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The medical team at the University of Pennsylvania, who actually examined the victims and published their findings in the peer reviewed Journal of the American

The medical team at the University of Pennsylvania, who actually examined the victims and published their findings in the peer reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association, found that the victims suffered real injuries and psychosomatic illness was ruled out. Meanwhile, all these people who have never examined the patients keep speculating the opposite. Color me skeptical.

rdtsc 8y ago
How was it ruled out. Did they find physical damage in the brain or other organs? In a lot of cases it was self reported or stuff people could fake if they wanted "oh look, I am losing my balance and falling". Another point to consider is that a lot of the staff were CIA emoyees working in an embassy that was probably going to be closed or have staff reduced because of the current administration's stance regarding Cuba. And one thing CIA employees do professionally is make up cover stories. If they could make up a cover story to retire early with extra pension for injuries in a high profile case, I can see some taking that route. For instance last time we discussed a story in the New Yorker about someone who went through this and surely at the end they said they might retire early because of the injuries received. That for some reason made me skeptical too...
jackweirdy 8y ago
> Imaging > MRI neuroimaging was obtained in all 21 patients. Most patients had conventional imaging findings, which were within normal limits, at most showing a few small nonspecific T2-bright foci in the white matter (n =9, 43%). There were 3 patients with multiple T2-bright white matter foci, which were more than expected for age, 2 mild in degree, and 1 with moderate changes. The pattern of conventional imaging findings in these cases was nonspecific with regard to the exposure/insult experienced, and the findings could perhaps be attributed to other preexisting disease processes or risk factors. Advanced structural and functional neuroimaging studies are ongoing. The study concludes that "These individuals appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma." but its not clear to me whether that is to say the study identified specific signs of injury (the imaging section certainly doesn't indicate that) or whether it is saying the symptoms would usually be explained by injury that is as-yet unidentified https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673168 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673168
- jug 8y ago
  How can they say all this unless they had made brain scans before the specific incident to compare against?
  - aylmao 8y ago
    Well, most brains all look the same. It's much like hands. If you were tasked with finding out if someone had a hand chopped off, and saw they had two hands on them, you wouldn't need to know how many hands they had before to be able to medically claim "Yeah, two hands is within normal limits".
okl 8y ago
> Meanwhile, all these people who have never examined the patients keep speculating the opposite. Color me skeptical. You are poisoning the well, since the article even says > That’s not to say that the diplomats weren’t attacked, the scientists added — only that the recording is not of a sonic weapon, as had been suggested.
- abnry 8y ago
  Well, the article headline says otherwise. Which is typical of media headlines.
  - okl 8y ago
    The headline doesn't say that the victims did not suffer injuries.
  - oldgradstudent 8y ago
    No it doesn't. It says the sound was crickets. There were symptoms, and there was a sound. It was assumed that post hoc ergo propter hoc - the sound was the cause of the symptoms. This was always a strong hypothesis without real evidence to back it up.

rdtsc 8y ago

How was it ruled out. Did they find physical damage in the brain or other organs? In a lot of cases it was self reported or stuff people could fake if they wanted "oh look, I am losing my balance and falling". Another point to consider is that a lot of the staff were CIA emoyees working in an embassy that was probably going to be closed or have staff reduced because of the current administration's stance regarding Cuba. And one thing CIA employees do professionally is make up cover stories. If they could make up a cover story to retire early with extra pension for injuries in a high profile case, I can see some taking that route. For instance last time we discussed a story in the New Yorker about someone who went through this and surely at the end they said they might retire early because of the injuries received. That for some reason made me skeptical too...

jackweirdy 8y ago

> Imaging > MRI neuroimaging was obtained in all 21 patients. Most patients had conventional imaging findings, which were within normal limits, at most showing a few small nonspecific T2-bright foci in the white matter (n =9, 43%). There were 3 patients with multiple T2-bright white matter foci, which were more than expected for age, 2 mild in degree, and 1 with moderate changes. The pattern of conventional imaging findings in these cases was nonspecific with regard to the exposure/insult experienced, and the findings could perhaps be attributed to other preexisting disease processes or risk factors. Advanced structural and functional neuroimaging studies are ongoing. The study concludes that "These individuals appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma." but its not clear to me whether that is to say the study identified specific signs of injury (the imaging section certainly doesn't indicate that) or whether it is saying the symptoms would usually be explained by injury that is as-yet unidentified https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673168 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2673168

jug 8y ago
How can they say all this unless they had made brain scans before the specific incident to compare against?
- aylmao 8y ago
  Well, most brains all look the same. It's much like hands. If you were tasked with finding out if someone had a hand chopped off, and saw they had two hands on them, you wouldn't need to know how many hands they had before to be able to medically claim "Yeah, two hands is within normal limits".

okl 8y ago

> Meanwhile, all these people who have never examined the patients keep speculating the opposite. Color me skeptical. You are poisoning the well, since the article even says > That’s not to say that the diplomats weren’t attacked, the scientists added — only that the recording is not of a sonic weapon, as had been suggested.

abnry 8y ago
Well, the article headline says otherwise. Which is typical of media headlines.
- okl 8y ago
  The headline doesn't say that the victims did not suffer injuries.
- oldgradstudent 8y ago
  No it doesn't. It says the sound was crickets. There were symptoms, and there was a sound. It was assumed that post hoc ergo propter hoc - the sound was the cause of the symptoms. This was always a strong hypothesis without real evidence to back it up.