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5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

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Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#61

Post by kurthr »

ceejayoz wrote: post #28
francisofascii wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree there is not evidence of a weapon, I am not buying hypochondria. The amount of reports and the peculiarity of the hearing symptoms don't add up to hypochondria. Local environmental pathogens or chemicals could be a cause. Also, our ability to detect such pathogens or brain abnormalities is still very limited, so finding no abnormalities is not surprising.

Lots of reports and peculiar symptoms don't rule out psychogenic causes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness We had a case of it near us in upstate New York a few years back. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/magazine/teenage-girls-tw... ( https://archive.is/EoY7e )

Neither do they particularly support it.

https://youtu.be/zy_ctHNLan8 -Benn Jordan video

Lot's of people hear low pitched sounds, for decades, and it's been in the news. It must be psychosomatic... oops, we can measure it (~60dB), because we bothered to check. Where's it coming from? Don't know, but maybe NatGas pumping stations?

Now, the reason I doubted that RF was causing this is that enough radio wave power to penetrate skulls at a distance would have been easily detected with some LEDs and short pieces of wire. The idea that there aren't wide band RF detectors in embassies strains credulity. You could put them in glasses trivially. I think it would take me 5 minutes with a soldering iron and parts on hand, and be almost indetectable without examining the glasses.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#62

Post by 1oooqooq »

pessimizer wrote: post #39
pessimizer wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was another hysteria that was constantly government-fueled, and discussion of it completely disappeared once the people who met every morning to whiteboard how best to push it were assigned to other projects.

It's very strange that the serious position is to pretend like this was an organic social phenomenon, an incident of mass psychology, and ignore the fact that it was always, as far as any science goes, a physically impossible proposition, entirely fueled by successive administrations advocating for it in every mainstream media outlet. This was another reason why Russia was a nation of comic book style evil geniuses t…

why not both?

covid is now proven both as lab leak and a convenient emergency for multiple ends /s?

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#63

Post by applied_heat »

someotherperson wrote: post #47

I'm waiting for it to turn out to be something stupid like highly lead-contaminated cutlery, furniture and other things. Or maybe some sort of pesticide or insecticide being sprayed on or around the building.

One study did identify heavy pesticide use due to concerns about Zika virus and measured changes in people’s brains before and after their trips to Cuba:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/havana-syndrome-neurotoxin-en...

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#65

Post by ipaddr »

ceejayoz wrote: post #34
tantalor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

It's a pithy saying, but misused here. Not bothering to look into it would be "absence of evidence". Extensive looking into it and finding nothing much across many different people and many different scans by many different researchers is a form of evidence.

Evidence we are not good at finding brain abnormalities.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#66

Post by skygazer »

tokai wrote: post #14
Mindless2112 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study isn't evidence against it. > The NIH study, which began in 2018 and included more than 80 Havana syndrome patients, wasn't designed to examine the likelihood of some weapon or other trigger for Havana syndrome symptoms.

I know. I wrote "no evidence for ".

I think they're just establishing a scope for the "no evidence for," because "no evidence for" doesn't necessarily imply "evidence against" but it's often interpreted that way.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#67

Post by asdff »

tokai wrote: post #2

The symptoms sounded like burnout from the beginning. Hypochondria is a common symptom of stress, depression, and other mental disorders. A scary and confusion symptom when one does not have tendencies for it normally. There isn't one clean piece of evidence for any energy weapon or attack hypothesis. It's about time the mass hysteria surrounding Havana syndrome is laid to rest.

It makes you think about the implications of this. A stressed workforce is not an efficient one at all. Say you want to get an advantage against your competitor without directly attacking their labor. How might you increase stress levels? What levers can you pull to make these diplomats to pull all nighters at the embassy for weeks at a time? I imagine its very cheap to pull such levers if you are an enemy intelligence agency who is read up on american standard operating procedure.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#68

Post by dotps1 »

tokai wrote: post #14
Mindless2112 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study isn't evidence against it. > The NIH study, which began in 2018 and included more than 80 Havana syndrome patients, wasn't designed to examine the likelihood of some weapon or other trigger for Havana syndrome symptoms.

I know. I wrote "no evidence for ".

I mean the fact that they did this before, I think should go in the evidence column

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Signal

After they got caught they put extra cladding up on the building, and the soviets in turn responded by just making their signal transmission stronger.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#70

Post by diogenescynic »

immibis wrote: post #41
immibis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of thing isn't unheard of. It's not like the USA wouldn't do the same to diplomats from other countries if it wanted to. It's not like every pair of nearby embassies and the host country don't have various radio beams pointed at each other all the time. You can easily imagine at least one simple possibility: Cuba replicated The Thing and is using a microwave beam to power it which is too strong.

Downvoters on this one should leave comments explaining why they disagree.

Probably this nonsense: >It's not like the USA wouldn't do the same to diplomats from other countries if it wanted to. It's not like every pair of nearby embassies and the host country don't have various radio beams pointed at each other all the time.
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