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March 30, 2006

Maybe Wishing on a Star Would Work Better

Well, so much for folding one's hands and talking to the air.

In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

Valid reason, I think, that when someone asks if they may pray for you that you reply "Heck no, are you trying to kill me?"

The work, which followed about 1,800 patients at six medical centers, was financed by the Templeton Foundation, which supports research into science and religion. It will appear in the American Heart Journal.

While I'm happy that such a large study shows nothing fails quite like prayer, it's equally saddening that we have to waste time and money on such nonsense and that we actually publish the results in a scientific journal. Maybe next year we can research whether voodoo chicken blood rituals cure impotence.

I fully expect that Christians will now trot out the line about "thou shall not test the Lord thy God." However, I don't recall any of them being concerned about that when smaller studies indicated some possible beneficial effect (I guess their memory of the Bible ranks right up there with their knowledge of statistically-valid sample sizes).

Update: I wished upon a star tonight and suddenly a pony, led by a clown, walked up to my front door. Woohoo!