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I have both scientific and ethical concerns about the study by Harris et al¹ on intercessory prayer. First, the study was not randomized. Patients were systematically assigned to study groups by a method that the authors expected to be random in net effect; that is not the same thing. The approach used by Harris et al more often results in accidental unblinding and systematic bias from unexpected systematic behavior than does true randomization. Although this is relatively unlikely to have caused problems in this specific study, the term randomized should be reserved for studies that are actually randomized.

More importantly, the statistical analysis is problematic. The authors used the t test to compare results on a clinical outcomes scale. Such scale values are not ordinary number-line numbers in their representation of clinical severity; one cannot in any clinical sense say that a unit increment in one portion of the scale . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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