Prayers found ineffective in speeding recovery

[Dna]

I would be interested in anyone's comments on this.


Prayers found ineffective in speeding recovery

* 07 April 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition

Praying for someone might give you hope, but it won't help them recover from heart surgery. It may even harm them. That's the surprising result from a multi-year clinical trial on the therapeutic effects of prayer.

Herbert Benson and Jeffery Dusek of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and their colleagues followed the fates of 1802 patients undergoing coronary bypass operations. Several Christian prayer groups prayed for one set of patients, while another did not receive any prayers. Although all these patients knew they were in the trial, neither they nor their doctors knew which of the groups they were in.

The prayers made no detectable difference. In the first month after surgery, 52 per cent of prayed-for patients and 51 per cent of non-prayed-for patients suffered one or more complications, the researchers found (American Heart Journal, vol 151, p 934).

A third group of patients received the same prayers as the first group, but were told they were being prayed for. Of these, 59 per cent suffered complications - significantly more than the patients left unsure of whether they were receiving prayers.

The researchers have no explanation for this result, but Mitchell Krukoff at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, suggests that the burden of knowing they were being prayed for may have put added stress on these patients after their surgery.
From issue 2546 of New Scientist magazine, 07 April 2006, page 6

[Rob P]

As Jon Stewart says-
'Maybe we should pray for better heart surgeons..'

http://www.onegoodmove.org

This must also explain the results of the
Presidential Prayer Team...

http://www.presidentialprayerteam.org

[M]

Could it be that Christian prayer groups do not know how to pray properly...? :confused:

[Dna]

It is possible that the notion of prayer could be wrong. In my experience, the notion of Christian prayer can be one of begging or pleading, which probably does not bring into manifestation the desired reality. I think that prayer can and should be a more positive co-creation of reality. It should be really energised. Not dissimilar to magic, in fact. Ultimately the two should be the same.

Another reason could be the relative insincerity of the prayer process, under experimental conditions. Those saying the prayers would have no real connection to the sick people they were praying for. It may not have worked because the intent was wrong in other ways. For example, they may have been devout Christians praying to prove the point that prayer works, without really caring about the sick people. They would have sabotaged their own success in this way.

Dna.

[M]

Dna: In some mystical way you seemed to cover most of what I really wanted to write about the topic, but didnt in lack of energy. Thanx! ;)

The only thing I could add is what I belive to be an important factor to successful prayer, wich is: not to go against the prayed-for person's own will. Wich may lead to the deepening perplexity of this study, that most people have no clue what so ever of what it is that they truly want. Maybe they should have backed up the study with some extensive interviews regarding how the people in this study pray, what they truly wanted out of the experiment and so on..

[Dna]

Thanks M.

Very interesting point about free will - I never thought of that. You are probably right in some sense, although if you asked the patient they would say they wanted to get well. Perhaps it is not a matter of 'wanting' as much as 'faith'. Jesus, in the bible, indicates that healing is a matter of faith.

Dna.

[M]

I probably shouldn't have written "what they truly wanted to get out of the experiment", of course they all would have said they wanted to get a speeding recovery..

And the thing about that it's not as much matter of 'wanting' as a matter of faith I belive to be true, those who say for example "I want a fast recovery" often seems to end up getting exactly what they asked for, they get a 'wanting' of that speeding recovery and not the fast recovery in it self.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

these people were prayed for over a distance by people whom they didn't know, and didn't know them. rupert sheldrake would probably have a great deal to say about this infantile orchestration of the experiment.

[daniel]

One study is not proof - or disproof - of anything. I strongly recommend Dean Radin's book The Conscious Universe where he uses statistical science to analyze a wide range of psychic experiments over the course of the last century, and finds that psychic effects have been demonstrated according to statistical methods.

I also think that there are many intangibles of psychic research - intangibles of which modern science has no awareness or means to quantify. This array of factors might include the intention and mindset of the scientists, the location of the experiments, the planetary conjunctions at the time of the experiments' beginning and ending. Greater attention would have to paid to many subtle factors in order to create an actual model for scientific research of psychic phenomena.

[Dna]

Unfortunately, I don't have the facts to hand at the moment, but statistical significance of the the studies like the ones done at PEAR (http://www.princeton.edu/~pear), though small, is greater than the significance of results from some experiments done in the fields of drug-testing and particle physics, which have been seen by the scientific establishment to be valid or successful proofs of some hypothesis.

The reason for this is simple: less proof is needed to add to scientific knowledge, if you remain within the accepted paradigm.

Dna.

[ocoyai]

duh..

(Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) ...

Its a bunch of sick jews.

Of course christ payers wont work.

Its basic math