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Over the course of their 6-year investigation into “Havana Syndrome” U.S. officials expended considerable human capital and financial resources going down a rabbit hole searching for exotic explanations. Instead of finding secret weapons and foreign conspiracies—they found only rabbits. For in the end, prosaic explanations were determined to be the cause of the events in Cuba and its subsequent global spread. That is the lesson of “Havana Syndrome”—follow the science.
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[1] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10913303/
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A consensus has formed among the growing community of AHI sufferers that the U.S. government — and the CIA in particular — is hiding the full extent of what it knows about the source of Havana Syndrome. The victims offer two general hypotheses as to why. The first is that releasing the full intelligence around Russian involvement might be so shocking as to convince the American people and their representatives that Moscow has committed an act of war against the United States, thereby raising thorny questions as to how a nuclear power fond of showing off its hypersonic missiles ought to be made to pay.
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Okay, so Russia is running around randomly attacking low level embassy workers, and the US knows this and is playing PR for Russia, because they're worried about US citizens viewing Russia negatively. I'm sure there's far more absurd mental gymnastics in there as well, as that was literally from the first section I clicked to. When we get out of this clown world era and back to something vaguely resembling normalcy, there's about a 100% chance that these "citizen investigative journalists" are mostly all going to end up having been little more than Operation Mockingbird 2.0. [1]
"attacking low level embassy workers"
Do you think really they'd pick the US president as their first target on an experimental (or even proven) weapon? And I wouldn't call embassy employees "random" in any context.
>US knows this and is playing PR for Russia, because they're worried about US citizens viewing Russia negatively
As a student of history, there are hundreds of reasons and prior examples of governments hiding the true capabilities of nations they consider enemies or adversaries. This allows them time to investigate and create a defense, it also appease the public becuase telling everyone "hey everyone watch out our advisory has this super top secret weapon to which we have no defense!" is not a great idea.
The idea that the US would "play PR for Russia" is absurd.
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While the U.S. Government allowed the release of the [politicized findings which suggested weapons as a possible cause], they withheld the results of other investigations that were skeptical of the condition. In 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that mass psychogenic illness was most likely responsible for the outbreak. While the report remains classified, its conclusions were leaked to the media. The contents of a second classified report were only released in September 2021 after a Freedom of Information Act filing. It found the role of microwave radiation “highly unlikely,” and that psychogenic illness appeared to play a role
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The political establishment was actively trying to suggest it was caused by secret weapons from "foreign adversaries", and classifying the opinions which contradicted that. They were undermined by a mixture of leaks and Freedom of Information Act requests. People claiming to suffer from the syndrome numbered in the hundreds in 70 countries around the world [1], including many Western nations where "foreign adversaries" would stand minimal chance of deploying any sort of a weapon, even more so after the initial incidents. Notably, from the same article, workers who reported suffering from 'Havana Syndrome' were able to receive compensation of up to $200,000.
[1] - https://apnews.com/article/health-cuba-havana-congress-e0186...
Are you suggesting these people reported symptoms in order to be eligible for potential future government compensation? Compensation I remind you, that didn't even exist until very recently.
Oh and I couldn't resist:
"Specific amounts will be determined to by the extent and severity of the victims’ injuries, which have included brain damage not limited to vertigo, cognitive damage, eyesight and hearing problems, according to the officials and aides."
That's some "psychogenic illness"! And why would they compensate at all if this is just made up?
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One found that patients “appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma” (Swanson et al., 2018, p. 1125). But standard MRI scans of the brain were normal and based on the criteria for abnormal neuropsychological tests, just about anybody would be diagnosed with brain injury as the threshold for impairment was excessively high (Della Sala & Cubelli, 2018). Another study using functional MRI found “brain anomalies” in a small cohort of patients (Ragini et al., 2019). But such anomalies are common with this imagining technique, often representing normal individual variation.
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And I'm stopping the quote there for brevity. It goes on with further elaboration.
Subsequent evidence debunked that "post-mortem", as another user posted.
We've seen, with evidence, China pressure research groups and Nature into calling the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory. Like "fake news", "conspiracy theory" is now actively used by China as a way to shut down evidence.
From subpoenaed communications we even know that certain figures who publicly denounced the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy, privately believed the theory was likely.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-covid-lab-leak-deception-an...
Government covert operations are not the kind of phenomenon science can properly study because it's not reproducible and data is not open. It's the realm of investigative journalism and intelligence.
But when journalists or intelligence agencies lie, exactly nothing happens. Intelligence agencies clearly see lying as just part of their retinue of weapons. And the media in general has mostly become a mixture of entertainment and bias confirmation. The internet seems to have largely killed the traditional role of the media as the bearer of information and knowledge on the happenings of the day.
[1] - https://nypost.com/2024/06/02/us-news/house-covid-panel-chai...
I also didn't claim Journalists and Intelligence Agencies are bearers of truth but it stands that to study something like Lab Leak or Havana Syndrome is a question in the realm of investigation, not science. No?
Peter is risking criminal consequences based on evidence gathered by investigation, not the scientific process. Also not because of purposefully misleading research but dangerous research and lies while testifying, which isn't fraudulent science.
But if you want a more general case, just check out Retraction Watch. You'll find that consequences are very real, they're just not the sort that typically make the news. For instance looking up cases at Harvard, I randomly picked Sam W Lee. [1] The final charge against him was in 2019. Since then he has not only been terminated at Harvard, but has not had a single publication - meaning he likely has been unable to find a position at another university, nor has he been able to independently publish. [2]
[1] - https://retractionwatch.com/2019/04/19/harvard-cancer-lab-su...
“It is necessary to use an animal like a ferret that has brain structures resembling the “gyrencephalic nature” of the human brain; mice and rats do not fulfill this criteria, according to the summary. The brain tissue of gyrencephalic animals, like humans, ferrets, pigs and primates, resembles ridges and valleys, compared to smooth surfaces of the brains of lissencephalic animals, such as mice and rats.”
“You don’t get approval for animal testing unless the science is there. … You’ve already proven out that the science is correct and exists, and now you are looking at the biological impacts that can’t be modeled and you need a specimen to determine what it does biologically,” the former official said.
0. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/09/pentagon-funding-ex...
[1] - https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_W81XWH2211105_210...
[2] - https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_W81XWH2211105_97D...
- a very small minority of navy seals have committed suicide after exhibiting signs of psychological disorders
- post-mortem analysis showed damage that could be related to exposure to blasts
- blasts causing brain damage? perhaps in training?
Everything else that's written is (to me) pretty much irrelevant. Because in science, a good scientist engaging in good science would now setout to reject their own hypothesis. And only after trying to refute it in every way imaginable might they begin to accept it as even possible, and then set out to test it, again with the goal of rejecting it, so much as possible. But media goes the other way and now runs around collecting statements, data, and evidence in favor of their hypothesis, but you can collect practically endless evidence in support of ideas that are false (which is why science focuses on rejecting your own ideas instead), so it's quite a pointless endeavor.
I tried to do the same with the 60 minutes article (going by the transcript), but failed. The reason is that what they presented sounds pretty silly if you remove it from the "flow." A Russian working in America as a chef, who previously worked as a military comms guy, is arrested for speeding/evading arrest and has a device to allegedly wipe his car's comp? That doesn't even really qualify as circumstantial evidence, because it's just not at all logically connected unless you're playing a game of "connect the dots." And one can do that, but in the end you mostly just end up drawing a Jackson Pollock.