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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

#91

Post by jonathanstrange »

sudosysgen wrote: post #89
dotps1 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is far, far most likely an RF signal used to power espionage devices. Both the US and the USSR played with putting passively powered espionage devices. The idea it was done to injure embassy staff at this point is a conspiracy theory.

It's not meaningful to call a hypothesis a "conspiracy theory" in this everyday sense when the world of espionage is concerned. Many things that people would intuitively put into conspiracy theory territory have occurred or are even common in clandestine service scenarios. Bugs have been put into buildings during construction years before they were used, radioactive substances were used to track people, one-time pads written by secretaries on typewriters were broken in deciphering efforts that took many years, hardware devices were intercepted and modified during ordinary mail order process, Swiss companies specialized in encryption were entirely compromised and run by the CIA, people have been murdered with poison pellets from a gun looking like an umbrella, etc.

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

#92

Post by southernplaces7 »

ipaddr wrote: post #65
ceejayoz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or just evidence that there were none in this case.

If a bunch of scientists and astronomers directed their best instruments at finding a teacup orbiting the sun somewhere between Earth and Mercury because a small number of people insisted it was there, but never locate it, the more reasonable conclusion wouldn't be that we're not good at finding orbiting teacups. It would be that assertions of its existence were based on bad reasoning.

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

#93

Post by southernplaces7 »

janalsncm wrote: post #38
fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Crime is lower on pretty much every metric than it was 20-30 years ago where the last big panic set in the mandatory minimum mania and the carceral state exploded. Crime was very high in the 1990s though and it's regulation wasn't from a sudden "panic" but a steady growth from 1950 as it climbed from 5 deaths by homicide per 100,000 in 1950 to 10.4 in 1980 and 9.4 in 1990.[0] If anything there is more "mania" about…

Homicides in the US today are 7.8/100k, which is still above the 1950 number. I wonder what accounts for the difference. Globally, the US has a higher rate than other countries likely due to guns, but it’s not like guns were illegal in 1950.

>I wonder what accounts for the difference. Globally, the US has a higher rate than other countries likely due to guns, but it’s not like guns were illegal in 1950.

The FBI'S Uniform Crime Statistics (last published for 2022, 1) break down homicide rates and numbers by demographics. Some reasons for the higher murder rates are right there in easily discernible patterns that have little to do with guns specifically. A majority of homicide is black on black crime among younger men, (though there'es no shortage of white offenders in the same age and gender group, bear in mind the population differential for the country) and it occurs across many states regardless of those states specific gun laws, or those of the municipalities in which these homicides occur.

The above is considered by many to be extremely politically incorrect, even racist, but it is what the numbers clearly show based on minutely collected data. We can argue about socioeconomic and other social or political factors causing such homicide numbers in that demographic, but since the focus here is on guns as a possible cause of murder (a rather absurd idea since guns are inert objects unless made to cause harm by a human), that's a different argument.

Also, if you look at a breakdown of U.S. states with the most guns per capita, and another one of U.S. states with the highest homicide rates. They don't match, indicating that it's not simply "the guns".

FBI's Crime stats: https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

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

#94

Post by maxcoder4 »

ineedaj0b wrote: post #46
111111101101 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be a uniquely American thing. In my country at least (Australia), anything that benefits the common man isn't labelled as communism. It's probably related to hysteria induced by McCarthyism.

Australia is particularly strange. The US tries hard to paint democracy as a positive world wide. I would imagine the CCP would paint themselves a good position too. If you were in a position of power in the CCP, who wouldn’t push for positive propaganda to all nearby territories? All innocent Australians should realize they are consuming pro Chinese and pro American /foreign/ propaganda. I would argue the Chinese ar…

>I would argue the Chinese are focusing more resources in Australia compared to the US.

What are your sources? All declassified documents that I know of suggest otherwise. For example UK's Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament report titled "China" almost starts with "China sees almost all of its global activity in the context of its struggle with the US".

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

#95

Post by hacoo »

diogenescynic wrote: post #85
jmyeet wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see 'crime' all over now.. This is anecdotal. The data just doesn't back it up (eg [1]). You've brought up a number of issues As for retail theft, even the Walgreens CEO had to admit the problem was overstated [2]. There are a bunch of reasons for it. One is the crime narrative. Another is its easier for companies to blame theft rather than poor inventory management and retail operations. When you say you "see" c…

No, I mean I see it with my own eyes when I walk/drive the same streets of California I have my entire life. When I was a kid, I would go to the skatepark at 10 years old and be there all day and basically have zero parent supervision and it was 'safe'. There was only one homeless person who was basically an older guy who pushed around a TV and plugged it in at various public outlets. Now, I go to the same public pla…

This is all correct. Stats lie. Crime is an extremely localized issue, so it's easy for people to handwave away if they are in an area that doesn't experience it.

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

#96

Post by bjourne »

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.

It was the sound of crickets: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/havana-s...

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

#97

Post by immibis »

diogenescynic wrote: post #70
immibis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do, that's verifiable. Harming people is very rarely the intended purpose though.

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

#98

Post by sudosysgen »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #91
sudosysgen wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is far, far most likely an RF signal used to power espionage devices. Both the US and the USSR played with putting passively powered espionage devices. The idea it was done to injure embassy staff at this point is a conspiracy theory.

It's not meaningful to call a hypothesis a "conspiracy theory" in this everyday sense when the world of espionage is concerned. Many things that people would intuitively put into conspiracy theory territory have occurred or are even common in clandestine service scenarios. Bugs have been put into buildings during construction years before they were used, radioactive substances were used to track people, one-time pads…

It is a conspiracy theory because the CIA spent 20 years trying to find any effects on health and failed, because medical research spent 50 years trying to find a way how non-heating, non-ionizing radiation could have ill effects on health, and because RF fields to power passive spy devices has been demonstrated many times. Anyone believing at this point that a microwave signal weaker than the leakage of a microwave oven was design to hurt people at the embassy is at the level of a conspiracy theory.

There is no scientific basis for the theory, there are decades of research failing to find either a theoretical or empirical basis, while there are other plausible and precedented hypotheses. Every single example you provided however, was immediately technically plausible at the very least. So yes, the theory it was somehow detrimental to the health of the embassy staff is essentially a conspiracy theory. There is nothing behind it beyond motivated reasoning.

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

#99

Post by hansvm »

treyd wrote: post #29
oldstrangers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very unrelated but if anyone reading this is dealing with long covid/brain fog related symptoms, try famotidine (pepcid).

What's the justification for this recommendation? I find this really curious since I had some stomach acid issues that started during the pandemic (like, perhaps late 2020) that I assumed were stress related. I don't remember actually getting COVID in that time span (my uni was testing us every 3 days so I would have noticed if I had it around then). My primary care prescribed me famotidine for it in ~2022 which help…

Somebody linked a study showing an effect. For a bit of intuition:

A lot of the negative effects of covid are from our immune response and general long-term swelling and inflammation. Pepcid is a pretty safe histamine blocker, suppressing some of that initial broad-spectrum inflammatory response.

Recently I had a pretty bad poison oak problem, and in addition to the normal things (steroids, antibiotics, ...), the doctor strongly suggested allegra+pepcid for a similar reason.

Related, my gut instinct would be that benadryl would have similar effects on long-covid patients (though that might be hard to test given the induced drowsiness from the drug).

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

#100

Post by rapjr9 »

I find a few issues with the study paper:

The papers results section says: Results Among the 81 participants with AHIs, the mean (SD) age was 42 (9) years and 49% were female; among the 48 control participants, the mean (SD) age was 43 (11) years and 42% were female. Imaging scans were performed as early as 14 days after experiencing AHIs with a median delay period of 80 (IQR, 36-544) days. After adjustment for multiple comparisons, no significant differences between participants with AHIs and control participants were found for any MRI modality. At an unadjusted threshold (Pless than .05), compared with control participants, participants with AHIs had lower intranetwork connectivity in the salience networks, a larger corpus callosum, and diffusion MRI differences in the corpus callosum, superior longitudinal fasciculus, cingulum, inferior cerebellar peduncle, and amygdala. The structural MRI measurements were highly reproducible (median coefficient of variation less than 1% across all global volumetric ROIs and less than 1.5% for all white matter ROIs for diffusion metrics). Even individuals with large differences from control participants exhibited stable longitudinal results (typically, less than ±1% across visits), suggesting the absence of evolving lesions. The relationships between the imaging and clinical variables were weak (median Spearman =0.10). The study did not replicate the results of a previously published investigation of AHIs.

So it seems they did find large differences, but the differences did not change which they interpret as "the absence of evolving lesions" and hence nothing to worry about. If this was one time damage from exposure to something why would they expect evolving lesions? How can they ignore the large differences they did find compared to the control subjects?

Also they say they started the study in 2018, but the original cases started in 2016, so based on their subject selection criteria their results only apply to people who reported AHIs in later years.

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