Re: Large scale study of the effectiveness of prayer

Dave Smith wrote:
Yes, the results are best interpreted in the light of prior knowledge
of probabilities. Incidentally, I think the design of the trial can be
criticised in that the drug was administered to six people at the same
time. If the drug had been given to a different subject every few
hours, then the trial would have been stopped well before all six were
placed at serious risk.

They did stagger the doses, but, yes, one of the criticisms is just that, that there ought to have been a big enough gap to detect the problem.

You can understand why it happened to some extent. It had all worked perfectly in mice and the dose given to the people was about 1/500th or smaller than that that was expected to be therapeutic.
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