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Commentary on "experiments on distant intercessory prayer" in archives of internal medicine
Journal of Parapsychology, The, June, 2002 by J.E. Kennedy
In addition, from my perspective, Chibnall et al. took an overly black-and-white approach to scientific investigation of paranormal aspects of spirituality. They had an underlying assumption that divine phenomena would not have patterns that could be discovered with science. Of course, another spiritual perspective is that the world is a manifestation of God, and therefore the established physical laws of nature demonstrate that consistent patterns are the norm rather than the exception for divine manifestations. Chibnall et al. appeared to have a theological position that there is a great separation between humans and the divine. An alternative position has a more intertwined relationship between humans and the divine.
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I have recently suggested that the slow, perhaps negligible, progress in parapsychology, combined with the evidence that psi sometimes seems to guide people (rather than people guiding psi), suggests that it may be time to consider the possibility that psi is at least sometimes guided by a "transcendent" aspect (Kennedy, in press). This proposal is based on the recognition that the failure to make progress with the most parsimonious explanation is justification for exploring hypotheses that are more difficult to investigate. Progress with this proposal assumes that there are patterns or relationships that could be identified as meaningful from a more holistic perspective. Ultimately, this is an empirical question.
The problems with multiple analyses in exploratory studies are well known to parapsychologists. However, the number of outcome measures in the prayer studies is larger than is typically found in parapsychological research and suggests extra caution.
At the same time, the possibility that the results are some type of "mysterious finding" may deserve greater consideration than the methodological crud factor suggested by Chibnall et al. My evaluation of the data in Byrd's (1988) study indicates that the results for two of the outcome measures are significant at the .05 level even after conservatively correcting for 29 multiple analyses. (1) Further, Harris et al. (1999) described their single primary overall outcome measure as being predefined.
It may also be worth noting that the .04 significance level with 990 patients in the study by Harris et al. (1999) is exactly what would be expected with efficient, goal-oriented experimenter effects that produce the desired experimental outcome with minimal paranormal influence (Kennedy, 1994, 2001).
(1.) Using the Bonferroni method to correct for 29 analysis, the probability for an outcome must be .05/29=.00172. Table 2 in Byrd's (1988) article reported that "intubation/ventilatin" occurred for 0 of the 192 treatment patients and 12 of the 201 control patients. Fisher's exact test for this difference gives p = .0003, one-tailed, which is below the Bonferroni criteria. Similarly, "antibiotics" were given to 3 of the treatment patients and 17 of the control patients, which has p = .0014. The article reported a stepwise logistic regression and a rating scale that combined measures. However, the stepwise regression did not adjust for all the measures in the study, and the rating scale was done at the suggestion of a publication reviewer after the researchers knew which measures had the greatest differences (Gunnard Modin, data analyst for the study, personal communication, June 8, 1994). Therefore, the adjustment for multiple analyses noted here is a good indication of the overall significance of the results .
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