It was, therefore, somewhat surprising in the face of all this upbeat hype to open the March/April 1997 issue of Psychology Today and see a special report from Dossey informing us that both words and prayer not only have a negative side, but in many situations words and prayer can actually harm! According to Dossey, the old nursery rhyme “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” is wrong. It should be changed to “Sticks and stones can break my bones and words can also hurt me!” Moreover, Dossey says he has the proof.

In a series of allegedly “scientific” studies, Dossey argues that negative prayers from human beings can harm microorganisms. He stresses that while most everyone is familiar with the placebo effect, few are aware of the nocebo effect — the ability of negative beliefs and expectations to actually cause harm. Though far more complex, we humans share many identical biochemical processes with microorganisms and we harbor billions of microbes within us. Therefore, if negative prayers can harm lower organisms, would it not be possible to exert a nocebo effect on humans as well? Dossey says, “Yes, indeedy!” and he even goes so far as to suggest that negative prayer not only works but that everyday ordinary “harm-meaning” folk regularly engage in it, especially in athletic contests, where the opposing teams gather in their respective locker rooms, praying that they will beat the BeeJesus out of their opponents. In such a situation, God must be very puzzled, but Dossey tells us such prayers work, citing a comment from Michael Murphy, founder of the New-Age Esalen Institute in California, as proof:

Witness the many hexes aimed at games via radio and television sets. If rooting channels or triggers powers of mind over matter, it is no wonder that during certain contests balls take funny bounces and athletes jump higher than ever or stumble inexplicably. . . .

Although scientific studies of the effects of purposeful negative prayer on human beings have not been attempted because of their obvious illegal and unethical implications, there is little doubt that the range of negative power is enormous, especially in the form of curses on those we hate and those who have done us wrong. Referring to primitive cultures where hexes, spells, and voodoo can have tremendous negative effects — even death — on those who are victims of such powerful suggestion, Dossey says that “after years of study, I'm convinced that the malevolent use of prayer is quite common, woven into our society and our lives. In a 1994 Gallup poll on the prayer habits of Americans published in Life magazine, five percent of people confessed they'd prayed for harm to come to others. And that was only the number that admitted it.” Dossey goes on to suggest that diseases such as the Guillain-Barrë syndrome and other illnesses of unknown origin are due in part to the negative wishes and prayers of others!

Dossey summarizes his position by suggesting that negative prayer is nothing, after all, but the devil in us and the evil side of the two-headed human coin we keep flipping, hoping that good will turn up. He discusses the case of Eddie Rickenbacker, who, according to Dossey, was adrift in a lifeboat during World War II when, as the result of a prayer, a bird dropped by that he captured and ate. Dossey also tells us about the prophet Elisha, who caused forty-three children who made fun of his baldness to be devoured by bears.

While Dossey seems to believe that the eaten children were the direct result of an answered negative prayer, I can think of a different explanation. Odds are that Elisha had some very specific extra help with the bears, and, should he have actually pulled off such an atrocity, even in his time Elisha would have been lynched, gassed, hung, injected, and electrocuted by a jury of peers for such a humongous crime against innocent children over a mere tease. I would also bet the outraged curses of eighty-six vengeful parents would more than outweigh anything Elisha could ever conjure up.

Dossey’s illustrative examples do raise some very intriguing questions. What happens when the same number of people pray for something as pray against it? How does God decide whose prayer to answer? Does the total number of people praying for or against something matter? How about the righteousness of the supplicants? Are positive prayers answered more frequently than negative ones? Does God take the positive ones and Satan the negative? Does the intensity of the praying have any effect on the outcome? Does the length of time one devotes to praying have any effect on the frequency with which one’s prayers are answered? Do the words and phrases used in the prayer — either positive or negative — have any bearing on the success rate? Does the nature of the thing or things prayed for have any bearing on the prayer’s success rate — either positive or negative prayers? Why or why not??

All of these questions, and more, have a very particular relevance and application when we come to the realm of athletics. Just for example, this spring when a small Kentucky town in Eastern Kentucky won the State High School Girl’s Basketball crown, the town’s newspaper, as well as the largest newspaper in Kentucky, gave credit for the victory to God’s answering their prayers. Why their prayers were answered and the prayers of the losers were not remains unknown. One possibility is that the Hazard team had a better “pray-er” — in the form of their principal, who was also a minister. If it turns out that the higher one stands in the religious hierarchy the better the chances that one’s prayers will be heeded, then it certainly behooves every athlete and every athletic team to employ the most religious “pray-ers” possible. Certainly no one should ever enter any contest unpre-prayered!

If Dossey is right then we have an exciting future ahead of us! Not only will we have the game itself, but the prayer game within the game — another exciting and dramatic contest between the opposing praying ministers and the opposing praying fans. Special prayer meetings will be held before every game, featuring the top clerics striving to outpray each other and guarantee victory for their team. In fact, I think this is what Dossey had in mind all along — a movie epic with Spielberg as producer and Chris Carter as director for a billion-dollar blockbuster called Prayer Wars.

In the 1998 Super Bowl, on one side of the field we will have Billy Graham, praying that the AFC champion will destroy the NFC champion. On the the NFC side, praying equally hard, if not harder, we will have Benny Hinn sending up a heavenly beseechment urging every man on the NFC team to break various parts of their foe’s anatomy. To add to the excitement we could have the nation’s huddled watchers vote electronically to determine the winner of the prayer game independently of the winner of the ball game. Then, if the prayer-game winner is also the football-game winner, we will know once and for all whose side God was on. If it turns out that the prayer-game winner is the football-game loser, then we will also know once and for all that God does not put a very high price on the game of football or the other mindless games that humans play. We will also remember what we seem to have forgotten somewhere down the line, that humans have engaged in wishful thinking and have asked for help from above since the beginning of time, with only chance results.

If you take the time to ponder this issue, you may come to the surprising conclusion that maybe we are all better off if many of our prayers are ignored and never answered, especially the negative ones.

As for Dossey’s thesis, I'm afraid he has not thought it through and has not even begun to answer any of the questions posed earlier regarding winners and losers. If Dossey is correct, then I would certainly hate to be in his shoes, because the number of negative prayers launched against him since he started this campaign to promote superstition and misinformation and to misinform and mislead the masses is bound to have such harmful effects upon his person that he is already in the emergency room. And if he only knew about the white-coated doll with “Dr. D” stenciled on the back and the twenty-five pins. . . .We can rest assured, however, we've no cause for concern since the last thing on earth Dossey is, is superstitious! He is, after all, a medical doctor and a medical scientist!

In the spring, CSICOP launched the Media Stock Fund to provide leverage for the entertainment industry’s lucrative commercial marketing of fringe-science and pseudoscience. CSICOP is asking friends and supporters to help it acquire common stock in media conglomerate companies. The Fund will allow CSICOP to take part in shareholder meetings, and create an endowment for the Council for Media Integrity.

Author/entertainer Steve Allen is one of several recent donors. The Media Stock Fund has been featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and in other newspapers across the country. It has also appeared on CNBC, the cable business news network. The Fund includes shares in Disney, Time-Warner, Westinghouse, General Electric, and NewsCorp.

Weeping Icon in Toronto

On August 27, CSICOP Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell and Press Officer Matt Nisbet traveled to Toronto to investigate an alleged weeping icon at a Greek Orthodox church. In front of a dozen television, newspaper, and radio reporters, Nickell collected samples of the “tears” for Toronto police lab analysis. (Nickell had originally visited the icon in September of last year, but was not allowed to do an analysis. Nickell reported on this visit in the March/April 1997 Skeptical Inquirer.) Following completion of his examination, Nickell termed the icon “consistent with a fraud” and, pending lab testing, concluded that the substance of the “tears” was little more than olive oil. Last fall, over 20,000 people visited the church to witness the “miracle,” donating an estimated $500,000 in money and gifts. The ousted priest of the church has been accused of perpetrating the hoax and stealing the money from the church’s coffers.

Council for Scientific Medicine Establishes New Journal

Several prominent fellows of CSICOP have joined to form the Council for Scientific Medicine and launch a scientific journal devoted exclusively to objectively evaluating the claims of “alternative medicine.” Named The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, it is the only peer-reviewed medical journal of its kind. “The new journal will consider each claim on its merits,” says Review Editor Wallace Sampson, M.D., Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford and long-time CSICOP fellow. “It will reject no claim because it fits, or fails to fit, some paradigm. It will simply seek justified answers to two questions: ‘Is it true?’ and ‘Does this treatment work?'” The Council includes nearly sixty prominent physicians and scientists and five Nobel laureates. The official debut of the Review will be October 14, at a press conference in the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

Council for Media Integrity and Steve Allen Ask for Horoscope Disclaimer

In August, the Council for Media Integrity and Steve Allen sent a letter to U.S. newspaper editors asking that they run an advisory next to horoscope columns. The advisory warns readers that astrology is "for entertainment value only; it has no reliable basis in scientific fact.” CSICOP’s efforts to get newspapers to run such an advisory go back to 1986. As a result of this most recent effort, at least five more newspapers have adopted disclaimers, bringing the total to sixty-five nationwide. An editorial by CSICOP chair Paul Kurtz and astronomer Andrew Fraknoi was carried by the Buffalo News, and several other newspapers across the country.

Skeptical Inquirer Editor on Science Friday

On June 27, National Public Radio’s Science Friday program, hosted by Ira Flatow, aired a one-hour segment on the Roswell crashed-saucer incident. Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier and new SI consulting editor Dave Thomas were on the program along with Don Berliner, co-author of Crash at Corona, and Jim Wilson, author of the July 1997 Popular Mechanics cover story on Roswell.

For the first few weeks of every school year, my class uses subjects of the paranormal to investigate the scientific method. We discuss UFOs, ghosts, Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster, Ouija, psychics, dowsing, the Bermuda Triangle, crop circles, and many other old favorites.

I begin the discussion of each topic by having the students tell what they know, or think they know, about the phenomenon. They usually relate anecdotes about UFOs or ghosts or what they have learned on television ("Alien Autopsy,” Nostradamus, “Unsolved Mysteries,” etc.).

After looking at the quality of evidence for belief in the phenomenon, we shift to the skeptical viewpoint. For this, I use my complete set of back issues of Skeptical Inquirer and several titles published by Prometheus Books. The students can see that the evidence for the phenomenon dissipates rapidly when held up to a skeptical investigation. They also come to understand some of the many reasons why people make such claims; from honest mistakes to outright fraud.

Finally, we do a little experiment of our own with a Ouija board.

The Ouija Experiment

Many kids have played with Ouija boards, especially at sleepovers. In class, my students tell of their experiences, and many of them believe that something paranormal did happen.

To begin the experiment, I ask what the students believe was “paranormal” about their experiences. They say such things as, “The indicator moved by itself; we didn’t push it,” or, “There are spirits who know the answers to all questions, and it is they who move the indicator through our fingers.”

I then ask the two students who appear to be the most fervent believers to carry out the experiment. I explain that the question asked to the Ouija board will be one to which only I know the answer. (It’s usually something like, “Where was Mr. Barrieau’s maternal grandmother born?”) An envelope with the correct answer inside is then shown to the class and kept in my pocket.

To get the class to take this seriously, I announce that if the Ouija board answers the question precisely, I will give everyone in class an A for the year and they won’t have to come to class again. This definitely gets their attention!

The two students selected to operate the Ouija board then sit opposite each other. Two other students hold a large piece of oak tag under the operators’ chins so that the operators can’t see their own laps. I then place the Ouija board (one that a student has brought in and “works”) on their laps so that the orientation of the board is unknown to the operators. The indicator is put on the board and the students place their fingers on it. Another student is assigned to record where the indicator stops each time the operators say that it has. This recorder positions himself or herself to see the board while the operators cannot.

My question is given to one of the operators who asks it to the Ouija board. When the operators are satisfied that the answer has been given, the recorder writes the information on a piece of paper. Then I hand the envelope to the recorder, who opens it and writes my answer on the chalkboard. The recorder then writes the operators’ answer next to mine. A groan goes up after the first couple of letters are written. (They really wanted that A.)

Of course the Ouija has never even produced a word, much less an accurate answer. Protests are immediate: “It wasn’t dark!” “We didn’t have a candle!” “We weren't in a circle!” This is when I introduce the idea of eliminating variables and invite them to set up their own experiments at home doing just that.

I realize that I am not a scientist and that this experiment has holes in it big enough for James Randi to levitate through. But with this age group, it seems to work very well.

As we discuss other paranormal subjects, I ask the students to think of ways they might test the claims. Many good answers surface, and discussion on how to eliminate variables gets lively. When we finish this section, I ask the students to make posters to illustrate the phrase Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. The poster voted the best is placed in a prominent spot on the wall for the rest of the year.

So, after this paranormal unit do all of my students become skeptics? Yeah, right. But some do become skeptical about some of the topics. And at least the seed has been planted in others, and we can only hope for future germination.

Drawbacks and Dangers

Obviously I am biased and really like this approach. Others are biased in different ways and really don’t like it.

Every year parents complain about my “teaching the paranormal.” Often, all they need is a face-to-face explanation of what is going on to calm their fears. But some parents complain to the administration and try to get me to cease and desist. I have been called “Satan’s tool,” “occultist,” “demonic,” and so on. The administration has given me support, and then withdrawn it under pressure.

It would be much easier to drop this section and introduce the scientific method in the standard textbook manner. But I've done it that way, and the students seem to understand and absorb at a much higher level with this approach.

If we give in to irrationality, the students and, I believe, the country will suffer.