This Doesn't Have a Prayer

A fair amount is made about the “power of prayer”, and how it can aid in recovery from illness. Not being a particularly religious person, I’ve always been pretty skeptical of this claim. I do think there is good reason to believe that positive thinking can be helpful in situations like this, but a recent study indicates that my intuition on this subject was correct: prayer doesn’t do much of anything for recovering patients, healing-wise. Of course, there might still be good reasons for people to pray because of psychological benefits to both the sick individual and those close to that person. But the evidence from this study show no correlation between prayer and recovery, and actually a slightly higher rate of complications among people who knew they were being prayed for. A great quote comes from Jon Mandle at Crooked Timber, in response to a theologian/doctor who says the findings are “not surprising”, since science is "not meant to study the supernatural”:

No, it’s designed to study the natural. Like, for example, whether prayer can help recovery from bypass surgery.

UPDATE: Predictably, the federal government has been spending millions of tax dollars over the past few years studying the potential for distant prayer in healing the sick.