In a study that spanned a decade and included more than 1,800 patients, researchers have concluded that prayer is not effective in speeding recovery after surgery. This is big news for those who have relied on prayer as legitimate aspect of complementary and alternative medicine.

The study, which was scheduled to run in this week's addition of the American Heart Journal (but was published online late last week), found that prayer was not only ineffective in helping post-operative recovery, but it also had a detrimental affect on patients. Those who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms. Researches attribute this to the expectations the prayers created.

In a recent press conference, the study's authors, led by Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute said that the study is not the final assessment of the power of intercessory prayer (prayer on behalf of others).

Some experts are debating the relevance and efficacy of studying prayer at all. "The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion," said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University and author of the upcoming book, Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine.

[via New York Times]

Image: cenaclesisters.org