I said, concerning Leibovici' reply in the British Medical Journal to comments on his successful experiment (at http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7344/1037):
> >But perhaps someone else on this list has a better idea of what > >the author is trying to tell us. > And Paul Brandon replied: > I just skimmed it, but he seems to be saying that if prayer seems to make > people feel better, you shouldn't futz it up (old Talmudic term ;-) by > studying it. Ah, but that was just the manifest message in his comment. What about the hidden, latent message? Wasn't that a strange response to his critics from someone who has apparently just demonstrated in a methodologically-sound double-blind study that prayer works? Wasn't it curious that he would assert "the article has nothing to do with religion"? Isn't it also curious that he previously published an essay against the empircal testing of alternative medicine claims (Leibovici, 1999)? Was his experiment just a big set-up? And if so, how did he get BMJ to let him get away with it? On another matter, I'm going away for a while. Don't discuss anything interesting while I'm gone. -Stephen Leibovici, L. (1999). Alternative (complementary) medicine: a cuckoo in the nest of empiricist reed warblers. British Medical Journal, 319, 1629-- (at http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1629) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy Check out TIPS listserv for teachers of psychology at: http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/psyc/southerly/tips/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
