Dr Eric Haseltine, a former American intelligence officer and neuroscientist, has expressed skepticis in his Psychology Today blog (Long Fuse, Big Bang), that “mass hysteria… does not explain much of the data from studies of victims, and remains an unproven hypothesis.” ‘Havana Syndrome’ refers to an array of health complaints first reported by U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers stationed in Havana, Cuba in 2015. Technically, it does not fit the definition of a syndrome since the symptoms and course were so variable, but to avoid confusion, we have placed quotation marks around the term.
What we argued
Dr. Haseltine’s column is more measured than most criticisms of the psychogenic explanation, which we appreciate, but several of his objections rest on a version of our argument that we never made, and others are answered in our book he cites [1].
Neurologist Robert Baloh and I have never claimed that all or even most of the reports of Anomalous Health Incident (AHIs) share a single cause, or that those affected are malingering (feigning illness). Psychogenic illness can affect anyone, and the symptoms are real. The conclusions of the two “prestigious expert panels” that Dr. Haseltine cites as suggesting microwave radiation as a likely cause, were both chaired by the same person and their findings were rejected in 2023 and 2025 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [2, 3]. The intelligence community consensus judged it “highly unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible, and that the symptoms were probably the result of preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses and environmental factors.
The two panels cited by Dr. Haseltine were flawed. The National Academy of Sciences panel stated that there was no epidemiological evidence on the social patterning of cases, making it impossible to adequately assess psychogenic illness as an explanation [4]. However, they failed to acknowledge an investigation which detailed the early social patterning starting with ‘patient zero.’ This information was first published in February 2018 by two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists who travelled to Cuba and conducted over three dozen interviews [5, 6]. The second panel cited by Dr. Haseltine, dismissed the psychogenic explanation on the erroneous grounds that intelligence officers and diplomats were not prone to experiencing psychogenic illness due to their training [7].
Dr. Haseltine writes that “Several medical studies reported objective clinical findings, including vestibular and oculomotor abnormalities.” This is misleading. The most serious symptoms were brain damage, white matter tract changes, and hearing loss, and while widely reported in the media, they were never demonstrated. For instance, a 2019 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association identified brain anomalies in the U.S. diplomats in Cuba [8]. Media outlets jumped on this story and it was widely reported that the victims were suffering from “brain damage.” But in the ‘Discussion’ section of the study, the authors admitted that the anomalies were relatively minor and could have been caused by individual variation. Also absent from most news reports was the observation that it is not uncommon to find minor brain anomalies in small cohorts that are under long-term stress. Brain anomalies are not the equivalent of brain damage. Another often overlooked factor has been the use of advanced brain imaging that is notoriously difficult to interpret as it produces a massive number of data points that unlike regular MRIs, are so complex they can only be understood with sophisticated computer programs and generate false positives as high as 70 percent [1]. As for the claims of hearing loss in some victims, that was a result of media reports that turned out to be untrue [1].
A More Plausible Explanation
When you remove claims of brain damage and hearing loss, you are left with a long list of symptoms. These include headaches, dizziness, nausea, forgetfulness, confusion, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, balance problems, tinnitus, ear pain, head pressure, insomnia, and depression. These symptoms are common in any population. A 2014 study surveyed 1,000 people who were read a list 46 symptoms and asked if they had experienced any over the previous seven days. The average was five. Over 30 percent reported fatigue and headaches while about 30 percent said they had insomnia. Over 10 percent reported difficulty concentrating, depressed mood, memory problems, eye or vision issues, and ear or hearing problems. Nausea and dizziness came in at about 8 percent [9]. These are symptoms of ‘Havana Syndrome’
A mechanism is not an exposure
Haseltine’s simulation suggests pulsed Radio Frequency waves could, in principle, injure tissue, and he candidly says it does not prove that it did. But a plausible model is not evidence that anyone was exposed. The ‘Havana Syndrome’ attack explanation requires energy delivered through walls into bedrooms and hotel rooms, to chosen individuals, unnoticed by the person in the next bed, and without burns. Ric Tell, who spent decades on exposure standards, noted that damaging brain tissue would mean heating it to the point of cooking [1]. Sharon Weinberger’s review in Nature found that fifty years of research had produced no usable microwave weapon [1]. After a decade, nobody has produced a device, a signal, or a measurement of energy at any site. A major problem with the public understanding ‘Havana Syndrome’ is that it has been politicized. A 2024 Congressional hearing was presumptuously titled: “Silent Weapons: Examining Foreign Anomalous Health Incidents Targeting Americans in the Homeland and Abroad.” [10]
The timeline and symptom pattern
Dr. Haseltine asks how contagion can explain people who fell ill alone at night before they knew of other cases. Embassy personnel that we talked to were adamant that this was not the case: everyone knew [1]. A former CIA officer described that first patient as aggressively lobbying people to connect their health complaints to the sounds [11]. He even played his recording at an embassy gathering, urging them to report their symptoms [12]. His recording was later identified to be that of the Indies short-tailed cricket [13]. The reports that emerged after the story was created, are what we would expect if the story shaped how people remembered ordinary sensations. Haseltine’s own The Spy in Moscow Station shows that the narrative was part of intelligence lore long before 2015. That is an ingredient for a nocebo response, not an objection to one. If the story is a sound that strikes you at home, expect reports of sound, pressure and directionality. And then there are the crickets. A loud insect calling nearby would seem to start and stop as a person moves about, which is the very pattern he offers as evidence against a psychogenic explanation.
The medical findings
The Penn study used healthy volunteers as controls. Twelve patients had previous concussions and none of the controls did, and the imaging relied on complex computer processing with high false-positives [1]. Almost any symptomatic group would differ from healthy controls. The most rigorous work came after our book. In 2024, National Institute of Health researchers found no significant evidence of MRI-detectable brain injury, and no differences in most clinical measures, among subjects who experienced these incidents compared with controls. Saying that later studies “did not find differences on all measures” understates that result [14, 15].
Who is being victimized?
Dr. Haseltine worries that calling these illnesses psychogenic will wound people twice. But the opposite is also true as fear sustains symptoms. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. A decade has now passed without a weapon or clear evidence of exposure. Maybe someday evidence will be produced to prove that American diplomats and spies are being zapped by energy weapons, but right now there remains no credible evidence to suggest that this has happened.