Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason

We discuss in this commentary a recent Cochrane review of 10 randomised trials aimed at testing the religious belief that praying to a god can help those who are prayed for. The review concluded that the available studies merit additional research. However, the review presented a scientifically unso...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Jørgensen, Karsten Juhl, Hróbjartsson, Asbjørn, Gøtzsche, Peter C
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2009
Materias:
Commentary
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728094/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19515229
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-5751-8-7
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author Jørgensen, Karsten Juhl
Hróbjartsson, Asbjørn
Gøtzsche, Peter C
author_facet Jørgensen, Karsten Juhl
Hróbjartsson, Asbjørn
Gøtzsche, Peter C
author_sort Jørgensen, Karsten Juhl
collection PubMed
description We discuss in this commentary a recent Cochrane review of 10 randomised trials aimed at testing the religious belief that praying to a god can help those who are prayed for. The review concluded that the available studies merit additional research. However, the review presented a scientifically unsound mixture of theological and scientific arguments, and two of the included trials that had a large impact on the findings had problems that were not described in the review. The review fails to live up to the high standards required for Cochrane reviews.
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spelling pubmed-27280942009-08-18 Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason Jørgensen, Karsten Juhl Hróbjartsson, Asbjørn Gøtzsche, Peter C J Negat Results Biomed Commentary We discuss in this commentary a recent Cochrane review of 10 randomised trials aimed at testing the religious belief that praying to a god can help those who are prayed for. The review concluded that the available studies merit additional research. However, the review presented a scientifically unsound mixture of theological and scientific arguments, and two of the included trials that had a large impact on the findings had problems that were not described in the review. The review fails to live up to the high standards required for Cochrane reviews. BioMed Central 2009-06-10 /pmc/articles/PMC2728094/ /pubmed/19515229 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-5751-8-7 Text en Copyright © 2009 Jørgensen et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Commentary
Jørgensen, Karsten Juhl
Hróbjartsson, Asbjørn
Gøtzsche, Peter C
Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason
title Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason
title_full Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason
title_fullStr Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason
title_full_unstemmed Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason
title_short Divine intervention? A Cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason
title_sort divine intervention? a cochrane review on intercessory prayer gone beyond science and reason
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728094/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19515229
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-5751-8-7
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