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Efficacy of Prayer
Skeptical Inquirer, March, 2000 by Irwin Tessman, Jack Tessman
Conclusions
The tests of Harris et al., taken in their entirety, fail to show any significant benefit of intercessory prayer, and one of the tests directly contradicts Byrd's primary evidence for efficacy (his Table 3) that is the cornerstone of his "landmark study."
Acknowledgment
We thank Louis J. Cote (Purdue University) for extensive discussion and criticism.
Irwin Tessman is a professor of biology. Address: Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 e-mail: itessman@purdue.edu. Jack Tessman is a professor of physics Emeritus. Address: Department of Physics, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155; e-mail: jtessm01@tufts.edu.
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Notes
(1.) Galton's retrospective analysis revealed no beneficial effect.
(2.) Here is how good and bad scores were achieved. The outcome was scored as good if only one of the following occurred: "left heart catheterization; mild unstable angina pectoris of less than six hours' duration; self-limiting ventricular tachycardia within the first seventy-two hours of myocardial infarction; supraventricular rachyarrhythmia; uncomplicated third-degree heart block requiring temporary pacemaker; mild congestive heart failure without pulmonary edema; no complications at all." The outcome was scored as bad if there occurred "nonelective cardiac surgery, readmission to the coronary care unit after a myocardial infarction with unstable angina, extension of initial infarction, cerebrovascular accident, cardiopulmonary arrest, need for artificial ventilator, severe congestive heart failure with pulmonary edema and pneumonia, hemodynamic shock due to sepsis or left ventricular failure, death."
(3.) Byrd might have gone further and designed his study so that no human would know, until the appointed time for breaking the code, which patients were in the test group and which in the control group. If the intercessors needed names for their assigned patients, pseudonyms could have been used without any human knowing to whom the pseudonyms referred. This should present no difficulty to the Judeo-Christian God to whom the intercessors were praying.
(4.) To help assure blindedness, not even the patients knew they were being studied. The requirement of informed consent was waived, in part, because it was felt that the study posed no known risk to either patient group.
(5.) The conditions include, for example, the need for antianginal agents, antibiotics, arterial monitor, vasodilation, antiarrhythmies, catheterization, diureties, a permanent pacemaker, an interventional coronary procedure, intubation/ventilation, major surgery, and twenty-two others.
(6.) We calculate P = 0.36. Reminder: P is the probability of this result occurring purely by chance. Conventionally, a value of P greater than 0.05 attributes no statistical significance to the result.
(7.) An example of their scoring system: if "a patient developed unstable angina (1 point), was treated with antianginal agents (1 point), was sent for heart catheterization (1 point), underwent unsuccessful revascularization by percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (3 points), and went on to coronary artery bypass graft surgery (4 points), his weighted MAHI-CCU score would be 10."
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