Mark Gagnon

And that's what statisticians would call survivorship bias.

And it's difficult to say if the number of people that get healed after going to Lourdes is higher on average than just the average sample in society.

You would expect, if it was purely coincidence, that the people getting healed at Lourdes would be the same as general society.

But again, it's inconclusive.

Also, the people going to Lourdes to get healed are a different sample size.

They might come from a different socioeconomic bracket, or perhaps there's a placebo event where they're thinking that they're gonna get healed and that it might actually contribute to their healing in some way.

Again, we just don't know.

But the miracle claim at Lourdes doesn't rest on the statistics.

It rests on the specific individual cases and their timing.

So could this apparition at Lourdes that then leads to a spring that then heals people, is this a miracle?

Well, if you're religious, if you're Catholic and you believe that God is behind these healings, then you would say, yes, this is a miracle from God.

At least the people that are healed, those are miraculous events, which again, according to this medical bureau, about 70 to 72 people have been miraculously healed.

But could it also be a coincidence?

Sure, people that are going there, they're in a higher income bracket, they're able to make a little bit more money, they get other treatment afterwards.

Maybe it's just purely corollary, or maybe there's no statistical connection at all, and that in any sample of a million people, 1% of them will be healed.

Who's to say?

Now, could it be a synchronicity?

Think about that term, right?

Jung might say that if the healing was meaningful to the patient's psychological state, so you go in, you have some type of rare cancer, you go into the spring, you douse yourself with holy water from the Lord's,

all of a sudden you start thinking, wow, God's got my back.