The Havana Embassy Mystery: Conversion Disorder | Hacker News Reader

The Havana Embassy Mystery: Conversion Disorder

vanityfair.com

18 pointsamaccuish12 comments

This article reads as irresponsible gaslighting, and the magazine should have known better than to publish it in this snarky voice. The referenced reports that raise the possibility of psychosis are maintaining a scientific voice: that one must keep an open mind to alternative explanations for an observation so long as they remain viable and not falsified. The writer was wrong to read psychological illness as the most viable explanation -- and surely wrong to assert to readers that this is the case.

Given the currently known evidence, conversion disorder is the most viable explanation. While new evidence could change that, there's nothing wrong with reporting on what currently seems to be correct. The referenced reports do the same thing, state what they find most likely and say that further evidence could change this. They aren't just printing their guess.

The only team who has published results based on direct examination of patients did not draw that conclusion. You can read the JAMA paper yourself. The rest of the peanut gallery is simply speculating off that single report.

That report's stated objective does not include diagnosis, just to describe the neurological manifestations of the people involved. Other teams used that report as evidence to make reports, they don't need more direct examination of the patients.

The sound of someone with something to lose, this comment right here. It's just really obvious, the tone of this comment.

You urgently scramble to peg an opinion on this thread. You protest too much.

The New Yorker story is still the most thorough and best reported story I have read on this subject:

>> Smith rejected this explanation [of mass hysteria]. “To artificially display all of these symptoms, you’d have to actually go and research, practice, be the most consummate actor ever, and convince one expert after another,” he said. But he acknowledged that more data were needed to convince skeptics that the syndrome was real. He said his team was awaiting “potential tangible evidence” from a new neuroimaging study involving the victims. In addition, experts from the National Institutes of Health were examining the JAMA results. “Let the scientific process play out,” Smith said.

It is also suspicious to me that the Cuban government has refused to provide surveillance footage from the alleged scenes of the attacks:

>> Investigators, arriving months after the incidents, had to contend with the fact that such attacks would leave no physical evidence at the scene: no shell casings, no burn marks, no chemical residue. There might have been video evidence, however. Agents visiting the two hotels saw surveillance cameras in the lobbies and hallways, which might help determine if anyone was outside the rooms during the incidents. The F.B.I. asked for access to footage from the hotels, and from cameras near the Americans’ residences. According to U.S. officials, the Cubans have yet to provide it.

It's kind of pathetic and lazy for an article like this to assume that this is some elaborate Trump-fueled plot against Cuba.

(link here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/the-mystery-of...)

It seems microwave frequencies can travel through the dermal layer of the head and into the cochlear of the inner ear, where transduction can then occur. It's similar to how hearing implants work.

Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17495664

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https://patents.google.com/patent/US4877027A/

Abstract: "Sound is induced in the head of a person by radiating the head with microwaves (...) The bursts are frequency modulated by the audio input to create the sensation of hearing in the person whose head is irradiated."

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https://patents.google.com/patent/US6470214B1

Abstract: "(...) intelligible subjective sound is produced when the encoded signal is demodulated using the RF Hearing Effect (...)"

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Voices or harsh music carried by microwave signals can be transmitted into your head, bypassing your ears going directly into the center of the brain so that they can be much louder than ordinary sound can be and last until they turn it off. There is no time limit. You won't sleep until they let you sleep. If this ultra insistent voice demands you do something, you will do it.

So all the brain imaging scans that showed concussions were nothing?

No brain imaging scans showed any issues except "perhaps" for one or two people.

The media, if you read it correctly, reported this correctly from day dot.

At no point was there evidence coming from brain imaging for the staff that showed any problems, everything was consistent with what we know it is..... mass hysteria.

Those don't exist. The workers displayed concussion like symptoms, but most of the MRIs reported conventional findings in the normal ranges.

The subject is interesting but man this article is so long! It could have been a tenth of its current size and still give us more than enough information.

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