One problem with this line of research.

What constitutes a "dose" of prayer? How does one define prayer? Is channeling Buddhist intention or reiki energy the same thing as praying to a Judeo-Christian God? And how do you determine whether it was prayer that made a patient better, or something else, such as the placebo effect?

"There are enormous methodological and conceptual problems with the studies of distant prayer," said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University in New York.

There's a lot of stuff about being human that at first blush looks to be non-physical in derivation (like mob psychology) because we only directly perceive the effect of whatever causes it. I think the recently discovered mirror neurons and the placebo effect are at the root of much of it. But you can't get 15 grams of placebo effect either.

Anyway, this is beyond testing scientifically.

Far-off healing
Many Americans pray for the health of loved ones; others turn to shamans or reiki. Now science is putting these practices to the test.
By Hilary E. MacGregor
Times Staff Writer
May 2, 2005

On an operating table at a medical center in San Francisco, a breast cancer patient is undergoing reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy. But this will be no ordinary surgery. Three thousand miles away, a shamanic healer has been sent the woman's name, a photo and details about the surgery.

For each of the next eight days, the healer will pray 20 minutes for the cancer patient's recovery, without the woman's knowledge. A surgeon has inserted two small fabric tubes into the woman's groin to enable researchers to measure how fast she heals.

The woman is a patient in an extraordinary government-funded study that is seeking to determine whether prayer has the power to heal patients from afar àa field known as "distant healing." While that term is probably unfamiliar to most Americans, the idea of turning to prayers in their homes, hospitals and houses of worship is not. In recent years, medicine has increasingly shown an interest in investigating the effect of prayer and spirituality on health. A survey of 31,000 adults released last year by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 43% of U.S. adults prayed for their own health, while 24% had others pray for their health.

Some researchers say that is reason enough to study the power of prayer.