Prayer work! bah humbug

LINK2
"San Francisco cardiologist Randolph Byrd, for example, conducted an experiment in which he asked born-again Christians to pray for 192 people hospitalized for heart problems, comparing them with 201 not targeted for prayer. No one knew which group they were in. He reported in 1988 that those who were prayed for needed fewer drugs and less help breathing."

This type of study is simply wrong.

Scientifically it is wrong.
Who is the "control group"...
ONE:
there is NO WAY to know which patients are being prayed for.

They assume patient X is prayed for, and Patient Y is not...

But maybe Patient Y has a pious grandmother who prayed for him?
Will God let him suffer because the wrong person prayed for him?
Did God agree to obey the rules of the experiment?

TWO: They assume God can be manipulated...
IF you pray, he does A. If you don't pray, he does B...
Give penicillin, germs die. Don't give penicillin, germs thrive...
No believer believes that God will grant all our prayers...that is magic, not piety.

Three: They assume that the "best" outcome is needing decreased pain medicine and getting well...

But maybe God doesn't agree...

This is the problem of pain, the problem of evil.
God often allows evil, but may not will it.
And he often brings greater good out of the evil than that which we can imagine.

If I hadn't developed benign tumors, I would probably have become a psychiatrist in Boston...as it was, I had to drop out...and ended up meeting my husband in my next job.

So if I hadn't been sick, I probably would be living in Boston rather than retired in the Philippines.