ADDENDUM::RealClearScience - Published Paper Blames Schizophrenia on Demons

THE EDITOR OF the Journal of Religion and Health is Dr. Curtis Hart, a lecturer in public health at Weill Cornell Medical College. RealClearScience reached out to him for comment.

"The article was published in hopes that it would provoke discussion," he said. "The Journal does not agree that demons are a real entity."

There are currently no plans to retract the paper, but two rebuttals are already slated for a future issue, Curtis added. The journal's publisher, Springer, recently made headlines by withdrawing 16 gibberish papers spotted by an independent computer scientist. The nonsense papers were created with a computer program, SciGen.

RCS gave Irmak a chance to defend his paper.

"There is no scientific evidence to support the existence of demons," he admitted. "This is like the argument of creation or evolution. It is a matter of belief and I think the existence of demons cannot be proved by scientific methods."

For the record, there is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence in support of evolution, which is not at all a matter of belief.

Irmak also insisted that readers of his paper watch the Academy Award-winning film A Beautiful Mind, which chronicles the life of genius mathematician John Nash, who suffers from schizophrenia.

"I think the creatures who disturb John Nash are demons," he said.

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/06/published_scientific_paper_blames_schizophrenia_on_demons.html

RealClearScience - Published Paper Blames Schizophrenia on Demons