The Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer Study, also known as STEP, is the latest controlled study examining prayer with heart patients. The investigators designed a study using all best research, statistical, and ethical research procedures of high quality. They went beyond the limitations of previous studies.
STEP claimed to be the largest prayer study ever conducted. He used a sample of 1,802 heart bypass patients from six hospitals to measure the effects of intercessory or third-party prayer.
Two earlier studies found some better results in the groups they prayed for, but they also had significant limitations. Two more recent studies found that heart patients in the prayer group fared no better than those in the no-prayer group. A similar pattern of little or no benefit was found in 25 controlled studies of varying quality related to prayer.
One step back
Research like the STEP study tries to determine if something works or not. Various controls are put in place to eliminate the role of chance or placebo effects. Such research has been primarily with pharmaceuticals where everything except the substance taken can be kept the same. It becomes much more difficult when the intervention is not a pill. More control can make the intervention look less like what people actually use in real life.
This points to a significant problem with the STEP study. To ensure that everyone received the same type of prayer, a standardized prayer was used, people were told when to pray, and given only their first name and last initial. The groups that prayed told the researchers ahead of time that they were completely changing the way these groups normally pray for patients. If researchers asked a pharmaceutical company to change the normal contents of its tablets, would the research tell us anything about the tablets that are normally used? Probably not.
Prayer is a spiritual exercise that involves theological beliefs. Research on prayer has been influenced primarily by theological views, and not always to the benefit of research. Some studies have combined the prayer of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and other groups, assuming that this makes no difference.
Some prayer studies have used prayer to a personal God, while others pray to direct impersonal energy. In one study, researchers admitted they didn’t know what the prayer intervention was. The belief that totally different forms of prayer can be seen as the same thing leads to interventions that do not match what people do when they pray. This can undermine the credibility of any results.
The STEP researchers, and most others, claim that they are not trying to say anything about whether or not God exists. They do not want to evaluate whether one form of prayer is better than another. However, if they find that prayer works, wouldn’t it be ethically important to tell people how to pray? Or if praying this way or that way works better? The STEP study shows that praying a standardized prayer from memory is not beneficial.
A fundamental problem with prayer research
This arrives at a fundamental problem with prayer research. The science behind the studies is that the intervention should be controlled as much as possible. The theology behind some forms of prayer is that there is an uncontrollable aspect.
Prayer can also be seen magically, where the divine being is manipulated. Prayer can be seen as impersonal energy, something that can be controlled. Some of the prayer studies have used this type of prayer. In these traditions, if the prayer is to lead to a certain result, it can be measured. Negative results could be interpreted as evidence that impersonal prayer is not effective, if prayer is that.
The prayer involved in the STEP study involved Christian groups. Your prayer would be an appeal to a personal being who decides how to respond to the request. But a prayer study cannot be controlled if a personal being of some kind is determining the outcome. The negative results do not indicate that such a personal being does not exist, but rather that the researchers have not discovered how to control it. Since so many people are praying to such a personal being, it seems questionable to continue the kind of prayer studies exemplified by STEP. They do not refer to prayer as practiced by many people.
The right way to study prayer
So should any investigation continue with prayer? David Eisenberg, a professor of medicine, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School have conducted surveys on the use of complementary and alternative medicine. They asked people about their use of prayer for healing, although these results have received little attention. Prayer has consistently been the most frequently used healing method, used by 25, 35, and 45 percent of those surveyed in 1990, 1997, and 2002, respectively. When prayer was broken down by category, it ranked first, second, third, and sixth in popularity (prayer in general, praying for one’s health, others praying for one’s health, and participating in a prayer group).
Such popularity invites investigation. Why do people resort to prayer? Do people who pray for their own health get better results or do they manage better? There is much we do not understand in this area.
Research needs to move away from trying to test prayer as a “therapy” that can be packaged into a controlled intervention. Such an approach is degrading to spiritual traditions that value prayer, especially the personal aspects of prayer. Prayer is not a therapy to be used only when needed. It is an intimate expression of a personal relationship between a person and God, a God who loves and cares for them.