While personal prayer provides comfort and solace, my particular area of investigative interest
is the quality and integrity of the
published scientific studies on the effects of prayer.
The famous 2001 study (J Reprod Med 2001 Sep;46(9):781-787) purporting to demonstrate that
distant intercessory prayer positively influences the success rate of in-vitro fertilization
has been exposed as an apparent fraud. See here.
The famous 1998 study (West J Med 1998 Dec;169(6):356-63)
purporting to demonstrate that
distant intercessory prayer positively influences the course of AIDS
turns out to have been fudged as well. See here
and here.
|
"Study Yields No Evidence for Medical Efficacy
of Distant Intercessory Prayer: A Follow-up Commentary" (a critique of
this study
by Dr. Dale Matthews),
The Scientific Review of
Alternative Medicine , Winter 2002 [My preliminary article,
"An Examination of the Media Coverage of a Prayer
Study-in-Progress," was published in
The Scientific
Review of Alternative Medicine, Fall/Winter 1998.]
|
|
|
|
