June 08, 2004

On a Wing and a Prayer

Posted by Kieran

A couple of people have emailed me about this story. In 2001, the Journal of Reproductive Medicine published a study in which a group of women who wanted to become pregnant by in vitro fertilization were prayed for, without their knowledge, by others. Astonishingly, the paper found that being prayed for doubled your chances of getting pregnant. We all know that praying for oneself can have positive medical consequences if it makes you happy, relaxed and gives you a positive outlook on life. But this paper got a lot of coverage at the time because, obviously, it went so far beyond this. The authors were Daniel Wirth, a lawyer and believer in the supernatural, Kwang Cha who directs a fertility clinic in L.A., and Rogerio Lobo, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Lobo is also on the board of the journal. This week, taking time off from his scholarly research, one of the authors pled guilty to federal charges of fraud.

Daniel P. Wirth … was accused of conspiring with another man to defraud several banks, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and Adelphia Communications, a cable-television company. According to the charges, the two men bilked Adelphia of $2.1-million. They pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit mail fraud and bank fraud. Both men will face as much as five years in federal prison and $250,000 in fines when they are sentenced, in September. They have agreed to forfeit more than $1-million seized during an investigation of the case.

The fraud case isn’t about the paper. But what do Wirth’s co-authors think now? Well, in the best traditions of being the Senior Author, Lobo now denies all knowledge of the research:

Dr. Lobo’s secretary, Reba Nosoff, described Dr. Cha as a visiting professor and said he had completed the study without Dr. Lobo’s help … Dr. Cha, said Ms. Nosoff, “brought this study to Dr. Lobo to go over because he could hardly believe the results. Dr. Lobo said it’s a good study, and it is proper. So he put his stamp of approval on it, that’s all.” … [The DHHS’] research-protections office said in the letter that it would not take action against Columbia in part because Dr. Lobo “first learned of the study from Dr. Cha 6-12 months after the study was completed. Dr. Lobo primarily provided editorial review and assistance with publication.”

Ah, the old stamp of approval. I need to get one of those, to increase my publication count. Dr Cha was not available for comment. As Bellesiles had his Cramer and Lott his Lambert, these guys had Bruce Flamm, an OB/GYN who teaches at Irvine. He wrote letters to the journal, but didn’t get any satisfaction so he wrote an article for Skeptic Magazine instead. Apparently he and others had complained about the paper, which had a bizarre and indefensible research design on top of everything else. The Journal dropped the paper from its website after Flamm published his article and are claiming the “paper is being scrutinized, and there will be a statement that will appear in a forthcoming issue.” Meanwhile, both Cha and Lobo have managed to avoid getting quoted directly about their role. I pray that we’ll hear from them soon.

Posted on June 8, 2004 11:57 PM UTC
Comments

If anyone’s curious, Bob did a post a while back with links to studies of intercessory prayer.

Posted by ogged · June 9, 2004 12:17 AM

None of which were conducted under adequate controls.

Posted by fyreflye · June 9, 2004 12:25 AM

Well now what I want to know is, if intercessory prayer worked, wouldn’t all UK monarchs live to be about 150? Considering how often the words ‘God save the Queen [King]’ get said? Of course they would. That study’s been done, dude.

Posted by Ophelia Benson · June 9, 2004 12:35 AM

if intercessory prayer worked, wouldn’t all UK monarchs live to be about 150? … That study’s been done, dude.

Ha! QED, man. QED.

Posted by Kieran Healy · June 9, 2004 12:48 AM

Perhaps someone could do a study to see if having people pray for you increases your chances of beating federal fraud charges……

Posted by Mike G · June 9, 2004 12:51 AM

Yeah — these studies that show the healing qualities of prayer (and a positive mindset) are invaribly debunked upon closer examination.

The question to my mind is why do so many smart people desperately want to believe them?

Posted by hmmm · June 9, 2004 12:54 AM

It is amazing that because he put a “stamp of approval on it” he got to become one of the authors of the paper.

Would being the named author of a ground-breaking study bring praise? If the study had won prizes, would the guy have come out with the “stamp of approval on it” statement.

Maybe a paper should have two categories of names: those who wrote it, and those who approved of it.

Posted by q · June 9, 2004 01:15 AM

I’ll just remind everyone that my stamp of approval comes with a free Erdos number of 4, and I let you keep senior authorship.

Obviously my instinct for self-protection was working when I proposed this deal - if Lobo were a junior author it would be much easier to weasel out of the problems he faces.

Posted by John Quiggin · June 9, 2004 01:42 AM

Actually, from what I understand about medical publishing, you get to be a co-author if at any point in time you proof read any part of the paper.

Posted by Rob · June 9, 2004 01:56 AM

John Quiggan-
I would like to take you up on your offer and proof read your next paper.

I wonder what is the maximum number of names you can have on a paper?

Posted by q · June 9, 2004 02:21 AM

Obviously the prayer was only strong enough to work if all other in-vitro procedures were correctly done. Otherwise you could just pray for the woman to be pregnant.

For a control study perhaps we could have people praying for a nice spontaneous abortion and see how that works.

Posted by Zizka · June 9, 2004 03:44 AM

Zizka- The issue at hand does not deserve a remark in such poor taste as that.

Posted by DCharles · June 9, 2004 04:32 AM

You could call it focused meditation instead. Even that’s culturally loaded. Believers see proof of their belief in everything that moves, especially the unusual. Miracles prove the validity of whatever brand name’s on the act.
It’s just that religionists and credulous occultists are the only ones simple-minded enough to expose themselves to the raw heat of public consumption and cynical examination. Besides charlatans and quacks.
What’s the motive? Imagine a woman with three breasts. Is she going to call up the National Enquirer? Why? Besides venality.
You expect telepaths to come forward and submit themselves to the testing and investigative techniques of a discipline that has no qualms about cutting into the skull of a living chimpanzee, for “research” - and that’s just one instance of psychopathic butchery in a catalog of depraved inhuman practices that is nauseatingly lengthy.
You want the psychically sensitive to walk into the maw of that demonic church? For what? The amazing Randi’s million bucks? Dream on.
You’re looking for the “natural”, the clairvoyant hick with no tradition behind him; no cult, no priesthood, no already-on war between good and evil.
As opposed to the combative dualities that bifurcate virtually every other human enterprise.
-
Anyone who’s performed successfully in front of a large crowd has experienced something like the will of the group mind, which is like focused prayer in its intensity, and can be felt long after the actual performance, for better or worse.

Posted by msg · June 9, 2004 06:30 AM

Does anybody know whether Galton’s study, using prayers for the monarch as sample, controlled for the fact that most people engaging in public ceremonies are probably just going through the motions, whereas prayers for Mrs Bloggs are mainly from her friends, or at least fellow parishioners, who actually give a damn?

Posted by chris · June 9, 2004 07:14 AM

q, you misinterpret my offer. To be clear, you write the paper, I supply the stamp of approval.

Posted by John Quiggin · June 9, 2004 08:04 AM

The behavior of the journal editors here appears utterly disgraceful. As Belle said in another context, their families must really be in need of having more time spent with them.

Posted by John Quiggin · June 9, 2004 08:10 AM

With regard to the monarchs, one lacks a control sample. Maybe medieval monarchs would have lasted about a week without all that intercessory prayer.

Posted by Andrew Chen · June 9, 2004 09:35 AM

The issue at hand is a ludicrous piece of superstition.

Posted by Zizka · June 9, 2004 01:25 PM

With regard to the monarchs, one lacks a control sample.

How about Prime Ministers as the control? Nobody ever says “God Save the PM,” right?

Posted by Stentor · June 9, 2004 02:26 PM

A late reply to Ophelia: your point would be conclusive if “saying prayers” and “praying” were one and the same thing. Millions have said “God Save the [Monarch],” not so many have meant it.

Plus there’s the problem of what is meant by “save” — maybe none of the English monarchs have gone to hell . . . yet . . .

Posted by Ayjay · June 9, 2004 05:03 PM

Seriously, as C. S. Lewis pointed out many years ago, a “study” of this kind (whether methodologically sound or not) will always be theologically flawed. The problem is that the only motive one can have for praying for one set of people and not praying for another set is to find out what happens. In other words, you’re not really praying, you’re just saying the words of prayers. You can’t possibily have any legitimate reason for wanting Woman A to get pregnant and Woman B not to. You’re just trying to “test” God, and this is something Jesus explicitly forbade, so any Christian who participates in such an experiment is being disobedient.

Q.E.D.

Posted by Ayjay · June 9, 2004 05:09 PM

I can think of many legitimate and theologically sound reasons to pray for Woman A to get pregnant while not praying for Woman B. The most obvious one: Woman A is my wife, Woman B is a stranger. I have lousy sperm. I know nothing comparable about Woman B’s husband, though her having three kids suggests that Woman A and I need God’s help and Woman B and her husband do not.

Posted by C.J.Colucci · June 9, 2004 05:18 PM

To c.j.c.: My point was that the participants in the experiment were unable to make the distinction you just made: between people we know and love and people we don’t. They were given photographs of people to pray for, and were not given the photographs of another group of women with the same interests. But there can be no legitimate “spiritual” reason to pray for the women in Group A and ignore the women in Group B. It’s not like the women in Group A are either more deserving or more important to the people doing the praying. It’s an utterly false situation — whereas there is nothing false about praying for one’s spouse while not praying for a stranger. To the contrary; one has more reasons to pray for the wellbeing of loved ones than to pray for the well-being of strangers. But even at that, there can be no justifiable moral or spiritual reason to refuse to pray for someone simply because she is a stranger. The situation of the experiment is therefore one that does not correspond to anyone’s real wishes for the women involved. As Lewis put it in his essay on “The Efficacy of Prayer,” the stated interests of the people doing the praying are at variance with their real interests. It’s therefore like trying to play a trick on God.

Posted by Ayjay · June 9, 2004 08:01 PM

Ayjay — that doesn’t seem quite right to me — the purity of intention of the test subjects (the supplicants) need not be blemished by the nefarious intentions of the people running the test. If the subjects were given some photos, and told “these women are barren — pray for them to become fertile” — could they not sincerely and legitimately pray for an end to the strangers’ misfortunes? They need not have known anything about a separate group of strangers for whom they were not to pray. (And yes, granted the whole thing is silly and lame — I just don’t see how this objection would necessarily hold true.)

Posted by Jeremy Osner · June 9, 2004 08:47 PM

Jeremy, it seems to me that. for the experiment to work, the pray-ers would have to know not only whom to pray for, but also whom not to pray for. Not in detail, of course — not a list of names of Women to Ignore. But presumably they would need to be told to pray for the women in Group A only — that is, make a point of not praying for (say) all women who wanted to get pregnant through in vitro, or even all local women who were going the in vitro route. Otherwise the control group could be contaminated, and the experimental results compromised. So, again, since the pray-ers could have no legitimate religious reason to pray for some people and avoid praying for others, in the end they are simply saying prayer-like words in order to find out what happens when you use such words, rather than actually praying.

I push these points because you just have to think about how you might do this experiment correctly in order to realize what a ridiculous thing it is to attempt, both from a scientific and from a religious point of view.

Posted by Ayjay · June 9, 2004 09:50 PM

What I’m actually concerned about is this: What if there’s a nefarious group of right-wing pronatalists who are constantly praying for everyone’s contraceptives to fail? Because some people do believe that contraception goes against God’s will.

Posted by Maureen · June 9, 2004 10:31 PM

Well, at least it keeps them busy and so not doing other things that might actually make something happen.

Posted by Ophelia Benson · June 10, 2004 01:31 AM

Ignore the praying for infertile women and so on. The story is the strangeness of the two co-conspirators, Wirth and Horvath:

The other of Mr. Weird’s no, Wirth’s papers were in Healing Sciences Research International, 29 Orinda Way, Box 1888, Orinda, CA 94563—some sort of weird front Wirth and his co-conspirator Horvath used.

The end of the story: Horvath got an IT job, using the false identity John Wayne Truelove, at Adelphia’s Buffalo office in 1999, and from September 2001 to March 2002, funneled 12 payments to Daniel Wirth, totalling $2.1 million for “computer consulting.”

Wirth and Horvath have been friends and co….dupers? Delusionists? since they both were at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda (where Wirth got his law degree). In 1990, Horvath was jailed for fraud (at that time he was using the identity of a child who had died in 1957, Joseph Hessler. The fraud charge came about because Horvath claimed he had been robbed of a $30,000 night deposit.

“John Wayne Truelove” is another dead child, this one died in 1959. Both Horvath and Truelove have used the Truelove identity—Horvath to buy a bungalow in and burn it down for the insurance payment; Wirth, in the 1980s, to obtain a passport and obtain a passport and rent apartments in California. Additionally, Wirth was “ Rudy Wirth” to establish an address in New York and claim social security benefits. The real Rudy Wirth died in 1998.

Wirth and Horvath originally claimed innocence (of the defrauding Adelphi, itself full of fraudsters as it turns out) but evidently arrainged a plea bargain, as they pled guilty to fewer charges just before the case was to go to trial.

Posted by liz · June 10, 2004 06:29 AM

Ignore the praying for infertile women and so on. The story is the strangeness of the two co-conspirators, Wirth and Horvath:

The other of Mr. Weird’s no, Wirth’s papers were in Healing Sciences Research International, 29 Orinda Way, Box 1888, Orinda, CA 94563—some sort of weird front Wirth and his co-conspirator Horvath used.

The end of the story: Horvath got an IT job, using the false identity John Wayne Truelove, at Adelphia’s Buffalo office in 1999, and from September 2001 to March 2002, funneled 12 payments to Daniel Wirth, totalling $2.1 million for “computer consulting.”

Wirth and Horvath have been friends and co….dupers? Delusionists? since they both were at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda (where Wirth got his law degree). In 1990, Horvath was jailed for fraud (at that time he was using the identity of a child who had died in 1957, Joseph Hessler. The fraud charge came about because Horvath claimed he had been robbed of a $30,000 night deposit.

“John Wayne Truelove” is another dead child, this one died in 1959. Both Horvath and Truelove have used the Truelove identity—Horvath to buy a bungalow in and burn it down for the insurance payment; Wirth, in the 1980s, to obtain a passport and obtain a passport and rent apartments in California. Additionally, Wirth was “ Rudy Wirth” to establish an address in New York and claim social security benefits. The real Rudy Wirth died in 1998.

Wirth and Horvath originally claimed innocence (of the defrauding Adelphi, itself full of fraudsters as it turns out) but evidently arrainged a plea bargain, as they pled guilty to fewer charges just before the case was to go to trial.

Posted by liz · June 10, 2004 06:31 AM

There was a good documentary about a similar experiment. There were also interesting comments by theologians and rabbis who were critical of the idea of such a test from a religious point of view. I wonder why even that doesn’t bother those believers who support this kind of “research” approach.

Anyhow, I would love to see more experiments like that, if only they were conducted by this guy

Posted by pepi · June 10, 2004 10:38 AM

ayjay - You’re just trying to “test” God, and this is something Jesus explicitly forbade, so any Christian who participates in such an experiment is being disobedient. (…) It’s therefore like trying to play a trick on God. (…) a ridiculous thing both from a scientific and from a religious point of view.

From the article I linked:

Many theologians say that, even if you believe in the power of intercessory prayer, such a trial is doomed to failure because it “puts God to the test” - and there are clear instructions in the Bible not to do this. The Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Tom Wright, said: “Prayer is not a penny in the slot machine. You can’t just put in a coin and get out a chocolate bar. This is like setting an exam for God to see if God will pass it or not.”

I remember Jewish theologians expressing the same perplexity. I believe the slot-maching idea of prayer is not exactly endorsed by other major religions either.

Another interesting thing in that documentary was that some of the Christian prayer groups interviewed were voicing their annoyment about having their prayers “counted” together on an equal level with the prayers from Muslims, Buddhists, and other religions.

They did not address that theological aspect at all, but, especially after the results came out and were inconclusive, argued that the studies were flawed on the basis of their being “multi-faith” - see this for instance:

Some of the studied performed to date have involved multi-faith teams involved in intercessory prayer. For example, the Targ study involved Jewish, Native American,  perhaps a follower of the New Age, and probably others. The MANTRA study involved Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and perhaps others. It might be revealing to further analyze the data to differentiate among the various religions followed by the prayer groups. Conceivably, prayers from followers of one or more of the religions could be shown to be more effective that the others. That would be a remarkable result! It might give some insight into the nature of God: whether God prefers one religion over others, or all religions equally.

That’s just the kind of research the world needs, isn’t it?

Posted by pepi · June 10, 2004 11:19 AM

It seems obligatory in this thread to recall Littlewood’s law of miracles, which states that each person averages one miracle a month. He arrives at this by estimating how many “events” one sees in a month, and assuming that anything with odds of a million to one or more against counts as a miracle.

In contexts like this. Littlewood should never be forgotten.

Posted by Jonathan Goldberg · June 10, 2004 02:32 PM

” if intercessory prayer worked, wouldn’t all UK monarchs live to be about 150? … That study’s been done, dude.

Ha! QED, man. QED.”

Ah, but the prayers for the monarch’s health are cancelled out by the FTQ graffiti and accompanying sentiments in the Catholic-areas of Northern Ireland.

Posted by Tom · June 11, 2004 06:22 PM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.