Faculty Bibliography

"Miracle Workers," which airs Monday nights on ABC, offers the services of so-called miracle doctors to people with horrible medical problems. The show's Web site says that the program is an example of the network's "tradition of developing reality programming that makes impossible dreams come true."

Harvard researchers and the John Templeton Foundation, a philanthropy devoted to bridging the gap between science and religion, recently poured nine years and $2.4 million into the most comprehensive study to date of the power of prayer for the sick. They wanted to see whether prayer by strangers, sometimes called "intercessory prayer," would increase the chances that people got better or had fewer problems as they healed