A new study in the American Heart Journal, reportedly the largest of its kind, found no healing benefits for hospital patients from being prayed for by strangers. Unexpectedly, the study also suggested that there might even be a detrimental effect, as measured by incidence of post-surgical complications, from knowing that you are being prayed for -- but even that effect, if it exists, is small. The important thing is that the study does not suggest that prayer has any effects absent psychological ones, as would have to be the case if prayer could heal people without them being aware the prayers were occurring (if praying for people, in itself, actually caused them harm, though, we might have to take more seriously the joking claims of Howard Stern, director Vincent Gallo, and anarchist blogger Michael Malice, all of whom have independently noted that people for whom they pray seem to end up getting cancer).
The study is a welcome counterweight to one widely touted by the media in 1995 that purportedly showed the healing power of prayer but was likely conducted in a biased fashion by Dr. Elisabeth Targ, a Viking-helmet-wearing believer in the supernatural -- raised by a father who had studied psychic claims for the military and would scold her if she failed to predict the contents of her Christmas packages before opening them -- who later passed away surrounded by (futilely) praying New Age healers.
The new study was conducted using two Catholic and one Protestant prayer groups and was co-authored by Rev. Dean Marek, director of chaplain services at the Mayo Clinic. Its results will no doubt be welcomed by atheists (such as the publishers of Free Inquiry magazine, whose April-May reprints the infamous Danish cartoons of Mohammed and is being kept off shelves in Waldenbooks and Borders bookstores because of it) and dismissed by believers (the study authors note that it of course conceivable that the patients in the study were unaffected by prayer because they were not personally known to those who were assigned to pray for them). There was, of course, little reason, save superstition and wishful thinking, to believe prayer had any power in the first place, but it's always nice to have evidence instead of mere supposition -- unless you like operating on blind faith, of course.
No one study can be declared final and certain, though, whether it brings confirmation or refutation of our preconceived notions -- witness the upheaval caused by another new report, in the May 2006 issue of Addiction Research and Theory that suggests that moderate alcohol consumption, believed in recent years to have beneficial effects on the heart, may not be so useful after all. Apparently, many of those counted as non-drinkers for purposes of prior studies were non-drinkers because of already-existing health problems, and thus may have fared more poorly than their drinking counterparts for reasons unrelated to alcohol consumption. The purely psychological benefits of drinking, on the other hand, continue to vary widely with the individual.
But in the case of prayer, we have as yet no plausible evidence of efficacy -- as indeed, we have no good evidence for any supernatural or paranormal phenomena, despite the widespread popular acceptance of such things -- and it would be wise to err on the side of skepticism unless and until believers come up with something solid.
That's not to say that we shouldn't relish opportunities to comfort and soothe people with ritual, kind words, and hope -- but for an informed populace, the kindest and most comforting words may be: "You don't have desperately wish for assistance from the beyond -- science and medicine are here with concrete results."
Todd Seavey is Director of Publications at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com). He'll host a Jinx Society debate on abortion at Lolita bar in Manhattan at 8pm on April 5.
