Author of a Controversial Paper on the Medical Benefits of Prayer Is Accused of Plagiarizing
A controversial study that claimed to demonstrate the efficacy of prayer in medicine has suffered yet another blow to its credibility, as one of its authors now stands accused of plagiarism in another published paper.
Doctors were flummoxed in 2001, when Columbia University researchers published a study in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine that found that strangers' prayers could double the chances that a woman would get pregnant using in-vitro fertilization. In the years that followed, however, the lead author removed his name from the paper, saying that he had not contributed to the study, and a second author went to jail on unrelated fraud charges.
Meanwhile, many scientists and doctors have written to the journal criticizing the study, and at least one doctor has published papers debunking its findings.
Now the third author of the controversial paper, Kwang Y. Cha, has been accused of plagiarizing a paper published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in December 2005. Alan DeCherney, editor of Fertility and Sterility and director of the reproductive biology and medicine branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said on Monday that it was clear to him that Dr. Cha, who has since left Columbia, plagiarized the work of a South Korean doctoral student for a paper he published on detecting women who are at risk of premature menopause.
Jeong Hwan Kim, then a student at Korea University, in Seoul, had published the same paper in a South Korean journal in January 2004, according to Sunday's Los Angeles Times. Mr. Kim brought the matter to the attention of Fertility and Sterility in the spring of 2006, Dr. DeCherney said. In an interview on Monday, he said he had spent the intervening time confirming the accusations.
Dr. DeCherney said he would recommend that the journal's oversight committee publish a statement saying that the paper was plagiarized and bar Dr. Cha, who appeared as the lead author on the paper, and the five other listed authors from publishing in the journal for three years. The publication committee of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, which oversees the journal, is expected to decide on the issue in April.
Dr. Cha, a businessman whose company owns fertility clinics in Los Angeles and Seoul, could not be reached for comment on Monday. He also did not return calls from the Los Angeles Times, according to that newspaper's report.
Dr. DeCherney said that he had compiled a list of other papers Dr. Cha has published in Fertility and Sterility, and that he would review the list if other complaints arose. As for the validity of the 2001 paper on the efficacy of prayer, Dr. DeCherney said his journal had declined to publish the findings in the first place.
"It's baloney," he said. "That's not in question."
Editors at The Journal of Reproductive Medicine, which is affiliated with several organizations including the Martin L. Stone Obstetrical and Gynecological Society of the New York Medical College, did not return calls for comment on Monday. Lawrence D. Devoe, the journal's editor in chief, said in 2004 that the journal was further scrutinizing the paper (The Chronicle, December 2, 2004).
But Bruce L. Flamm, a researcher who has worked for years to debunk the 2001 paper, said the plagiarism accusations against Dr. Cha should leave the Journal of Reproductive Medicine with no choice but to retract it.
"I'm convinced that paper is fraudulent," said Dr. Flamm, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at Irvine. "And over the years, everything that has happened has confirmed that opinion, not moved me away from it."
There simply is no magical correlation between faith and health. Sorry, folks, but facts are facts.
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