I recently heard the opinion expressed that it had been “proven scientifically” that prayer was good for plants and bad (or possibly good?) for bacteria. After some searching online, I found some good refs (especially skepdic.com) about whether prayer helps humans, but no references (and I mean papers in actual journals) about the flowers and germs, from either side. I’m sure some of you can point me to some online resources for this, or even know of the actual articles.
Well, no actual journals but if you haven’t seen these (here and here) pages, you may want to take a look just for some info.
I’m praying you find something.
Doubt any exist. But man, I hope you find a sound debunking. Nothing more annoying than you new ageish mother in law insisting that science has substantiated the value of prayer. BTW, the story I got included prayer for the sick.
Prayer for bacteria and plants was quite the media sally a while back. I heard one of the fanfares around '98 or '99, but I have not heard of anyone replicating and verifying the various experiments, nor did I hear of any respectable journal publishing the findings. Einmal ist Keinmal, as they say in German. I have to say that in this case Keinmal ist Keinmal, since the evidence does not appear to exist.
I do remember that several of the prayer experiments (not necessarily with bacteria and plants as subjects) were claiming statistical variations as conclusive positive proof, which is of course bad science. Additionally, the placebo effect could be skewing results.
The funny thing is that I was not able to find any reference to studies on bacteria and prayer that were published in any scientific journals, but I found countless references on several Web sites that offer definite scientific proof for the power of prayer. All of it sounds like wishful thinking. All of it sounds like bad science.
This site looks at the process with a skeptical eye, and examines some philosophical problems involved: http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/avalos_17_3.html
You can also check out Health Care Reality Check at http://www.hcrc.org/ for a whole slew of articles on this prayer nonsense.
Dunno about praying for plants, but I do know that talking to plants helps them. Don’t laugh–here’s the explanation for it.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF8/837.html
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While you’re up close to the plant, talking to it, you’re noticing things about it, and you’re more likely to notice early signs of distress, such as that very first mealybug.
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The carbon dioxide in your breath probably helps.
I remember this early episode of NOVA:
One of the segments was a successful experiment showing that plants grow better with prayer! It also showed two twining plants in different locations, but their twining was synchronized! It appears that that episode isn’t available on video. I wonder why? 
the lovely symmetry between plants and animals provides that green plants benefit from the carbon dioxide we exhale;
aerobic bacteria also, but only because we exhale some unused oxygen… anaerobic bacteria prefer anoxic conditions and so may have mixed feelings about our breathing on them… the above applies to silent prayer as the pray-er still exhales through his nose… my advice - take the antibiotic your doctor prescribed, say grace over your salad if it makes you feel better, and breathe loving words to all who have the good fortune to meet you face to face!