Intercessory Prayer – Does it Work?

Don M. Hartsough, February 27, 2005

Why the topic interests me.

• Not a praying person in the conventional sense of messages to a personal god.
• A psychologist interested in effective behavioral interventions, especially concerning physical and mental health.

What is intercessory prayer?  (Sometimes called distant prayer.)

• Prayer = “a reverent petition made to a deity…any fervent request” (Am. Heritage Dictionary)

• Petitioner = praying for one’s own needs.
• Intercessor = praying for the needs of someone else.

Larry Dossey, M.D.  – Concept of the nonlocal mind; Universal Mind.

• Books that relate medical practice and paranormal research to his deeply held  religious beliefs and commitments.
• He’s convinced, a true believer.
• What is the research?  And what would you have to do to demonstrate scientifically that intercessory prayer [IP] “works”?

Randolph Byrd’s 1982 research on a CCU at San Francisco General Hospital

• 393 patients signed up for the study of 450 total admitted in 10 months; 87%
• 192 IP group; 201 control; no health differences at admission.
• Will reveal results later; but now look at challenges for such research.

What must one do it make such a study scientifically respectable?

• Random assignment of patients to research groups (study group, control group)
• Sufficient number of patients for statistical power
• No differences between groups pre-test; or can control for any differences statistically.
• Double blind conditions (patient doesn’t know; staff doesn’t know) [Patients know they are in a study – Human Subjects Use Requirements]
• Control over the independent variable(s)
• Control over and unbiased measurement of the dependent variable(s)
• A reasonable, believable theory to explain positive results, if you get them.

Did Byrd meet these criteria? 

• Random assignment, sufficient number, no pre-test differences, double blind – Yes. Unbiased measurement of the dependent variables, presumably – Yes.  
• Problem with control over the independent variable:  Each IP patient was assigned from three to seven Intercessors, who were asked “to pray daily for a rapid recovery and for prevention of complications and death.” 

Page 2 

· “IP was done outside the hospital daily until the patient was discharged.” Probably did this at home.  [Intercessors were “born again Christians” and did not know the patients, but did know their names.]

· The problem:  All patients may have been (and likely were) also prayed for by family, friends, their own clergy or health caregivers, etc…In addition, patients may have also prayed for themselves (especially after signing up for a study on the beneficial effects of prayer).  The study thus became not prayer vs. no prayer but the amount of prayer.  Presumably the study group had more lobbying power.

Results of the Dr. Byrd’s San Francisco CCU study.

• Twenty-six outcome measures were taken to compare the prayer group to the control group.  Six of the dependent variables were favorable to the IP group, including ventilator support, intubation, need for diuretics or antibiotics, and cardiopulmonary arrest.

• However, all six are interrelated and would indicate that either congestive heart failure or pneumonia (or both) occurred more often in the control group.

In fact, in the IP patients, 6% fewer developed congestive heart failure; 5% fewer got pneumonia, and 5% fewer suffered cardiopulmonary arrest.

• In addition, when staff judged the hospital course of each patient as either “good” “bad” or “intermediate” – a “bad” hospital course was ascribed to 22% of the control group, but only 14% of the IP group.  The difference was statistically significant (chi-square with p=.01).
• What about “rapid recovery” and “prevention of death” – what the Intercessors were praying for?

1. Although more control group patients died, the difference was not statistically significant.  (Although Dossey ignores that.)

2. When the study looked at “days in the CCU after entry” “days in the hospital after entry” and “number of discharge medications” – NO Significant differences were found.  So much for “rapid recovery.”

Interpretation of Results – Where the Fun Begins

• Byrd’s Abstract:  “The IP group...had a significantly lower severity score based on hospital course after entry (P less than .01).  Multivariant (sic) analysis separated the groups on the basis of the outcome variables (P less than .0001).  The control patients required ventilatory assistance, antibiotics, and diuretics more frequently than patients in the IP group.  These data suggest that intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God has a beneficial therapeutic effect in patients admitted to a CCU”

Page 3 

• A critique of the study by Gary P Posner, M.D. “If ‘intercessory prayer’ was not controlled…what are we to conclude?  That God is conditioned in a Pavlovian manner to automatically respond to the side with the greater number of troops, even though the assigned intercessors had no emotional ties to their patients, and even though the IP patients were otherwise no more worthy of healing as a group than were the controls?  Does God not know that the side with fewer troops is in just as much need of assistance?  Where is the evidence of his omniscience and compassion?”    And, further…
• “And what can be said about the evidence of God’s omnipotence?”  (Cites the data about less need for antibiotics, ventilation, etc..) “But no significant differences were fo;und among the other twenty categories, including mortality, despite explicit prayers ‘for prevention of…death.’   Then, critic Posner points out that only six out of twenty variables showing a difference is skating on thin ice.

Problems with the Byrd study

• Inability to control the independent variable produces design problems.
• A religious bias is injected into a scientific study; “the results show prayer to a Judeo-Christian God is effective” assumes a god that can’t be demonstrated scientifically.
• It stands alone.  Scientific progress is made by the accumulation of overlapping studies, i.e., the “preponderance of evidence”  that points in the same direction.
• Also, who is to say  that prevention of death is always the outcome wanted by the patient? 

My Interpretation and Critique

• Good for Dr. Byrd for trying out something “outside the box”.
• Good for the critics for not letting it go unchallenged – that’s science at work.

• Another theory for positive results of intercessory prayer studies:  That another level of communication exists in the natural world of which we have only a vague, undocumented idea.  If this were true, it neither confirms nor denies the existence of a Judeo-Christian God, nor any other kind of God.
• It is the belief of many practitioners of paranormal psychology, or “parapsychology” that such a form of communication exists.  The concept is  generally NOT accepted as a valid explanation by scientists, and the studies are controversial.  But Larry Dossey endorses “praying” for bacteria, fungi, microbes and viruses as part of the proof that intercessory prayer exists. (Spiritual healers vs. college sophomores in a contest to see who can get more seeds to germinate faster.  Is this really prayer as we know it?  I don’t think so.)

· I am suspicious of experimenter bias – getting (somehow) the expected results. The study should be repeated by a researcher without a religious point to prove.

Page 4

· And, get more control over the amount of prayer being offered, even if it has to be done post hoc by statistical means.  Ask family, patients, how much prayer was offered during the patient’s stay in the hospital.

How would Unitarian Universalists conduct a study on intercessory prayer?

• Identify UUs who are “Believers” and “Non Believers” and have available both sets of people for assignment into patient and control groups; AND for assignment to the task of praying for the patients.  (“Believers” refers to belief in a personal deity; “Non-Believers” refers to a belief that no personal deity exists for anyone.)

Patients being Prayed For

                                                                        UU Believers                UU Non Believers

Prayers

                        UU Believers                                  1                                     2

                        UU Non Believers                          3                                     4

• Again, Double blind study.  UU Believers don’t know who they are praying for, and UU patients don’t know if they are being prayed for, or not, and if so, whether the prayers are coming from Believers or Non Believers.
• If the results come out as a wash – no differences anywhere, that is, not favoring either group of patients, the IP group, the controls, the Believers and the Non Believers, then neither the personal deity theory nor the parapsychology theory have been supported.  That is, “You can pay, but nothing of consequence comes of it.” (Might want to repeat the study with UUs vs. Born Again Christians or Parapsychologists.)
• An Old Testament view is that God favors the Chosen People.  This interpretation of God would be strongly supported if the only group showing positive results were the UU Believer Patients being prayed for by the UU Believers (Cell #1)  This would be especially impressive if they all believed in the same deity, although  the chances of that happening in Unitarian Universalism are slim.

What I believe:

· I do not believe in a personal deity, although I respect the beliefs of those who do. I do believe in the wonder of this universe and that there are many forces we do not understand that we can worship in sincere honesty.

· I am intrigued by the notion of another level of communication among humans and between humans and other sentient beings (animals).  I am skeptical of parapsychology’s claims, although open to new evidence.

· I believe that psychological science, if conducted responsibly, can eventually shed light on the phenomenon of intercessory prayer.