There are easily 130 studies that show that if you take prayer into the laboratory under controlled situations, it does something remarkable. The most famous prayer study was conducted by Dr. Randolph Byrd, a cardiologist at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. He took 393 people who had been admitted to the hospital with a heart attack. The results highly favored the prayed-for patients, who had fewer deaths, fewer instances of CPR, less need for mechanical ventilation, less need for diuretics and antibiotics, and less pulmonary edema. The outcome was so significant that if the subject of this study had been a new medication, this would have been considered a medical breaththrough.
People often pray in a crisis.
For research purposes, scientists have gotten around this by doing studies of the growth of bacteria in test tubes. That way you guarantee the purity of the control group. Most likely, nobody outside the lab will be praying for the growth of bacteria. This kind of study seems ridiculous, but this is where precise science can be done. Now what if someone prays for healing and it doesn't happen.