Pseudoscience

(via Phil Plait)

Via the blog Epiphenom, I'm alerted to another study finding absolutely zero evidence that praying for a sick person can offer them any better recovery or health than those who are not the recipient of such prayers.

Every few years, a group based at Hertford College at Oxford puts together a statistical analysis of all the studies conducted to date that have looked at whether praying for sick people helps them get better (or at least stay alive).

The latest has just been published, and it contains something pretty radically new in their conclusions: the evidence is now so clear cut that they think that no more studies should be done. The book is shut. Praying for sick people simply doesn't work.

In both Dawkins' God Delusion and Hitchens' God is not Great, there were references to a large Templeton Foundation experiment which attempted to determine whether prayer could indeed have benefits. Interestingly, as each author pointed out, not only did praying for the sick fail to increase the likelihood of recovery, those patients who were aware that others were praying for them fared worse than those who did not. Please, religious people, stop the nonsense faith in pseudoscience and that 'God' or prayer will see you well.