NPR: WTF? Bad Science.
This story, "Can positive thoughts affect another person" is bad, irresponsible journalism on so many levels. First off, correlation does not equal causation! A few healthy AIDS patients who take no meds but believe in God does NOT mean that faith makes and keeps people healthy. ARRRGH!
The researcher mentioned in the second half of the story, Marilyn Schlitz, is the director of the Noetic Institute. I looked it up, when a commenter on the story mentioned it as a pseudoscientific group that publishes in its own journals, not in standard scientific journals; the Wikipedia article I came to first is defensive of them. It claims IONS does publish in peer-reviewed journals, although it mentions that Quackwatch sees IONS's work as dubious.
I looked at Quackwatch, and frankly I am not very impresssed with their work: rather than calmly walking through false claims, it uses a lot of name-calling and the same kind of logical fallacies it accuses "quacks" of using. Sigh.
The researcher mentioned in the second half of the story, Marilyn Schlitz, is the director of the Noetic Institute. I looked it up, when a commenter on the story mentioned it as a pseudoscientific group that publishes in its own journals, not in standard scientific journals; the Wikipedia article I came to first is defensive of them. It claims IONS does publish in peer-reviewed journals, although it mentions that Quackwatch sees IONS's work as dubious.
I looked at Quackwatch, and frankly I am not very impresssed with their work: rather than calmly walking through false claims, it uses a lot of name-calling and the same kind of logical fallacies it accuses "quacks" of using. Sigh.