Living on a prayer. Or not.

The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin) informs me that a "Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer". It goes on to say:

"Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

"And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

"Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation."

And they've spent $2.3 million on this so far.

You just gotta love Americans, scientists and American scientists.

Something about this whole scenario intrigues me: using science to investigate whether religion works. That's like appointing a teetotaller as a wine-taster. Or putting a vegetarian in charge of Angus Steak House's kitchen. It can be done, but what would be the point?

If you have faith, no amount of scientific study is going to convince you otherwise. And if you don't, then you don't need the scientific study anyway. Not this particular one, that is.