NYT: Researcher Pulls His Name from Paper on Prayer and Fertility

Researcher Pulls His Name From Paper on Prayer and Fertility
By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: December 4, 2004


A prominent researcher at Columbia University has pulled his name from a controversial study of prayer's effect on fertility, the university says.

The study, published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine in 2001, found that women undergoing in vitro fertilization doubled their chances of becoming pregnant when Christian groups prayed for them.

The study immediately brought fierce criticism of the Columbia researcher, Dr. Rogerio Lobo, a fertility specialist whom the paper listed as senior author, from scientists who questioned the way the experiment had been conducted.

Then, this May, one of Dr. Lobo's co-authors, Daniel Wirth, a California lawyer and alternative medicine researcher, pleaded guilty in connection with an unrelated $1.2 million case of business fraud.....

***

"The university seems to think that because he's taken his name off the paper, that solves it," said Dr. Bruce Flamm of the University of California, Irvine. "But that solves nothing. The real issue is that this research is flawed and possibly fraudulent, and it's now back up on the journal's Web site."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/04/science/04prayer.html

resources continue to be wasted on stupid prayer research. I can understand why these studies had some value back in the 60's, when America was coming out of "leave it to beaver" mode, but after 40 years, why keep repeating this nonsense?

That should be the issue here- not the various accusations thrown about in the article.

And prayer plays a HUGE role, whether you believe it or not, when families deal with sickness in the family. No citation or statistic that I have to offer, but from my lectures in my Practice of Medicine course "spirituality in medicine" the medical faculty was universal when they said that over 60% of patients utilize prayer when going through disease such as cancer or AIDS. Mind you I DIDN'T say CHRISTIAN prayer, just prayer. Its an important outlet for many people to cope with the stresses of their illness.

Likewise, its also important for health care providers not to dismiss a patient's deep spirituality, with science and research. So thus, at least in my school, we're taught to offer spirituality services from the Rabbi, Ministers, Priest, or Sheiks (is that right for an Islamic holy man?) from the local community, if they want it.

Just because something sounds silly or trite, doesn't mean that it couldn't have a huge impact in the future of medicine. No one thought before it was discovered on accident that a life saving drug like penicillin would be found produced by molds.

Kary Mullis, the man who revolutionized the Genetics revolutions was a druggie who thought up, Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR, while on on an acid trip. PCR has transformed medicine and molecular biology, and opened outlets to things we coudn't find out or do before it was discovered. And no one dismissed his ideas squarely because he was a drug addict, it was a good idea and they verified it it would work with research.

The point is that this is wasted research money.

is routinely done by the academics and healthcare providers who read these articles, peer review. If there is no proof that there is a benefit, or that the benefit is impractical, I wouldn't jump to say it was wasted research money because now we know something that we didn't know before. Its science. Just because you show that something doesn't work the way you thought it did, doesn't mean that it was a waste of money. Because now you know something you didn't know before, and it'll be up to the peers in your field to determine what to do with that knowledge. Thats the field of research.

No one has ever proved that there is a benefit to doing CPR, does that mean its a waste of time and money training the millions of people who certify in it every year?

I'm sure engineers and scientists didn't think it was a waste of money when they went through multiple prototypes for the airliners, and space shuttles that didn't work before getting it right billions of dollars later.

"Of great importance for successful resuscitation was whether the arrest was witnessed and by whom (table 2). In 39% of cases there was no witness, and no patient survived. Fifty four per cent of arrests were witnessed by a relative or bystander; cardiopulmonary resuscitation was attempted in less than one third of these cases, but when it was attempted the success rate rose from 2% to 8% (P<0.001). The best result occurred when the arrest was witnessed by a paramedic equipped with a defibrillator; this happened in only 5% of cases, but the success rate increased to 40% (28% to 53%) (table 2)."

Fatality outside hospital from acute coronary events in three British health districts, 1994-5
Editorial by Evans
R M Norris on behalf of the United Kingdom Heart Attack Study Collaborative Group.

On edit - Yes, it is an observational study, and therefore is not proof. But it is persuasive, in my opinion.

on Cosmic Muffins, the results would be the same.

If the people at Columbia had less selection biased, and randomly chose people who just admitted to using prayer often when going through period of medical treatment, instead of selecting only christian prayer, that would have been much better and given more legitimacy to the findings of this study.

Don't make me agree with you! :toast:

Succinctly said, sir.

The mind works as powerful medicine. It can also wreak havoc with psychosomatic illness.

Perhaps Mr. Mullis would have thought up PCR during a dream, rather than an acid trip. Who knows ...

Thanks for the interesting factoid :)

I understand what you're saying and I agree with you. The faith of a patient that he/she will get well is extremely important. That's why it is important for a patient to have faith in his physician. A patient's family can also get much comfort from prayer and faith, if they are believers. What this study is trying to show, though, is that strangers praying for someone they don't even know has an effect. Maybe it does. I do believe in the power of the mind and certainly good vibes from strangers cannot hurt. Good vibes is "a good thing," but getting well, I am certain, is much more personal.

A patient's individual attitude and spirituality may affect the course of a disease process or at least have an effect on how he/she experiences the process.

But REMOTE prayer is an entirely different matter! Here, you are trying to prove that prayer by others will change outcomes! This is dipping into the realm of magic!

I haven't the time to research this fully right now, but here is a start:

" Intercessory prayer flunks another test. Mayo Clinic researchers have found no significant effect of intercessory prayer (prayer by one or more persons on behalf of another) on the medical outcomes of more than 750 patients who were followed for 6 months after discharge from in hospital coronary care unit. The patients were randomized within 24 hours of discharge into a prayed-for group and a control group. The prayer involved at least one session per week for 26 weeks by five randomly assigned individual or group intercessors. http://www.mayo.edu/proceedings/2001/dec/7612a1.pdf "

  "Remote prayer report misrepresented its data. Wired Magazine has uncovered evidence that data used to obtain two federal research grants totaling $1.5 million were represented as positive even though they were not. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.html The research, done by the late Elisabeth Targ, M.D. and colleagues, involved 40 patients with advanced AIDS who were randomly selected for either "distant healing" or a control group. The "healers," many of whom were located thousands of miles away, performed various prayer-based ministrations after receiving photographs of the patients. After six months, the researchers concluded that the subjects who were not prayed for had spent 6 times as many days in the hospital and contracted 3 times as many AIDS-related illnesses. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/htbin-post/Entrez/query?db=m&form=6&dopt=r&uid=9866433 The researchers subsequently were funded by the NIH Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to conduct two 150-patient trials -- one on brain cancer, and the other to redo the AIDS study."

http://www.valleyskeptic.com/pray.htm
 

Not that it seems to keep people on point around here- but it's refreshing nevertheles.

tell that to my co-worker's SIL who's suffering from metastasizing uterine cancer. this foolish woman was diagnosed (after 9 months of heavy bleeding which she did nothing about) with uterine cancer last february. she had a hysterectomy immediately along with the removal of a few tumors. however, she was supposed to return for followup chemo and radiation. she lied to her family and did not. her husband also has his head in the sand and refuses to confront her abou it. he has a fear of hospitals and doctors.

now she is in pain, and uses "prayer" and "herbs" constantly to cure her cancer. when she called the doctor back about her increasing pain, he hung up on her.

i'm sorry, but i have no tolerance for ignorance. some people can't be helped.

Third party prayers do not do a damn thing for patients, and this has been shown ad nauseam in randomized double blind comparisons.

Now, if you want to talk about placebo's or Hawthorne effects- OK, maybe you can show better outcomes- but don't tell me they're scientific and don't try to lend them credence by comparison with epiphanies people have had on hallucinogens.

You might as well tell me to go see the voodoo priest (actually, if there was even a shred of evidence that voodoo worked for collective societal insanity, I'd be on the first plane to Haiti). ;-)

in Washington and we shouldn't fall into the Dark Ages along with them!

Let us try to respect the scientific method and shun the flimsy, anecdotal and bogus "studies" that are so eagerly foisted upon us. Otherwise, we won't have to go to Haiti, we will have created our own voodoo empire right here!

bought and paid for by the Fundies. I thought they didn't believe in Science? When it proves them wrong, Science is the Devil's handmaiden. When it "proves" them correct (however dubious the study) then Science is paraded around like their long lost sister.
But their "flock" will eat it right up and quote this "Scientific study" forever as proof positive that prayer is the only answer. :eyes:

It's not a bad thing to repeat earlier studies to see if you can refine the questions and learn something new -- especially when you know you still don't know how or why it seems to be effective in some cases. After all, that's Science -- keep questioning and be prepared to adjust your hypothesis to reflect new information. It's Faith when you look at prayer studies and smugly assert that you know already exactly why it works end of story.

One of the problems with the way prayer/healing, laughter/healing, and positive affirmation studies are received by the public is the way they can be used to reinforce our cultural tendency to blame the victim. A technique that appears to work for some people may be translated in the public mind as something that will work for all people IF ONLY they would "do it right."

For those with a skeptical attitude toward prayer or organized religion, I think it would be worthwhile to frame some of those studies around the vocabulary of different belief systems, such as earlier experiments with extra-sensory perception. What happens when a group (of either strangers or friends) bends their thoughts toward another person and visualizes healing? What about deep meditation? Is a group effort transferable there as well?

I'm very curious about the why, what, and how, and would be glad to read the conclusions of honest, scientifically conducted inquiries. I'm sure that prayer does help a lot of folks with some things, but so do psychotherapy, regular exercise, and good nutrition. Does prayer raise endorphins? Is the mode of prayer important?

It's a shame that these researchers got involved with fraud and quackery, because this field of research is rich with possibility. Wonderful work has been done studying, variously, the brain waves of Tibetan and Zen monks as they practice meditation, and the body postures used by shamans to induce trances.

Hekate

~~~ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever does. ~ Margaret Mead ~~~

(and maybe others), embracing wider possibilities.

after years of fertility treatments and not getting anywhere a friend recommended that I go to a prayer group that had a reputation for getting people pregnant. In spite of not believing in organized religion I was desperate. So I skeptically went to the basement of a Catholic church.

The meeting was in session when I arrived. I sat in the back. A woman a few seats away leaned over, looked me in the eye and mouthed Hello. For some reason I thought she was an angel.

At one point the group was asked to pray for someone in the crowd (me)who was trying to get pregnant. A chorus of speaking in tongues arose. I had never heard this before. It was as if they were speaking ancient languages from some other place.

I assumed that was it, however, after the meeting the woman who had greeted me called me aside and said that the elders wanted to pray on me. I said Sure. About 8 senior citizens surrounded me. They each touched me somewhere and started to sing in tongues. I sobbed. I felt healed. As we left my husband turned to me and said We were in the presence of angels.

I was pregnant within a month. I was 44.

I still don't go to church nor does my husband. We don't believe in organized religion. But I do have a kid.

It is the relaxing, calming effect associated with prayer, not the actual prayers. Probably a nice vacation, candlelight dinner, etc., would have the same effect.

and also.. a person being OPEN to something happen makes something possible. Just part of the "you have to envision it before it can come into being." Even Einstein had that one figured out.

Have you ever made it to the store of your choice without somehow envisioning how you will get there??? mapping it out....

in the world wont get you pregnant at 44!

There are many methods of eliminating stress, and prayer could be one, but is by far not the only one. I know three people personally and have heard of others that were desperately trying to get pregnant and couldn't, but when the desperation was alleviated, pregnancy was the result.

A cousin of mine stopped trying when she decided to adopt a Chinese girl. As soon as she got the go-ahead for adoption (a huge relief) she got pregnant. Her husband had to go alone to get the baby because she was 8 mos. pregnant and not allowed to fly.

Another couple I know decided after years of trying and much expense at failed in-vitro, that it wasn't going to work and took the rest of the money they had set aside for more in-vitro and went to Europe. She got pregnant there naturally.

A third adopted a child after six or seven years of trying, and a year later she had a baby of her own. After that she had three more kids, naturally without fertility treatments.

You don't know it wasn't the prayer. What an amazingly arrogant response. Do you really think they didn't try candlight and relazation before this happened?
If believing you can get pregnant because you relax isn't magical thinking I don't know what is. You get pregnant when a fertilized egg implants on the uterine wall. Relaxing has nothing to do with it.

My God, those of you who are anti religion are as small minded and brainwashed as any religious right person I have ever met.

anti-religious yet recognize that it is not necessarily "divine intervention" that leads to success in whatever it is we may desire (pray for meditate on...whatever).

My belief is this:

Praying doesn't change God (by whatever name one may use to indicate God)...
But it DOES CHANGE US.

Asking then BELIEVING changes our state of mind.

Does that mean we will receive everything we ask for?

Absolutely not...though some would disagree with me on that.

There are still outside influences that can thwart our fervently held desires no matter how faithfully we believe they will come to us. We don't live in a vacuum. All actions create a reaction and like ripples on a pond the actions of others (and nature) eventually slap up against our shore.

So in short...for those who believe that prayer will make a difference...it usually does...and part of the reason it does so is because we DO relax. We no longer feel "alone" and that inables us to lessen the stress we've been dealing with.

:)

it was "Bull Pucky", not Hockey Puck that they used to say on Mash.

B-)

It was a remarkable experience for me because although I am following an alterative religious path, I was raised by the Mother of All Rational Beings and tend to live in my head. I don't usually step forward to lead group rituals.

My women friends and I have met at the full moon as often as we could over the past 15 years. The one who has so often led us was that night too distraught from many, many cares weighing her down, and without thinking or analyzing I suggested we do a body-blessing, which begins "Bless her Mother, for she is Your child." We gathered her in and laid our hands on her as I recited a variation on a common ritual, blessing her eyes to see her path clearly, her lips to speak her truth, her heart that it be loving and open, and so on down to her very feet, that they would carry her on the journey of her life on this earth.

Chalco, I felt it. I felt the energy flowing down my arms, through my hands, to her, and I know she felt it too. I was thinking psychology/calming the emotional state/showing our love for her/being supportive -- but something else happened too. Somewhere a thought floated in my mind: "So this is what a laying on of hands feels like."

I know the loving touch of our friends had an affect on her. I know I felt something come through me. If I were to read an article in Discover magazine about a similar event, I'd be interested -- but it would not take away my sense of awe and mystery. I'm a mythologist -- mysteries there will always be, even if we meet few of them in our daily lives.

You experienced an even greater encounter with mystery, and I'm awed for you. The people you met were conduits for a power beyond themselves, and whether they would call it prayer or a New Age person would call it channelling, it almost doesn't matter. What a wonderful story, and with such a happy outcome. Congratulations on becoming a mother.

Hekate

~~~ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever does. ~ Margaret Mead ~~~

a "good" soul. Thanks for the positive energy on a touchy subject for so many people. :hug:

Yes, something did pass from them to me. I felt it, my husband saw and felt it. It was a miracle.

the statement that you were "raised by the Mother of All Rational Beings?"

Warm and loving when we were young. Very intelligent, a wide-ranging reader,always regretted she didn't finish college due to lack of funds. Ex-Catholic, both deeply spiritual and deeply skeptical of organized religion. Taught us to respect our fellow humans, of whatever race or creed. Scathing of those who didn't use their brains or blamed their predicament on God. "God helps those who help themselves," she'd tell me, and "God gave us the capacity to reason, so that we could figure it out for ourselves," and very often the admonition to "be rational" and not let my emotions overcome me.

A Platonic dualist if there ever was one, courtesy of her Catholic upbringing. Intellect and the life of the mind, plus a powerful code of ethics, are the measure of a life well lived. Having shed organized religion she also shed some of its vocabulary, so we never heard words like "morality" and "sin" from her, but there was a strong code of "ethics" to delineate right from wrong. I can't even remember how young I was when I heard her use the phrase "social contract" to describe how humans decide how to live together and conduct themselves, but I'd say gradeschool. Her God-concept was an impersonal and far-off Intelligence.

In college I studied the Age of Enlightenment (of course it was referred to in more than one class), and learned that America's founding fathers are often called Sons of the Enlightenment because of the way they embodied and utilized key ideas from those philosophers. I realized that was my mother: a Daughter of the Enlightenment in the mid-20th century.

I owe a lot to her, such as a life-long love of book-learning, which led me to pursue a midlife PhD in mythological studies. The fact that I wrote my dissertation about the rituals that modern women are creating in the Goddess movement was an expression of my personal search not only for religious expression but my desire to heal the mind-body split of Platonic dualism.

And so it goes. I am my mother's daughter -- but I'm also different in significant ways, and at times that has created significant tension.

Hekate

your mother sounds intelligent and thoughtful. She gave you a lot...even the ability to question her. That's quite a gift.

I'm glad I stopped back in tonight.

You're right about my mom. It's because of the way she transmitted her own sense of ethics, fairness, and right action that I'm a feminist and a liberal.

We're coming back into alignment this year...

Talk to you later, Chalco, :hi:

Hekate

i was raised catholic (now atheist), spent 9 years in catholic schools, so i ask from a position of knowing something of the catholic church. i am assuming this is a roman catholic church, rather than an eastern orthodox church, of which i know nothing.

1) what country was this in?

2) You say "For some reason I thought she was an angel." This leads me to at least wonder if your religious background is catholic. Is it?

3) i am aware of a small evangelical movement in the catholic church, but not the "speaking in tongues" variety. Are you sure this was a catholic church?

4) If this whole story is true (which i wholeheartedly doubt) and you truly believe that "prayer" administered by this group resulted in your pregnancy, what thought processes leave you not believing in organized religion?

i don't know, but i call bullshit on this story. Nothing at all sounds roman catholic to me. and i would probably (but not certainly) know.

I was raised Roman Catholic as was my husband. This took place in the United States in the basement of a Roman Catholic church. The church was attended regularly by my friend who recommended the group to me. She went to the church on Sundays and to this group one evening a week. I don't know what name the group had, she just called it the Wednesday night prayer group. It was a Catholic church that I passed everyday on the way to work. I don't want to give any further details because I don't care to identify myself.

I frankly did not believe in the power of prayer and don't know that I do now. All I know is what happened. I have no proof that being prayed on helped me or not. All I know is that by my next cycle I was pregnant at 44.

I don't advocate prayer. But I do think about things. And, some of the things I think about are: dreams, energy, thought. What are they?

of 'unexplainable' things happen to me in my life. Nothing quite so dramatic as what you discribe but enough so to make me go, "Hmmm."

I do believe that there are many many things we do not know or understand about the mind. Seems I read somewhere that people with positive attitudes recover faster than those who without. We are just scratching the surface on mind research and have a long way to go before we have many answers. There are so many variables involved that double blind studies are hard to do.

And coincidences do happen. I remember a science program where Carl Sagan was talking about the mathematical probability of coincidence and how it happens with a lot more frequency than people imagine.

You got pregnant (congratulations!) following this event. Whether the event itself had any direct correlation, well, that would be hard to prove. Still, it's one of those "Hmmmm" moments.

:hi: Welcome to DU!

Mz Pip
:dem:

and they do speak in tongues.

The Houston/Galveston Diocese has a Charismatic Center--originally fuonded in 1972.

www.catholiccharismatic.com/hours.html

Hardcore Christian Reconstructionists hate the charismatic movement--partly because it's ecumenical. Of course, they hate just about everybody.

Did you ever hear of Charismatic Catholics?

http://www.sfspirit.com/WhoAreWe/whoarewe.html

this book really opened my mind about respecting evangelical practices.

when you think about it prayer isn't much diff than yoga, meditation and visualization. it's the best part of the mystery schools science kept alive thru mainstream religion. prayer isn't the only way to get there.

we bristle at stories about prayer b/c it feels like state-sanctioned religion. and there is most definitely something creepy about calling it prayer. i wish they would adopt a secular language to talk about it (visualization -- what's wrong with that?).

That is why good research design includes the placebo effect. Going to this group could have had this effect - merely doing something that you thought might work may have helped result in a positive outcome. The unusual atmosphere could have enhanced the result. I think the mind-body interaction is a very complex one. I am glad it worked for you, however it did.

If God wants a piece of the credit from me, consider it done.

it does have effects on people--so they percieve these exceplars do--so be it. "Science" may just be part of this belief system--not the other way around. Who know?

I have heard of charismatic Catholicism, but I have never experienced it myself. Very interesting, thanks.

I have heard of charismatic Catholicism, but I have never experienced it myself. Very interesting, thanks.

have been dismissed so many times as just so much New Age supernatural silliness by some of the same Christians who told me that I did not pray sincerely enough to prevent my son from dying. Meditation has proven helpful for me.

those who told you that piece of crap are NOT Christians IMHO...and not worth your time.

I'm glad meditation is helping you. So sorry to hear you've lost a child. That has to be so very difficult. :hug:

...I also wonder how much of it has to do with powers of our brains/minds that we, in this age of science and modernism, are wholly unaware of.

Recently, a show on the Sci Fi network (I think it may have been "Proof Positive") did a segment on remote viewing. For those of us who do not know of or have never heard of remote viewing, it's a bit freaky. Apparently, when the human brain/mind is in a meditative state (I don't know that there is any one specific technique involved), it can accurately visualize real places, things, and persons that the viewer has never seen before.

I've always been a bit sceptical of this, but both the CIA and the KGB used this technique to some success during the cold war. Now, before I saw this program, I was more than a little sceptical. However, the show had a former CIA agent who had participated in the agency's viewing program train several people- something like six or eight- in how to do this "properly". The show then had a woman drive around town on a motorcycle to random locations, and the people on the "other end" had the job of trying to visualize where she was and what she was seeing from her vantage point on the bike.

Their success as a group in this was demonstrable. One person even drew a sketch of the logo on the shirt of the man who was helping the woman riding the bike get ready, and the sketch wasn't even similar- it was dead-on accurate. The group also correctly identified several buildings she drove past, a curving tunnel the road ran through, a fountain she also drove past, and several other landmarks. Mind, they didn't know where she was going to be driving, or any other details of her ride beforehand.

We've all heard the tales of pyro- and telekinesis, precognitive dreams, and so on. I myself, after seeing that show and reading the account of "faith-based pregnancy" on this very thread, am becoming more and more convinced that it isn't prayer at all, although prayer may be a means to the end state of mind required for succcess.

I'm thinking our brains/minds are far, farmore capable of Really Odd Things than we are able to acknowledge, just because they're Really Odd Things. I only wish more people would lend credence to that possibility. Perhaps our brains/minds really have a great deal more power to affect the physical world than we are willing to accept.

I've even experienced things like this myself several times. My hubby and I are very close, and we've been known to hand the other the very thing the other was looking for without being asked (i.e., "just a feeling" that the other wanted that object), we've been know quite often to say the exact same phrase at the exact same time, we've completed each other's sentences, etc. I know for a fact I'm not the only one who has had this happen to them!

Given that we actively use only a small portion of our brains, it seems to me that that space is there for a reason, and we just haven't yet figured out what that reason is. The irony? In this, the prayerful and pious may be ahead of the rest of us on this- not because of their prayers, but rather the state of mind their prayers puts them in.

Maybe what we've always called "miracles" are actually our own brains/minds at work doing things we never knew they could do. :shrug:

that my girlfriends would not get pregnant.

and ya know - it always worked!!!!

Praise the Lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I noticed the study was on in vitro fertilization, a method that leaves leftover frozen embryos...to be destroyed, left frozen for all eternity, or used in stem cell research.

I find it odd Christians would even pray for such a procedure.

If we think something long enough,it becomes a physical reality....so the group "praying" for these women...are sending thought waves...but the receiver must want the end result to be the same or it won't work...we can't control others without their permission on some level.

Religion has nothing to do with it.

IVF? Prayer groups? - been there - done that, and nothing to show for it.

I think Wiccans chanting would have the same effect as Christians praying on anything.

What I was hinting on is so many Christians are against stem cell research, but the stem cells come from left over embryos from invitro fertilization...yet no one seems to be protesting invitro fertilization.

Egg not being fertilized in the womb and all of that.

Welcome to DU!!

prayed for them...not when the sick prayed themselves. And it specifically references Christian prayer groups.

Creeeeeeeep-y.