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ABSTRACT
Among the many recent attempts to demonstrate the medical benefits of religious activity, the methodologically strongest seem to be studies of the effects of distant intercessory prayer (IP). In these studies, patients are randomly assigned to receive standard care or standard care plus the prayers or "healing intentions" of distant intercessors. Most of the scientific community has dismissed such research, but cavalier rejection of studies of IP is unwise, because IP studies appear to conform to the standards of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and, as such, would have a significant advantage over observational investigations of associations between religious variables and health outcomes. As we demonstrate, however, studies of IP fail to meet the standards of RCTs in several critical respects. They fail to adequately measure and control exposure to prayer from others, which is likely to exceed IP and to vary widely from subject to subject, and whose magnitude is unknown. This supplemental prayer so greatly attenuates the differences between the treatment and control groups that sample sizes are too large to justify studies of IP. Further, IP studies generally do not specify the outcome variables, raising problems of multiple comparisons and Type 1 errors. Finally, these studies claim findings incompatible with current views of the physical universe and consciousness. Unless these problems are solved, studies of IP should not be conducted.
OVER THE YEARS, THERE HAS BEEN considerable interest in the possibility that religious activity may have health benefits. Most of this research has focused on whether individuals' religious involvement benefits their own health. Over a century ago, Francis Gallon (1872) dismissed this possibility, observing no benefit to the religiously active: for example, clergy did not live longer than lawyers, missionaries' ships were no safer than merchant ships, and physicians were not known to suggest religious interventions.
Contemporary research, however, has reported positive findings: attendance at religious services or reading the Bible have been associated with reduced mortality (Helm et al. 2000; Hummer et al. 1999). However, religious involvement is strongly correlated with health-related factors, such as functional status and social support, which that may confound these associations. For example, people who attend services regularly have greater functional status than those who are bedridden. The latter group is at greater risk of...