According to New Scientist, prayer was found to double fertility in a double blind test. Statistical evidence that magic works?
Prayer can double the success rate of IVF treatments, according to a double blind study published in the respected Journal of Reproductive Medicine.
A team in the US asked groups of people around the world to pray for pregnancy in one half of almost 200 women undergoing the fertility treatment in South Korea. The prayer groups were given only photographs of the women, and the women were unaware of the study.
Despite controls for age, length of infertility, type of infertility and number of prior attempts to become pregnant following IVF, 50 per cent of the women who were prayed for became pregnant, compared with 26 per cent of women in the control group. An independent statistician in the US had randomised the women into the two groups.
Update: This was almost certainly falsified.