Prayer - Healing

Thesis

Studies in prayer will try to isolate the causative agent of prayer as a treat. The best reason to use the test to control the processing tasks from the control group (whose members will not be prayed in this case) and the experimental group (whose members are praying), and the blind scientists and stakeholders to ensure that group members were appointed.

Ideally, the prayer will examine a significant number of people who need a healing for the same reason (eg, patients coronary artery bypass surgery or suffering from AIDS). At least 50 people would be needed. They were randomized to prayer or the control group. Researchers, who calls patients to their group did not immediately informed either patients or a researcher who will assess the healing process in patients. Once the data has been collected, the first researcher shows to which group each patient only if researchers to analyze data to determine whether prayer makes no difference.

Scientists can determine what we mean by "Prayer" and "treatment" to work begins. For example, a patient may be considered cured if they do not die, or if he is released from the hospital, or if there are no complications after surgery. (Which is defined as the treatment should not be after the test was completed. OTHERWISE, researchers can go in the mining industry, trying to find something that seems to confirm this hypothesis, because support for the hypothesis, if it comes, will come in the form of statistics, as well known, that if the statistical analysis of many factors, one or two seem to support this hypothesis, there is a very good chance that the result will be false).

The study should have indicated at the beginning (for example, when a man is in hospital for treatment), and by the end (for example, when the patient is discharged from the hospital or die, or for a certain period of time, such as six months from baseline). If prayer is a causal factor in the treatment, then a much larger number of people, statistically speaking, should be treated in a group prayer. Statistical significance was determined by mathematical formulas that we do not have to go into here. These investigations have been done? Yes, and the results clearly show that the therapeutic effects of prayer is not found. Anecdotal evidence and a very convincing

In an item "Healing Prayer and distant remedy, I believe several large technical investigations that checked whether plea can heal. These tests Randolph Byrd, Fred Sicher and Elisabeth Targ, William S. Harris, Kwang Y. Cha, Daniel P. Wirth, and Rogerio A. Lobo, Mitch Krucoff and others;. Herbert Benson, I, and others. I also discuss some of the major obstacles that a person who tries to do a controlled experiment in prayer, for example, the definition of "dose" of prayer and prayer of control.

Bird Study for the wrong should be considered in depth. He took the gun approach and seek the healing power of prayer in 26 categories, ...