Pray and Bear It

A new research center at the University of Oxford will probe the physical aspects of faith, in part by probing the physical aspects of both believers and nonbelievers. The Oxford Center for Science of the Mind will study whether belief in God or in some other, more earthly resource -- like a placebo -- endows people with a heightened tolerance for pain.

The center brings together experts from six of the university's departments in what Toby Collins, a pharmacologist and its

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