditation, vigils, positive vibes, or any other jedi mind tricks.

And I guess that doesn't pass my s--- detector. I personally believe 'positive thinking' does speed the recovery process. So perhaps one cannot cure cancer with prayer. But, perhaps one can hope to recover faster?

If a person just gives up and does nothing to become healthy and fills thjeir mind with depressed and negative thoughts, generally speaking, that person will not heal as fast or as well as someone positive suffering the exact same malady. At least, that's my opinion.

Maybe they'll test for that at some point? I'm sure someone will.

DMT

just now i got an e-mail about a co-workers child being in ths hospital for surgery.

the e-mail ended with "thank you all for your prayers and thoughts."

I wanted to write back how silly that was

yeah so I don't believe some stranger praying for you does jack s--- for your well-being. Turns out I'm right.

boo hooo hooo you candy-ass-cry-baby ...

whatever. I didn't consider actually doing it at all but so say that response wan't on my mind would make a lier, since we've spent the last two or three days going back and forth on that exact issue.


so the only mistake I made in my original statement was to word it in such a way, that you closed little mind would certainly misunderstand it

mea culpa :roll:

you're still a candy-assed-cry-baby-p@#$%y

If a person just gives up and does nothing to become healthy and fills thjeir mind with depressed and negative thoughts, generally speaking, that person will not heal as fast or as well as someone positive suffering the exact same malady. At least, that's my opinion.
DMT

Believing in the supernatural is not rational. Maybe someday science will reach its limits, but at this point if there is something we don't understand we need to explore it and discover what is really happening, not just sit back and say, "f--- it, god musta done it." That is not the way to advance human knowledge.

blah blah blah I know more than you and I'm gonna get the last word blah blah blah

blah blah blah your wrong and I know more than you and I'm gonna get the last word blah blah blah

I have no idea what this has to do with anything we've discussed

OK. Here's what I know, kubi: you say that believing in God is somehow not rational and yet there are many people who live happy, moral productive lives and believe in God. Even some better people than you and I, Kubi. Some who were kinder, harder working, more intelligent. more courageous, more productive. And some of these people would credit their behavior to their belief in God. That their belief might help them to be better than you or I never seems to enter into your picture of 'rational'. Why is this not rational? There are many great scientisits on this list. So what is your definition of rational belief? Only that which can be demonstrated scientifically? Do you believe blacks are in some natural sense equal to whites? Do you believe that eating healthy will make you live longer? That children should not be beaten, that education is good for the human race? That science is good for the human race? Can you demonstrate any of this scientifically? Did you really study the content of your most important beliefs carefully, from a scientific point of view before you made up your mind?