Miracles are funny things; people will often claim they believe they can happen but the examples they tend to point to happened so far in the distant past as to be virtually unverifiable. Modern miracle claims also tend to suffer from specious data, dependent on dubious medical assessments if any at all. One of the more famous wells from which spring miracle claims is that of Lourdes in southern France. There, since the nineteenth century, various “miracles” have been performed, connected to an appearance of the Virgin Mary a Catholic girl in 1858. But just how reliable are these claims?
This was the subject of a recent video by Jackson Wheat, a YouTuber who does impeccable work on issues related to science, especially evolutionary biology. (I interviewed Wheat on the problems with creationism for an episode of “Amateur Hour w/the Amateur Exegete” a while back. Check it out!) In it, Wheat looks at a couple of papers connected to the miracles at Lourdes and considers their scientific and epistemic standing. You should give it a watch.
The Amateur Exegete 