Praying Doesn't Help

dannywalk writes "Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina have run a study to see if praying for sick people makes any difference. Apparently it doesn't. 'Before their operations, they were randomly split into two groups, and half were prayed for by Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims. However, checks revealed they had fared no better than those not prayed for.'"

Comments

Obviously

[borgboy]

God didn't respond to the prayers so as to test peoples' faith.
</sarcasm>

What exactly makes this /. newsworthy?

[Mattcelt]

Hmmm, seems that perhaps we need a moderation system for article posters? (Score -1; Troll)

This is going to be a hugely active thread here, and it's not going to do anyone any good, because those who always believed that prayer was bunk are going to say "I told you so" and the people who always believed in prayer are going to say "It doesn't prove anything". And we're going to be right back where we started.

This one would have been better left to the religious websites, not the geek ones.

Re:What exactly makes this /. newsworthy?

[eugene ts wong]

the people who always believed in prayer are going to say "It doesn't prove anything"

I'd like to expand on that a bit.

The Bible never says that a prayer automatically translates to healing. God never promises a life of ease just because we believe. So it would be kind of like saying, "Seat belts don't help because when people drive off of cliffs, they die. Thus we shouldn't buckle up @ all.". It's a crude illustration, but hopefully it gets the point across.

As you said, this article is a troll. Therefore I rate this article as "-1 Michael".

Re:What exactly makes this /. newsworthy?

[0x20]

Your seatbelt analogy doesn't make any sense. It translates to "Prayer helps people as long as they don't get cancer. Thus we should keep praying," which is not exactly a convincing endorsement.

Not trying to be insulting, but it's this kind of pseudo-logic which misleads vulnerable people into joining churches. It sounds good - just as long as you don't think about it too deeply.

Next study: Don't pray

[ccady]

Now they need to have another study: tell patients that they are being prayed for , yet don't do it, and see how well they fare. My guess: they'll have increased recovery.

obvious answer

[moof1138]

This one is really straightforward to explain. You see, in addition to prayer by the One True Religion, the prayers of infidels were also mixed in. Since the prayers of infidels are actually prayers to the Dark One who does the opposite of what was asked, these amount to anti-prayers. Hence they cancelled out their results.

Re:obvious answer

[Tyreth]

From a Christian perspective there are a few thoughts, but one of them is not "do not put God to the test". If prayer really is supposed to aid most (or even a measurable percentage) people, then it should be able to be proven - whether through intentional or accidental experience. For example, someone is missing a foot - they are prayed for and the foot grows back.

It doesn't go without saying though, that God is not a neutral, unintelligent force that is manipulated by the hands of men. Many people treat prayer like a magic spell, a way we can force His hand to our will. The truth is (from a Christian perspective, obviously not from a New Ager or others who believe that all things make up God) that if a person's time to die has come, they will die. I am of an increasingly minority view in Christianity today. After the New Testament was completed, the spiritual gifts (healing, prophecy, miracles, etc) ceased. Their purpose for that time had been completed, and they ended - as had happened in times before. Then over the next 400 years, culminating with Christianity becoming the official religion of Rome, the supposed miraculous increased in number. But these were not the true gifts - they were pseudo miracles, hypnotism, trickery and deception.
This experiment confirmed what I already believed - that prayer is our chance to worship God, to make known our heartache, and pray for His intercession in ours and other's lives. We can request from Him a miracle for healing or other things. In reality, such true miracles are very rare. As someone said, for the few thousand that Jesus fed miraculously, millions still have to cook their meals every night. The miracles are a sign of His power, but by no means common.

The truth is, I don't expect God to make much of a difference for all those prayers made, regardless of whether it's a test or just a ministry, regardless of whether they are all from the "One True Religion" or not. If God has any power at all, then we are His servants, not the other way around.

Not scientific at all

[pmz]

How would a scientist claim that he removed a deity from the control group? How could the scientist prove this?

Re:They Forgot

[Glytch]

I've found the answer! God is actually Schroedinger's cat!

prayer is not the whole point...

[Slowping]

The prayer itself is not the point.

Remember this slash article about the pain of rejection?

What scientists should be looking at is the power of positive thought and feeling of social acceptance in improving quality of life for recovery.

Re:They Forgot

[Daniel Dvorkin]

"Thou shalt not look to see if I am actually here." -God

Yep. Or as the article says:

Many theologians say that, even if you believe in the power of intercessory prayer, such a trial is doomed to failure because it "puts God to the test" - and there are clear instructions in the Bible not to do this.

Which neatly encapsulates the fundamental difference between science and religion; in science, you always look to see if something's actually there. And anyone who says, "I'm going to assert that this is true, but you don't get to test it" is rightly viewed with suspcicion and contempt.

woo!

[kurosawdust]

Oh YEAH! In your FACE, Mrs. "Please God help my kid beat cancer"! Woo!
*does endzone dance*
Who's the man?
Who's the man?
Not God!
YEE-HAW!

Studies Showing The Opposite Too

[TheFlyingGoat]

So the editors are trolls now? For every scientific study "proving" that prayer doesn't work, there's one proving that it does. For example, look at this Wired article which talks about a faith healing study done at UC San Francisco Medical Center. It's just one of many. Nobody who believes in prayer will be swayed by this report, and those who don't believe won't be swayed by the one I linked to. Pointless article in a slow news week.

Re:Studies Showing The Opposite Too

[Flamerule]

For every scientific study "proving" that prayer doesn't work, there's one proving that it does. For example, look at this Wired article which talks about a faith healing study done at UC San Francisco Medical Center. It's just one of many.

But this one is the largest, most comprehensive ever. It's worth more than the other, smaller ones.

Nobody who believes in prayer will be swayed by this report [...]

Most people who believe in prayer wouldn't even be swayed by the destruction of the Earth and the death of all humans, so I think we can safely ignore them.

and those who don't believe won't be swayed by the one I linked to.

Uh, dude, I don't think you read that article as closely as you should have. Besides the fact that it only involved 20 patients -- as opposed to the 750 patients in this new study -- eventually it also gets around to pointing out how the study in question was illegitimate. Quote:

WHAT TOO FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT TARG'S FAMOUS AIDS STUDY: That her study had been unblinded and then "reblinded" to scour for data that confirmed the thesis - and the Western Journal of Medicine did not know this fact when it decided to publish.

And what did one of the researchers do?

[...] He had also seen which group each patient was assigned to, treatment or control, but he swore he didn't remember and maintained he was therefore impartial.

Did you read that!? One of the researchers, who had been privy to the assignment of patients into groups, then went back through the patients' charts to gather more data. Blindedness was totally compromised... and incidentally, this incident displays a more-than-cavalier attitude toward the science in the study.

[...] This isn't what science means by double-blind. The data may all be legitimate, but it's not good form. Statisticians call this the sharpshooter's fallacy - spraying bullets randomly, then drawing a target circle around a cluster.

The writer also notes:

I learned all this from Dan Moore and confirmed it with Mark Comings. Moore seemed unaware how explosive his version of the story was. "I was always troubled over the sifting it took for the data to hold together," he said. "I think Fred and Elisabeth missed the real story, which was the difference between medical science and alternative medicine. Triple-drug therapy was literally saving lives. We were only looking at secondary things."

With this information, I reread the paper with an awe for how carefully they chose their words. Only with the benefit of this hindsight do holes emerge, ones that had been clouded by the scientific language and statistical commentary.

Unbelievable. And an eminent biostatistician who looked at the study said:

Spiegel continued: "It does change her work considerably. It puts it into more of an exploratory study, rather than a confirmatory study. It would be wrong to say it'd been proven."

That's an understatement. And finally, thanks to the study's insufficiently random selection of patients, and laughably small sample size:

[...] In other words, the study provided fairly convincing evidence that if you had AIDS back in the mid-1990s, the older you were the more likely you were to die.

So this pro- faith healing study was a total crock of shit. No one's going to be swayed by it because it's imaginary, and it only demonstrated the poor science being put out by faith healing people.

Re:ok....

[bill_mcgonigle]

then why do doctors sometimes come to the conclusion that something beyond medicine was the cure in a case where a family prayed to some saint-to-be, allowing that person to be promoted to sainthood?

Maybe because they don't understand entirely how the human body works? Just because a doctor doesn't understand something doesn't mean he ascribes it to supernatural powers.

eg - a family has a seriously ill child, and prays to a man/woman who has already died but worked (in a religious context) toward improving the lives of children. child recovers, and doctors are unable to explain how after investigating. several other cases of this results in that man/woman in being recognized a Saint by the Pope.

Correlation != causality. We have a method to see if your theory is true or not (maybe it is). The Scientific Method can develop a proper experiment, pretty much no matter what your contributary factors may be. I'm surprised there are no studies like this coming out of, e.g. The Vatican. I guess they're too busy trying to figure out how HIV passes through condoms.

Perhaps they are missing the point.

[MarvinMouse]

Being a somewhat slacking Roman Catholic, I look at the people who pray for various things, (especially other people's health), and I've realized that while I have no idea whether the prayer helps the person prayed for or not, it does definitely help the person praying. Sometimes people feel helpless, like there is nothing they can do when someone they love is dying, and prayer gives them some hope that they are doing something to help out.

As well, prayer research studies are hard to rate because there will always be questions of faith of those in the study, whether connectedness is important, and what the one "true faith" is. All of which will alway make is easy to discount/support any conclusions.

Personally, I take prayer from a very sociological and psychological viewpoint. It provides some form of hope to people who feel otherwise helpless. It gives them the opportunity to feel that they can do something, anything to change what they feel needs to be changed.

Whether it works or not, in the end, is irrelevant.

Re:Devine Healing

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Faith healing only works if everyone involved has no doubt that it will work. Meaning everyone believes the person will be healed. This is shown many times when Jesus is healing the sick, just because they believe in him. If you recall he didn't perform many miracles in his hometown because no one there had believed he was the Christ. If you would like some scripture references let me know and I will post them at lunch.

The power of the great and powerful Oz only works if everyone involved has no doubt that it will work. Meaning everyone believes the person will receive a heart, a brain, or courage. This is shown many times when Oz is helping Dorothy and her friends, just because they believe in him. If you recall he didn't help them before that because they had believed he was just a man behind a curtain. If you would like some L. Frank Baum references let me know and I will post them at lunch.

Mind over matter

[Apreche]

Being prayed for by others obviously wont help your odds in any activity. But I'm a firm believer in mind over matter. The placebo effect is great evidence of this. If someone truly believes that they will survive through some surgery, or live another day because of some deity or something, then they probably will. Their religeon, deity, values and morals could all be completely false and it doesn't matter. Because in their brain they truly believe that X will happen, it does. Because you truly believe a surgar pill is actually the perfect cure for your ailment, it will be.

That's my real problem with religeon is that it gives some imaginary omiscient being credit for the achievments of flesh and blood people.

"Save me Jebus!"

Jebus didn't save you, you saved you. Because you believed you would survive the surgery, you did. It had nothing to do with your Jebus, who is completely imaginary and such.

I probably could have gotten my point across in fewer and better words, but I'm too lazy now.

Uhhh...

[cavemanf16]

I don't get it. Why try and apply the scientific method to faith? That's just silly. God isn't Santa Claus; HE IS GOD! Duh! I'm sure God is a bit wiser than us (if you have faith that he is omniscient, omnipresent, etc. - basically infinitely perfect in all things). Why a scientist would try to apply a 4 dimensional measuring system to an infinite being (God) is beyond my comprehension.

C'mon, logically, either you believe in God or you don't. You can't measure that. You can infer by a person's actions with a high amount of accuracy that they do or don't believe in God, and that miracles are or are not possible, but you can't ultimately prove it one way or another. Let me guess, this was a US GOVERNMENT funded study, wasn't it?

Prayer or Pray-ee?

[Halvard]

Perhaps it's the pray-er and not the pray-ee that benefits by feeling better that they are trying to make a difference.

In other news

[rudy_wayne]

The earth is not flat.

Re:Seat belts

[eugene ts wong]

Seat belts do save lives

I agree.

Your parable may mislead people into thinking that prayer is as powerful as seat belts.

I would argue that it is more powerful, but not necessarily more successful. My whole point is that just because there is failure, it doesn't mean that there isn't value in the action/activity. If enough people went over cliffs with safety belts buckled, then the success rate of safety belts would drop, right? Well, I think that we can agree that there are more factors than whether or not belts are buckled. Prayer is like that too. In fact most things are like that. Just because the switch is on, it doesn't mean the computer is working.

Now, do you know what I mean?

Also, bear in mind, that I did say that it was a crude illustration. If people can't see it for what it's worth, then I can't do anything about it, because there is only so much that I can do. I'll try to be clearer next time.

I would love to see a case in which it is as powerful as seat belts.

I wish that I could give you 1. Then I'd be able to put the whole discussion to rest, for everybody. However, when you are dealing with people, it's really hard to quantify them. God is a living being according to the Bible, so even though he may have a set flow chart for how he decides who to help, it may be so complex that everything seems random.

Let's use a down to earth illustration. Most people have managers over them. The workers may be consistent & fair the whole time of their employment, but funny things happen with people, & problems occur. Sometimes we get fired through no fault of our own. I guess you could argue, "Ah, that means God fires people unfairly!". Well, that's not the point of my illustration. My point is that the world is complex, & even though there is a specific reason for everything, it is too hard to predict the outcome, based only on a few variables. I would argue that getting God to heal people physically in a measurable way is possible, but it is difficult to do because there are so many factors.

Perhaps a better example is charitable giving. There are things that they can do to increase donations. However, does that guarantee that everybody will give? Does that mean that they will give more? Does it mean that organizations will need to implement the same techniques everywhere? I don't think that they need to implement the same kind of techniques everywhere because people give through other channels, in different cultures & contexts. However, it does help overall to use the same techniques.

Looking @ it from the relationship point of view, I don't think that he wants to be ignored just because he already intends to heal some1.

I hope that helps. I don't expect my words to win souls, but rather to give a solid understanding of why my point of view is very logical & valid.

Re:Seat belts

[M.C. Hampster]

Do you think that if religions were to teach faith in humanity first that it would result in a more tolerent society insofar as others' beliefs?

I'm sure it would, but is that necessarily a good thing? Is tolerance the end all and be all virtue? Should I tolerate people committing horrible acts against others? Should I tolerate falseness and lies? Tolerance without any guiding morality is no virtue.

As a Christian, I am extremely tolerant. The Bible tells me not to judge others, that is reserved for God. I can exist peacefully with all sorts of people. I believe in the freedom of religious expression. I have no problems with people of any faith or of no faith, I get along with them all. But I do believe in an all-powerful God, who has set up moral standards and sent his son to save us from sin. Does that suddenly make me intolerant? Or incoherent? Well, I may be incoherent at times, but I don't think it has anything to do with my faith :-)

No, no, no

[GCP]

Mod points are no substitute for reasoned debate.

I'm not religious, but it seems to me that the study is a reasonable one to do. If it turned out that prayer had a measurable, salutary, repeatable effect, that would have meant that there was something going on that would be worth investigating further.

On the other hand, if there's no difference, it doesn't disprove God or prayer. Even though I'm not a believer, I know that the *theory* is that there is a God listening to the prayers who isn't an automaton but an omniscient and omnipotent being. Such a being could presumably cause the test to come out any way he chose. If his purpose is to test people's faith, that purpose would not be well served if anybody could discover the reality of God with no need for any faith at all by simple scientific experiments.

So it's just a test to see what would happen. If something did, it would be worth looking into further. If nothing happened (results uncorrelated to prayer), then it doesn't appear to prove anything more than that there is no automatic benefit or harm from prayer performed in this manner. All the Big Questions are still there.

Re:I am not Anti-christian.

[anomaly]

I use all the might of my reason to arrive to a conclusion: there is no god
With all due respect, the only way one can posit a logical negative is to have all knowledge about a certain topic. In order to assert certainly that no god exists, you would have to have all knowledge of the entirety of existence simultaneously.

This would make you omniscient - one of the qualities of the god that you contend does not exist. :)

You may choose to believe that there is no god, but it is not the only conclusion that can be reached through the might of reason.

Respectfully, Anomaly