Ok on one hand there is a study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair by doctors who examined and treated the patients (clearly you haven’t read the study).
Yet you are dismissing the study based on an article with a few quotes from scientist who haven’t examined the patients yet are diagnosing them with psychosomatic mass hysteria. I notice your article/those scientist have nothing to say about the objective tests such as MRIs/hearing tests. Clearly the UPenn Center for Brain injury and Repair has no idea what the hell they are doing or how to run a study...clearly the right way to debunk a study and diagnosis patients with mass hysteria is to shoot from the hip without exaimination of the patients.
The amount of armchair diagnosis going on, both in this case and in this thread, is remarkable.
>Dr. Douglas Smith, who led the medical examination of the American diplomats, questioned how much a single recording could reveal about the experience. Some patients didn’t report hearing anything unusual, he noted, while others heard a range of sounds.
>“It could be like a low-tone motor, or metal scraping, or like driving in a car with the back window open,” said Dr. Smith, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania.
>Dr. Smith wouldn’t rule out the possibility that some diplomats might have heard crickets, but said that had no bearing on the real damage they’ve suffered.
I'm also curious if these crickets are native to China, where diplomats have had similar symptoms.
>I notice your article/those scientist have nothing to say about the objective tests such as MRIs/hearing tests
Well the actual study found no abnormalities in the imaging tests:
"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%)"
As for hearing loss:
"Moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss was identified in 3 individuals."
So only 3 out of the 24 had some kind of hearing loss, and we don't know what their hearing was like before the incident.
So no it’s no longer a flawed study but one that supports that nothing occurred? I see, you must have missed the non-cherry picked parts, here is the conclusion for your benefit:
>Results Of 24 individuals with suspected exposure identified by the US Department of State, 21 completed multidisciplinary evaluation an average of 203 days after exposure. Persistent symptoms (>3 months after exposure) were reported by these individuals including cognitive (n = 17, 81%), balance (n = 15, 71%), visual (n = 18, 86%), and auditory (n = 15, 68%) dysfunction, sleep impairment (n = 18, 86%), and headaches (n = 16, 76%). Objective findings included cognitive (n = 16, 76%), vestibular (n = 17, 81%), and oculomotor (n = 15, 71%) abnormalities. Moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss was identified in 3 individuals. Pharmacologic intervention was required for persistent sleep dysfunction (n = 15, 71%) and headache (n = 12, 57%). Fourteen individuals (67%) were held from work at the time of multidisciplinary evaluation. Of those, 7 began graduated return to work with restrictions in place, home exercise programs, and higher-level work-focused cognitive rehabilitation.
Conclusions and Relevance In this preliminary report of a retrospective case series, persistent cognitive, vestibular, and oculomotor dysfunction, as well as sleep impairment and headaches, were observed among US government personnel in Havana, Cuba, associated with reports of directional audible and/or sensory phenomena of unclear origin. These individuals appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma.
71% having balance problems 3 months later doesn't sound like the effect of crickets or other loud noises. Could be the microwave hypothesis though maybe?
An MRI isn't a clear cut test. It is an imaging technique. The images must then be interpreted. There is room for mistakes in this interpretation process.
Obviously, I have no idea if that is happening in this case. But we must admit the possibility, especially if other more rigorous medical evidence is not present.
My lab does MRIs of humans and animals. There's a crazy amount of variability in the structure and function of an allegedly "normal" subject's brain. For example, a good friend has what looks like an extra little bump near the vertex. He's normal enough though, and will probably finish his PhD this year.
The Brain Imaging Center does refer people with weird scans to (clinical) neurologists. They've caught a few things, but the vast majority of those are also "weird, but apparently fine" too.
It's obviously not ideal, but it's not like you can recruit subject, do some baseline tests, and then prospectively assign some of them to a foreign embassy where they /might/ be caught in the middle of something.
Not everything needs to be an RCT, and we've learned a lot from case studies, especially where the "case" is due to some effect that's difficult or unethical to replicate. Some examples:
Yes I’m the abstract and conclusion UPenn clearly acknowledges the medical history of the patients. None of them had any history of head/brain injury.
I’d like to see you cite anything from the study that states the doctors made that statement without reviewing the patients medical histories. Or anything at all from the study suggesting UPenn had no access to the patients medical histories.
Science is not unimpeachable, no matter how many times you try to appeal to authority. I’ve personally read many papers from prestigious institutions where the conclusions seem flashy but the methodology is suspect.
It’s possible (even expected) for two researchers to come to differing peer-reviewed conclusions for the same circumstance. Some scientists wrote a paper in a journal, others wrote to the journal to disagree. It’s a normal day in academia and how science progresses, not ‘shooting from the hip’. Without being involved in this particular field, it’s nearly impossible for a layperson to draw conclusions either way.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/14/cuban-acoustic...