I'd ask you to pray for me, but what's the point?

SOURCE: Skeptical Inquirer, July/August '06, "One Big STEP: Another Major Study Confirms That Distant Prayers Do Not Heal the Sick." by Bruce L. Flamm


If you get the chance you ought to track down this article. I'll summarize.

STEP is a massive study into the efficacy of distant prayer. The results have been published, confirming what I've known for a long time. Distant prayer does nothing. The decade long study, involving researchers from six different academic medical centers found no statistical basis for the idea that distant intercessory prayer helps the sick get well.

The study involved 1,802 cardiac bypass surgery patients and randomly divided them into three groups. One group was told they may or may not receive distant intercessory prayer and ultimately did receive the prayer. The second group was told the same thing as group one, but ultimately did not receive prayer. Neither the patients nor the doctors new which of these first two groups were actually receiving prayer. The third group was told they would definitely receive prayer, and ultimately did. The prayer was carried out by one catholic group and two protestant groups.

Here's what the study found. There was no statistical difference between groups one and two. None the patients in these two groups knew whether prayer was being rendered on their behalf, and whether it was or wasn't made no difference to their health. Group three, which new it was receiving prayer actually fared worse than the other two groups. Funny, because they were definitely receiving prayer. You would expect them to fare better (if prayer worked) or, more likely, fare the same as groups one and two. The authors of the study hypothesize that this discrepancy might be caused by stress. Learning that they were going to be receiving prayer may have caused patients in group three to believe their condition was worse than it was; one that required prayer. This extra stress could have caused health complications.

The author sums things up in his closing paragraph. He says, "If prayer was a drug being tested for effectiveness, these well-designed studies would have destroyed it. A medication that failed this miserably in two huge randomized trials would never be approved by the FDA." (The other study being referenced here is MANTRA II, an earlier, smaller study that came to the same conclusions STEP has.)

But here's the hard truth. Christians don't care what the study proves. In their minds, it proves nothing. Bob Barth, a member of one of the protestant prayer groups said that his faith in prayer wasn't shaken a bit. He said, "People of faith don't need a prayer study to know that prayer works." And what do you base this knowledge on, Bob? Your own sense that your accomplishing something? Clearly not actual, confirmable evidence.

That's a textbook example of a human brain with its switch firmly in the "off" position. 1.) "I believe X." 2.) "But look, X is clearly not true. 3.) "But I believe it, so it is true." Christians can manipulate the universe to conform to their neat little prepared package. Even if god himself were to appear before them in a bank of the blindingest of all blinding lights, and tell them something in the bible wasn't true, they would find a way to discount the experience. After all, Satan can appear as an angel of light.

Not that converting Christians is the purpose of this study. Nor should the study be looked at as a way for thinking people to feel good about the positions they've taken. When conducting a study is this sort, an open mind requires that we prepare ourselves for the possibility that our hypothesis is wrong. And, using this study as an example, if we discovered that distant prayer had some effect on the health of patients, we would have to open ourselves to the possibility that some supernatural force was involved. Or at least some as of yet detected energy or other physical mechanism. However, I don't think we'll ever be in that position.