Does the practice of religion bring health benefits to the faithful? Not likely, says Richard Sloan. He has been simmering for years about the poor research that says otherwise, prompting him to co-author a literature review for "Lancet" in 1999 and now this book. Much of the research reviewed in "Blind Faith" has been supported by advocacy foundations that think religion is good for your health and don't mind using the tools of science to prove it. Relentlessly, they misuse these tools and an uncritical media propagates their invalid conclusions.

Suppose you want to see if religion influences health. Since it's not feasible to randomly assign half your group to be religious and half irreligious, the groups are "self-selected" by church attendance surveys. Never mind that church attendance is known to be over-estimated in face-to-face interviews and that attendance doesn't necessarily measure devoutness - those details are routine hazards of epidemiological research.

In five years your data shows the mortality rate to be higher for non-church-goers. Should that be proof of a health benefit or is it more likely that people too sick to attend are also the ones more likely to die. What about the influence religion might have on smoking, drinking, drug usage, and a hazardous life-style? Is resultant better health the direct effect of religion or is a byproduct of a healthier lifestyle - called a "confounder"? Observational studies of this type are all that's available in much of epidemiology. Confounding is a serious problem, subject to biased interpretation. A randomized, double-blind experiment is much preferred.

Ideally, all studies would be randomized and double-blinded - you take a group of people, randomly divide them into 2 groups, apply the variable to one group and a give placebo to the other, without the researchers or either test group knowing which group is which. Then you compile and evaluate the results. Standard methods are used to minimize bias and statistics are applied to see if the differences are significant.

Many randomized and double-blinded studies intend to show that intercessory prayer (IP) improves surgical outcome. Most of them have significant methodological flaws, commonly misusing the data. The researchers are looking to prove their stated hypothesis, but dozens of outcome variables may be incidentally measured. If you measure enough variables, some will achieve significance. These should be identified and researched with another study. Instead, a biased researcher might say, "Eureka! The prayers were answered." This is called the "sharpshooter's fallacy" - drawing the bull's eye on the barn after the arrows have reached their mark.

The following things good researchers take great care not to do:
1. Use anecdotes
2. Ignore confounding factors
3. Confuse correlation with causation - Factors associated with health outcomes may be markers but not causally related
4. Scientific conclusions cannot be based on the sharpshooter's fallacy

The authors writing articles about the religion/health issues are guilty of all these things and more. As a result, their articles are almost always published in the same group of sub-par journals, released as abstracts, or leaked to the press without peer review. They are then restated inaccurately in religious periodicals until they reach the myth stage.

The best part of this book is Part Two: Reading the Evidence. It is a well-done expose of religion-inspired efforts to skew data. The rest of the book (rightfully) takes to task those Doctors who want to evangelize while they practice medicine, but I don't see this as the burning issue Sloan does. Throughout the book, he questions the validity of doing these studies at all - because it trivializes religion. Religion shouldn't get this free pass and I eagerly welcome the few well done studies - the poor ones are not going to disappear. There is much to be said for relentless application of the scientific method - no other method has ever worked so well in uncovering the truth. If certain myths fall by the wayside, so be it.

There is a growing movement to incorporate religion into the practice of medicine. Proponents claim that hundreds of studies have shown the benefits of intercessory (distance) prayer, energy healing, and so on. Anecdotal stories of miraculous interventions abound. The media has been glutted with supporters of various religious links to healing and medicine.

But is it true? Does solid, empirical evidence really exist to prove these claims?

Richard Sloan, Ph.D. and behavioral medicine professor at Columbia University, disputes the validity of these findings. In his new book, BLIND FAITH: THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE OF RELIGION AND MEDICINE, Sloan examines the impact of religion on healthcare. He not only takes a critical look at the sources of supporters' research, but at the mental, spiritual, and physical effects of blending religious ideals with medical cases. In addition, he raises the concern that sponsoring such research is harmful to religion; that to take something transcendent and try to make it scientific is to trivialize it. Toward the end of the book, Sloan posits:

"Recognizing the effort to bring religion into clinical medicine as bad science, bad medicine, and bad religion is not a critique of religion at all. In fact, it's an effort to protect religion against the trivialization of being simply another part of the scientific enterprise."

Ultimately, Sloan does not dismiss the importance of religion to patients and some doctors. However, he uses this platform to expose the dangers of mingling religion and health in inappropriate ways.

"But recognizing that religious and spiritual concerns arise in times of illness doesn't mean that doctors should take these concerns on as part of their responsibility," Sloan writes. "... doctors lack the time, the training, and the experience to engage in spiritual interactions with patients."

This book is an important look at a growing movement. Sloan's voice needs to be heard above the din, lest the system goes completely awry.

Reviewed by Christina Wantz Fixemer
10/17/2006