Posted on: Saturday, September 4, 2004
Prayer/pregnancy findings losing credence
By Jeff Gottlieb
Los Angeles Times
The medical study had profound implications, apparently offering scientific proof of the power of prayer, even the existence of God.
The article, with two Columbia University physicians listed as authors, said that women undergoing in-vitro fertilization treatments in South Korea were twice as likely to conceive when strangers prayed for them.
Making the findings even more spectacular was that the women didn't even know they were being prayed for.
The doctor identified as the lead researcher told The New York Times that he and his colleagues found the results so improbable that they debated whether to publish them.
But questions about the study began soon after its publication in the September 2001 issue of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. Several researchers, led by Dr. Bruce Flamm, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente in Riverside, Calif., and a clinical professor at the University of CaliforniaiIrvine Medical School, questioned the study's methodology.
Flamm found it so complicated as to be almost unexplainable. And the authors said several times that the women didn't know they were in an experiment, which would be considered a serious ethical breach. Flamm wrote critical letters and e-mails to the journal's editors and the scientists. He called. He left messages. And for nearly three years, he has been ignored.
Then something happened that attracted attention to the study once more.
The third researcher on the prayer study, Daniel Wirth, pleaded guilty in Pennsylvania to federal charges of embezzling $2 million from Adelphia Communications by submitting fictitious invoices for consulting services. Indicted on charges that included using false identities for decades, Wirth pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.
Even though the journal identified Wirth as a lawyer, critics knew him for his articles on psychic healing in less scholarly journals, including a study claiming prayer had helped salamanders regenerate limbs.
Wirth, who is listed on the study as "Dr. Wirth" — apparently in reference to his juris doctor degree — also has a master's degree in parapsychology from John F. Kennedy University, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Flamm's concerns about the prayer study's credibility, detailed in an article he wrote that will be published this week in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, started to gain recognition with the spreading news of the indictment. "I had no idea this guy was going to do me the favor of getting arrested," Flamm said.
Questions remain. Why have the journal and the authors ignored Flamm's questions, especially because scientific journals typically provide a forum for debate by printing critical letters along with the authors' responses? How did two professors from Columbia University Medical Center get mixed up with Wirth? How did such a seemingly questionable study pass the peer-review process at the journal?
The journal recently took the prayer study off its Web site — not as a retraction, but because the publication was receiving so much "traffic" over the article that its small staff couldn't keep up, said Dr. Lawrence Devoe, the journal's editor, who said he was going through mail generated
by the prayer study and would send it to the authors for their response. "It will take some time," he said.
Marilyn Castaldi, a spokeswoman for Columbia's medical center, said a six-member faculty committee began an inquiry last month.
Dr. Rogerio Lobo, one of the study's authors and then-chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia's College of Physicians & Surgeons, said the authors stood by the study.
"Oh, my God," said Lobo, who promoted the story in the national media. "Why won't this stuff just go away?"
The other author, Dr. Kwang Y. Cha, a professor in South Korea working with Lobo during a yearlong sabbatical, did not return calls seeking comment. He is medical director of the Cha Fertility Clinic in Los Angeles.
Wirth's attorney said he had advised his client not to comment.
The study said that women undergoing in-vitro fertilization, where the egg is fertilized outside the body and implanted in the womb, had a 50 percent pregnancy rate when people were praying for them, compared with a 26 percent pregnancy rate for women who had no one praying for them. The women underwent the procedure in a Seoul hospital.
Christians in the United States, Canada and Australia were faxed unidentified photographs of the women and asked to pray that "God's will or desire be fulfilled."
Some Christian groups embraced the study, encouraged to know that one of the most prestigious medical schools in the country was alleging scientific proof that prayer works. Scientists, by implication, were saying that God existed.
Flamm noticed the study when a nurse dropped a copy of the journal on his desk.
"The first thing I noticed was (that) it made an apparently miraculous claim," he said. "I'm not accustomed in my medical career to seeing a miracle cure."
Flamm, who attended the University of CaliforniaiRiverside as an undergraduate and received his medical degree from Wake Forest University, will not divulge his religion, if he has one, saying it shouldn't make a difference.
"Religions base things on faith," he said. "A scientist should look at things scientifically, based on the merits."
He also found problems with the study's scientific design and had other questions. If prayer were so powerful, why did the women need to use in-vitro fertilization? Why were the prayers to a Christian God? What about Buddhists, Jews, Muslims and others? Was God punishing the women who didn't get pregnant?
Flamm sent his criticisms and assumed the Journal of Reproductive Medicine would address his concerns by printing his letter and the authors' response, but his letters weren't printed.
Flamm spoke in early 2002 to the journal's managing editor, Donna Kessel. He said Kessel told him that she was aware of his concerns but that "we don't want to add fuel to the flames. We won't publish anything else." Then she hung up.
Kessel did not return calls.
Wirth faces the possibility of a maximum sentence of five years. Sentencing is set for Sept. 14.
