redneckgaijin

A decade-long medical study strongly suggests prayer by strangers has no positive effect on surgical patients.

Appalling quote from the article:

"The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion," said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, "Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine."

Excuse me, what? Bad religion I could understand, but that which cannot be quantified or reproduced is not science.

Also, key point:

Dean Marek, a chaplain at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a co-author of the report, said the study said nothing about the power of personal prayer or about prayers for family members and friends.

So this study eliminates any effect from social or familial bonding- that is, it ignores as a variable any good or ill that comes from the patient knowing they have friends who know them and wish them well, religious or not. This is about as close as can be found to a perfect blind study with control of the power of prayer. (Well, as close as can be found unless 1,000 patients with no friends or family whatever turn up and sign release forms for a study.)

Prayer may not help, but signs that it might actually hurt (one researcher called it "performance anxiety" on the part of the patient) may be simple statistical drift. So if someone wants to pray for you, let them- it makes the PRAYING person feel good, even if it doesn't do jack shit for you.

And if you want to pray for a stranger, by all means do so- just don't tell them you're doing it.