Your Tax Dollars at Pray

I wish I could say that this is an example of Engrish but, alas, it is not. I did say "pray." I'll let the rest of the blogosphere prattle on about Dan Rather today. I have bigger fish to fry.

One of the more annoying stipulations of the training grant that funds my research is the fact that it requires me to audit an "Ethics in Science" course. Since most of the others in the course have political beliefs spanning the whole gamut from liberal Democrat to Communist, I get to hear plenty about the "conflicts of interest" "inherent" in corporate-funded research, but nothing about the inevitable problems that will arise when the state has a stranglehold on research. (Have any of these people ever heard of Lysenko?)

It's really galling to have to listen to people who operate on the assumption that "the government" is somehow magically immune from the foibles or the ideology of its officials. (In fact, since the government is the sole social institution that legally wields force, it is far more susceptible.) Worse still, there are many examples of research out there that indicate that there are problems in research that lie deeper than just ethics. I ran across this example today in the article "Praying for Credibility" from my email subscription to The Scientist. Yes. The title of the journal article under discussion really is, "Does prayer influence the success of in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer? Report of a masked, randomized trial." And yes, it did get published as the lead article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. And yes, the last author is a faculty member at Columbia University. According to the U.K. Observer,

The study claimed to show that a woman's chances of conceiving through IVF [in vitro fertilization] treatment doubled when someone prayed for them. 'IVF is a very difficult procedure. Increasing the success rate by 100 per cent would be a huge breakthrough, a revolution,' said [Dr Bruce] Flamm[, a clinical professor at the University of California].

The journal article, predictably, has been examined and found wanting by Dr. Flamm. Among the more interesting objections:

The authors claim that "we set out with the expectation that we would show no benefit of intercessory prayer." This is a questionable claim for at least 2 reasons. First, many studies have failed to demonstrate any medical benefit of intercessory prayer. It would seem doubtful that anyone would embark upon an international study of this magnitude to simply add another negative study [3,4]. Second, 1 of the study's 3 authors has a long history of publications that appear to support spiritual and prayer-based faith healing [5-11].

[T]o demonstrate a lack of bias, the authors point out that, "none of the authors are [sic] employed by religious organizations, and we were not asked by any religious groups to conduct this trial, nor did we seek religious advice at any time." However, the authors did not disclose any other religious affiliations that could introduce bias. Most people engage in religious organizations as volunteers, not as paid employees. A later comment stated that, "most intercessors were known to one author." The reader ... can surmise that at least one of the researchers had attachments to some of the participants, since most of these extremely religious people were "known to one author."

Recent developments have raised questions about the study's raw data. Dr. Lobo, identified by the New York Times and ABC News as the report's lead author, now claims to have not been involved with the study until after its completion and to have provided only "editorial assistance." Both he and Dr. Cha have refused to respond to phone calls or letters about the study. The remaining author, Daniel Wirth, has no medical degree but has published many studies claiming to support the existence of paranormal phenomena. Many of these studies originated from an entity called, "Healing Sciences Research International," an organization that he supposedly headed. This entity's only known address was apparently a Post Office box in Orinda California. Wirth holds an MS degree is in the dubious field of "parapsychology" and also has a law degree.

In April 2004, Wirth and an accomplice (Joseph Horvath) pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and bank fraud and agreed to forfeit assets of more than $1 million acquired through their schemes. Documents in the case indicate that the pair used assumed names, obtained bogus identifying documents, and obtained employment with a large financial institution from which Horvath improperly paid to Wirth for alleged services [13]. Wirth's long pattern of dishonest behavior raises the question about whether the studies in which he was involved actually took place and, if so, whether the results were reported honestly.

The Observer goes on to reveal that Dr. Wirth, aside from producing questionable research, has quite the checkered past.

FBI papers filed during the case also show that Wirth has used a series of false identities over the years. In the mid-1980s, Wirth used the name of John Wayne Truelove to obtain a passport and rent apartments in California. The real Truelove was a New York child who had died as an infant in 1959.

He also used the name of Rudy Wirth, who died in 1998, to establish an address in New York and claim social security benefits. It is not clear whether Wirth and Rudy Wirth were related.

... Wirth [also] has no medical qualifications. He graduated with a law degree and then took a master's in parapsychology at John F. Kennedy University in California, where he met Horvath.

He has also admitted to being involved in a multi-million dollar scam (knobboy, aside from posting a good blog on this, links to the indictment.)

From The Scientist, we learn that despite the enormous media exposure this "study" has received, that noone has stepped forward claiming to have been a member of one of the prayer groups! Where were Wirth's well-wishers when he really needed them?

Also in November, the journal published a letter from the study's first author, Kwang Y. Cha of the Cha Fertility Center in Los Angeles, defending the study. Flamm says that he now wonders whether any of the infertile couples were prayed for during the study, given that Wirth was in charge of organizing and monitoring the prayer group. This controversy has received a lot of media attention, he says, and "not one person has come forward and said, 'I was in one of those prayer groups.'"

One missing piece to the puzzle is funding. It is probably a safe assumption that the federal government underwrote at least part of this research. Nevertheless, I have not been able to determine who funded this study, even with the paper in hand. But even if the entire study were funded without tax money, this doesn't mean that federal funds weren't wasted on it. According to another article by Flamm:

In December 2001, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), after being alerted by media coverage, launched an investigation into the lack of informed consent in the Columbia study.

Columbia University subsequently acknowledged noncompliance with its Multiple Project Assurance (MPA) and its own policies and procedures. Specifically, Dr. Lobo never presented the above research to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (CCPM).

Leaving aside whether the nanny state should be monitoring science at all, what's wrong with this picture? What enabled this travesty to occur in the first place?

One could stamp around shouting, "Ethics! Ethics!" But this is only a symptom of a deeper problem. Yes, Wirth is a crook and Lobo is either dishonest of incompetent, but it took a more fundamental breakdown for the Three Stooges of PTL-IVF to make a major scientific journal: an epistemological one. Flamm doesn't simply impugn the character of the scientists behind the study, but he also raises some scientific objections. (Interested readers can find them in the referenced articles.) But why all the fuss? The fact that the article starts from so many ill-defined and arbitrary assumptions alone is enough to discount it. What is God? How do we know he exists? What, exactly, is prayer? How do we know that Christian prayer actually counts, and can we really be sure that some or all of the sects from which the prayer groups were allegedly drawn aren't heretical? Faith? We certainly don't have proof, and proof doesn't really matter to the truly faithful anyway.

Science deals with evidence and proof, not the arbitrary. This article should not have even hit the review process, but have been rejected out of hand. It no more makes sense to review a study on the effects of prayer than it would to send archaeologists to Mars because someone once dreamed there might be pyramids there. Whether the reviewers were jaded subjectivists or had a religious bent, their standards were not scientific.

But the tireless efforts of Flamm have not been entirely wasted, though he did not actually need to prove that the study was fraudulent. Flamm has show us yet another alarming parallel between the religionists and the loony left. I have already mentioned that Christians are starting to use lawsuits to get their views funded by taxation in our public schools. Here, they're behaving like the environmentalists: they're trying to gain undeserved respectability for their views by falsely claiming that science supports them.

The culture wars get more interesting by the day!

-- CAV