Systematic Review of Clinical Trials Examining the Effects of Religion on Health
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Using MEDLINE, (limited to the English language and the reference lists of the randomized controlled trials (RCTs), we assessed the impact of religion on health outcomes via systematic, critical review of the medical literature. All RCTs published from 1966 to 1999 and all non-RCTs published from 1996 to 1999 that assessed a relationship between religion and measurable health outcome were examined. We excluded studies dealing with non-religious spirituality, ethical issues, coping, well-being, or life satisfaction. We used the Canadian Medical Association Journal's guidelines for systematic review of the medical literature to evaluate each manuscript. Nine RCTs and 25 non-RCTs met these inclusion/exclusion criteria. Randomized controlled trials showed that intercessory prayer may improvehealth outcomes in patients admitted to a coronary care unit but showed no effect on alcohol abuse. Islamic-based psychotherapy speeds recovery from anxiety and depression in Muslims. Non-RCTs indicate that religious activities appear to benefit blood pressure, immune function, depression, and mortality.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.027 | 0.120 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.014 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.020 | 0.017 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".