 Some authors contend that the miracle argument is, in fact, an instance of fallacious reasoning called the base rate fallacy (Howson 2000: ch. 3; Lipton [1991] 2004: 196–198; Magnus &amp; Callender 2004). Consider the following illustration. There is a test for a disease for which the rate of false negatives (negative results in cases where the disease is present) is zero, and the rate of false positives (positive results in cases where the disease is absent) is one in ten (that is, disease-free individuals test positive 10% of the time). If one tests positive, what are the chances that one has the disease? It would be a mistake to conclude that, based on the rate of false positives, the probability is 90%, for the actual probability depends on some further, crucial information: the base rate of the disease in the population (the proportion of people having it). The lower the incidence of the disease at large, the lower the probability that a positive result signals the presence of the disease.