[snarks_when_bored]

If the study has methodological flaws, as you concede, and if the lead author wasn't really the lead author, and if another author won't answer questions about the study, and if the third author is a perpetrator of fraud, I'd say that it would be unwise to rely on the results of the study.

That's not to say that healing prayer isn't a reality, but it is to say that healing prayer isn't proved to exist by this study.

[philomath]

i agree that the study show very little except the tantalizing possibility that prayer influenced events. my point here is that refuting scientific studies takes more than saying that the authors are dirtbags. that they are indeed dirtbags makes me very suspicious of the result, but we shouldn't make a beta error and assume the null hypothesis based on their excursions as miscreants. quite strange that they were anxious to make a statement promoting a highly prescriptive religion through proscribed means....