Intercessory Prayer for the Alleviation of Ill Health

Intercessory Prayer for the Alleviation of Ill Health, by Leanne Roberts and colleagues, published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in 2009, is a Cochrane systematic review, the gold standard methodology in evidence-based medicine, pooling randomized controlled trials of intercessory prayer's effect on health outcomes. Its authority rests on Cochrane's rigorous, pre-registered systematic review methodology and its independence from any religious or anti-religious position. Its finding, that the trial evidence is inconsistent and does not clearly demonstrate an effect, should be read as a data-inconclusive result within a genuinely difficult phenomenon to study, not as proof either that prayer works or that it does not.