A demon-haunted world/ won the prayers

A medical study revealed statistical significance in the success of fertility treatment in infertile women when the treatment was accompanied by prayers held for the benefit of those women. Is it possible to see this as proof of the effectiveness of the prayers, or is it worth checking the research for its tassels?

By: Marius Cohen, from the Galileo journal

Research
In September 2001, the respected medical journal Journal of Reproductive Medicine (JRM) published an article about the surprising findings of a unique study, conducted under the auspices of the Columbia University Medical Center in New York. From this study it emerged that infertile women for whom Christian prayer groups prayed succeeded in conceiving twice as often as infertile women in the control group, for whom no similar prayers were held. About two hundred women from South Korea who received advanced fertility treatment participated in the study, for about half of whom group prayers were organized in the United States, Canada and Australia. The prayers were directed at those women through their photos that were sent to the prayer groups by fax, and this without the knowledge of the women who participated in the study regarding the prayer supplement for treatment. This precaution is intended to neutralize a possible placebo effect. The article in which the extraordinary findings of the unusual scientific experiment were presented caused echoes in the media around the world, and brought in its wake various reactions, from dissatisfaction and suspicion of the research's credibility on the part of the scientific medical community (which, as usual, requires extraordinary proofs for extraordinary claims), to enthusiastic reactions in the religious communities and "Spirituality" of various kinds. These communities saw the research findings as scientific confirmation of their beliefs, and some even claimed that it was the most important discovery in human history.

The criticism
But in this study, whose conclusions contradict the insights of modern science, many flaws were discovered. First, the experimental set-up: the prayer groups were oddly divided into three different levels, with prayers being held at the first level to increase the success rate of fertility treatment for those women whose pictures were in the hands of the worshippers; On the second level, prayers were held for God to respond to the prayers from the first level, whatever they may be, and for God's will to be fulfilled in the lives of the treated women; And on the third level, prayers were held for God's response to the prayers from the first and second levels, that is, prayers that the prayers for the success of the fertility treatment would be answered, and that the prayers for God's response to these prayers would also be answered! Dividing the experiment into these three levels seems cumbersome and unnecessary. Why didn't they use only one level, where the participants prayed for the success of the fertility treatment for the women in the experimental group? Despite the strangeness of this experimental set-up, no justification has been given to it, and the considerations for its choice are unknown. Also, assuming that we cannot determine what God's will is, then there is also no practical way to determine whether a prayer for the fulfillment of this will was indeed answered or not. Another problem is that we do not have data on prayers that were held for these women outside of the experimental set-up (by family members, friends and perhaps the women themselves), and that perhaps they even had an impact on the research findings.
But methodological problems are not the only problems found in this study. Following suspicions that arose about the way the research was conducted, it was scrutinized by several parties inside and outside of Columbia University. Three researchers signed the study: Kwang Cha (Cha), Rogerio Lobo (Lobo) and Daniel Wirth (Wirth). It turned out that Dr. Lobo, the other researcher who signed the study and who was presented as having played a leading role in it, did not participate in it at all, and only heard about it a few months after it was completed. In fact, his role amounted to linguistic editing of the article and assisting in its publication. Also, Dr. Che, who ran a fertility clinic at Columbia University at the time the study was conducted, severed his ties with the university shortly after the article was published, and refused the requests of scientists and journalists to comment on it. He gave his concise response only three years later, over the pages of the same medical journal. In his response, Dr. Che justified the experimental setup by saying that Dr. Wirth believed that it was the most suitable experimental setup for research, and claimed that he did not believe that Wirth, who was solely responsible for organizing the prayer groups, acted dishonestly in his actions and reports, and this due to the great interest that he has on the subject.
But it was Dr. Wirth who cast the heaviest shadow on the whole affair. An examination revealed that Wirth, who had previously published medical studies in the field of spiritual healing, was not a doctor at all, although he presented himself as such, and his previous publications were published in non-scientific journals devoted to paranormal fields. On top of that, Wirth was subject for a long period of time to the investigation of the police and the FBI, and in the end he was accused and convicted of dozens of acts of fraud and theft, which spanned two decades, and which he carried out under various false names with the help of an accomplice named Joseph Horbath. This accomplice, who had previously been in prison, also posed as a doctor many times, and probably also helped Wirth in his previous "researches" on the subject of spiritual healing (these "researches" also yielded, surprisingly, positive results). The two crooks were sentenced in November 2004 to a long prison term and a high financial fine for acts of fraud and theft. The lack of credibility of the study's editors, and the fact that they refused to comment on it in any way, raises the suspicion that not only are the study's findings flawed, but that such a study was not even conducted at all.
In May 2004 (even before the verdict in Wirth's trial) the London Observer published an exposé of the affair. Attempts by researchers and journalists to obtain a response from the authors of the study or from the JRM system have been futile. The journal even refrained from publishing letters of criticism to the article, and with the exception of Dr. Che's late and terse response and the announcement that Dr. Lobo wishes to remove his name from the list of signatories to the study, the journal maintained a puzzling silence regarding the subject, perhaps in the hope that the echoes The matter will be known and it will automatically drop from the scientific agenda.
Since scientists can also make mistakes, and unfortunately even mislead, the findings of non-repetitive studies have no value (that is, repeating them did not produce the same findings); And in the history of modern science, all the studies that have ever produced positive findings regarding paranormal abilities or effects have suffered from the lack of apartments1. This fact causes serious scientific journals to check the fine print of each such study before it makes its way to the printing press, and such an examination usually results in discovering flaws in the research and preventing its publication. It is not clear how a respected journal like the JRM failed in this case (perhaps the fact that Dr. Lobo serves as a consultant to the journal has something to do with it), and what motivated him in his unprofessional treatment of the many criticisms leveled against him.

The article itself was eventually taken down from the JRM website, but the damage had already been done, both in terms of the credibility of the journal and the spread of the misinformation around the world. The problem is even more serious because various "spiritual" groups, who often ignore and disdain scientific research, jump on the invention whenever such an article manages to pass the rigorous examination network of the experts and be published in a prestigious journal. Even after the findings of this type of research are refuted, these groups continue to wave it as scientific proof of the truth of their beliefs. The same is true of this "study", which was cited in hundreds of newspapers and magazines around the world, and which references to it continue to appear in the scriptures even today, after the revelation of the findings that damage its credibility, and often without mentioning the harsh criticisms of it.

Summary
There is no doubt that prayer has value in the life of a believer, and most doctors will not only not doubt the benefit that a patient may derive from his faith, but will even sometimes harness it to his benefit. At the same time, attributing unproven medicinal properties to any treatment may cause harm to the patient, if the patient chooses this treatment as a substitute, rather than an addition, to an established medical procedure.
It is worth noting that flaws are often discovered even in normal medical research, and there have even been cases in which ordinary researchers were caught or admitted to falsifying experimental findings (see the editorial in issue 90 of "Galileo"). But the extra caution that scientists take in their reference to studies dealing with the paranormal is justified, if only due to the fact that no supernatural ability has ever been demonstrated under controlled conditions, and claims about paranormal effects have not yet been confirmed in repeated studies.

Terms
Placebo effect: a psychological effect on a patient's clinical condition resulting from his expectations of the effects of the treatment. Medical studies take this effect into account, and make sure that none of the research subjects know whether they belong to the experimental group (receiving the researched treatment) or the control group (receiving a sham treatment).
Repeatability: the ability to get the same results again in an experiment conducted under the same conditions. If the findings of an experiment are not reproducible, it is not considered admissible, due to the possibility of error or intentional biasing of the results.
Paranormal: in which supernatural forces are involved, and which therefore does not agree with the way modern science perceives the world.
Spiritual healing: any treatment method that claims to benefit the patient without physical intervention, whether through prayer, whether by moving the hands over the body without touching, or by any other paranormal means.