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The ongoing conflict around the Strait of Hormuz has become a situation in game theory known as a war of attrition. The maths behind it can help explain what's going on, says Petros Sekeris

Yesterday involved a lot of walking, much of it with no destination, but I did get in 12,000 steps. Our plan was to take a two-hour walking architecture tour at 9:30, followed by a search for lunch. Unfortunately, my friend Tim got lost on our walk to the tour’s starting point, and we missed the whole tour. The plan then changed to an attempt to have lunch at the famous Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room, an all-you-can eat dining experience with great Southern food. But we missed that, too: we found we could change our architecture tour to 1 p.m., and so missed the first seating at Mrs. Wilkes’s.

So it was back to Ogelthorpe Square for the second tour attempt, which succeeded. In between, we grabbed a forgettable lunch at a Mexican restaurant and some excellent ice cream at a famous place.

First, the street where we’re staying again: Jones Street, which our tour guide called “The most beautiful street in Savannah”, lined as it is with oak trees and old houses:

And a portion of the long line at Mrs. Wilkes’. This is an every day occurrence as the place is famous and it doesn’t take reservations. After one seating, you have to wait until a table vacates (you sit with nine strangers) before you can get in, and we missed the first seating. In the meantime, Tim managed to get us on the 1 p.m. tour without paying extra.

After lunch, the first stop was Leopold’s Ice Cream, founded in 1919.  From Wikipedia:

In August 2004, Leopold’s moved to its present home on East Broughton Street, in Savannah’s downtown, where it is known for regularly having a line of customers waiting outside.  Stratton Leopold hired Hollywood production designer Dan Lomino to recreate his father’s soda fountain from the original store.  The ice cream is made, using the same recipes developed by his father and uncle, at a former wholesale florist building at 37th and Price Streets and brought over to the store as necessary.

Leopold’s signature flavor is tutti frutti, a favorite of Savannah’s Johnny Mercer, who worked in the shop as a ten-year old, sweeping floors,  while former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s favorite was the butter pecan. Carter wrote the foreword to Leopold’s Ice Cream: A Century of Tasty Memories, 1919–2019 (Melanie Bowden Simón, 2020).

The outside:

The inside; I didn’t see a soda fountain (perhaps this counter is the remains), but they had a gazillion flavors of ice cream. And yes, there was a line outside.

The newest flavors were also listed outside, and I immediately decided to get the top two, neither of which I’d had before:

My double scoop of lavender and cherry blossom (I ascertained first that they used real flowers). It was terrific: high in butterfat content, dense, and with very subtle flavors. Two scoops after lunch made me walk slower on the architecture tour!

Our first stop was the house of Juliette Gordon Low (1860-1927), who married an uncaring git named William Mackay Lowe, who often cheated on her.  During her long periods of being alone, Low learned metalworking, pottery, and other skills. She in fact made this wrought-iron gate at her house:

Low had a tumultuous life, and was almost cheated out of her inheritance as her husband left his money to his mistress. But the will was successfully contested, Low got the dosh, and looked for a worthy project to occupy her. Her project was to found the American Girl Guides, which became the Girl Scouts of America. Eighteen girls were enrolled, and the organization continues today.

Below is a photo from Wikipedia labeled, “Juliette Gordon Low (center) standing with two Girl Scouts, Robertine McClendon (left) and Helen Ross (right).” They’re all in Girl Scout uniform. We were told that every summer Girl Scouts from all over America make a pigrimate to visit Low’s house in Savannah.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons Here’s the tallest structure in downtown Savannah, the Independent Presbyterian Church, with a steeple that’s 227 feet and 6 inches tall. Now, by law, no structure in the town can be higher than four stories. They take their historic preservation seriously here.

The bench where Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks) catches a floating white feather (symbolizing the “randomness” of fate) was located right next to the church above, but although the bench was a Hollywood prop and is no longer there, tourists still come in droves to be photographed at the bench site.  That famous scene is below:

A typical scene: Southern live oak (Quercus virginiana) covered with Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides), a flowering epiphyte that’s neither a moss nor Spanish.

Another epiphyte on an oak tree, Pleopeltis sp. or “resurrection fern,” The AI Google search explains the name:

The resurrection fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides) is named for its remarkable ability to survive long periods of drought by curling up its fronds, turning grey-grown, and appearing dead. When exposed to moisture—even just a little water—it rapidly uncurls and turns vibrant green within 24 hours, appearing to “resurrect”.

There is a drought in Savannah now, so you see the fern in its moribund state:

Below is the Green-Meldrim Mansion, built in 1853 and a National Historic Landmark.  The photo below the house explains its historical significance as Union General Sherman’s headquarters in Savannah (upper floor, two window to the right). While Sherman burned much of Georgia during his infamous 1864 March to the Sea that pretty much ended the Civil War, he spared Savannah because it expelled its Confederate troops and surrendered to the Union Army.

Click to enlarge:

One of the many buildings of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), one of the world’s most famous art schools.  Their philosophy is to have art taught by those who make art, not by academics, and I’m told they have a 99% placement rate of its graduates. The school is so wealthy that it participates in Savannah’s ongoing efforts to buy and refurbish historic buildings exactly as they were: a laborious and expensive effort.

In fact it occupies many of the buildings it’s bought and refurbished: this is Poetter Hall, the National Guard Armory in the late nineteenth century. It was SCAD’s first academic building.

A monument to (and burial place) of Casimir Pulaski, a Pole who moved to America and fought for the colonial army during the American Revolutionary War, saving George Washington’s life.  He’s a much beloved Polish-American.

Below is the Mercer House (now the Mercer House Museum), completed in 1868. It’s famous for reasons set out in Wikipedia:

The house was the scene of the 1981 killing of Danny Hansford by the home’s owner Jim Williams, a story that is retold in the 1994 John Berendt book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The house is also featured in the movie adaptation of the book, released three years later. Williams held annual Christmas parties at Mercer House, on the eve of the Savannah Cotillion Club‘s debutante ball, which were the highlight of many people’s social calendars.  Williams had an “in” box and an “out” box for his invitations, depending on whether or not the person was in Williams’s favor at the time.

The site of the killing was the room on the first floor whose window is bottome left.

Williams went through four trials for the killing, but no jury in Savannah would convict this popular man, so he esceped punishment, though he did spend some time in jail awaiting trial.

The house was build by the great-grandfather of lyricist Johnny Mercer (“Moon River,” “And the Angels Sing,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” etc.) but nobody named Mercer ever lived in the house.

Because of the movie “Forrest Gump,” Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and the subsequent movie, tourism in Savannah has increased by several-fold in recent years.

Another Historic District house. I can find its picture on Google Image Search, but not its name:

The Armstrong-Kessler Mansion, once owned by Jim Williams (see above): a lousy panoramic shot due to the absence of a viewpoint that didn’t endanger me. From Wikipedia:

The Armstrong Kessler Mansion (formerly known as Armstrong House) is a nationally significant example of Italian Renaissance Revival architectural style located in the Savannah Historic District. The structure was built between 1917 and 1919 for the home of Savannah magnate George Ferguson Armstrong (1868–1924). It was owned by the Armstrong family from 1919 to 1935. Afterward, the structure and grounds served as the campus of Armstrong Junior College. Threatened with demolition, the Historic Savannah Foundation purchased the Armstrong House along with five other threatened historic buildings from the college for $235,000 in 1967. Once saved, Historic Savannah Foundation sold the Mansion (and Hershel V. Jenkins Hall) at the exact purchase price to preservationist and antique dealer Jim Williams who restored it as his home. Eventually, both were sold to a major Savannah law firm as offices.

It’s HUGE and has lovely gardens that are not open to the public. Our guide got to see them, though, and showed us photos.

Finally, a Jew church in Savannah! Yes, a Gothic Revival style synagogue, the only one I know of.  Congregation Mickve Israel was founded in 1735, almost immediately after Savannah was settled. It was formed by Sephardic Jews and is now a reform temple . The building dates from 1876, and is built to look like a church as the Jews didn’t want to stick out in Christian Savannah.

A note from Wikipedia:

The Congregation was the first Jewish community to receive a letter from the President of the United States. In response to a letter sent by Levi Sheftall, the congregation’s president, congratulating George Washington on his election as the first President, Washington replied, “To the Hebrew Congregation of the City of Savannah, Georgia”:

… May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land – whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation – still continue to water them with the dews of heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.

“That people whose God is Jehovah”—as opposed to those people whose God was the REAL God!

The plaque outside (click to enlarge).

We had no food ot note yesterday save the ice cream, but in about an hour from this writing we’re off to Mrs. Wilkes’s Boarding House for a gigantic Southern meal

Deep inside planets like Uranus and Neptune, scientists may have uncovered a bizarre new state of matter where atoms behave in unexpected ways. Advanced simulations suggest that carbon and hydrogen, under crushing pressures and scorching temperatures, can form a strange hybrid phase—part solid, part fluid—where hydrogen atoms spiral through a rigid carbon framework. This unusual “superionic” structure could reshape how heat and electricity flow inside these distant worlds, potentially helping explain their mysterious magnetic fields.

Deep inside planets like Uranus and Neptune, scientists may have uncovered a bizarre new state of matter where atoms behave in unexpected ways. Advanced simulations suggest that carbon and hydrogen, under crushing pressures and scorching temperatures, can form a strange hybrid phase—part solid, part fluid—where hydrogen atoms spiral through a rigid carbon framework. This unusual “superionic” structure could reshape how heat and electricity flow inside these distant worlds, potentially helping explain their mysterious magnetic fields.

The latest social media buzz involves a list of scientists who have either died or gone missing over the last three years, with the implication that there must be something nefarious going on. The FBI is now investigating these cases to see if there is any connection, and the White House appears to be taking the case seriously. James Comer of the House Oversight Committee said: “It does appear that there’s a high possibility that something sinister is taking place here. It’s very unlikely that this is a coincidence. Congress is very concerned about this. Our committee is making this one of our priorities now because we view this as a national security threat.”

My initial reaction to stories like this is – these kinds of things crop up all the time and they always turn out to be just coincidences, or not even that. Sometimes they are just stories fabricated out of increasingly distorted information, almost always to serve some conspiracy narrative. So my reaction is the same as if someone claims to have seen Bigfoot or an alien spacecraft – initial skepticism is fully warranted, but sure, I am happy to take an objective look. This may be a rare case when there is a genuine phenomenon going on, and in any case this is what activist skeptic do – take a deep dive when these stories emerge.

Let’s first review the basic facts as presented. Here are the 11 scientists currently on the list:

Amy Eskridge—Scientist reportedly researching anti-gravity technology. Died: 2022

Michael David Hicks—Research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; worked on the DART Project and Deep Space 1 mission. Died: July 2023.

Frank Maiwald—Principal researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Died: July 2024.

Anthony Chavez—Former employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Missing since: May 2025.

Monica Reza—Director of Materials Processing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Missing since: June 2025.

Melissa Casias—Administrative worker at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Missing since: June 2025.

Steven Garcia—Government contractor at a New Mexico facility for the Kansas City National Security Campus. Missing since: August 2025.

Nuno Loureiro—Director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Died: December 2025.

Carl Grillmair—Caltech astrophysicist who worked on NASA’s NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor missions. Died: February 2026.

William “Neil” McCasland—Retired U.S. Air Force major general. Missing since: February 27, 2026.

Jason Thomas—Pharmaceutical researcher. Found dead: March 2026.

From a scientific (specifically epidemiological) perspective what we have here is called an apparent cluster. We encounter these in medicine all the time. I remember when I was a neurology resident in the 1990s there was an apparent cluster of cases of CJD (mad cow disease) in New England where I was working (more specifically the Naugatuck Valley of Connecticut). I had a few cases myself, and it definitely seemed to be more than we would expect by chance. It is the job of the CDC to investigate all such apparent clusters and first determine if they are real. This is mostly a statistical analysis – is this just the random clumping that we expect in data, or are these cases truly outside the statistical noise? It was determined that the CJD cluster was not real – just statistical noise.

With a case like the dead or missing scientists, we can do a similar type of analysis. Is this really beyond what we would expect by chance? Remember that people are really good at pattern recognition, to the point that we see patterns that are not really there (a recognized phenomenon known as apophenia). We also feed these illusory patterns with other cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, subjective validation, anomaly hunting, and post-hoc reasoning. In the case of apparent clusters like this, what that means is that people might decide after they see a potential data point that it is significant, rather than determining ahead of time what constitutes a “hit”. They also may stretch any definitions they are using to cast a deceptively wide net. Once an apparent cluster is noticed then confirmation bias kicks in. In today’s world this means that an army of social media “sleuths” can go hunting for any apparent cases that fit the cluster – again, casting a very wide net.

Without getting into the individual cases yet, the numbers do not seem impressive. Just eleven missing or dead over four years – but what’s the baseline? Well, there are about 2 million researchers in the US. There are about 25 deaths per million people per day in the US, that’s 50 scientists dying each day, or 73,000 scientists over a four year period. Finding 11 that have some vague connection does not seem unusual to me. I would be amazed if you couldn’t find far more convincing clusters than this one. When we look at the list this base-rate problem gets even worse. On the list is a retired US Air Force major general – not a scientist. There is also a government contractor, and an “employee” – the net widens. Also, we are including both deaths and people who have gone missing.

I should point out I am using numbers for the general population, which may not match the rate for scientists. However, since the list included non-scientists and people who have retired, the numbers are reasonable, at least to get a general idea of probability. But I also looked at CDC data – about 800,000 people in the US between 25 and 65 die each year, or 3,200,000 over a four year period. About 6% of the population work in the science field, which would be 192,000, or half that if you use a narrow definition of 3%, so close to the 73,000 figure I calculated the other way.

We can also look at the institutions – JPL has 4,500 employees. If we crunch the numbers, then we would expect about 41 JPL deaths each year, or 164 over four years. At the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the figure is 18,000 employees, or 164 people per year, 657 over four years.  Even if you want to be super conservative – even one tenth of these deaths at JPL and LANL would still be 82 deaths over four years – so again, the five on that list are not impressive. Given these numbers I think it is reasonable to conclude this is not a real cluster. This is far less than random noise, by at least two orders of magnitude.

The other approach to questions like this is to investigate the individual cases. The CDC, for example, would not only look at the numbers in a potential disease cluster, but would also review individual cases. If individuals with a foodborne illness all ate at the same restaurant, that would be significant, even if the overall numbers were not that impressive. So I don’t have a problem with the FBI doing some basic investigation so see if there is anything suspicious going on, but I would be really surprised if there were. It is not inherently implausible that one or more of these people were targeted because of their work or high security clearance, but looking through the list there doesn’t appear to be a real connection there.

Eskridge, for example, doesn’t seem to have anything connecting her to anyone else on the list, except her work was vaguely “sciencey”. I say this because she is on the list because she supported research into antigravity technology. I don’t think it’s fair to say she was an antigravity researcher. She had a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry, no masters or PhD. She has no published papers. She started the Institute for Exotic Science and had an interest in antigravity. This makes her more of a crank than anything else – give that it is extremely likely that antigravity is impossible (this goes way beyond this blog post, and perhaps I can do a deep dive on this later, but if you are interested just look it up). Until we have a theory of quantum gravity we have to keep the door slightly cracked open that maybe it’s not strictly impossible, but that is extremely unlikely. In any case, we don’t even have the beginning of a basic science to work from, and what we do have says it’s not possible. So unless you are a world-class theoretical physicist working specifically on uniting quantum mechanics and general relativity, your not worth killing if the goal is to prevent the emergence of antigravity technology.

Hicks worked on the DART project, the goal of which is to develop technology to deflect asteroids that might strike the Earth. Why is that connected to antigravity research? Why is that a threat to anyone? What is the connection to a pharmaceutical worker, a fusion researcher, or a materials scientist? Grillmair worked on the NEO telescope, which is a near Earth object scope, so there is a potential connection to DART, but not anyone else. The rest are mostly just administrators, workers, and employees, and one major general thrown in.

At first blush this seems to be a list of people put together by searching for anyone who has died or gone missing over the last few years with any vague connection to anything space related. I would be surprised if this turns into anything. I suspect that the FBI will do a preliminary investigation, find nothing, and the whole story will fade away. However, it will likely live on in the conspiracy subculture, morphing over time to make the details seem more impressive until there is a mostly false mythology about the dead scientists.

The post What’s With the Dead or Missing Scientists first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A light-sensitive crystal is opening the door to a new era of “light-written” technology. Arsenic trisulfide can be reshaped and permanently altered using simple light, creating ultra-fine optical patterns without expensive manufacturing tools. Scientists even etched a nanoscale portrait of Einstein and high-density patterns that could act as secure optical signatures. This breakthrough could power everything from advanced sensors to next-generation AR devices.

Scientists have unveiled a breakthrough imaging method that can capture the hidden details of events unfolding in trillionths of a second. This new technique doesn’t just track how bright something is—it also reveals subtle structural changes that were previously invisible, all in a single shot. By effectively turning ultrafast phenomena into detailed “movies,” researchers can now watch plasma form, electrons move, and materials transform in real time.

So far, America has remained ahead in the new space race. But its biggest rival is making continual steps to catch up. China announced another step in that direction with the unveiling of its first ever reusable five-meter-wide composite propulsion module, announced in a press release on April 11th.

This social media fad promises to supercharge your sleep and make you healthier than healthy, when in fact it probably does significantly more harm than good.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A major discovery is reshaping how scientists think about catalysts. Researchers have, for the first time, captured oxygen atoms moving through the interior of a catalyst—not just along its surface. This reveals that the bulk material can actively participate in reactions, opening a new frontier in catalyst design. The finding could lead to smarter, more efficient systems by harnessing this hidden internal pathway.

“We are on a slippery slope now: For the first time, the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment to bless a risk of therapeutic harm to children by limiting the State’s ability to regulate medical providers who treat patients with speech.” Justice Jackson, dissenting

The post SCOTUS conversion therapy decision “opens a dangerous can of worms” first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Using the eROSITA space telescope, MPE researchers have successfully isolated the X-ray glow from our Solar System, revealing its impact on the soft X-ray sky. The findings, published in Science, underscore the importance of considering Solar System processes when analyzing X-ray data and highlight eROSITA’s role in advancing not only astrophysics but also heliophysics.

A feature length documentary film, released in December 2025, has revived an oft-touted claim of strong evidence of the supernatural. The Case For Miracles1 is based on the 2018 book of the same title by Christian evangelist Lee Strobel.2 Since the film has been criticized for being long on drama and short on evidence, I decided to look for documentation in the book. Unfortunately, when it comes to presenting specific cases of miraculous cures, this is limited to a single chapter, titled “A Tide of Miracles.”3

Among the dramatic cases cited by Strobel is that of a woman identified only as “Barbara” who was suffering from multiple sclerosis to the point that she had been confined to bed for seven years. She heard a voice telling her to rise and walk, which she did. She was sure this was the voice of Jesus. The documentation of this miracle, along with other claims in the chapter, however, is less than impressive, since they all consist entirely of testimonials; nor did the end notes to that chapter provide any medical documentation.4

Among the problems with testimonials as accurate histories are the imprecision of human memory, the tendency of narratives involving storytelling to arise among a group of those witnessing the same event, and bias on the part of witnesses. For example, consider the testimony of Tim Ley and members of his family regarding the appearance of the Phoenix Lights (thought by some to be UFOs) in 1997. He, along with his wife Bobbi, his son Hal, and his grandson Damien Turnidge, initially saw them as five lights in an arc shape. They soon realized the lights were moving toward them. As they did so, over the next ten minutes the lights resolved into a V shape similar to a carpenter’s square, or like two sides of an equilateral triangle. They, like other witnesses, reported a huge object, discernible not only by five lights on its leading edge, but as well because it blotted out stars in the night sky as it passed silently over the city. Soon, the object appeared to be coming right down the street where they lived, only about 100 to 150 feet above them, traveling so slowly it appeared to hover. 

It would appear that much of what witnesses saw resulted from the perceptual centers of their brains automatically filling in the spaces between the lights to create a whole object. 

Fortunately, in addition to the testimony of many witnesses, we have videos taken of the 1997 incident,5 which show a series of lights appearing in the sky, one by one, then winking out one at a time. In one of the videos, the man filming it exclaims, “Another one just showed up!” In that video the first three lights form a line, then a fourth appears in such a position as to make a shallow angle. In another video, this one without sound, one light appears, then another, then more, up to five, then six lights. These are first in shallow “V” shape, then in a more or less straight line. Then the lights wink out, one by one. None of the videos shows a solid V-shaped object blotting out the stars as it moves overhead. In fact, in most of them the lights simply hover, rather than moving in any discernible direction.6 It would appear that much of what witnesses saw resulted from the perceptual centers of their brains automatically filling in the spaces between the lights to create a whole object. 

The images of the lights in these videos support the claim by the Air Force that the “Phoenix Lights” were not alien spaceships but military flares dropped by an Air Force reserve unit on a training mission. These flares are used in combat to illuminate a battlefield at night. As such, they were dropped by parachutes, which allowed them to hover for some time. They were dropped west of the Estrella Mountains, which lie west of Phoenix. They seemed to suddenly wink out as they slowly drifted downward, and their images were blocked by the darkened, hence invisible, mountains. 

More to the point of miracle cures, consider the claim that the Indian mystic and holy man, Sathya Sai Baba, raised a devotee of his, Walter Cowan, from the dead on Christmas 1971. The narrative of this miraculous healing begins with Walter Cowan and his wife Elsie, followers of Sathya Sai Baba, arriving in Madras, India, on December 23, 1971. Walter, an elderly man, suffered a massive heart attack on Christmas Eve and was taken to a hospital, where he died. Then, on Christmas Day, Sai Baba entered the hospital room where Mr. Cowan’s body lay. After a time, he left. Then, friends of Cowan’s arrived and found him alive. This miracle was attested to by a medical doctor, Dr. John Hislop. His wife reported: 

When we reached the hospital with the vibhuti, Mrs. Cowan said, “Walter took a very bad turn just a little while ago. I thought he was dead, and I was terrified. I at once called Baba in a loud voice. Now, Walter seems a little improved. When I called Baba I felt his presence at once.”7

The validity of this dramatic testimony is somewhat undone by Elsie’s statement that she thought her husband was dead and that he was then “a little improved.” In any case, both she, along with Dr. Hislop and his wife, were devotees of Sai Baba, rendering the objectivity of their testimonies suspect. 

Since I wasn’t able to find more rigorous evidence than testimonies in Strobel’s book, I decided to look online for medical reports of miraculous healing, specifically healing attributed to the effect of intercessory prayer. In an article in the medical journal Heliyon from 2023 I found an article titled “The remote intercessory prayer, during the clinical evolution of patients with COVID-19, randomized double-blind clinical trial.”8 The article states the objective of the study as follows: 

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of intercessory prayer performed by a group of spiritual leaders on the health outcomes of hospitalized patients with Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, specifically focusing on mortality and hospitalization rates. Design: This was a double-blinded, controlled, and randomized trial conducted at a private hospital in São Paulo, Brazil. 

Here are the results of the study: 

A total of 199 participants were randomly assigned to the groups. The primary outcome, in-hospital mortality, occurred in 8 out of 100 (8.0 percent) patients in the intercessory prayer group and 8 out of 99 (8.1 percent) patients in the control group […] The study found no evidence of an effect of intercessory prayer on the primary outcome of mortality or on the secondary outcomes of hospitalization time, ICU time, and mechanical ventilation time. 

In another study, doctors measured the healing effects of intercessory prayer on patients recovering from cardiac bypass surgery: 

Patients at 6 U.S. hospitals were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: 604 received intercessory prayer after being informed that they may or may not receive prayer; 597 did not receive intercessory prayer also after being informed that they may or may not receive prayer; and 601 received intercessory prayer after being informed they would receive prayer. Intercessory prayer was provided for 14 days.9

The study yielded the following results and conclusions: 

In the 2 groups uncertain about receiving intercessory prayer, complications occurred in 52 percent (315/6o4) of patients who received intercessory prayer versus 51 percent (304/597) of those who did not […] Complications occurred in 59 percent (352/601) of patients certain of receiving intercessory prayer compared with the 52 percent (315/6o4) of those uncertain of receiving intercessory prayer […] Major events and 30-day mortality were similar across the 3 groups. 

Conclusions: 

Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery […] but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications. 

Another clinical double-blind study gave more positive results,10 in which intercessory prayers were made by a group that did not know the patient for whom they were praying, nor did any of the patients know whether or not they were the subjects of intercessory prayers. The researchers concluded that remote, intercessory prayer was associated with lower CCU scores (a metric used to evaluate severity of cardiac illness), suggesting that prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care. While this study suggested that intercessory prayer aided recovery, the benefits gained were far from dramatic: 

Using the unweighted MAHI-CCU score, which simply counted elements in the original scoring system without assigning point values, the prayer group had 10 percent fewer elements […] than the usual care group. There were no statistically significant differences between groups for any individual component of the MAHI-CCU score. 

While a ten percent improvement sounds good, it hardly equals Strobel’s claimed miracle case of the woman with multiple sclerosis, bedridden for seven years, suddenly walking. 

Effects of emotions or psychological states on the brain … can result in the transmission of healing by way of the nervous system acting on the body through the endocrine system. 

Far more dramatic and positive results occurred in a notable Dutch study on the efficacy of intercessory prayer as an instrument of healing: “A Dutch Study of Remarkable Recoveries After Prayer: How to Deal with Uncertainties of Explanation.”11 The study encompasses in-depth interviews of 14 people selected from a group of 27 cases, which were evaluated by a medical assessment team at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. Each of the participants had experienced a remarkable recovery immediately after, or even during, intercessory prayer sessions. So, is this evidence of miraculous, supernatural healing? Not necessarily. 

The article begins with a description of one of these healings, experienced by a woman named Julia who was diagnosed in 1990 with post-traumatic dystrophy, also known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). She was wheelchair bound due to intense pain. In 2007, after 17 years of suffering, she and her husband took part in a prayer healing session led by a well-known Dutch evangelist. After the session, Julia stood up and started walking without a trace of pain. She was still free of pain 15 years later, when the study was conducted. 

Julia’s CRPS is initially acute pain caused by an injury, that persisted long after the injury was healed. Among the causes of this syndrome are psychological factors and a neurologically triggered autoimmune response.12 In autoimmune disorders, the immune system goes from attacking foreign invaders, such as viruses and bacteria, to attacking the person’s own body. Other patients in the study also suffered from autoimmune disorders. Among these were muscular dystrophy, psoriatic arthritis, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s Disease. Some of the patients also suffered from purely psychological problems, such as anorexia nervosa and alcoholism. 

All of these diseases can be induced by malfunctioning of the nervous system. This is not to say these disorders are all in the patients’ heads. However, the effects of emotions or psychological states on the brain-such as taking part in a prayer session and states of belief-can result in the transmission of healing by way of the nervous system acting on the body through the endocrine system. 

Three other patients suffered from brain injuries or malfunction. One patient had Parkinson’s Disease, which is caused by the failure of certain brain cells to produce dopamine. Another had suffered from a stroke. Another patient suffered from deafness. While the healing of these problems cannot be so simply assigned to the effect of a psychological state on the nervous system and transmission of these effects to the body by way of the endocrine system, they all do involve central nervous system functioning, which could be affected by an induced emotional state. 

Only four of the patients suffered from complaints seemingly separate from the nervous system. One suffered from iatrogenic aortic dissection—an injury or scarring suffered during a surgical procedure, such as the insertion of a stent. This is usually treated with beta blockers. These medications block adrenaline, thus relaxing the heart and easing stress on the aorta. So, a changed psychological state could, likewise ease this stress. 

Another patient suffered from pelvic instability, which often results from pregnancy and is caused by a weakening of the ligaments at the pelvic floor. This is a basin-shaped structure, consisting of the sacrum, pubis, and hip bones, all held together by ligaments. When these ligaments are overstretched or injured, the bones of the pelvic floor move excessively during physical activities, resulting in pain in the groin, hip, or back. This makes even simple activities difficult and painful. This condition is usually treated by various stretching exercises. 

Another patient suffered from drug induced hepatitis. This is inflammation of the liver caused by various medications, treated by simply stopping the use of these medications. Finally, one patient suffered from rotator cuff rupture. While this is caused by traumatic injury, its protracted pain results from inflammation. Thus, just as in Julia’s case, all four of these disorders involve chronic inflammation. 

There are three problems imputing the dramatic healings to divine intervention. One is that they all seem to stem, one way or another, from either chronic pain or nervous system dysfunction. We do not see in them people being healed of drastic infectious diseases, such as COVID-19. Nor do any of them involve permanent remission of metastasizing cancers. 

It is too far a leap to extrapolate divine intervention from a few healings we can’t explain. 

Another problem is that of patient involvement. In both the study involving patients with COVID-19 and the one dealing with patients recovering from cardiac bypass surgery, the intercessory prayers were remote for the purposes of performing objective double-blind studies. Particularly in the case of Julia’s healing, the patients in the Dutch study were actively involved in the prayer sessions, thus clouding any clear evidence of cause and effect. Finally, it is too far a leap to extrapolate divine intervention from a few healings we can’t explain. 

One last problem with seemingly miraculous cures as evidence of the Judeo-Christian God, is that such a deity would seem to be acting in a rather haphazard manner, healing some people here and there, while not bothering to intervene in horrific atrocities, for example, either the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide. In the latter event, the Armenians were targeted specifically because they were Christians.13 Between one and two million of them perished at the hands of the Turks and other of their Muslim neighbors. 

Thus, these now and again, possibly miraculous, healings hardly constitute proof of the God of the Bible.

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Just. a quick update on yesterday’s peramublations, which included sightseeing and food.

We’ve rented an Air BnB equivalent in downtown Savannah, and it’s on this lovely tree-lined street:

Only half a block away is Clary’s Cafe, an eatery made famous because it’s in the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a semi-true tale of life and a murder in  Savannah in the 1980s.  I read it before I came here, and it was pretty good.

Here’s Clary’s with an old-time sign. When I went to get coffee at 8 a.m. it was empty, but when we returned at 10 a.m. there was a 25-minute wait. The cafe became a lot more popular after it was featured in the novel as well as in the eponymous film directed by Clint Eastwood. From Wikipedia:

The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt, described Clary’s as “a clearinghouse of information, a bourse of gossip,” where he came to know the characters who would animate his narrative.  James Gandolfini made an uncredited appearance as the cook in the two scenes filmed at the cafe.

A photograph of the cast hangs inside the restaurant, featuring Alison Eastwood (who plays Mandy), her father, Clint Eastwood (director), The Lady Chablis, John Cusack (John Kelso), Kevin Spacey (Jim Williams) and Jack Thompson (Sonny Seiler).

The unprepossessing interior, which does serve up good food.

Since one of my goals here is to eat as much Southern food as I can, I had that classic staple for breakfast: biscuits in sausage gravy. Very filling–and good.

And I decided to have dessert as well: bread pudding. (Do not food shame me! I don’t eat like this all the time!)

In the afternoon we spent walking around the Wormsloe Historic Site, From Wikipedia:

The Wormsloe State Historic Site, originally known as Wormsloe Plantation, is a state historic site near Savannah, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. The site consists of 822 acres (3.33 km2), protecting part of what was once the Wormsloe Plantation, a large estate established by one of the founders of colonial Georgia, Noble Jones. The site includes a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) dirt road lined with southern live oaks, the ruins of a small house with fortified walls built of tabby, a museum, and an area with recreations of colonial structures such as a blacksmithing forge and a house similar to those first built in the colony of Georgia (or as housing for enslaved people).

It was atmospheric even though not many of the original structures remain. Here’s part of the long and famous alley of live oaks. I love the Spanish Moss, which for some reason doesn’t seem to hang on the palm trees. Perhaps a botanical reader knows the reason.

I’m visiting with my oldest friends Tim and Betsy, whom I stay with when I go back to Cambridge, MA.  I’ve known Tim since 1967 when we lived in the same dorm at William and Mary; Betsy arrived as a transfer student two years later.

Here are the remains of Noble Jones’s house, a fortified structure built in 1745 not only as a home, but to withstand attacks by the Spanish and to monitor traffic passing through the narrows of the adjacent Skidaway River.  The walls were built of “tabby,” an early form of cement made of equal volumes of water, sand, lime, and ground oyster shells. (The shells were obtained from copious Native American middens.)

And after considerable discussion in the morning, we decided to have dinner at a place of great repute—the Driftaway Cafe, known for its seafood and excellent cooking. And yes, it lived up to its reputation.

As soon as I saw shrimp and grits on the menu, I wanted it. I asked the waiter if the portion was large, as I was famished, and she replied, “Yes, it’s very big.” And it was: a huge bowl of grits made with four types of cheese, loaded with plump fresh shrimp, and studded with bacon bits. I could barely finish it (washed down with sweet tea, of course), and I was glad I didn’t order the fried green tomatoes (another Southern dish) as an appetizer. All evening long I would groan sporadically, “Oy, am I full!”

This was by far the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever had: a Platonic dish!

New missions mean new capabilities - and one particularly interesting new mission is finally up and running. Data is starting to come in from SPHEREx, the medium-class surveyor that is mapping the entire sky every six months. A paper based on some of that early data was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal, mapping ice and compounds called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) throughout some interesting regions of our Milky Way.

A traditional vaccine primes the immune system to build better defences. Researchers think we can do something similar to increase our resilience to the pressures and worries of life