sir_toejam
Posts: 846 Joined: April 2005
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Quote | I think the pencil experiment wins, hands down. |
yeah, but could you get 2.4 million for your pencil study?
actually, rigorous studies of this type are extremely valuable to point to as tools showing that science does indeed, not simply run away from anything that smacks of the supernatural.
the issue is, nobody here is studying the cause, only the effect.
perfectly legit research.
as to interest levels, check out the first paragraph of the response article published in the same journal:
Quote | Systematic study of intangible “noetic1” or “frontier2” healing methods such as intercessory prayer, defined as “widely practiced therapeutics with no plausible mechanism,2” is an area of great public and scientific interest, as well as of great controversy.3,4. Although prayer is one of the most ancient of healing practices, the scientific literature studying prayer is still quite young. In this issue of the journal, Benson et al report the sixth and largest prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled study of distant prayer scardiovascular patients1,5-8 in the STEP. |
@Stephen:
funny enough, but i think the article you referenced in the Lancet is actually a compeletly different study regimen (MANCA instead of STEP).
interesting that they published at almost the exact same time.
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