BBC: "Healing Power of Prayer revealed"

[EGarrett]

I found a reference to this article in an old thread on another board.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/485268.stm

A massive study has found that patients admitted to hospital with heart trouble fare better if someone is praying for them.

None of those involved were told that people were engaging in what is known as "intercessory prayer" on their behalf...

[quixotecoyote]

If anyone has a JAMA membership:

Data without a Prayer (http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/160/12/1870)

From http://www.sciencecases.org/prayer/prayer.asp:

“It is probable that many, if not most, patients in both groups were already receiving intercessory and/or direct prayer from friends, family and clergy during their hospitalization,” according to the report. “Thus, there was an unknowable and uncontrollable (but presumed similar) level of “background” prayer being offered for patients in both groups; whatever impact that (the) group assignment had on healing was over and above any influence background prayer may have had.”

But this study and a similar one in 1988 in San Francisco that involved 393 heart patients had questionable methods, according to an expert not involved in either study.

Both studies used their own scoring systems that tallied complications. Dr. Herbert Benson, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said their scoring systems have not been proven medically valid. Benson also is president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

In one study, prayed-for patients suffered worse and others have found no apparent benefits to being prayed for.

From The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine (http://members.aol.com/garypos/Harris_study.html):

The MAHI authors do not claim to have replicated Byrd's findings -- which was their stated objective. Here is the entirety of their sentence only partially quoted from above: "Our findings support Byrd's conclusions [emphasis added] despite the fact that we could not document an effect of prayer using his scoring method."

and now the payoff for all you who followed me this far:

The MAHI-CCU system, like Byrd's, is "an unvalidated measure of . . . outcomes" (they could find no previously validated system in the medical literature). Yet the MAHI researchers were able to claim "findings . . . consistent with those of Byrd, who reported that intercessory prayer for hospitalized patients lowered the hospital course score." Overall, their prayed-for patients, as a group, scored 11% better than the others, with only a 1:25 probability that this difference in score is attributable to chance alone (P = .04). For comparison, when my skeptical colleagues or I test claimants of paranormal powers, we try to devise a test wherein the probability of "success" by chance alone is in the range of 1:10,000,000. The James Randi Educational Foundation would not confer its $1-million prize upon someone able, on a single occasion, to identify correctly a number between one and 25. As the axiom of science goes, extraordinary claims -- especially supernatural ones -- demand extraordinary proof.

[fls]

http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/159/19/2273#TABLEIOI90043T1

It's hard to get excited by this. When you have a heterogeneous group of patients you expect heterogeneous outcomes. If you manage to someone put a bit more weight on a few of those outcomes than you do on others, you can manufacture the appearance of a difference. Without a validated outcome score, and with all of the individual outcomes showing no real differences between the two groups, this can just as easily be interpreted to show that their made-up score was unreliable and invalid. Especially since this was supposed to be a replication study and they failed to replicate a difference in the outcome variable used in the prior study (which was also apparently made up).

Linda

[Gmonster2]

A link to a another study...

http://www.slate.com/id/2139373/

[AngelicAtheist333]

It has to do with the power of suggestion. I think it's like the plucebo effect? Did I spell that right and am I useing it accurately? XD

[arthwollipot]

It has to do with the power of suggestion. I think it's like the plucebo effect? Did I spell that right and am I useing it accurately? XDClose, and close. It's "placebo", and that idea is eliminated because

None of those involved were told that people were engaging in what is known as "intercessory prayer" on their behalf...

Placebo only works when you believe that you're getting treatment.

[GreyICE]

So if you do enough studies eventually you flip 5 heads in a row?

[arthwollipot]

So if you do enough studies eventually you flip 5 heads in a row?If you do enough studies, eventually you'll flip 20 heads in a row. But I don't think I'm going to wait quite that long...

[GreyICE]

If you do enough studies, eventually you'll flip 20 heads in a row. But I don't think I'm going to wait quite that long...

At 0.04 it's between 4 heads and 5 heads. That doesn't take long at all.

20 heads is 0.000001.

That's not even apples to oranges. That's apples to lunar space fruit.

[arthwollipot]

I did say "eventually"...

[GreyICE]

I did say "eventually"...

Believe me, if they'd done enough to get it down to 0.000001, I'd be paying attention.