The Great Prayer Experiment

The Rabbi’s opening post

The Great Prayer Experiment

Posted on 3/3/2009

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The Great Prayer Experiment

In Dawkins’s book, ‘Is There a God?’, which I am currently reading, there appears a description of a controlled experiment regarding the effect of prayer. 4.2 million dollars from the Templeton Foundation—and there you have it.

They divided about 1,800 patients in six hospitals in the United States into three groups: one group received prayers and did not know it. A second group did not receive prayers and did not know it. And a third group received prayers and knew it.

The prayers were offered in three distant churches, and the names of the patients given to those praying for them consisted only of first names and the initial of the last name. Everyone used the same sentence in the prayer.

The person who ran the experiment (Dr. Benson) was a cardiologist who believed in the effect of prayer.

Dawkins has a field day with this experiment, in his usual entertaining way, and I will not go into that here. In any case, the experiment came up empty. The results were reported in the American Heart Journal (possible only in America), April 2006, and it turns out that there was no difference in outcomes between the first two groups. Incidentally, the third group suffered more complications (the explanation given was that if a person knows people are praying for him, he assumes his condition is critical).

What does all this mean? Does prayer really not help? Is this evidence for Leibowitz, even if not for Dawkins?

I have a few analytical twists and refinements on the matter, but naturally I will leave them for later.

Source (the forum ‘Stop Here, We Think’): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2587885&forum_id=1364