|
|
Post by the Scribe on Aug 15, 2021 13:14:05 GMT
Robert E. Bartholomew
The Sociologist ✧ Specialising in Mass Hysteria & Social Panics
PhD (Medical Sociology)
Honorary Senior Lecturer
Department of Psychological Medicine
University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand
Research Fellow
Center for Inquiry, Amherst, New York
Research Interests
Cultural relativism; Ethnographic diversity and human tolerance; Southeast Asian ‘psychiatric’ disorders (amok, latah, koro, spirit possession); History of psychiatry; Mass psychogenic illness and conversion disorder; History of Māori racial discrimination in New Zealand; Post-partum psychosis; Gender studies; Deception by anthropological informants; Collective behaviour (rumour, gossip, fads, crazes, manias, moral panics, stampedes, urban legends, community threat panics, riots, ‘cults,’ social movements, folie a deux); History of witchcraft; False Memory Syndrome; Social delusions; Media hoaxes and the history of tabloid journalism; Critical thinking; Psychology of ghosts and hauntings; Contested medical conditions and claims (Gulf War Syndrome, Multiple Personality Disorder, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Sick Building Syndrome, Repetition Strain Injury, Facilitated Communication, Morgellons Disease); Mass media influence on society; Fantasy-prone personality; Human perceptual fallibility; Conformity dynamics; Pseudoscience; Cryptozoology (community ‘monster’ panics) Social history of Unidentified Flying Objects in the United States; Social history of the Loch Ness and Lake Champlain ‘Monsters’; Islam in Malaysia; Medicalization of deviance (the inappropriate placement of medical labels onto unfamiliar or unpopular
non-western behaviours); Psychological impact of chemical and biological terrorism scares; New England folklore; Malaysian folklore and supernatural beliefs (Jinn, toyol, hantu, Bunian); History of minority religious movements; and Human rights and social justice among Indigenous peoples.
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Aug 15, 2021 13:15:17 GMT
Robert E. Bartholomew ✧
books
We Don’t Serve Maori Here: A Recent History of Maori Racism in New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: Bartholomew Publishing, 2021.
No Maori Allowed: New Zealand’s Forgotten History of Racial Segregation. Auckland, New Zealand: Bartholomew publishing, 2020.
Havana syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria. Co-authored with Robert W. Balho. Cham, Switzerland: Copernicus Books, 2020.
American Intolerance: Our Dark History of Demonizing Immigrants. Co-authored with Anja Reumschüessel. Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 2018.
A Colorful History of Popular Delusions. Co-authored with Peter Hassall. Amherst, New York: Prometheus, 2015.
American Hauntings: The True Stories Behind Hollywood’s Scariest Movies – From The Exorcist to The Conjuring. Co-authored with Joe Nickell. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2015.
Australia’s Forgotten Children: A Case Study of Educational Apartheid at an Aboriginal School. Pukekohe, New Zealand: Teachers with Integrity, 2012, 2013.
The Untold Story of Champ: A Social History of America’s Loch Ness Monster. Albany, New York: Excelsior Books (an imprint of the State University of New York Press), 2012.
The Martians Have Landed: A History of Media-Driven Panics and Hoaxes. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing, 2012.
Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior. Co-authored with Hilary Evans. Anomalist Books, 2009.
Bigfoot Encounters in New York & New England: Documented Evidence, Stranger Than Fiction. Co-authored with Paul Bartholomew. Vancouver, BC: Hancock House, 2008.
Panic Attacks: Media Manipulation & Mass Delusion. Co-authored with Hilary Evans. United Kingdom: Sutton Publishing, 2004.
Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking. Co-authored with Benjamin Radford. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 2003.
Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Headhunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusions. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2001.
Exotic Deviance: Medicalizing Cultural Idioms - From Strangeness to Illness. University Press of Colorado, 2000.
UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries of Mystery. Co-authored with George S. Howard. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1998.
Monsters of the Northwoods. Co-authored with Paul Bartholomew., Bruce G Hallenbeck, and William C Brann. 1991, 1992.
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Aug 15, 2021 13:17:48 GMT
Robert E. Bartholomew ✧
psychology today column
It’s Catching – on Social Panics, Popular Delusions and Mass Suggestion
1. Don’t Let Psychogenic Illness Undermine the COVID Vaccine.
2. Study Links ‘Havana Syndrome’ to Radio Frequency Energy… Omits Key Information.
3. A Popular Website Is Reportedly Making People Sick.
4. New Zealand: A Nation Grappling with its Racist Past.
2. What’s Driving the Lockdown Protests over Covid-19?
3. 5G Conspiracy Theories Are Sweeping the Planet. Why?
4. Deciphering New Zealand's COVID-19 Numbers
5. COVID-19: Making Sense of the Numbers
6. The Coronavirus and the Search for Scapegoats
7. The Chinese Coronavirus is not the Zombie Apocalypse
8. An Open Letter to the Diplomats with ‘Havana Syndrome.’
9. A Popular Website is Reportedly making People Sick.
10. New ‘Sonic Attack’ Study Mostly Spin, Little Substance
11. Latest Chapter in the ‘Sonic Attack’ Saga.
12. The ‘Momo Scare’ Goes Viral Again: The recent flareup taps into parental fears.
13. Many Americans Cannot Separate Fact from Fiction
14. The World’s Most Dangerous Myth
15. Weak Evidence for Microwave Radiation in the U.S. Evidence:
16. Sonic Attack Story is being Misreported.
17. Major Study on ‘Sonic Attack’ is Alarmingly Inaccurate.
18. ‘Sonic Attack’ Not Mass Hysteria, Says Top Doc – He’s Wrong!
19. Strange Sounds Sickening Cuban Diplomats?
20. Earthquake Shock: Mexico’s Buried Schoolgirl Who Never Was
21. ‘Sonic Attack’ on the U.S. Embassy Likely Psychological
22. Fidget Spinner Fad Winds Down: Should fidget spinners be allowed at school?
23. Why are Females Prone to Mass Hysteria? Mass hysteria is an overwhelmingly female condition. But why? (Social factors can potentially explain the differences).
24. World Exclusive: Strange Outbreak of Hallucinations – Solved
25. The Bizarre Outbreak of Hallucinations in Oregon: A mysterious outbreak has U.S. authorities baffled.
26. History Tells Us that the Clown Scare May Grow: It’s likely to get worse before it gets better.
27. The Great Clown Scare of 2016: Why the panic won’t last.
28. Australian Family Suffer Bizarre Shared Delusion: The strange case of the family who suffered a collective panic attack.
29. Phantom Clowns in South Carolina are Nothing New: Reports of phantom clowns in South Carolina luring children into the woods, are most likely a matter for folklorists, not police.
30. Pokémon Go Fad Will be Gone by Christmas: The latest in a long history of fads
31. The Man Who Thought he was a Cat: The Story of the cat-man is one of the strangest in the annals of human behavior.
32. The School that Caught the Hiccups: A strange outbreak of mass psychogenic illness in Massachusetts.
33. Can Ouija Boards Trigger Demonic Possession?
34. Mass Suggestion at 40,000 Feet: The Placebo Effect in reverse – the power of the mind.
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Aug 15, 2021 13:20:25 GMT
Robert Bartholomew Ph.D.
It's Catching
Don't Let Psychogenic Illness Undermine the COVID Vaccine
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/202012/dont-let-psychogenic-illness-undermine-the-covid-vaccine
An Open Letter to Journalists
Posted December 8, 2020 | Reviewed by Matt Huston
This post was co-authored by Kate MacKrill of University of Auckland
"If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." —William I. Thomas
Opinion surveys show that many people are hesitant to be vaccinated for COVID-19 over safety concerns. Even before the world had heard of the coronavirus, in 2019 the World Health Organisation was warning that “vaccine hesitancy” was a major threat to global health (WHO 2019). Reticence to be vaccinated has been blamed for increases in preventable disease outbreaks around the world (Wiyeh et al., 2018).
Also concerning is the number of mass hysteria outbreaks triggered by vaccination campaigns. This is a serious issue because any outbreak of psychogenic illness could undermine public confidence in the safety of a COVID-19 vaccine.
How Serious Is the Problem?
Outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness triggered by vaccinations have been documented in at least a dozen countries since 1992, including Iran (1992), Italy (1995), Jordan (1998), India (2001), Vietnam (2001), Australia (2007), Taiwan (2009), the United States (2010), Japan (2013), Colombia (2014), Denmark (2015), and Brazil (2019). There are also many media reports describing events that were never written up as formal studies, where doctors told journalists that the likely cause was psychological.
A similar event could damage public confidence in vaccine safety and reduce the number of people who will be open to receiving the vaccine. In 2014, Colombian researchers identified an outbreak of psychogenic illness among several hundred girls who had been injected with the Gardasil vaccine, which targets the human papillomavirus (HPV). As a result, the uptake rate for the HPV vaccine plummeted to 14% for the first dose and just 5% for the second injection, leaving girls in the affected group at higher risk for cervical cancer (Simas, 2019). A similar plunge in uptake rates took place in Vietnam during a psychogenic outbreak in 2001, when children were being inoculated for cholera. Of the 97 children affected, only two were allowed by their guardians to receive a second dose (Khiem et al., 2003).
Psychogenic illness is more common than many people realize, and given the history of outbreaks involving vaccination campaigns, there is a danger that even a single outbreak could shake public confidence. So, what is the best strategy to counter the threat?
Awareness and Identification
The media and the public need to be aware of the likelihood of psychogenic clusters. What will they look like? Psychogenic events will involve the clustering of transient, benign symptoms that appear shortly after vaccination. Outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness associated with past vaccinations most commonly include headache, nausea, dizziness, breathlessness, and fainting. These complaints are characterized by a rapid onset and recovery. If this occurs, mass psychogenic illness should be a prime suspect.
Remember, serious side effects of vaccines are rare. The problem is, media reports have been shown to increase the frequency of psychogenic symptoms. Media stories of vaccine side effects can give the misimpression that such reactions are more frequent than they are, increasing anxiety about the vaccine. Studies have shown that media coverage of side effects of certain medications can increase the number of adverse symptoms, particularly the specific symptoms mentioned in the news item (MacKrill et al., 2019).
It is important to remember that any vaccine that has been approved for widespread use will have adverse reactions ranging from mild to severe. However, mass psychogenic illness should be suspected when there is a clustering of symptoms. Given the large number of people who are expected to be vaccinated, it would be surprising if several clusters of psychogenic reactions do not appear. Historical outbreaks of psychogenic illness have often been met with suspicion and hostility and can spread in the form of misinformation, rumors, and conspiracy theories. Media outlets need to be aware that psychogenic clusters are likely to appear – and if they do, it is important to report on the event in a calm, measured tone until the origin of the outbreak is ascertained.
Kate MacKrill (k.mackrill@auckland.ac.nz), Department of Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
References
Khiem et al. Mass psychogenic illness following oral cholera immunization in Ca Mau City, Vietnam. Vaccine 2003; 21: 4527-4531
MacKrill K, Gamble GD, Bean DJ, et al. Evidence of a media-induced nocebo response following a nationwide antidepressant drug switch. Clinical Psychology in Europe 2019; 1(1): 1-2.
Simas C, Munoz N, Arregoces L, et al. (2019). HPV vaccine confidence and cases of mass psychogenic illness following immunization in Carmen de Bolivar, Colombia. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 2019;15(1): 163–166.
Thomas, W. I., & Thomas, D. S. (1928). The child in America. Oxford: Knopf.
Wiyeh AB, Cooper S, Nnaji CA, et al. Vaccine hesitancy ‘outbreaks’: Using epidemiological modeling of the spread of ideas to understand the effects of vaccine related events on vaccine hesitancy. Expert Rev Vaccines 2018; 17: 1063-1070. |
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Aug 15, 2021 13:24:17 GMT
Robert Bartholomew Ph.D.
It's Catching
Study Links ‘Havana Syndrome’ to Radio Frequency Energy
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/its-catching/202012/study-links-havana-syndrome-radio-frequency-energy
The problems with a report from the National Academy of Sciences.
Posted December 7, 2020
Long-awaited findings from the National Academy of Sciences cover the origin of ‘Havana Syndrome’ – the mysterious malady that has afflicted dozens of American and Canadian embassy diplomats and their families based in Cuba since 2016.
The report claims that there was insufficient evidence to link the outbreak to mass hysteria. As a specialist who was cited 11 times in the report as an expert on mass psychogenic illness, it is by far the most likely explanation. Instead, they opted for pulsed radiofrequency energy. They may as well have claimed it was caused by Bigfoot.
For starters, how was the RF energy delivered to specific people in specific locations without affecting others nearby? To do so would defy the laws of physics.
The report is conspicuous for what it omits. For instance, the NAS report refers to mysterious sounds heard during ‘attacks,’ yet inexplicably they leave out that over a dozen recordings of these incidents were later identified as the mating calls of crickets and cicadas (Baloh and Bartholomew, 2020).
Unfortunately, people will see the name ‘National Academy of Sciences’ and assume that the conclusions are valid, when the RF explanation is in fact far-fetched.
Chasing Shadows
I fear that this report will lead to the continued creation of imaginary enemies. The trouble is that the panel apparently did not review all the evidence. Some data was withheld due to government secrecy and privacy concerns. Significantly, they never read the only comprehensive study on this case to date: a 70,000-word report led by UCLA neurologist Robert W. Baloh, of which I was a co-author. Released in May 2020, it concludes that mass psychogenic illness is the most likely explanation – with sonic and RF energy waves among the least likely (Baloh and Bartholomew, 2020). This report even identifies historical outbreaks dating back over a century, cases that were remarkably similar to those found in Cuba, including the signature complaint: concussion without head trauma. There are numerous historical precedents to ‘Havana Syndrome’ – acoustical scares such as ‘telephone sickness,’ ‘musical illness,’ ‘The Hum,’ and ‘wind turbine syndrome’ – cases of mass psychogenic illness triggered by people who thought that sounds were making them sick. ‘Havana Syndrome’ is just the most recent example within a different social and cultural setting.
Muddying the Waters
The NAS study is likely to engender conspiracy theories of sinister foreign actors targeting U.S. diplomats with a futuristic, sci-fi, James Bond-type device at a time when we have important domestic issues to grapple with. The result will be unnecessary anxiety, wasted resources and false accusations of nefarious activities.
The panel has gone for the most exotic hypothesis while failing to sufficiently assess more conventional explanations. They should have heeded the old medical adage, ‘When you hear the sound of hoofbeats in the night, first think horses, not zebras.’ They wrote that there was insufficient information to ascertain the social patterning of symptoms (“the committee received no epidemiological evidence about patterns of social contacts that would permit a determination about possible social contagion”). We drew the opposite conclusion by looking at the early reports and how they spread.
article continues after advertisement
Investigations Ignored
A key observation of the report is that they could not identify the index case – the first to be affected, then the sequence of cases after that. But the early social patterning of the outbreak has been documented by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tim Golden and his partner in the investigation, Sebastian Rotella, who identified the early spread based on Embassy documents and interviews (Golden and Rotella, 2018, 2019). How could a panel charged with conducting a comprehensive review overlook our report and those of Golden?
It may be that the panel sought to avoid a diagnosis of psychogenic illness knowing that such renderings are notoriously contentious. Such a conclusion could certainly be embarrassing to the same government officials who requested the study. Both the Centers for Disease Control and the FBI were tasked with investigating this case. Their findings have never been released and all requests for U.S. Government Freedom of Information documents have since been denied. It is no small irony that when asked when these reports will be made public, the response has always been the same – crickets.
References
Baloh, Robert W., and Bartholomew, Robert E. (2020). Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria. Cham, Switzerland: Copernicus Books.
Golden T, Rotella S. (2019). The Sound and the Fury: Inside the Mystery of the Havana Embassy. ProPublica, February 14
Golden T, Rotella S. (2018). The Strange Case of American Diplomats in Cuba: As the Mystery Deepens, so do Divisions in Washington. ProPublica, Nov 9.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. An assessment of Illness in U.S. Government employees
and their families at overseas embassies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi.org/10.17226/25889
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Aug 15, 2021 13:34:38 GMT
Robert Bartholomew (part 1 of 3, made with Spreaker)
Rob McConnell 5.3K subscribers Source: www.spreaker.com/user/xzonerad... The Untold Story of Champ - Robert Bartholomew is an American born medical sociologist, writer, journalist, human rights advocate and certified high school social studies instructor currently teaching history at Botany Downs Secondary College in South Auckland, New Zealand. He is credited with coining the term 'exotic deviance' in the field of social psychiatry to describe the inappropriate placement medical labels by Eurocentric scientists, onto unfamiliar behaviors and conduct codes in NonWestern countries.He holds a doctorate in sociology from James Cook University in Queensland Australia, a Masters in American sociology from the State University of New York at Albany, a Masters in Australian sociology from The Flinders University of South Australia, a BA degree in Communications from The State University of New York at Plattsburgh, and a Certificate in Radio Broadcasting from the State University of New York - Adirondack campus. He has written on an array of topics ranging from human social and cultural diversity, to mass psychogenic illness (aka "mass hysteria"), social delusions, moral panics, fads, collective behavior, the history of tabloid journalism, history of the paranormal, popular myths and folklore. He has published over a dozen books and over sixty articles in peer-reviewed journals. Like us on Facebook - www.facebook.com/thexzoneradiotvshowVisit the All New 'X' ZONE STORE at |
|
