Nialler

Do they incorporate controls and double-blinding in their assessment? Any account taken of placebo?

Do they incorporate spontaneous or unexplained cures which have taken place among people not visiting Lourdes?

Cat59

I think the fact that the current group of specialists haven't recognised any of the hundreds of cures presented to them since the 1980s as showing that most of them maintain their scientific integrity. But they do believe in God and the possibility of miracles, so that at the end of the day, that will impact on their decision and cause me to treat any judgement they make with sceptism.
How they proceed- the specialist in that field is allocated the case if after superficial examination it appears unexplainable. He/she obtains all documents pertaining to it, talks to the person's doctors and specialist and usually the individual themselves.
The considerations given when coming to his/her conclusion is that the illness must have been serious and considered impossible to cure; no medication or treatment must have been given which could possibly have caused the change and the cure must be sudden and complete, with no relapse. This is then presented to the bureau and the case followed up for several years before a decision is reached as to whether or not it is unexplained.
It is unsuprising therefore that as medical knowledge increases, especially around things like the placebo effect and biases, the number of "cures" decreased substantially and the possibility of one being ever announced again extremely small. As I said, none since 1980s.

David B

http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/Lourdes.html

I like Randi

David B

Nialler

Cat59,

Thanks for the explanation. It fits in with what I'd been thinking - that recent improvements in methodology are making it more difficult to establish a cure as a miracle. Perhaps one day the word "difficult" will be replaced by "impossible".

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that spiritual people derive benefit from going there, and that some may even be cured of imagined ailments. Placebo may also be strong there. Reminds me of a friend's wife, who is quite the psychosomatic. Imaginary problems are best cured by imaginary cures (in my book, anyway), and she has attended various successful faith-healers over the years. They usually manage to, errrr, "cure" her of her ailments, and all are happy, save her hubbie, who has seen depletion of his bank account.

Our Health Service is proably happy as well. Tracing down and diagnosing these imagined maladies could involve lots of work and expense for them.

Strangely, when she broke an arm she went straight to a hospital, though, not giving the woo-woo men a chance to wave their hands over the fracture.

Huon

Back to Bernadette Soubirous : The official site mentions that the body of Bernadette Soubirous was found "mummified", but avoids carefully to speak of a "miracle". So, the believers can understand that there is a miracle here, but the responsibility of the Roman Church is not engaged.

Naturally mummified corpses are not, by far, very exceptional.

What would have been really a miracle with Bernadette, if Our Lady had cured her of her tuberculosis. And her convent gave her the responsibility of the infirmary (so that she could give her bacilluses to the sick persons she had in charge...).

Fischy

From there:

:rolling: Good stuff

Fischy

I took a better pic of this but I don't have access to it at the moment:

http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/12657.html?popped=1

This one is older, this guy died in 1419. That's St Vincent's left arm at the Catedral de Valencia in Valencia, Spain. They even put rings and bracelets on it. It looks like a piece of beef jerky.

Huon

Lourdes water is not especially mineral water, does not sprinkle. It is holy-water, a priest has said something on the vials.

Boro Nut

In fact the English had no word for vial before the introduction of French mineral water.

Boro Nut

JaredM

The mineral springs at Saratoga Springs, NY have been renowned for their healing properties as well, due in large part to the trace minerals in the water. It is still bottled and sold to this day, and is quite good. I went to college in upstate New York (State University of Albany, in fact), and this is the preferred brand of water up there.

I would not be surprised if that is the case with Lourdes as well.

--Jared