Prayer Study (Letter to Time, 2006)

As someone who regularly looks forward to when TIME takes research I have read in medical journals and translates it into language the layperson can understand, I was quite disappointed with the recent article “The Year in Medicine from A to Z” [Dec. 4]. I regularly encourage my college Wellness students to read TIME because of the unbiased, cogent medical and health advice that is regularly reported. However, your recent article that mentions the study of 1,802 coronary-bypass graft (CABG) patients who either received prayer (and did or did not know it) or did not receive prayer and their concomitant post-operative complications seemed to offer a bit of scientific soft-pedaling. First, you mention (as does the study) as a limitation that the investigators could not control whether friends and family prayed for these patients; and the investigators did not try to control this (unethical as well as impossible). The researchers mention this because if all subjects received robust amounts of ‘personal’ prayer, then the gain from additional prayer would in fact be harder to statistically detect. However, whether the prayers were heartfelt (because they were “provided by clergy and identical”) seems a moot point – is the Lord’s Prayer that is recited in these very Churches every Sunday any less heartfelt because it is “provided by clergy and identical”? Furthermore, if Christians are having a hard time offering ‘heartfelt’ prayers for patients recovering from open-heart surgery, then I cannot help but wonder how ‘heartfelt’ prayers can be about less life-threatening matters. I was most appalled, however, by the concluding statement of TIME that “the possible confounding factors in this study made it extraordinarily limited.” I am a bit confused as to how this study is “extraordinarily limited” compared to any other study that must control for extraneous variables. Would it have been better to let subjects ad-lib their own prayers? (Limitations then become: What was said during prayer could have accounted for the differences.) The investigators designed a well-designed study to test the efficacy of intercessory prayer for unknown individuals and should not have to soft-pedal the results any more than TIME should when reporting them. As a scientist who grew up in the Church, I am appalled to continually see Americans reject data in favor of their interpretation of whatever Holy book they adhere to, be it the Qur’an, the Torah, or the Bible. Perhaps the TIME writers were persuaded by the closing paragraph of these investigators’ paper, which does its own soft-pedaling of its results. I would hope that the TIME staff and every reader would be smart enough to read the fine print on the first page of the original article: “sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.” John Templeton, the founder and philanthropist behind the John Templeton Foundation, is quoted on their website as saying “love and prayer” are “the most powerful weapons on earth.” While I should not expect all readers to find and examine original research for themselves (although I encourage this), I do expect TIME to adequately research any data before labeling it “extraordinarily limited.” Is this research scenario so different than my telling a relative across the U.S. that my church, despite not knowing him, is praying for him daily?