Scientists Praying No One Notices They Spent $2.4 million to Come up With Nothing

By Alicia Dorr in News on Mar 31, 2006 5:37PM

A study by a group of scientists from several institutions around the country found that prayer does not seem to help patients at all. They were actually surprised to find that some of the heart surgery patients they studied actually did worse than other patients when they knew people were praying for them. Yep—here we go.

The study, which the scientists said was not in an effort to disprove religion in any way, cost almost $2.5 million to monitor 1,802 cardiac patients. The theory was that people who knew friends in faith were pulling for them would be more relaxed during surgery, and so would their hearts.

Apparently, not so much. The patients were divided into groups of people who knew people were rooting for them, people who didn't know and people who didn't know and weren't getting any prayers either. The prayed for ones had a higher rate of complications. Kinda sucks for the people who were praying for them, who weren't their friends so much as strangers of varied denominations and religions.

So, basically a bunch of scientists spent a bunch of money doing a neutral study (Hey, didn't you hear? Science and religion are BFF now!) and came up with ... nothing. Despite the aformentioned differences between prayer people and the others, they said that it really didn't determine anything either way.

And the religious people who have started to balk at the results don't sound too koo-koo bananas, either—nothing like the Dominos billionaire who decided he's going to start his own "city of god" with lots of religion and lots of pizza. No, they seemed to just shrug off results ... for now.

The whole thing is damn confusing, if you ask us. Science is backing away with their palms out, "We didn't see anything, nevermind, sorry" and prayer remains, officially now, a matter of faith. Hmph—it took $2.4 mil to figure that out?