Friday, March 31, 2006

 

Praying Found to Increase Performance Anxiety


It has long been known that swearing and fun poking do not help with performance anxiety, and in fact may worsen the situation. A new, long awaited study has now shown that prayer may have the same effect.

The study followed 1802 patients recovering from coronary bypass surgery. They were divided into three groups, two which were prayed for, and a third which were not. Half of the prayed for set were told that people were praying for them, and half were told they might or might not receive prayers. The prayers were delivered by three congregations, who, as required by HIPAA Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, used only the first name and first initial of the last name of patients. Notwithstanding the inevitable duplications, it was hoped that this would be sufficient for God, the angels, or the saints, as the case may be (the prayers were told to use their regular approach) to sort out the intended beneficiaries. The study cost $2.4 million, mostly privately funded. This was over and above the $2.3 million the Bush administration has spent on other prayer research since 2000.

The researchers found no differences in the incidence of complications in patients that were prayed for and those who were not. However, those that knew they were prayed for did worse, 59% having complications, compared with 51% who were told they might or might not be prayed for. This notwithstanding that the prayers all requested "healthy recovery and no complications". The authors conjectured that being aware of strangers' prayers, even on a first name basis only (and last initial), may have caused a kind of performance anxiety.

Despite the careful controls in the study, the experts said they could not overcome the largest weakness, the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends and family, and congregations around the world who regularly pray for the sick and dying. Ethical considerations prohibited requests to those people to withhold prayer, a not uncommon problem in this type of medical study. Likewise, if the early results had shown significant improvement by those receiving prayer, it would have been necessary to terminate the study and immediately institute prayer for the remainder of the patients.

Bob Barth, Director of the Office of Prayer Research, cautioned that "research on prayer and spirituality is just getting started."

The experts failed to note another, possibly more important, weakness in the study: human nature. Suppose you are in the hospital and are told hundreds of people are praying for you. Aren't you likely to relax a little, maybe skip the regular pray regimen? Cool. It's handled. But now suppose you are told maybe nobody is putting in a word for you? You get busy, right? Now what is likely to work better? And you will probably use your full name. Just in case.

Comments:
I at first thought this was a joke, at least until I clicked on the link, now I can only shake my head. One more example of our insanity.
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?