[PatrickHenry]

I recall reading something long ago about such studies, and I came away from the article realizing how difficult it is to control for all the potential variables. It's like the studies we often see showing longer lifespans for married men. What does that prove about marriage itself? Many of the perpetually sick, the winos, the derranged, career criminals, the alternate lifestyle types, and other such marital undesirables would be "naturally" excluded from the population of married men, thus skewing the results.

Similarly, among the people prayed for and who recovered, were some of them "naturally" in better shape, merely because they were already healthy enough to be regularly attending church, had a large support group, etc.? It might be that a group of gregarious people and a group of sullen loners would exhibit wildly different health statistics, prayers or no prayers. In other words, it's difficult in such studies to avoid playing with a stacked deck.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post!

Indeed, in any such formal study it must be much easier to collect the information than to understand it.