Dr. David Hodge of the Arizona State University, published a meta-analysis of the studies on prayer that indicates prayer works. Here are some links:
- Research on Social Work Practice: A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature on Intercessory Prayer (online abstract, paper not available without payment)
- ASU Insight: Prayer works, researcher says (press release)
- PhysOrg: Does God answer prayer? ASU research says 'yes'
- Science Blog: Meta-study finds God answers prayers
As the abstract is available online and only two lines long, I've decided to quote it in its entirety under fair-use provisions of the copyright law:
Perhaps surprisingly, many social workers appear to use intercessory prayer in direct practice settings. To help inform practitioners' use of this intervention, this article evaluates the empirical literature on the topic using the following three methods: (a) an individual assessment of each study, (b) an evaluation of intercessory prayer as an empirically supported intervention using criteria developed by Division 12 of the American Psychological Association (APA), and (c) a meta-analysis. Based on the Division 12 criteria, intercessory prayer was classified as an experimental intervention. Meta-analysis indicated small, but significant, effect sizes for the use of intercessory prayer (g =–.171, p =.015). The implications are discussed in light of the APA's Presidential Task Force on Evidence-based Practice.
Despite the $15 cost and not looking forward to wading through a meta-analysis article, I attempted to purchase the article. Their system appears to have crashed (I may not be the only one who decided to buy today), and my only hope is that my credit card didn't get billed before the system crashed. Should I get a copy of the article, I will post my analysis of it.
There's a lot we can tell from the abstract, though. First, this is a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis attempts to combine the results of many studies with smaller data samples to determine what, if any, result is present. If you want to learn more, go read the Wikipedia article or, better yet, go take a statistics class. Meta-analysis, while often seen as "spooky" or problematic, is like any other statistical test: it's only accurate if it's applied correctly and its accuracy is based on the underlying assumptions.
That's why I'm not sure there's any point in me buying the article. I can sometimes pick out an incorrectly applied Student's T test or the like; I don't feel there's much hope of me evaluating the application and assumptions used in this article. It's not that I couldn't do it, but we're talking a year or two of study and probably a couple thousand dollars in Pitt classes to bring me up to speed on the statistics.
What can I tell you? Has science proven the existence of God?1
Based on this article, no.
Do you see the line "…intercessory prayer was classified as an experimental intervention"? This means that prayer is a therapy for which there is not sufficient evidence to make it standard treatment. It might work. There is now enough evidence that prayer works that a larger, more rigorous study should be done to study the effects. In other words, we're talking about funding for research, not clinical practice and certainly not life-changing conversions.
There are plenty of treatment modalities and medicines out there that, at one time, were considered experimental that are now in use. They're not incredible therapies that cure everything, but they are useful. On the other hand, there are enough treatment modalities and medicines that were once experimental that are now listed under the heading "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
One also has to look at the individual studies. This study only suggests that prayer works. God is not necessary for prayer to work. I can postulate a number of mechanisms, some of them even totally materialistic with no spiritual dimension involved, that could permit these results but not require God. In the individual studies where some "transcendental being" was assumed, such a God would not be the God of the fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, fundamentalist Jews, nor fundamentalist Scientologists. I don't know enough about the fundamentalist Hindus to say, but I'd bet they're out, too.
My own view of God would need to change. I had this image of God being a bit snarkier and going out of the way to avoid being proven scientifically. This may indicate I'm in for a pleasant surprise — or not.
The fundamentalist atheists and fundamentalist religionists both seem to be going nutzoid over this article. For everyone else, take a deep breath, realize it's "interesting," and then ask yourself two questions:
- Why are the atheists so upset about scientific results?
- Why are the Christians who don't believe in global warming (with far, far, far stronger results) trumpeting this study?
And you know what? Maybe God didn't want me to buy that paper online.
- Interestingly, that would cause problems for Robertson and Falwell and others who claim the scientists are always wrong. If the scientists are always wrong, and science proves God exists, does that mean God doesn't exist? I suppose they could become Satanists — the non-existence of God would not preclude the existence of Satan, and honestly, Satanism is much more in line with their political beliefs than Christianity ever was. Ok, so that's pure snark, but I had to say it. Ever since D. James Kennedy declared General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics incorrect because they offend his religious sensibilities (mostly because he doesn't understand GR and QM, I might add), this crew has seriously annoyed me. Is there "proof positive" that prayer works? Do we go to a "faith-based" model of social work? [back]
Meta-Analysis: Prayer Works…
…
You ask, “Why are scientists so upset over scientific results? Well, I am an atheist and a scientist and although I strongly disagree with Hodge, I am not “nutzoid” over his i his ideas. Actually, I thought you had a pretty good handle on it yourself.
I ask, Which is more likely? That some inexplicable force can cause electrons, atoms, molecules, cells and organs to violate the known laws of physics and chemistry, or that wishful thinking, error, ignorance or fraud make it appear so? Which is more likely that the comment popularized by Mark Twain that there are, “lies, damned lies or statistics” is in operation or that a miracle has taken place? For make no mistake about it, intercessory prayer is a miraculous process, and no more amenable to scientific study than the existence of God. So to claim to have found evidence for its existence is equivalent to having discovered evidence for the existence of God.
Apparently Mr. David Hodge (and “researchers” of his ilk) has never had a course in the philosophy of science, because if he had, he would be aware of the “lemon test” for miracles.
In 1748 the great Scottish philosopher, David Hume, said that “(n)o testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be even more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish. . . ” Hume concludes his point by saying: “When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.”
This admonition by Hume is the bedrock principle for the scientific study of the physical world. To violate it is to admit that the laws of physics, chemistry and biology, including evolution and astronomy, do not operate according to the evidence of four-hundred years of painstaking discovery.
There is incredible irony in “experiments” and “meta-analyses” such as Hodges’ involving intercessory prayer. He is claiming to have found evidence of a most trivial kind that could even be mistaken for a statistical artifact, from an alleged Power of the most unimaginable magnitude. Power that presumably was the source of the astounding creation of hundreds of billions of galaxies, which are composed of hundreds of trillions of stars, dotted with singularities and “black holes” possessing immense gravity and crushing annihilatory densities; all of which are dancing with exquisite accuracy in spectacular elliptical orbits over a time- and distance-span of 14 billion light years; Power that has designed astonishingly complex molecular systems, composed of amazingly intricate atomic foundations; all operating according to the mechanics of gravity and other little-understood forces that bind atomic nuclei together while swarms of electrons maintain their balance around their stupendously dense centers in microscopic imitation of the grander galaxies; Power that orchestrated the rules of light propagation and spectrums of colors all arranged in fantastically diverse, visible, as well as invisible, wavelengths and patterns.
Meanwhile, experimenters like Hodge seek evidence of this breathtaking immensity by statistically manipulating numbers and probabilities to find a barely measurable difference on some ambiguous criterion between groups of people who were prayed for and a few others who were not (e.g., a difference in blood pressure between one group with hypertension who were prayed for and another group that was not.) It is as if one were asking a composer with a quadrillion times the musical capacity and comprehension of a Ludwig Von Beethoven to demonstrate his musicianship by writing out the notes to “Three Blind Mice.”
So I ask the intelligent and scientific reader, which is more likely, that four centuries of the accumulated knowledge of all combined scientific disciplines is wrong, or that Hodge is either ignorant, careless or deceitful?
The so-called meta-analysis of Hodge is nothing more than a statistical shell game. The author states that the “results are small but significant at the .015 level.” This canard will go unnoticed by the overwhelming majority of readers, but let’s look at what it means.
The phrase “statistically significant” means, that there is some chance that the result is an accidental finding when, in fact, there really is nothing to be found.
In many instances of scientific investigation, it is reasonable and appropriate to say, “Yes there is a chance that this is untrue, but only appears to be true, so (for the time being) we’ll accept it as probably true.” But not when accepting the possibility of miracles.
Here the stakes have to be extraordinarily higher, because we, in effect are accepting “The Infinite” as a manipulable cause and should be very cautious when doing so. Why, because to accept the manipulation of The Infinite is to destroy the position of science as the best way of interpreting the physical world. To accept that Hodge’s work has meaning is to discount the ideas of Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Darwin and all the other geniuses of scientific thought, and say (to paraphrase Hume) that “the falsehood of Hodge’s testimony would be more miraculous, than that these giants have all been right.”