Peer-Reviewed Miracles: Are Miraculous Cures Published in Scientific Journals?
What Medical Records Can (and Cannot) Tell Us
“Again [Jesus] entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand…And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here….Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
Mark 3:1-5
Not unlike the cripple in Mark’s narrative, Frank Brown (pseudonym) had endured the paralyzing effects of cerebral palsy for his entire life. Along with having mobility issues from his foot turning inward, the patient had suffered from spastic hemiplegia that had progressively withered away the tendons in his right hand.1 This would leave his appendage perpetually closed in a clenched fist, with limited functional use of his fingers (Figure 1). This deformity had been managed with a splint, though Frank admits that this was largely ineffective in undoing the decades of muscle atrophy and spasticity.
At the age of 60, Frank was admitted into the Intensive Therapy Unit (ITU) at Morriston Hospital in Swansea, South Wales, to surgically treat a case of bowel cancer. Though the initial operation was without complications, the man’s health declined five days following the surgery when he was taken out of his hospital bed at the recommendation of his attending nurse. His respiratory rate rapidly decreased, and the patient slipped into unconsciousness. After 30 minutes of resuscitation, Frank was able to move his limbs but could not respond to verbal commands. Full consciousness was regained approximately three hours later.
Immediately following his recovery, Frank would recount to the hospital staff that he had undergone an out-of-body experience where he had witnessed the doctors attempting to revive him. He also claimed to have seen his deceased father and mother-in-law during this experience, accompanied by a bearded man wearing a white shirt who, in the patient’s words, was “probably Jesus.” Jesus told the man that he “wasn’t ready yet” and “needed to go back” to earthly life.2
Frank would then be interviewed by Dr. Penny Sartori, a well-known researcher of near-death experiences (NDEs). Sartori was able to verify that the patient’s descriptions of the resuscitation process had all been extremely accurate, despite the man showing no indication of consciousness and having both eyes dilated at the time of resuscitation. It was during this interview that Frank inadvertently mentioned a particularly striking detail,3
When I came back down [to my body] I could open my hand...[The left] hand has always been strong but this hand [right] used to be like this [fist clenched and contracted under]. All my life, for 60 years, my arm has always been like this; I could never open it....only a little bit. My father used to say, “The monkey is in the cage.” Now I can open it...Even my sister was surprised about my hand. I’ve got cerebral palsy and my hand used to be like this; now I can open it. It feels a bit tight, but I do open it...Since the experience...I can do everything with it, all the cooking...Also, what I noticed since I came home, I used to turn my foot in; I can’t understand this, but I don’t do that anymore. I’m walking straight as a die, don’t know why; I’ve got taller - not taller, but I walk straighter.
This was highly unusual, especially since lifelong upper limb deformities of this kind tend not to rapidly disappear on their own. Sartori consulted Frank’s physiotherapy records, which indicated that he had not received any treatment for his right hand during his post-opt recovery. His physical therapist noted that the muscle tone on the right hand appeared normal when Frank was discharged from the hospital, though the medic was unable to account for this sudden change. In their judgement, “the hand should not have been able to open without an operation to release the tendons that had been in a contracted position for 60 years. No such operation had been performed.”4
Frank’s story would be written up in a 2006 case report published in the Journal for Near Death Studies, a peer-reviewed publication affiliated with the University of Virginia (Figure 2). The authors of the study seemed equally impressed and befuddled as to why Frank’s withered hand regained muscle mass immediately following his alleged tour of heaven and encounter with “Jesus”:
The fact that he was able to open his previously contracted hand defies explanation5...The healed hand remains inexplicable as there is no known mechanism for how a hand that had permanently shortened tendons due to spastic hemiparesis from birth has been able to open fully. This development is something that should not be physiologically possible and something the patient stated he had not been able to do before. This entire matter was also supported in a signed statement from his sister...This study confirms that cases of interest that cannot be dismissed or ignored can be captured during a prospective study.6
Two more follow-up interviews with Frank, the last of which occurred five years following the NDE, demonstrated that his hand and gait had remained normal. This account is truly remarkable. Sartori’s judgment seems justified in this case: Frank’s healing “should not be physiologically possible” given what we know about muscle atrophy and nervous spasticity.7
But while Frank managed to have his story told in a peer-reviewed medical journal, most are not so lucky. For every Frank Brown, there are a million others who claim to have been healed miraculously through prayer, religious pilgrimage, spiritual experiences, and the like. Why then are such medical miracles, despite being common in Christian anecdotes, so rarely ever published in mainstream medicine?
Where Are All the Miracles?
It is often suggested that, if the evidence for miracle cures were truly compelling, it would be expected that such cases would be published in mainstream scientific journals. If these instances cannot stand the scrutiny of peer review, then they ought to be dismissed as nothing more than uncorroborated anecdotes.
I am not persuaded. Indeed, this argument remains toothless for a myriad of reasons. As we shall see below, there are no less than several dozen instances of “miracle cures” published in scientific journals, both mainstream and fringe, over the last century. To claim otherwise is to plead ignorance of the publicly available data.
Still, it is a legitimate question to ask why such cases are not more well-known or frequently cited. Their impact within medicine is negligible at best and nonexistent at worst. I will argue that the rarity of “medical miracles” in the mainstream literature is due to the following triptych of considerations:
There is a large selection bias in mainstream publications that prioritizes pharmaceutical development over case reports and unreplicable anomalies.
Doctors frequently exclude references to the patient’s religious experiences within medical records and journal articles, leading to many false negatives getting published.
Academic stigma invites derision for anyone publishing defenses of faith healing.
Following my defense of each of these points, I will provide the reader with a select bibliography of miracle case reports that have passed the gauntlet of academic peer review and publication.
I. Selection Bias
Medical journals are primarily motivated by the profits of the pharmaceutical industry, in which illnesses are studied so that drugs and treatments can be developed and sold to the public. Such a sentiment creates significant selection bias in terms of which studies are funded and published.8 This is especially true with case reports, which are statistically less likely to be cited and may hamper a journal’s impact factor.9 Case reports of anomalous remissions after prayer are typically useless for pharmaceutical development, unless a mechanism can be unearthed and replicated in future drug trials. But such a mechanism defeats the point of any so-called “miracle.” As an alternative medicine advocate noted,10
The particular problem with case histories of remission is that no one knows what to do with them. In order for a given case to be published by medical journals, it needs to fit into an established theoretical context. But there is no theory yet, and context is created only by write-ups in medical journals. The question becomes, ‘How does medicine communally decide what gets studied and reviewed?’ Or to put it another way, ‘What is an acceptable level of mystery?’
Singular religious anomalies that seem to contradict our immunological models simply do not generate much interest from most major medical journals.
If this is true, then one should not furrow their brow at the fact that the only organizations interested in funding and studying faith healing are those that have a pre-established interest in finding a correlation between prayer and recovery. Scientific attempts to document inexplicable recoveries in a religious context began with the Catholic Church in the 18th century, when Prospero Lambertini (later Pope Benedict XIV) set forth the standard for scientific inquiry into miracles that has survived in Catholic practice to this very day. In most cases, current candidates for Catholic sainthood typically require at least two “miracles” at their intercession. These nearly always involve unexplained cures that must receive review from a panel of doctors in Rome before any declaration of a miracle can be authorized. The primary physicians of the miracle recipient are permitted to publish the documentation in scientific journals, but this often does not happen due to logistical reasons:11
[During the canonization process] the physicians agree not to discuss the miracle cases with outsiders. They are permitted to write them up in medical journals, but not until the cause has been completed and acted upon by the Pope. Since this may take a year and often longer, the consultants rarely bother to publish anything on them at all. Despite these restrictions…several members of the [Vatican medical guild] are quite willing to discuss their work.
Once in a blue moon, a case of this kind will manage to receive official publication. This has been seen with canonization case reports published in Catholic bio-ethical journals like The Linacre Quarterly.12 Most significant was the work of Jacalyn Duffin, a medical historian who remains one of the leading authorities on the subject of canonization cures. Duffin’s genesis began decades ago when the Vatican brought her in as a consultant for a leukemia cure associated with Canada’s first saint, Marguerite Bourgeoys (Figure 3). Deeply fascinated by the process, Duffin (a self-identified atheist) would go on to gain access to five centuries’ worth of case files and would produce her research in two tomes published by Oxford University Press.13
Protestant Christianity, while a bit late to this trend, would take a note from the Vatican’s playbook by using the Lambertini Criteria to document their own cases of alleged healing. The second half of the 20th century would see a plethora of books containing excerpts of medical records in support of cures from various Pentecostal evangelists like Benny Hinn,14 Mahesh Chavda,15 Reinhardt Bonnke,16 and Kathryn Kuhlman.17 Kuhlman was especially renowned for her advocacy of collecting medical documentation for her cures. Dr. Richard Casdorph’s 1976 book Miracles: A Doctor Says Yes! would cover 10 cases associated with Kuhlman’s ministry, supplying the reader with photocopies of the patient’s X-Rays, brain scans, and the other evidence to vindicate the evangelist’s claims to heal organic illness (Figure 4). Casdorph’s book would receive informal peer review from nine other consultant physicians, including specialists and department heads.18
Prayer research of the 2010s was spearheaded by the Global Medical Research Institute (GMRI), debuting with a pilot study in the Southern Medical Journal showing a strong correlation between Christian prayer and functional acuity in blind and deaf villagers in rural Mozambique.19 While the study was preliminary and lacked strong controls, GMRI has since put more emphasis on publishing case reports involving instantaneous and remarkable instances of faith healing in severely disabled individuals. This includes an immediate cure of legal blindness from juvenile macular degeneration,20 an instantaneous return of function to a paralyzed stomach from idiopathic gastroparesis,21 and a rapid recovery of severe symptoms in a child with a congenital genetic disorder.22
None of this is to say that there are no secular institutions that have dipped their toes into the pool of prayer research. One of the most recent examples involved a case series of six different journal articles, including a doctoral dissertation, published through Vrije University, wherein dozens of instances of remarkable cures were recorded in religious contexts.23 The most impressive of these was an instantaneous and long-lasting remission of Parkinson’s Disease (90% resolution of symptoms) that occurred during a 2012 Easter Sunday service.24 But these publications are, by and large, dominated by religiously adjacent organizations that are motivated to find a positive outcome for prayer’s effect on health. Bias may be a real concern here, but this prejudice goes both ways (see below). Partiality alone is not enough to dismiss data. One has to review each case on its own merits and methods.
II. False Negatives and Unmentioned Prayer
Prayer remains extremely common when petitioning for the sick.25 Even among the non-religious, over 40% report praying on at least a monthly basis.26 The prevalence of prayer creates a new problem: it becomes difficult, perhaps virtually impossible, to properly rule out potential background prayers that may have been given by the patient, a patient’s loved one, or even a caring stranger. Studies on the efficacy of distant prayer are well aware of this problem.27 One particularly renowned experiment from 2006 found a slightly negative correlation between prayer and recovery, but conceded that the control group could have received outside prayers,28
We did not request that subjects alter any plans for family, friends, and/or members of their religious institutions to pray for them, because to do so would have been unethical and impractical. At enrollment, most subjects did expect to receive prayers from others regardless of their participation in the study. We also recognize that subjects may have prayed for themselves. Thus, our study subjects may have been exposed to a large amount of non–study prayer, and this could have made it more difficult to detect the effects of prayer provided by the intercessors.
With prayer studies, we are potentially left with a significant number of false negatives where prayer was used by the patient, but was nevertheless deprived of mention by the study’s authors. Recoveries widely perceived as divine “miracles” have thus been reported in journals but are not distinguished as occurring within a religious context.
The October 2000 edition of the Hawaiian Medical Journal documented a medically remarkable case of sudden remission of liposarcoma (cancer of fat cells), the explanation of which remained elusive.29 The elderly patient had visited her dermatologist in 1996 due to a 3cm lump on her left buttock. While the doctor originally believed this to be a benign hematoma, the mass grew to 12 cm x 7cm and was surgically removed in January 1998. Pathology indicated the mass to be a high-grade pleomorphic liposarcoma that was considered aggressive. Further surgery was done to remove additional portions of the gluteal muscle. The patient then underwent temporary radiation therapy as a safe measure.
By September 1998, a chest X-ray indicated three new masses in her lungs (1 cm in left lung, 3.5 cm in the left hilum, and 3cm in the right lung), with one of these tumors biopsied as metastatic liposarcoma on September 17th (Figure 5). It was evident that her cancer had not only returned, but had rapidly spread to her chest cavity and lungs (Figure 6, left). Given the cancer’s aggressive metastasis, no treatments were offered and the patient was sent home with only a few months of life expectancy.
Contrary to all expectations, the patient returned to her doctor only two weeks later on October 2nd, reporting much better health. Chest X-Rays indicated a regression of her pulmonary tumors, with follow-up scans in November and December proving continued shrinkage in the size of these masses. By May 1999, no signs of cancer remained in the lungs (Figure 6, right). For good measure, further scans in August 1999 and August 2000 continued to show the patient remaining in remission. The published case study emphasized the peculiarity of this remission, especially in the absence of treatment: “The evidence for spontaneous regression in this case is convincing. Histologically proven lung metastases disappeared with no therapy at all.”30
This case study is certainly a bizarre medical anomaly.31 Pleomorphic liposarcomas are extremely aggressive and difficult to treat; while other forms of cancer can go into spontaneous remission on rare occasions, regressions of these types of liposarcomas are virtually unheard of at this stage.32 But while rife with medical details, the Hawaiian Medical Journal article does not tell the full story.
The cancer patient, 69-year-old Audrey Toguchi, had been told her condition was inoperable and that she had only a few months to live. After the prognosis worsened in late September, Audrey would trek to visit the Hawaiian tomb of Fr. Damien de Veuster, where she petitioned for the deceased priest to intercede for her healing. She reported immediately feeling better following the pilgrimage. Her next oncologist visit within that fortnight showed the early stages of cancer remission.
The editors of the Hawaiian Medical Journal did not mention that the Vatican was investigating the miracle for the potential canonization of Fr. de Veuster, nor did they feel the need to describe the patient’s prayers for healing that she attributed to her cure. Though prayer was instrumental in Rome’s inquiry and in the patient’s personal experience, it was considered incidental and ultimately irrelevant to the journal authors. Had one not known the unsaid religious context of this case, it could be seen as a highly atypical case of spontaneous cancer remission and nothing more.
In other instances, details of prayer are mentioned in medical journals only incidentally. A case report published in the fall 2018 edition of The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease recounts the remarkable cure of Eben Alexander from a severe case of meningitis caused by Escherichia coli bacteria.33 The patient had gone into a coma followed by septic shock with no improvement over five days. The survival rate was estimated at 3%, and even then, permanent brain damage was inevitable. In light of his doctors declaring the prognosis to be “dismal,” several strangers gathered around the patient’s bed and prayed for his recovery. Within 24 hours of the religious intervention, Eben inexplicably regained consciousness, showing delirium but rapidly improving with only minor inhibition of motor function. Follow-up tests two months later found all signs of neurological impairment absent, with the patient having made a “complete and remarkable recovery.” As of writing, Eben Alexander remains in normal health over 15 years later.
This cure, especially in the absence of any permanent neurological impediment, is astounding and otherwise unprecedented in the literature.34 As the study authors observed,35
Patients with Gram-negative bacterial meningitis have a high rate of neurological complications...however, this patient [Eben Alexander] attained full neurological recovery within 2 months, which is remarkable and rare. This recovery is particularly striking in light of the poor prognostic signs, including descent into coma within 3 hours of symptom onset....
To our knowledge, this is the first medical record review of a case of severe meningoencephalitis associated with a near-death experience. This is particularly relevant because of the specific and devastating effect of meningoencephalitis on the neocortex, compared with cardiac arrest and other more common conditions associated with near-death experiences.
Although this is one of the few instances where recovery following prayer was noted within a published case report, it was introduced by mere happenstance. The detail was mentioned to corroborate Alexander’s near-death experience that occurred during his coma, where the patient claimed to have floated out of his body and witnessed the praying individuals surrounding his bed. While the authors of the study see this as evidence that Alexander maintained some sense of conscious awareness in his comatose state, they do not make a direct causal relationship between the prayers and his recovery soon afterward. Had it not been for this accidental reference to communal prayer, the reader would have otherwise had no knowledge that Eben Alexander’s healing occurred within a religiously charged context.
Replacing Miracles With Anomalies
This trend may be much more common than one might expect. It appears that, more often than not, miracles and religious association are generally replaced by appeals to mystery and scientific anomaly. The first documented case of spontaneous remission of neonatal fibrosarcoma noted a surprising regression of tumors on an infant’s arm. Before and after X-Rays clearly showed reduced swelling and the reversal of bone erosion (Figure 7).36 But the published paper failed to observe that the gradual cure had occurred after the patient attended a conference led by the British healing evangelist John Wimber.37
The healing of 63-year-old Muriel Bourne-Mullen from metastasized hepatocellular carcinoma (late-stage liver cancer) was likewise published in a 1990 journal on gut health, where it was confirmed that her remission was complete and occurred in the absence of any treatment.38 An ultrasound indicated that the large mass on her liver, which had spread to her lungs and shortened her life expectancy (mean expectancy at six months), was inexplicably replaced with scar tissue during follow-up hospital visits (Figure 8). Scans also proved that the tumors had left her lungs. This case study was noted as highly unusual, as complete remissions of liver cancer at this stage remain remarkably rare. But the journal saw no need to mention the fact that the dramatic regression of the tumors began shortly after Muriel had sought a cure through various religious intercessors. In interviews, Muriel noted her Catholic upbringing and relayed how she had prayed incessantly to the Virgin Mary and other saints for a cure to her life-threatening cancer. She had even sought distant healing from her husband’s co-worker, who practiced Eastern forms of spiritual medicine. By the time of her next visit with her oncologist, she was not only still alive, but also asymptomatic and had gained about 6lbs back in weight.
None of Muriel’s spiritual therapies received even a passing reference in the published paper. As one commentator would later go on to critique,39
[The cure of] Muriel was written up, but her actual story disappears between the lines of her medical report. In the journal...[the] case unfolds with no more charm than the blunt prosody of its title...There is no mention [in the paper] of Muriel’s spiritual experiences and beliefs, or of the fervent prayers that fit no therapeutic schema.
Just as mainstream medical journals tend to dissuade mention of prayer in correlation with unexplained recovery, one finds equal silence in the patient’s own medical records. A 52-year-old woman (“Bethany”) suffered for five years from a progressively worsening autoimmune disorder diagnosed as autonomic neuropathy. Thermal regulation became more difficult to manage, and the patient would begin to lose muscle strength to the point where she required a walker. Hospice workers considered the condition terminal and estimated that the patient had less than six months left to live. In desperation, Bethany sought prayer on April 29th, 2010, from an associate minister affiliated with the healing evangelist Randy Clark. Both pain and prior food intolerance disappeared within the same day and were followed by a near-complete functional recovery.
Her neurologist conceded in an examination in 2011 that “her symptoms have resolved almost completely” and that they were “at a loss to explain why exactly this has occurred”. The same physician hypothesized that this may have been due to some ill-understood form of spontaneous remission, as seen in other kinds of autoimmune disorders. Nowhere in Bethany’s records did her doctor take into account the prayer service that immediately preceded her symptom resolution (Figure 9).40
Time and time again, doctors will often infer natural causes even when a patient directly attributes their recovery to miraculous intervention. Ray Jackson would be admitted to Duke Medical Center in December 1972 for hematuria (blood in urine). An X-Ray found an abnormal tumor in his left kidney, diagnosed as hypernephroma. The organ would be surgically removed a day later and was biopsied as a metastasized adenocarcinoma. By February 1974, concerns were raised when Ray developed a large sore on his finger that required immediate amputation. Biopsies of the severed digit verified that his cancer had returned and had traveled throughout his bloodstream. Bone scans in April 1974 confirmed the doctors’ worst fears: the disease had spread throughout his body and was rapidly deteriorating his bones (Figure 10). Ray was given a daily prescription for 30mg of Provera (hormone therapy) for pain management and was scheduled to return to the facility the following week for chemotherapy. Doctors made it clear that this treatment was only palliative: even with intervention, the cancer was in such a progressive stage that the patient was not expected to survive into the next year.41
Seeing that his life was in jeopardy, Ray took a step of faith by flying to Florida to attend a healing conference on April 28th, 1974. On May 1st, Ray would return to the facility reporting normal health and an absence of pain. Scans indicated no change in oncology, but, for reasons that continue to elude, his physicians agreed to forego any radiation therapy and only continued the prescription of Provera until the end of the year. An X-Ray examination in October 1974 found the cancer to be completely absent. Per his radiology records, “he went to some religious revival and his pain disappeared… [since then], healing of the previously described metastasis focus [is observed] on the left ischium. No other metastatic foci are identified.”42
Ray’s doctors seemed to have different interpretations of the event. Some medical records mentioned that the remission had begun following the patient’s faith healing experience,43
Within one week on initiating Provera therapy and following a religious experience in Florida…all pain subsided and irridaton therapy which had been planned for the left ischium was not given. Since then he has felt quite well without pain, cough, shortness of breath, weight loss, or intercurrent illness.
This sentiment does not seem to have been shared by everyone. During follow-up examinations in May and November 1975, a hematologist at Duke University Medical Center seemed to discount the religious elements of Ray’s cure,44
Careful review of the chest X-Ray showed no abnormalities and the chemistry survey was quite healthy as well. There was no abnormality of liver function, renal function, or of the blood calcium. We can only assume that the neoplasm is in remission, whatever the reason. [His primary physician] told me that he suggested resumption of the Provera compound [discontinued since 12/31/74]. It certainly isn’t mandatory although its administration coincided with a remarkable resolution in bone pain and stabilization of the bone scan.
The latter report seems to chalk up the spontaneous remission to mystery, tentatively suggesting that the palliative Provera hormone therapy may have been a factor in this “remarkable resolution” of late-stage cancer. This is highly unlikely; while the hormone treatment may have contributed in part to the patient’s improved health, the medical science strongly suggests that this cannot plausibly tell the whole story.45 Even more remarkable is the fact that Ray’s remission would be lifelong: the man lived another 41 years cancer-free until his death from natural causes in 2015.46 The vast majority of patients in Ray’s situation who underwent palliative care still died within 2 to 3 years of diagnosis.47
Whether Ray Jackson was cured by God or Provera, the point remains evident. Doctors are often unsure of how to incorporate their patients’ perspectives on faith when writing up case reports. Even when physicians have been made aware of their patients’ testimonies, speculations on natural mechanisms will typically wind up in the official medical records. References to prayer are less likely to make the final cut. The reason such “miracle” case studies have predominantly been exclusive to fringe journals is not that the medical evidence was inferior; rather, these publications are far more likely to include details about intercessory prayer that would have otherwise been omitted from a mainstream journal.
III. Academic Stigma
Faith healing is considered inseparable from complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), a subject typically derided by most American doctors and medical institutions.48 It is for this reason that nearly half of all CAM studies are produced in journals with virtually zero impact factor and negligible appeal to the broader scientific community.49 Journals promoting CAM are frequently denounced for what critics identify are “ridiculous studies”50 that are of “poorer methodological quality”51 compared to mainstream medicine.
While it is not always admitted, the greater tension is the underlying controversy within the natural sciences about research that would implicate potential evidence for the paranormal or the miraculous.52 Many scholars of science, history, and religion will state outright that accounts of miracles automatically make a claim less credible a priori.53 Some have (dubiously) gone so far as to suggest that the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth should be called into question primarily because the narratives of his life are engulfed in miracle stories.54 We see this line of reasoning in full force with religious scholar Raphael Lataster, who would write off one biblical account in Acts 12:20-23 because it dared to mention an angel: “Given that angels are mythical creatures, this story is inherently unlikely to be historical.”55 Just as entertaining the possibility of angelic visitors is seen as absurd in post-Enlightenment scholarship, equal stigma is risked if doctors were to publish miracle case reports with the religious details intact.
This academic cynicism has been prevalent for several centuries.56 One contemporary example is seen with alleged Eucharistic miracles, where a Catholic communion host is purported to transform into literal bodily tissue. Some instances have managed publication and replication in obscure medical journals.57 But more often than not, scientists exhibit great reluctance to affiliate themselves with these cases due to potential blowback. This was the case with Dr. Susanne Hummel, forensics professor at the University of Göttingen, who declined to examine a purported Eucharistic miracle of Buenos Aires out of academic reluctance, “If the testing confirmed what was being claimed, namely that a communion host had become flesh or blood, then this would embarrass the university and force it to close down part of the [department].”
In a separate Eucharistic case, two forensic scientists agreed to microscopically examine a bloodied communion wafer in Sokółka, Poland, and came to a positive verdict that the substance was real cardiac tissue. Due to these shocking results, and perhaps the questionable use of methods and resources by these scientists, public backlash ensued. One skeptic group went so far as to (unfoundedly) accuse the scientists of committing a murder to retrieve the heart tissue! As a direct result of this academic repudiation and the negative press that accumulated, future Eucharistic miracle hosts in Poland were turned down for scientific examination.58 One scientist would admit this directly in an interview with French media outlets,
Not all the scientists and organizations that initially participated in this study [on the Eucharistic host] agreed to give an opinion. Many withdrew, citing various reasons after learning the origin of this sample. In the end, two organizations issued a scientific opinion…they agreed that it was myocardial [heart muscle] tissue, but when told where this fragment came from they refused to write an opinion.
This general prejudice against religiously implicative research has been demonstrated in a comprehensive study out of Oxford by sociologist Elaine Ecklund, who noted that scientists frequently feel pressured not to discuss religious or spiritual matters among their colleagues.59 Such fears of academic retaliation led to the genesis of The Archives of Scientists’ Transcendent Experiences (TASTE), a platform where credentialed scientists could anonymously submit testimonies of experiences that they believed to be paranormal, miraculous, or transcendental in nature.60 The site’s founder, parapsychologist Charles Tart, emphasized the potential academic reprisal risked by scientists who publicly confessed to these otherwise taboo experiences,61
Too often I am the first and only person they have ever spoken to about their experiences, for fear of ridicule from their colleagues and adverse, prejudicial effects on their career. Such fears have, unfortunately, too much of a basis in fact.
To endorse the supernatural is to invite ridicule. Superstitions have no place in the academic collateral that the Enlightenment has left us. Hence Dr. Richard Casdorph, in publishing his book documenting the cures of faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman, was written off by colleagues as too credulous because of his faith. This is despite the fact that Casdorph took great care in backing up his claims with relatively thorough medical records.62 The same fate befell Allen Spraggett, a journalist who also defended Kuhlman by producing medical documentation from her case studies.63 Skeptics dedicated only two sentences responding to Spraggett’s 200-page book, dismissing him as a “would-be parapsychologist” without any further comment on his arguments.64
This fear of being hounded by colleagues persists in the peer-review process. Many mainstream journals and presses may be chastised for platforming publications that could be interpreted as legitimizing the paranormal. As one Swedish prayer researcher observed,65
Many anthropologists have remarked that in the past they have had difficulty publishing research that includes these [supernatural] experiences, partly because journals deny them and partly because they are worried about not being taken seriously....When researchers want to investigate the effect of prayer or report on [cures] with detailed descriptions of how the prayer is done, there is outcry [sic] and demands that similar studies should not be published...
Examples abound. Following the 1952 healing of four-year-old Ann O’Neill of acute leukemia, which was immediately preceded by prayers to a Catholic candidate for sainthood, her doctor argued that there was no precedent for such an unexpected remission. When asked by The Washington Post why he did not publish the case in a scientific journal, his response is quite telling: “The only reason this case has not been written up is that I have been afraid to.”66 The case would instead receive publication in a Catholic-affiliated medical journal where the more “miraculous elements” were less controversial.67 Another doctor would allegedly tell his patient that, despite witnessing them receive an impossible cure of a heart condition, he could not bring himself to admit this publicly. His reasoning? It would make him “the laughing stock of the entire medical profession.”68
Among the most controversial instances was the infamous 2001 study published in the Journal of Reproductive Health, where results indicated that intercessory prayer doubled the rate of fertilization for women using in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments.69 If true, these findings would be among the most dramatic and significant positive findings of prayer’s efficacy ever published in a mainstream medical journal. However, heavy criticism was directed toward the study’s convoluted methodology, potential ethical violations, and the authors' credibility.70 Backlash became so overwhelming that the journal took down the study from its website in 2004 as it had “generated more traffic than the office could handle.”71 In light of all of the outcry, the Journal of Reproductive Health would eventually reinstate the study on its website and allowed one of the paper’s authors to publish defenses of their findings in later issues.72 Later literature reviews would omit the IVF prayer study out of caution, but conceded this decision “may have been incorrect...[since we] still do not have proof that the study was bogus.”73
Neither the journal nor its associated school of Columbia University were able to come out of the IVF study reputationally unscathed. Detractors labelled the study a “fiasco” that left “a black mark on a great university.”74 Although many fair criticisms were leveled against the IVF study’s methodology, the most scathing commentators opposed the research question out of sheer principle. One of the study’s biggest critics expressed that experiments on miracles of any kind should never receive publication in a mainstream scientific journal:75
The ‘faith’ in faith healing refers to an irrational belief, unsupported by evidence, that mysterious supernatural powers can eradicate disease. Science deals with evidence, not faith....Unless replicated under strictly controlled conditions, studies claiming to have demonstrated ‘miracle’ cures belong in religious and paranormal magazines, not in scientific journals...
It is one thing to tell an audience at a tent revival that prayers yield miracle cures but quite another thing to make the same claim in a scientific journal. By doing so, faith healers cross the line into the domain of science, a domain where superstitious and supernatural claims are not taken seriously...Is it more likely that this study is flawed or fraudulent, or that the authors have demonstrated the existence of a supernatural phenomenon and thus have made perhaps the most important discovery in history?
The final line of this quote is undoubtedly a reference to David Hume’s maxim against the miraculous. No amount of testimony, even if observed in controlled conditions and published in a respectable medical journal, could ever establish that a miracle occurred.
Most journals are unwilling to receive the inevitable criticism, ridicule, and reputational sabotage entailed by platforming such studies. As a chief example, a pilot study on the positive effects of prayer on the blind and the deaf in Mozambique generated much controversy following its 2010 publication in the Southern Medical Journal (discussed above). The journal’s editor-in-chief, Ronald Hamdy, resigned from his position shortly after the paper’s publication, apparently due to the immense criticism received from the journal’s promotion of a study with potentially supernatural implications.76
Or consider Yale University Press’s 2024 book They Flew, which assessed historical accounts of levitation throughout the medieval and early modern period.77 In spite of its prestigious publisher and its highly acclaimed author, the decorated Yale historian Carlos Eire, critics wrote off the work as a “gullible new book” that was “deeply unserious” and went so far as to suggest that Eire’s approach was committing the sin of “professional dishonesty.” It is fine to study such accounts from a purely anthropological and historical perspective; however, in their eyes, the historian must not stoop so low as to actually take seriously the claims of anything remotely supernatural,
The history of the supernatural in early modernity—of miracles, witchcraft, magic—is a perfectly normal field of inquiry. What is more incompatible with seriousness is Eire’s contention that these miracles actually happened. These people flew…Just because some phenomena—a flying friar, a stigmatic and bleeding nun—couldn’t be explained didn’t mean it was God at work…
I think we’re meant to believe that these “eyewitness testimonies” suggest that Joseph, indeed, flew…To say that Joseph flew and that our understanding of the laws of physics therefore must change (how, exactly?) is to explain precisely nothing: nothing about the early modern world, nothing about our own, and nothing about the vexed relationship between the enchanted past and our disenchanted present…
If an award-winning and tenured historian like Carlos Eire cannot evade reputational tarnishment through such publications, what should we suppose about other researchers who are far less fortified in their careers? How much of a risk are they willing to take?
Whether justified or not, prejudice against claims of the paranormal remains rife among publishers in the social and natural sciences. Humans remain fickle, biased creatures enslaved to our presuppositions. Even the most educated among us have not escaped this fate of confirmation bias.
Coda
Claims of healing miracles are by no means rare. Anyone suggesting otherwise needs to get out more and explore the world. But most accounts remain just that: anecdotes, vignettes, and rumors that grow into nothing more. One cannot fathom the number of books that could have existed had we taken the time to record each and every miracle report.
Unfortunately, for most of the scientifically minded, such efforts are fruitless. Most academics have little interest in studying medical anomalies for which no profit can be made. If they are to ever make it to formal peer review, it is inevitable that such stories will be told with all sensational religious context stripped out. Today’s miracle is tomorrow’s anomaly. To take the supernatural seriously is to paint a target on one’s back, as if miracles now serve as a proverbial “Kick Me” sign for those who defend them in the literature. Miracles are not absent from medical science, but they are hidden under a pile of laicization.
Appendix
For the convenience of the reader, I have compiled a selected bibliography for every major case (within my knowledge) of a medical miracle found in the peer-reviewed literature. I have included both mainstream and alternative journals, including books published through academic presses.
Typically associated with neurodevelopmental disorders like cerebral palsy, spastic hemiplegia (SH) is caused by severe atrophy and weakness derivative of paralysis on one side of the body. This can affect the person’s arm or leg, with deformities of the former being far more common. Such deformities include stereognosis deficits that make it difficult to identify objects through tactile interaction, and such nervous deprivation will usually result in a significantly withered and shortened limb. See Anne Van Heest, James House, and Matthew Putnam. "Sensibility Deficiencies in the Hands of Children with Spastic Hemiplegia." The Journal of Hand Surgery 18, no. 2 (1993): 278-281. According to Dilip Patel, Mekala Neelakantan, Karan Pandher, and Joav Merrick, in "Cerebral Palsy in Children: A Clinical Overview." Translational Pediatrics 9, no. 1 (2020): 125-135, symptoms of SH usually begin in infancy and are quite common amongst children born with nervous disorders. Around a quarter of adolescents with cerebral palsy suffer from SH and lack proper control of one of their hands or feet. Spastic hemiplegia is not progressive and does not normally grow worse with age, although it typically plateaus following childhood and will continue to remain unimproved over time sans treatment.
Penny Sartori, Paul Badham, and Peter Fenwick, “A Prospectively Studied Near-Death Experience With Corroborated Out-of-Body Perceptions and Unexplained Healing." Journal of Near-Death Studies 25 (2006): 69-84. On pg. 73-75, the patient seemed less sure of the man’s identity, “I could say it was Jesus, I could say it was God, but who am I to know that?” On the man’s description, he stated that he “sort of” looked like traditional depictions of Christ and had a beard, though it seemed that the figure wore a white shirt instead of a robe that was “mostly white” in color. Only the torso and face of the figure were visible.
Sartori, Badham, and Fenwick, “Near-Death Experience,” 77.
Sartori, Badham, and Fenwick, “Near-Death Experience,” 83.
Penny Sartori, “Response to ‘Critique of ‘A Prospectively Studied Near-Death Experience with Corroborated Out-of-Body Perceptions and Unexplained Healing.’” Journal of Near-Death Studies 32, no. 1 (2013): 15-36, at 28.
There is no cure for lifelong deformities from spastic hemeplegia of this nature: “By orthopedic and hand surgical interventions flexible and structural alterations can be improved[,] but a normalization of arm and leg functions is not possible.” Cited in S. Senst, "Unilaterale Spastische Zerebralparese (Hemiparese)." Der Orthopäde 43, no. 7 (2014): 649-655. This is especially true with the seemingly instantaneous nature of the cure despite decades of disability. The Lambertini Criteria are well-satisfied.
This is most relevant for rare diseases, which are relegated to a much more niche market and are thus less of a priority to study. See Aya Mitani and Sebastien Haneuse,"Small Data Challenges of Studying Rare Diseases." Journal of the American Medical Association Open Network 3 no. 3 (2020): 1-3. One may very well say the same about rare medical anomolies deemed to be “miraculous” in nature.
Taichi Nakamura, Hisato Igarashi, Tetsuhide Ito, and Robert T. Jensen, "Importance of Case-Reports/Series, in Rare Diseases: Using Neuroendocrine Tumors as an Example." World Journal of Clinical Cases 2, no. 11 (2014): 608-613.
Quoted from Harris Deintsry, editor of the CAM journal Advances and cited in the foreword of Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Coyote Healing: Miracles in Native Medicine (Rochester, VM: Bear and Company, 2003)
Kenneth Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn't, and Why. (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 194.
See for example Barbara Neilan, "The Miraculous Cure of a Sarcoma of the Pelvis: Cure of Vittorio Micheli at Lourdes." The Linacre Quarterly 80, no. 3 (2013): 277-281; and Denesh Ratnasingam; Darren Lovick, Dennis Weber, Richard Buonocore, and William Williams, “An Unusual Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury in a Young Man.” The Linacre Quarterly 82, no. 1 (2015): 55–66.
Jacalyn Duffin, Medical Miracles: Doctors, Saints, and Healing in the Modern World. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Idem, Medical Saints: Cosmas and Damian in a Postmodern World. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Benny Hinn, Lord, I Need A Miracle. (Nashville:Thomas Nelson Inc, 1992). Perhaps as a way to boost his sketchy credibility, Hinn would incude excerpts of patient’s medical records within this publication and included a ministry-affiliated medical doctor to write the book’s forward. Hinn remains a popular target even among other Christians, some of whom had less than glowing reviews of the cases presented in Lord, In Need a Miracle.
Mahesh Chavda, Only Love Can Make a Miracle (Eastbourne, England: Kingsway, 1991); and Idem, The Hidden Power of Healing Prayer. (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny, 2011).
Reinhard Bonnke, Raised From the Dead: The Miracle That Brings Promise to America. (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2003.) See also a documentary from Bonnke’s ministry reviewing a dramatic cure with medical documentation.
Kuhlman’s cures were documented by journalists and doctors alike in various publications, which I have reviewed extensively in a separate 2025 article.
Richard Casdorph, The Miracles: A Medical Doctor Says Yes to Miracles! (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1976).
Candy Gunther Brown, Stephen C. Mory, Rebecca Williams, and Michael J. McClymond. “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique.” Southern Medical Journal 103, no. 9 (2010): 864–69.
Clarissa Romez, Clarissa, Kenn Freedman, David Zaritzky, and Joshua W. Brown. “Case Report of Instantaneous Resolution of Juvenile Macular Degeneration Blindness After Proximal Intercessory Prayer.” Explore 17, no. 1 (2019): 79-83.
Clarissa Romez, David Zaritzky, and Joshua Brown, “Case Report of Gastroparesis Healing: 16 years of a Chronic Syndrome Resolved After Proximal Intercessory Prayer.” Complementary Therapies in Medicine 43 (2018): 289-294.
Clarissa Romez, Aline Correia da Silva, Chrisandra Corneliussen, Gabrielle Cunha, and Joshua Brown. “Case Report of 11 Years of Severe Malabsorption, Muscular Atrophy, Seizures, and Immunodeficiency Resolved After Proximal Intercessory Prayer.” Advances in Mind-Body Medicine 28, no. 2 (2024): 40-55.
There are a number of papers associated with the Dutch prayer study: Dirk Kruijthoff, et al. “Prayer Healing: A Case Study Research Protocol.” Advances in Mind-Body Medicine 31, no. 3 (2017): 17–22; Idem, "Three Cases Of Hearing Impairment With Surprising Subjective Improvements After Prayer. What Can We Say When Analyzing Them?." Explore 18, no. 4 (2022): 475-482.; Idem, “Prayer and Healing: A Study of 83 Healing Reports in the Netherlands.” Religions 13, no. 11 (2022): 1056-1086; Idem, “Can You Be Cured if the Doctor Disagrees? A Case Study of 27 Prayer Healing Reports Evaluated by a Medical Assessment Team in the Netherlands.” Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing 19, no. 3 (2023): 376–82; Dirk Kruijthoff, Healing After Prayer, An Interdisciplinary Case Study. PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Vanderperk Groep, 2023); and Elena Bendien, et al., “A Dutch Study of Remarkable Recoveries after Prayer: How to Deal with Uncertainties of Explanation.” Journal of Religion and Health 62, no. 3 (2023)
Dirk Kruijthoff , Elena Bendien, Corlien Doodkorte, Cornelis van der Kooi, Gerrit Glas, and Tineke A. Abma. “‘My Body Does Not Fit in Your Medical Textbooks’: A Physically Turbulent Life with an Unexpected Recovery from Advanced Parkinson Disease after Prayer.” Advances in Mind-Body Medicine 35, no. 2 (2021): 4–13. It should be noted that the patient’s condition eventually relapsed, though a prolonged remission of over 10 years is still considered highly abnormal.
Jeff Levin, "Prevalence and Religious Predictors of Healing Prayer Use in the USA: Findings From the Baylor Religion Survey." Journal of Religion and Health 55, no. 4 (2016): 1136-1158.
Luis Luogo, Sandra Stencel, John Green, Gregory Smith, Dan Cox, Allison Pond, Tracy Miller, Elizabeth Podrebarac, and Michelle Ralston. "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic." The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 2008, at 44-45. More recent Pew Research data gives comparable estimates, with 17% of self-identified atheists and agnostics taking part in prayer daily, weekly, or monthly (pg. 52). This figure is significantly larger among the irreligious who may still believe in spirituality (51% pray at least monthly).
For methodological critiques of distant prayer studies, see David Myers, "Is Prayer Clinically Effective?" Reformed Review 53, no. 2 (1999): 93-102;
Herbert Besnon Jeffery Dusek, Jane Sherwood, Peter Lam, Charles Bethea, William Carpenter, Sidney Levitsky et al.. “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: a Multicenter Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory Prayer.” American Heart Journal 151, no. 4 (2006): 934-942, quoted at 942.
Walter Chang, "Complete Spontaneous Regression of Cancer: Four Case Reports, Review of Literature, and Discussion of Possible Mechanisms Involved." Hawaii Medical Journal 59, no. 10 (2000): 379-388.
Some natural explanations could be speculated. A consultant oncologist, who was the sitting President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, pointed out that only one of the three lung masses was biopsied as cancerous. No biopsy was performed on the other two tumors. Had the other two masses been unrelated nodular inflammation, they may have resolved spontaneously. He also opined that the patient’s discontinued radiotherapy months prior to metastasis could have contributed to the regression of the liposarcoma. However, this would not explain the timing of the remission, the onset of which began in a narrow time range near the patient’s religious pilgrimage (perhaps a coincidence?). In other studies sampling liposarcoma patients, complete remission was not observed even after extensive chemotherapy and surgical intervention (see footnote 32). It is thus unclear why Ms. Toguchi would have been an outlier. The consensus of the patient’s team of primary physicians, including a cardiologist, pathologist, oncologist, and radiologist, was that they “couldn’t explain” the remission. See “Woman: Prayer Cured Cancer.” Columbia Daily Tribune, August 10, 2008.
Studies sampling patients with liposarcoma are not overly abundant, given the rarity of the disease. In the available data, patients with high-grade liposarcoma had at best a survival outcome after five years of follow-up, but, unlike Audrey Toguchi, notably lacked complete remission of the disease. Review further Sandra Gebhard, Jean-Michel Coindre, Jean-Jacques Michels, Philippe Terrier, Gérard Bertrand, Martine Trassard, Sophia Taylor et al. “Pleomorphic Liposarcoma: Clinicopathologic, Immunohistochemical, and Follow-Up Analysis of 63 cases: A Study from the French Federation of Cancer Centers Sarcoma Group.” The American Journal of Surgical Pathology 26, no. 5 (2002): 601-616. See also Jason Hornick, Jason Marcus Bosenberg, Thomas Mentzel, Máirín E. McMenamin, Andre M. Oliveira, and Christopher DM Fletcher. "Pleomorphic Liposarcoma: Clinicopathologic Analysis of 57 Cases." The American Journal of Surgical Pathology 28, no. 10 (2004): 1257-1267.
Surbhi Khanna, Lauren Moore, and Bruce Greyson, "Full Neurological Recovery from Escherichia Coli Meningitis Associated with Near-Death Experience." The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 206, no. 9 (2018): 744-747. For the patient's own perspective on their healing and NDE, see Eben Alexender, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife. (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2012).
Some atheists like Sam Harris, a neuroscientist by trade, have critiqued aspects of Alexander’s near-death experience and have maintained that the degree of brain function while comatose is impossible to know. Harris makes little comment on the actual recovery of Alexander absent neurological sequalae, which is remarkable and infrequent.
Khanna, Moore, and Greyson, “Full Neurological Recovery,” 745.
N.P. Madden, R. D. Spicer, E. B. Allibone, and I. J. Lewis, "Spontaneous Regression of Neonatal Fibrosarcoma." The British Journal of Cancer 18 no. 1 (1992): 72-75.
David Lewis, Healing: Fiction, Fantasy or Fact? (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), 221-228. For critique, see Peter May and Ernest Lucas, “The Significance of Jesus’s Healing Ministry,” in Christian Healing: What Can We Believe? Doctors and Theologians Reach a Unique Consensus, ed. Ernest Lucas (London: Communications, 1997), 85–108, at 104-105.
R.C. Ayres, D. A. Robertson, K. C. Dewbury, G. H. Millward-Sadler, and C. L. Smith. “Spontaneous Regression of Hepatocellular Carcinoma.” Gut 31, no. 6 (1990): 722-724.
Caryle Hirshberg and Marc Ian Barash, Remarkable Recovery: What Extraordinary Healings Can Teach Us About Getting Well and Staying Well (London: Headline, 1996), 160.
Brown, Testing Prayer: Science and Healing. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 136-141.
Casdorph, The Miracles, 91-100.
Ibid, 94. Note the quotation combines two different radiology reports from October 1974.
Ibid, 94-95.
Ibid, 96.
Hormone therapies in the 1970s were quite limited, especially for highly metastatic cancer. Complete and long-term remission from late-stage cancer is largely unprecedented from hormone therapies of this era. Per one 1971 study on Provera’s effects on renal cancer patients, “The response of advanced renal cancer to hormonal treatment is usually incomplete and of brief duration, [but] it is possible for such treatment to offer a ‘new lease of life’ to a seriously ill patient…for 2 to 3 years.” See H. J. G. Bloom, “Medroxyprogesterone Acetate (Provera) in the Treatment of Metastatic Renal Cancer,” British Journal of Cancer 25, no. 2 (1971): 250–265, at 250.
I believe the following obituary from 2015 belongs to the same Ray Jackson as written up in the above case report. The reasons for thinking so are 1) the individuals share the same name (B. Ray Jackson vs. Byron Ray Jackson), 2) shared birth year, 3) shared locality of North Carolina, and 4) the obituary’s reference to Ray “giving his testimony of having been healed of terminal cancer now for 41 years.” This timestamp lines up perfectly with Ray Jackson’s remission in 1974.
Per Bloom in “Medroxyprogesterone,” 250, who points out that, “For the vast majority of cases…the onset of clinical metastases heralds death within a year or two.”
Katja Schmidt et al. observe that the British Medical Journal documented a significant publication bias in journals that specialize in alternative medicine, with a large number of studies being overly positive as to negate unfavorable results. Review Katja Schmidt, Max H. Pittler, and Edzard Ernst. "Bias in Alternative Medicine is Still Rife but is Diminishing." British Medical Journal 323, no. 7320 (2001): 1071. This is a uniquely American sentiment; in Europe, CAM studies appear to be more widely accepted, as argued in Amit Sood, Kayla Knudsen, Richa Sood, Dietlind L. Wahner-Roedler, Sunni A. Barnes, Aditya Bardia, and Brent A. Bauer, "Publication Bias for CAM Trials in the Highest Impact Factor Medicine Journals is Partly Due to Geographical Bias." Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 60, no. 11 (2007): 1123-1126.
Roberto Raschetti, Francesca Menniti-Ippolito, Emanuela Forcella, and Clara Bianchi. "Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the Scientific Literature." Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine 11, no. 1 (2005): 209-212. The authors do still note that there has been an upward trend in CAM publications within the last few decades despite their controversy.
Such criticism is expressed by people like David Gorski, who reckons that “Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing is a journal known for its publication of truly ridiculous studies.”
M.H. Pittler, N. C. Abbot, E. F. Harkness, and E. Ernst, "Location Bias in Controlled Clinical Trials of Complementary/Alternative Therapies." Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 53, no. 5 (2000): 485-489.
Craig Keener Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts Vol. 2. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), 688-692.
The opinion of John Granger Cook in "Resurrection in Paganism and the Question of an Empty Tomb in 1 Corinthians 15." New Testament Studies 63, no. 1 (2017): 56-75, at 56, seems reflective of many of those studying ancient history. He snides that, “prov[ing] the historicity of the empty tomb [of Christ]...[is] a pointless exercise after the arguments of David Hume.”
Stephen Law, “Evidence, Miracles, and the Existence of Jesus,” Faith and Philosophy 28 no. 2 (2011): 129-151. By Law’s logic, one should doubt the historicity of virtually any figure in early American Pentecostalism, whose miracle stories are no less numerous and extraordinary.
Raphael Lataster, Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 170. Contra Dale C. Allison Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History (New York: T&T Clark, 2021), 166, “it escapes me why the report of a vision of angels should be doubted...People can and do see things that do not exist.”
Ruth Cranston, The Miracle of Lourdes (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 35–36.
Odoardo Linoli, "Ricerche Istologiche, Immunologiche e Biochimiche Sulla Carne e Sul Dangue del Miracolo Eucaristico di Lanciano." Quaderni Sclavo di Diagnostica 7, no. 3 (1971): 661-674.
As argued in Saint Beluga’s article on Eucharistic miracles, “The reluctance of scientists and institutions to publicize their findings underscores why the Eucharistic phenomena are not discussed more widely among scientific circles. The Medical University of Bialystok’s reprimand of Sobaniec-Łotowska and Sulkowski in Sokolka just five years earlier probably did not inspire confidence that yet another report of heart muscle appearing on bread would be well received by the scientific community.”
Elaine Howard Ecklund, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 76, where she observes that “many scientists who do identify as religious—a large minority of those I surveyed—give in to strong departmental cultures and practice a closed faith...these scientists use a particular script to suppress conversation on religion.”
The TASTE project was developed as an offshoot of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (AAPS) and can be accessed at the following link:.
Charles Tart, "Letter to the Editor: The Archives of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences (TASTE)." Journal of Near Death Experiences 19 no. 2 (2000):132-134, at 134.
See the opprobrium of Dr. William Nolen, an outspoken critic of Kuhlman’s ministry. He opines that, "The reason that [Casdorph] can do this is that he is, admittedly, a believer. And if you are a believer, you are willing to suspend your rational faculties and accept as the work of the Holy Spirit things which, if you judge them with your own scientific critical faculties, you would say that…you can't accept them because they're not proven." Quoted from Pierre Lasry’s 1978 film Healing (Montreal, CA: National Film Board of Canada), 28:00-28:52.
Allen Spraggett, Kathryn Kuhlman: The Woman Who Believes in Miracles. (New York: World Publishing Co., 1970).
As we see in the opinion of James Randi: “Alan Spraggett, a would-be parapsychologist who investigated Kathryn Kuhlman, was ecstatic to discover in her claims similarities to those made by psychics. He quickly accepted Kuhlman as a genuine operator because she matched the ‘paradigm’ he expected.” See James Randi, The Faith Healers (Ebook Edition, 2011). One will note that Spraggett, in his own book, writes off several other faith healers precisely because they could not corroborate their claims with medical evidence. Kuhlman was seen as exceptional because of her willingness to put forth documentation. I am thus unsure of what “paradigm” Randi is accusing Spraggett of succumbing to.
Micael Grenholm, Dockmenterade Mirakler. English edition. (Örebro, Sweden: Sjöbergs Förlag, 2019), 14, 94.
Tamra Jones, "The Saint and Ann O'Neill." The Washington Post, April 2, 1994.
Marie-Alberte Boursiquot and Shirley E. Reddoch, “The Approved Miracle of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton,” The Linacre Quarterly 79, no. 2 (May 2012): 209-218.
Jamie Buckingham, Daughter of Destiny: Kathryn Kuhlman, Her Story. 2nd Edition (New York: Pocket Books, 1978),154-155.
Cha, Kwang, Daniel Wirth, Daniel and Regerio Lobo, "Does Prayer Influence the Success of in Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer? Report of a Masked, Randomized Trial." Journal of Reproductive Medicine. 46 (9). 2001:781-787.
Bruce L. Flamm, “Flawed and Fraudulent: The Problems with Prayer Studies,” Skeptical Inquirer 27, no. 5 (2003). Full overview of the controversy is detailed in Brown, Testing Prayer, 85-87.
Joyce Frieden, "Controversy Continues Over Prayer, IVF Study." The Hospitalist. March 15, 2005, 29
Leanne Roberts, Irshad Ahmed, and Andrew Davison, "Intercessory Prayer for the Alleviation of Ill Health." Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2 no. 1 (2009): 1-58.
Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis—How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), 97.
Flamm, “Flawed and Fraud,” pg. 26, 29-30.
As anecdotally recalled by Joshua Brown on Justin Brierley’s podcast Unbelievable?, around 1:03:55–1:05:40.
Carlos Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024)
A few things.
1) You neglect to mention that a large amount of scientific resources, including entire Ivy League departments, were established over the last 120 years to study parapsychology/paranormal abilities, both with and without religious connectivity. Under controlled conditions experiments failed so badly so consistently that now nearly all of those departments are no more. So the alleged "scientific bias" isn't a bias, it's a recognition that one can't incorporate someone's anecdotes as a legitimate scientific explanation, and that science's long pursuit of evidence of the supernatural has borne no fruit.
2) Do these types of anomalous remissions never occur among either the non-religious or non-Christians? I know the answer for the latter is a definite yes, while I'd bet the former is also true but harder to obtain data on.
3) You talk about how so few are reported in medical journals and the high number that doesn't capture. What about the infiltismally higher number who seek faith healers/relics/saintly intercessions who don't heal? That number is so much larger that it raises both significant questions not just about the explanatory feasibility of miraculous divine intervention but even if that is accepted as true, theological ones.
Not to derail the topic of this great article, but I’ve noticed that skeptical arguments against supernatural healings remind me a lot of the current UAP/UFO discussion. There’s a mountain of evidence (photos, videos, and anecdotal reports) but the underlying “mechanism” for why and when they occur seems to be elusive or poorly understood. The same can be said for demonic or spiritual warfare anecdotes (where hard evidence is more difficult to come by)