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Tomorrow, the American Heart Journal will officially publish what is sure to be a controversial study about the power of prayer for people undergoing surgery. The conclusion of the study? The issue needs to be researched more.

Still, a 2004 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study [PDF] said that about 43 percent of Americans pray for their own health, and roughly one in four were prayed for by others. The CDC study also says that almost 10 percent of Americans prayed for themselves as part of a prayer group.  

Beliefnet has an article on a study of intercessory prayer. 

Critics of this kind of test wonder whether God would participate in a test of his ability to heal a patient. Throughout the Bible, God took a dim view of people testing him.   

The New York Times summarized it this way on Friday:

Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.

Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.

The question has been a contentious one among researchers. Proponents have argued that prayer is perhaps the most deeply human response to disease, and that it may relieve suffering by some mechanism that is not yet understood. Skeptics have contended that studying prayer is a waste of money and that it presupposes supernatural intervention, putting it by definition beyond the reach of science.

At least 10 studies of the effects of prayer have been carried out in the last six years, with mixed results. The new study was intended to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations. The report was scheduled to appear in the American Heart Journal next week, but the journal's publisher released it online yesterday.

In a hurriedly convened news conference, the study's authors, led by Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston, said that the findings were not the last word on the effects of so-called intercessory prayer. But the results, they said, raised questions about how and whether patients should be told that prayers were being offered for them.

"One conclusion from this is that the role of awareness of prayer should be studied further," said Dr. Charles Bethea, a cardiologist at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and a co-author of the study.

In 2005, The Washington Post reported:

Surveys have shown that millions of Americans routinely pray when they are ill or when someone they know is. A growing body of evidence has found that religious people tend to be healthier than average, and that people who pray when they are ill are likely to fare better than those who do not. Many researchers think religious belief and practice can help people by providing social support and fostering positive emotions, which may produce beneficial responses by the body. 

In January, ABC News reported the early foundations of a study to be released this year. This one involves cancer patients.  

Last year, New York's Daily News ran a story that suggested religious belief benefits patients in other ways. Doctors reported that patients who had a deep sense of faith were less depressed and seemed to endure treatment better.

Reservists Having Job Troubles

The Chicago Sun-Times said that more reservists are filing complaints about employers who are not following the law:

With reservists away from their jobs more, some employers are balking at holding those jobs for them when they return, as federal law requires. Others are laying off or firing reservists and guardsmen, or making things so uncomfortable they quit, a Chicago Sun- Times investigation found.

The number of complaints filed with the U.S. Labor Department accusing employers of job discrimination against reservists and guardsmen went up 38 percent from the military buildup that began after the Sept. 11 attacks until 2005 -- from 908 complaints in 2001 to 1,465. It dipped last year to 1,320 -- a decline the Labor Department attributes to its aggressive efforts to get the word out to employers about the law. Illinois has seen a similar pattern of complaints.

The story continued:

Some companies say they're just watching the bottom line and can't afford to be without their employees for the extended periods now demanded of them -- though, in interviews, no employer would complain on the record, citing fears their comments might be viewed as unpatriotic or as an admission they discriminate.

"From an employer's point of view, hiring a National Guardsman or reservist is a riskier venture that could potentially lead to higher costs," says Victor Devinatz, a professor at Illinois State University's College of Business whose specialty is labor and management. "They might want to be patriotic and support the war, but they also have a business to run."

The Poor Play the Lotto

North Carolina just started its new lottery. The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer wanted to know who would likely play the numbers. So, the Observer looked next door to South Carolina and found that those who can afford to play the least actually play the most. The paper sorted lottery sales by ZIP code and median income. This method could be used anywhere to analyze who is playing your state lottery. A few years ago, The Chicago Reporter found similar results. The Observer said:

In South Carolina, The Observer found that lower-income people spend more. People earning less than $30,000 a year spent an estimated $627 per household annually, nearly triple the spending of those making more than $50,000.
 

It's not immediately clear why that is, Cook said. But race could be one of the factors.

Minorities have historically been over-represented among lottery players. In South Carolina, households with the same income levels in predominantly black neighborhoods generally spent more money than people in predominantly white neighborhoods.

S.C. Education Lottery director Ernie Passailaigue acknowledged the lottery has a higher player base among moderate- to low-income people.

"The common old wives' tale is (that) the only people who play the lottery are poor people or only minorities, and they spend their entire paycheck on the lottery," he said. "That is not the statistical norm... Are there some people playing who shouldn't be playing and spending too much? Sure... What you hope happens is adults make wise decisions."

Scratch Games Less of Sucker Bet

No lottery is a good bet, but I did learn something from this story on MSN/Money. Scratch-off games are a better bet than lotto games. The story said:  

Go ahead, scratch in public. "In just about every case, the scratch tickets are a better bet than the lottery," [Don] Catlin, [a retired mathematics professor,] says. The lottery usually returns about half of the money to the players. By contrast, most states' scratch games return close to 60 percent or more.  

Beware the stale game. People often don't realize that scratch games aren't finished when someone wins the biggest prize; the tickets are left out until they're all sold. That means you might be buying a ticket to a game in which there's no chance for a juicy payday, says Chris Gudgeon, co-author of "Luck of the Draw: True-Life Tales of Lottery Winners and Losers." Gudgeon's advice: Avoid scratch games that have been lingering near the Slurpee machine for ages. "If you're buying the scratch-and-wins, particularly the seasonal ones, don't buy a Christmas one at the following Halloween," he says. "There's a very good chance that all of the prizes are gone."