Controversy Over (quack) Study On (quack) Prayer's Effect (quack) On (quack) Fertility Continues

New York Times (12.04.04):

"A prominent researcher at Columbia University has pulled his name from a controversial study of prayer's effect on fertility, the university says. The study, published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine in 2001, found that women undergoing in vitro fertilization doubled their chances of becoming pregnant when Christian groups prayed for them. 'The university seems to think that because he's taken his name off the paper, that solves it,' said Dr. Bruce Flamm of the University of California, Irvine. 'But that solves nothing. The real issue is that this research is flawed and possibly fraudulent, and it's now back up on the journal's Web site.'" Emphasis supplied. Researcher Pulls His Name From Paper on Prayer and Fertility

Oh but that's not the interesting part, not by a long shot. Read on my faithful readers; both of you will be suitably entertained. One of Dr. Lobo's co-authors, David Wirth, pleaded guilty in connection with an unrelated $1.2 million case of business fraud. The Times described Mr. Wirth as "a California lawyer and alternative medicine researcher". WTF? Here's a copy of the indictment. Hmmmm. The Guardian has more:

"One of the study's authors is a conman obsessed with the paranormal who has admitted to a multi-million-dollar scam. Daniel Wirth, now under house arrest in California awaiting sentencing, has used a series of false identities for several decades, including that of a dead child. Wirth is at the centre of a network of bizarre scientific research, often working with co-researcher Joseph Horvath. Horvath has pleaded guilty to fraud, has used a series of false names and is accused of burning down his house for insurance money." Exposed: conman's role in prayer-power IVF 'miracle'

You just can't make this stuff up. Also from the Guardian:

• On 18 May, Wirth pleaded guilty to multi-million-dollar fraud charges against US cable telecommunications company Adelphia Communications. While working for Adelphia, Horvath had steered $2.1 million of contracts to Wirth.
• In the mid-1980s, Wirth used the name of John Wayne Truelove to obtain a passport and rent apartments in California. The real Truelove was a New York child who had died as an infant in 1959.
• He also used the name of Rudy Wirth, who died in 1998, to establish an address in New York and claim social security benefits.
• Wirth has no medical qualifications. He graduated with a law degree and then took a master's in parapsychology at John F. Kennedy University in California, where he met Horvath.
• Wirth and Horvath have co-authored numerous pieces of research claiming to prove paranormal activities. Many of them are linked to a body called Healing Sciences Research International, which Wirth heads. However, the institute appears to be only a mail box with no telephone number.
• Horvath also has a long criminal history and has used many fake identities, including Joseph Hessler, a child who died in Connecticut in 1957.
• It was as Hessler that (Horvath) was jailed for fraud in 1990. But it was as John Truelove - using the same false identity as Wirth - that he was arrested in 2002 for burning down his own bungalow in order to claim the insurance.
• Horvath has also pleaded guilty to practicing medicine without a license after posing as a doctor in California.

A Masters in parapsychology? At John F. Kennedy University? Not meaning to insinuate anything, but it sounds like kind of a progressive sort of institution, in a new-age sort of way. Has a law school though, which can't be all bad!! Via the incredibly excellent Scientist.com, here's the PubMed link to the original study. Dr. Bruce Flamm analyzes the study in great detail, and concludes that even though, at first glance, the success rate of the original study seems remarkable, a closer review suggests otherwise. Who is Bruce Flamm, you may ask? Let's Google him!! Yeah, this guy seems to know what he's talking about.