Follow-Up Study on Prayer Therapy May Help Refute False and Misleading Information About Earlier Clinical Trial

The following press release (Amherst, NY, July 22, 2005) is from the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health regarding a follow-up study to a clinical trial on the efficacy of prayer therapy.

by Nathan Bupp,
Director of Public Affairs,
Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health

A study on the healing power of remote prayer in the current issue of the medical journal Lancet may help correct misleading statements that the lead author made about the preceding pilot study. Thanks in part to this misinformation, the earlier study continues to be widely cited as scientific evidence of the efficacy of prayer.

Dr. Mitchell Krucoff, a cardiologist at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, NC, is the lead author of the Lancet study as well the pilot study that was published in the November 2001 issue of the American Heart Journal. Much misinformation about the apparent efficacy of prayer therapy has come from the author’s misleading statements to the news media, says Andrew Skolnick, executive director of the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health.

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