This article originally appeared in The Skeptic, Volume 3, Issue 3, from 1989.
A few months ago, The Skeptic reader Cyril James wrote to me asking if I could track down a reference he had seen in New Scientist to a Northern Irish study of the efficacy of prayer. I suggested he write to ask the author of the original piece. Recently, Mr James wrote again to say that the author — Martin Schatzman — had written back promptly and obligingly with details.
Schatzman enclosed a couple of pages from P.B. Medawar’s Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought, published by Methuen, 1969 (and the American Philosophical Society, 1960). These refer to a study by Francis Galton in 1872. Galton’s purpose in writing his Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer (published by the Fortnightly Review, 1 August, 1872) was, Medawar says, to show that a scientific study could be done.
Galton chose three different lines of enquiry. First, he examined the effect of prayers upon the longevity of the Queen and other members of the royal family (they are, one must presume, prayed for a great deal). Then he compared the rates of stillbirths between the devout and the professional classes generally. And third, he considered the fact that insurance companies make no inquiry into the devoutness of applicants for policies.
Galton found that, excluding accidental and violent deaths, in fact the Royal Family live a shorter time than the other classifications he examined. In all fairness, I have to point out that the clergy live longest of all the groups listed in his table!
He compared stillbirths reported in the clerical newspaper The Record and in The Times, and found the rates the same. And Galton pointed out, “How is it possible to explain why Quakers, who are most devout and most shrewd men of business, have ignored [the considerations of whether the insured-to-be is devout and prays daily], except on the grounds that they do not really believe in what they and others freely assert about the efficacy of prayer?”
Mr James adds that his wife worked for thirteen years as a night nurse in a cancer hospital, and noticed over time that prayers said by and for those under her care made no difference to their survival rate. A hospital chaplain Mr James heard on BBC Radio 4 had noticed a similar effect. and was disturbed to find, when he took careful notes, that he had confirmed it.
Mr James finished up by commenting on the appearance of one of the British Archbishops on television, when said clergyman commented about prayer that, one, Yes you can pray, but don’t expect anything to happen’ and two, ‘Just because you believe something doesn’t make it true.” I have myself been told that ‘you can’t bargain with God,’ and ‘you can’t just ask for birthday presents.”
I remember a devout person I knew explaining: ‘God won’t always give you what you ask for—it might not be good for you.’ (Do we know unequivocally that death is a bad thing? Remember the Afterlife.) In which case, since God knows what I need, why pray at all, except to say generally, “Thy will be done.” Which, if God’s up there, it will be anyway.
One must presume, therefore, that the efficacy of prayer lies in the person’s feeling of contact with Someone Up There who knows what’s going on. In very hard times and frightening circumstances, that sense of reassurance may be a cause for atheists to envy the faithful.
