Cuban lovelorn crickets, not a sonic weapon, made U.S. diplomats ill: Study

The Times notes that the research was released last week and has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.

Two dozen U.S. diplomats and several Canadians reported dizziness, anxiety, and mental fog—conditions that University of Pennsylvania researchers described as similar to concussions (see “21 U.S. diplomats in Cuba suffered ‘acquired brain injury from an exposure of unknown origin’: Experts,” HSNW, 20 February 2018).

Other studies, however, have dismissed the conclusion, with a paper in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry finding suspicious that no Cubans reported symptoms and theorizing about a mass hysteria (see Robet E. Bartholomew and Dionisio F. Zaldivar Perez, “Chasing ghosts in Cuba: Is mass psychogenic illness masquerading as an acoustical attack?” International Journal of Social Psychiatry [2 April 2018]).

The United States has not officially accused Cuba of attacking the diplomats. The Trump administration, however, has charged that Cuba had failed to protect them.

— Read more in Alexander L. Stubbs and Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, “Recording of “sonic attacks” on U.S. diplomats in Cuba spectrally matches the echoing call of a Caribbean cricket,” BioRxiv (4 January 2019) (doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/510834)