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The profile of cardiologist Herbert Benson by Wade Roush (Research News, [18 Apr., p. 357][1]) and the review by Irwin and Jack Tessman of his book Timeless Healing in the same issue (p. 369) devote extensive discussion to Benson’s intentions to demonstrate the power of belief in health and healing. One might also consider the pioneering work in this field more than a century ago by the biometrician Sir Francis Galton ([1][2]). Although his proposals were refused to directly test the efficacy of prayer for patients in one wing of a hospital as compared with those not prayed for in another wing, Galton performed a statistical analysis of the question from existing data by considering the effect of collective prayer on the life expectancy of different classes of English society. As summarized by Haldane ([2][3])He considered that of all classes of society in England those most prayed for were the sovereigns and the children of the clergy. If prayer is effective they should live appreciably longer than other persons exposed to similar risks of death. So kings were compared with lords, and the children of the clergy with those of other professional men. The conclusion to which his numbers led was that these much-prayed-for persons had slightly shorter lives than those with whom he compared them. Galton also determined the frequency with which ships carrying missionaries experienced disaster at sea and compared this with the frequency of disaster experienced by other ships. He found that missionary ships sank with a frequency and loss of life only slightly greater than that of less-blessed ships. The important conclusion reached by Haldane, and one perhaps important to gain also from Benson’s work, is that in neither analysis were the differences great enough to make it probable that prayers have any harmful effect. 1. [↵][4]F. Galton, Fortnight Rev. 12 , 125 (1872). 2. [↵][5]J.B.S. Haldane, in Possible Worlds and Other Papers (Chatto and Windus, London, 1928), pp. 237–252. # {#article-title-2} Benson needs to include a group of coronary bypass patients who know they are not being prayed for, along with the group who think they might be being prayed for and those who know they are being prayed for. The controls could then be coronary bypass atheists who adamantly doubt the efficacy of prayer, even after a good outcome. The controls required of this study would thus never benefit, and the others always would. By Benson’s protocol, prayer always works, it’s probably working right now, and that’s why we’re all not a whole lot sicker. # {#article-title-3} Debating whether humans are “hardwired for prayer” misses the point. Whether an individual copes with the dilemma of mortality by using prayer, exercise, a walk in the countryside, or the enjoyment of higher math and astrophysics, the end result can be the same. From an evolutionary perspective, individuals who do not give up hope would be expected to be more fecund. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.276.5311.357 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-2 [4]: #xref-ref-1-1 "View reference 1 in text" [5]: #xref-ref-2-1 "View reference 2 in text"