NYT: Researcher Pulls His Name from Paper on Prayer and Fertility

[DeepModem Mom]

Researcher Pulls His Name From Paper on Prayer and Fertility
By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: December 4, 2004


A prominent researcher at Columbia University has pulled his name from a controversial study of prayer's effect on fertility, the university says.

The study, published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine in 2001, found that women undergoing in vitro fertilization doubled their chances of becoming pregnant when Christian groups prayed for them.

The study immediately brought fierce criticism of the Columbia researcher, Dr. Rogerio Lobo, a fertility specialist whom the paper listed as senior author, from scientists who questioned the way the experiment had been conducted.

Then, this May, one of Dr. Lobo's co-authors, Daniel Wirth, a California lawyer and alternative medicine researcher, pleaded guilty in connection with an unrelated $1.2 million case of business fraud.....

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"The university seems to think that because he's taken his name off the paper, that solves it," said Dr. Bruce Flamm of the University of California, Irvine. "But that solves nothing. The real issue is that this research is flawed and possibly fraudulent, and it's now back up on the journal's Web site."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/04/science/04prayer.html