Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
I know my reaction to this story may be considered offensive to some religious people, but I think this is %$@#& hilarious :
The largest study of the medical power of prayer found secret prayers on patients’ behalf didn’t reduce complications in heart surgery and there was a 14 percent higher chance of problems when patients were aware of the prayers.The research, appearing in the April issue of the American Heart Journal, followed 1,802 patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery at six hospitals. Of those, one-third weren’t prayed for, another third were prayed for without their knowledge by three U.S. Christian congregations, and the rest knew they were the subject of prayers by the church members.
The researchers, led by Herbert Benson and Jeffery A. Dusek of Harvard Medical School and Mind/Body Institute, found that people who knew they received intercessory prayers had the highest chance of complications of the three groups, 59 percent. Among patients who didn’t know whether they were the subject of secret prayers, complications occurred in 52 percent of those who were prayed for and 51 percent of those who weren’t.
The death rates for 30 days after surgery were similar across all the groups, the two-year study showed.
In other news, placebos aren’t as effective as medicine. Who knew?!
Seeing as this is an article critical of religion written in America, I expected this bit of backtracking at the end of the article :
Patients in the three groups had similar religious profiles and most believed family and friends would be praying for them. The researchers didn’t attempt to curtail those or the subjects’ own prayers.“With so many individuals receiving prayer from friends and family, as well as personal prayer, it may be impossible to disentangle the effects of study prayer from background prayer,” co-author Manoj Jain, from Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, said in a statement released by Columbia University Medical Center yesterday.
Prayers from stragers don’t work, but prayers from friends and family might…yeah, that’s it. The closer to you are to the person praying, the more effective it is. Think of it as “six degrees of Jesus”.
There have been enough studies like this with different sample sizes and methodologies to pretty much please anyone, but it’s kinda sad to think that a study like this is required to temper its findings with a disclaimer to protect the feelings of those who might be upset by the results. Granted, when you’re studying prayer, the prayers of family and friends are an unknown quantity, but it’s not like this are factors “impossible” to measure.
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The truly frustrating aspect of a study like this is that a fourteen point decrease in complications for patients that knew they were prayed for would surely be celebrated and attributed to the success of prayer. Yet when the reverse is true, there is simply “no correlation”, “prayer can’t be measured”, etc… So tell me what the point of conducting such a study if you are going to skew the results to fit a Bronze-age worldview?
Comment by Rob from Philly — March 31, 2006 @ 10:13 am
Skew my butt. It’s a perfectly accurate point that if you have people praying for you on the side and don’t control for that, it invalidates the results (like feeding people a controlled diet but not worrying about what the eat away from the lab). And the same point has been made by pro-prayer writers about studies that supposedly prove prayer works.
And sometimes placebos do work as well as medicine.
What really puzzles me is the mathematics: If 59 percent of the patients who knew about the prayers suffered complications vs. 51/52 percent in the other categories, how does that translate into a 14 percent higher rate of complication?
Comment by Fraser — March 31, 2006 @ 10:45 am
I was not surprised that prayer has no efficacy. I AM surprised that the placebo effect wasn’t more beneficial. So much for my plan to cut American health care costs by 95%!
Comment by slickdpdx — March 31, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
Hallelujah!
I always knew the power of prayer was amazing indeed! It’s a miracle!
/snark
Comment by JillK. — March 31, 2006 @ 1:54 pm
Typical of “scientific” Christians: Embark on a pseudo-scientific study that fails to get their hoped for results and they fall back on: We can’t control the “dosage” of prayer so the study isn’t valid.
Unless all the patients are atheists, with 100% atheist families, friends, doctors and staff, and the study overseen by atheist researchers, you wouldn’t have a prayer.
Comment by Fermi Pyle — March 31, 2006 @ 3:21 pm
I’m not really sure why the results of a study that say that a source of hope for people with sick loved ones should be something to celebrate, myself. I’m not religious, but I certainly don’t begrudge people who take whatever sort of comfort they can in those situations. I don’t really get why this is awesome- we all know that god’s not real and prayers don’t work, is it really in good taste to find the results of studies that prove it and laugh about how dumb the rubes are?
–d
Comment by Dan Solomon — March 31, 2006 @ 7:50 pm
How can a Man know GOD.
Comment by M ike Meyer — March 31, 2006 @ 8:28 pm
I have to agree with Dan. I am very opposed to this attitude on the Left that science is absolute truth and anyone who “believes” in anything outside of that is a redneck moron from the “Bronze Age.”
Oh you hip atheists really have it all figured out, and your air of superiority is sooooo sexy.
Science is a religion like any other. Read some quantum physics and quit being so dismissive. If the left is supposed to be more “open-minded,” I’m not seeing that here. A truly open mind doesn’t laugh at anything that fails to fit his/her limited view of things.
By the way, I’m not defending the people who did the study…I’m just attacking the attitude that is disappointingly common on sites such as this.
Can we EVOLVE our minds beyond this left/right nonsense? I think it’s critical that we do if humanity is to survive even another decade.
Comment by David Parsons — April 1, 2006 @ 8:25 am
Religious people, by insisting that we respect their stupid delusions (i.e., sex is evil, Republicans are more honest than Democrats, we don’t have to take care of the enrivonment because the Rapture’s gonna happen any day now and that’s why I have a variable mortgage) do tons of damage which people are afraid to point out because they don’t want to offend religious people. In other words, religious people bully us with their feelings in a way that puts a huge crimp on intelligent, productive conversation. (Of course you could say the same thing for the identity politics crowd, but that’s another story.)
I mean Geez, Dan. if you can’t laugh at a destructive and apparantly intractable delusion that harms us all, what’s the use of going on? No use being a sanctimonious speck of drool.
And now it’s time for a round of Mr. Answer Guy:
“What really puzzles me is the mathematics: If 59 percent of the patients who knew about the prayers suffered complications vs. 51/52 percent in the other categories, how does that translate into a 14 percent higher rate of complication?”
59% - 8% = 51% 8 divided by 51 = 15.69%
59% - 7% = 52%, 7 divided by 52 = 13.46%
14% is a decent midpoint description for 13.46% - 15.69%
Comment by Hieronymus Braintree — April 1, 2006 @ 10:11 am
It is indeed a shame that you think that families so desperate for the survival of a loved one that they will try even prayer are a source of hilarity.
Schadenfreude is ill-becoming, no matter who is indulging in it. It itself is a sickness.
Okay, prayer doesn’t work. Is the crying child praying for the survival of her father funny? Is the desperate wife with four children to feed praying for the survival of her husband funny?
I’m an agnostic. That doesn’t make me insensitive to human pain. If you are, perhaps you need an empathy transplant.
Comment by David K. M. Klaus — April 2, 2006 @ 4:18 am
David,
Nuts to you, Sweetheart. That’s the thing about dealing with religious people and their apologists: They always resort to trying to bully people with their emotions.
You say schaedenfruede is a sickness. Uh, huh. And I should believe that why? Because some sanctimonious boob who has his panties in a knot says so?
And, incidentally, for me it isn’t even schadenfruede. It’s the relief at seeing a pernicious piece of horseshit exploded. Everybody has pain, Charlie. It’s just that some of us don’t use it as an excuse to shove our irrational beliefs down other people’s throats while telling everyone that we’re morally superior for doing it. Unfortunately, you can’t say that for Christians.
Comment by Hieronymus Braintree — April 2, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
I’m morally superior for not shoving my irrational beliefs down other people’s throats. Not that that’s where I’d shove them….
Comment by Kamachanda — April 2, 2006 @ 12:45 pm
Well, we can always tyring shoving as hard as we can and meet each other half way.
Comment by Hieronymus Braintree — April 2, 2006 @ 3:02 pm
Hieronymus Braintree, No one wants to do a colonoscopy on a Neo-Con. Probably find everything from Bush’s real military records to the Lindburg baby.
Comment by Kamachanda — April 5, 2006 @ 6:48 am
I can’t believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $57775. Isn’t that crazy!
Comment by Betsy Markum — May 8, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
i am happy mostly - though terribly sick at times - the medicine is not a perfect fix - i think some weed would help but caant find any - Kant find any…
Comment by bdsm fem dom — June 9, 2006 @ 6:24 pm