Link between piety, healing ? (scrutiny, church, pray, God, Christian)

[Bright-ness' Shadow]

Attempt to study effect of prayer draws fire

Appearing in the Oakland Tribune

Columbia investigating effort to prove link between piety, healing

By Benedict Carey, New York Times

In 2001, two researchers and a Columbia University fertility expert published a startling finding in a respected medical journal: Women undergoing fertility treatment who had been prayed for by Christian groups were two times more likely to have a successful pregnancy than those who had not.
Three years later, after one of the researchers pleaded guilty to conspiracy in an unrelated business fraud, Columbia is investigating the study. The doubts about the study have added to the debate over a deeply controversial area of research: whether prayer can heal illness.

Critics express outrage that the federal government, which has contributed $2.3 million in financing over the last four years for prayer research, would spend taxpayer money to study something they say has nothing to do with science.

"Intercessory prayer presupposes some supernatural intervention that is by definition beyond the reach of science," said Dr. Richard J. McNally, a psychologist at Harvard. "It is just a nonstarter, in my opinion, a total waste of time and money."

Since 2000, at least 10 studies of intercessory prayer have been carried out by researchers at institutions including the Mind/Body Medical Institute, a nonprofit clinic near Boston run by a Harvard-trained cardiologist, as well as Duke University and the University of Washington.

Even those who defend prayer research concede that such studies are difficult. For one thing, no one knows what constitutes a "dose": Some studies have tested a few prayers a day by individual healers, while others have had entire congregations pray together.

Another problem concerns the mechanism by which prayer might be supposed to work. Some suggest that prayer might have a soothing effect that works like a placebo for believers who know they are being prayed for.

Either way, even many churchgoers are skeptical that prayer can be subjected to scientific scrutiny.

"There's no way to put God to the test, and that's exactly what you're doing when you design a study to see if God answers your prayers," said the Rev. Raymond J. Lawrence Jr., director of pastoral care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. "This whole exercise cheapens religion, and promotes an infantile theology that God is out there ready to miraculously defy the laws of nature in answer to a prayer."

[Sunstone]

If I pray that these prayer studies cease, will God answer my prayers?

I think Rev. Lawrence's characterization of them as "promoting an infantile theology of God" is remarkably apt.

[meogi]

Sugar pills heal illnesses as well. Placebos are amazing things, mainly because they show the power of the human mind.

[painted wolf]

The mind is the most important factor in healing. If we could leran to harness that power then medicine would receieve a tremendous boost. If prayer is a tool in unleashing that extra bit of healing ability in a person then by all means use it.

This is definatly an area that could use some reserch. Though again I'm not shure that it is prayer that is doing the actual good as much as the patients mental state.

wa:do

[FireNexus]

The problem with these studies is that they are a post hoc fallacy, plain and simple. And there as many studies refuting any link as there are showing one. There's no science behind them.