296 mind
table14.1 Mean Age Attained by Males of Various Classes Who Had Survived
Their 30th Year, from 1758 to 1843
In Number Average Eminent Men
Members of Royal houses 97 64.04
Clergy 945 69.49 66.42
Lawyers 294 68.14 66.51
Medical Profession 244 67.31 67.07
English aristocracy 1,179 67.31
Gentry 1,632 70.22
Trade and commerce 513 68.74
Officers in the Royal Navy 366 68.40
English literature and science 395 67.55 65.22
Officers of the Army 659 67.07
Fine Arts 239 65.96 64.74
Note:Deaths by accident are excluded.
Source:Galton, Francis. “Statistical inquiries into the efficacy of prayer.”Fortnightly Review,12 (1872): 125–135.efficacy to a number. Whatever the validity of this theological objection, the
idea that prayer’s efficacy should in principle be scientifically testable has per-
sisted in our own time. Today, however, it is most vigorously defended,notby
those with a secular agenda or an anticlerical ax to grind, but by people who
see themselves as working on behalf of God and faith. God’s reality and power
will be vindicated by the very same scientific methodologies that, for so long,
have had the effect of undermining faith in both.
The specific scientific methodology that is used is one that was originally
designed to control for the influence of unwanted psychological factors when
testing for the efficacy of drugs: the randomized placebo-controlled clinical
trial, The hope is that this method will allow researchers to distinguish all
known natural factors that might broadly cause religion to be good for one’s
health from the supernatural effects of prayer.
The best-known study in this vein is that of Randolph Byrd, who studied
393 patients admitted to the coronary care unit of the San Francisco General
Hospital.^27 The patients were randomly assigned into two groups, one of which
was prayed for and another that was not (there was no attempt to stop family
members and others from praying for the people in the control group, leading
to rather odd discussions about the effects of “background” prayer and “prayer
dosage”). The so-called intercessors or “pray-ers” were all self-identified born-
again Christians who already claimed to pray daily and to go to church. Their
assignment was to pray daily for a speedy recovery of “their” patients with no
complications.
The results showed no difference in the speed of recovery between the two
groups, but Byrd found that, on 6 out of 26 kinds of possible complications,
the prayed-for patients did better on a statistically significant level than the