Are there any good statistics derived by legitimate scientific study?
Posted: March 11th 2010
Dave Hitt www
No.
Next question, please.
Posted: March 14th 2010
George Locke
Two recent meta-studies conclude that “intercessory prayer” does not improve medical outcomes: “link”:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16827626?log$=activity “link”:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17487575?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_SingleItemSupl.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=4&log$=relatedreviews&logdbfrom=pubmed. “Intercessory prayer” seems to be defined as effective when people pray for an individual with some medical problem and then that medical problem improves.
The latter article also assesses how prayer affects the one who prays. They look at frequency of prayer, content of prayer (i.e. what you pray about), and whether you pray during times of stress. The results are inconclusive.
As the article Brian links to suggests, inconclusive results are pretty pathetic for a god that’s supposed to be able to move mountains, etc.
Posted: March 11th 2010
brian thomson www
Depends on what you mean by “work”. There is evidence that meditation (whether called “prayer” or something else) can have beneficial effects on the person doing it, and that you can help someone else psychologically by telling them you’re thinking of them. The Wikipedia article on the topic calls these “first person” and “second person” and cites some studies.
However, when it comes remote effects, or “intercessory prayer” (“third party prayer”) – “praying” for someone who doesn’t know you’re doing it – nothing. Whenever you insert any form of scientific rigour in to the process, such as “blinding” the participants in the study, the claims are shown to be unfounded. The following commentary on the NIH MedGenMed website, summarizes the studies that have been done, along with some forthright opinions on the subject.
Posted: March 11th 2010