How would you test that without contamination though? Seems suspect. Like "Research shows link between consumption of ovaltine and premarital abstenence." Time back into the past, not ovaltine consumption, is the real x-axis.
I don't really belive. But I will LARP for you.
There have been quite a few studies into it over the years. As a rule of thumb either it doesn't work or initially it appears to work but then the data gets debunked.
Sicher
In 1998 Fred Sicher et al. supposedly performed a small scale double-blind randomized study of 40 patients with advanced
AIDS.
[14][15] The patients were in category C-3 with
CD4 cell counts below 200 and each had at least one case of AIDS-defining illness.
[16] The patients were randomly assigned to receive distant intercessory healing or none at all. The intercession took place by people in different parts of the United States who never had any contact with the patients. Both patients and physicians were blind to who received or did not receive intercession.
[16] Six months later the prayer group had fewer AIDS illnesses, less frequent doctor visits, and fewer days in the hospital.
[15] However, CD4 counts and scores on other
physiological tests had no significant variation between the two groups of patients.
[16]
Years later this study was debunked. The original research showed no significance so the researchers went
data dredging. They isolated the few statistical figures that were significant and discarded the rest, including one metric which showed prayer had a negative outcome.
[17] A later study which attempted to replicate the original found no significant difference between the study group and the control group.
[18]
ayo clinic
A 2001 double-blind study at the
Mayo Clinic randomized 799 discharged coronary surgery patients into a
control group and an intercessory prayer group, which received prayers at least once a week from 5 intercessors per patient. Analyzing "primary end points" (death, cardiac arrest, rehospitalization, etc.) after 26 weeks, the researchers concluded "intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a coronary care unit."
[19]
