We may not agree on what the evidence indicates, but can we get some agreement on what the evidence is?

Personally, my shot in the dark guess is malfunctioning shortwave electronic pest repelling devices.

Apparently devices like that would have to be in the room that they're supposed to keep free from pests and would be pretty easy to spot. And even though the Hotel Capri is very close to the Malecon and consequently the ocean, I guess they would be used against bats rather than dolphins! :)

Why don't you read the clause that immediately follows that line you highlighted?

What kind of compensation can these embassy victims receive?

I have not heard symptoms serious enough that they could not be accommodated to return to work in some other reassignment. They get some period of paid leave and all their medical is covered. Anything else?

US confirms two more victims + tourist fears he was targeted years ago
 

At this point it appears as if any kind of ailment counts as a symptom of the alleged attacks:
(my italics and (!), dann)

The article about the tourist is very long, but it now seems as if the 'attacks' started years ago:
To me this sounds as if anything goes in this case!
The story continues:
Unless he was sleeping on a vibrating mattress (or dreamed/hallucinated the whole thing), I don't know how to explain his symptoms.
But when he heard about the recent alleged sonic attacks on U.S. diplomats/spies, he immediately recognized them as fellow sufferers:

CBS News also tells his story:
Tourist fears he was hit by mystery attack in Cuba, years before diplomats (CBS, Oct. 19, 2017)

That's not consistent with the article you quoted, which says that at this point the US government has not actually delineated what counts as a symptom of the alleged attacks.

Trump is giving a voice to it, mass hysteria is the explanation.

There are multiple people with inconsistent symptoms all claiming to be affected. There are recordings of 'audible' sound that could be anything. It is also inconsistent and defies the laws of physics if that is the culprit. It should be reproducible but there are caveats, don't worry the recordings won't hurt anyone. :rolleyes:

The point is, like all hysterical reactions like this one, inconsistency is consistent. If you want to believe this is anything besides hysteria, have at it.

:boggled:

Non sequitur? Not sure what you are getting at.

Could explain some of the sound, does not explain the symptoms.

Whatever version of federal worker's comp applies to their jobs is a common expectation of people complaining of things like this.

That is the point exactly:
The assertion stands, but apparently the alleged symptoms don’t! And yet, without a motive, without a weapon or even a proper description of what would constitute this weapon (or “device”) and without a consistent set of symptoms, the U.S. Administration is able to claim that Cuba is responsible for “attacks that sickened U.S. diplomats”: “I do believe Cuba’s responsible, I do believe that,” Trump said.
And, of course, as long as the symptoms aren't remotely clear, any person who at any time experienced any kind of symptoms, like the "tingling" sensations in any part of the body, is now free to imagine that he or she is a victim of the Cuban science-fiction device!

The Tonkin Gulf Ghosts were the WMDs of the Vietnam War. They were not what caused the war. They served as an excuse for escalating a war that the USA wanted to escalate.
In the present situation, Trump does believe that "Cuba's responsible" because this belief serves his interest in shutting down the newly established diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and Cuba.
However, we are not talking about the need to believe that James Randi has mentioned time and again: In this case, any excuse will do.
And consider the alleged recordings of the "device": Are they even actual recordings or did somebody make them up? Why didn't these recordings appear until more and more experts started to "suspect a psychosomatic disorder linked to high stress in Havana"?! I hope that some acoustics experts will be able to come up with an explanation for how sounds like these can be made and what purpose they might serve …

Well, firstly let's whittle down a dividing line between media speculation and what the government is actually claiming. The facts, as presented by the government, are:

1. Numerous Americans attached to the embassy in Havana since its reopening have been suffering from some kind of somatoform disorder.

2. The complaints of symptoms are specifically correlated with having spent time working at the embassy and living in the American accommodations at the recently-renovated Hotel Capri.

3. Somatic symptoms were later experienced by personnel sent to Havana to investigate the initial complaints.

4. Some of the complaints allege audible, high-pitched sounds that seemed coincidental with development of the somatic symptoms. Some of the alleged sufferers recorded the sounds, so there can be no question they existed.

5. The recordings had many different sounds on them, but a particular sonic element common to the various recordings was found and isolated for further study, and a clip of this isolated element was provided to the AP (the sound you hear in the videos linked above).

The State Department and the US intelligence community does seem to be of a mind that the sound is part of a deliberate harassment campaign, which they have deemed an attack. They have not said Cuba is culpable. President Trump has implied that he believes they are, but the president has objectively and repeatedly proven to be an unreliable source and lacks any credibility to speak with authority on what the actual opinion of any government agency is, as he regularly contradicts, misrepresents, and/or repudiates those opinions in favor of his personal thoughts on any given matter when making public statements. So in that sense, whatever he says about the matter can be ignored.

What can not be claimed as fact OR the assessment of the government based on statements they have made:

A. That all of the symptoms that have been reported so far are the result of the alleged "attack"; proper research requires that all potentially relevant data be collected,

B. That the sounds themselves somehow caused any or all of the symptoms; so far there is only a correlation that isn't well understood (so far as is being said publicly),

C. That the sounds and whatever produced them are necessarily the only vector by which American diplomatic personnel were being "attacked" or harassed.

D. That the element in the sound clip released to the AP is the only thing in the recordings the government investigators find interesting or potentially important.

Any impressions you have of the situation so far that aren't consistent with all of the above, come from speculation being reported with more weight than it ought.

On pt 3: Investigators sent to Cuba to investigate the attacks also got attacked? I can not locate such a claim.Can you tell me where you got that information?

On pt 5: The AP doesn't say where they obtained this recording or why they would assume it to be authentic. No sources are cited, even in a general way such as "sources close to the investigation..." They seem to be self-referencing - reporting a story about a recording that they themselves released as if they are the source. Did I miss an article somewhere?

AP said the Navy and State Dept. did not comment on it.

So, where did it come from? Who recorded it? And why should anyone take it seriously?

I remember reading that fairly recently (and not in Checkmite's post), but I don't recall where.

The alleged facts, as presented by … Or: It is a fact that the government claims that …

… from several kinds of somatoform disorders.

That the recordings, as published by the AP, exist is a fact. That they were allegedly recorded by the alleged sufferers is also a fact, but only to that extent: There is good reason to question that they are actual recordings of the alleged attack.

… was allegedly found and isolated ...

President Trump says that he believes ...

… unless you're a Cuban diplomat who's been ordered to leave the USA. (But you are right, of course, as long as we are talking about how to epistemologically assess the credibility of claims in this case. :)

I still cannot find it. The only recent thing that may have been misconstrued is that Intelligence Officers under diplomatic cover had been targeted. But that news claimed they were among the very first cases, not sent there to investigate them.

Someone recorded some sounds. I don't know who, nor where, nor what equipment they used, nor whether what they recorded is what the recordist heard, nor how quiet these sounds were.

For all I know they turned the volume up so far that most of what we hear is electronic noise generated within whatever they made the recording on.

If people are going to use these recordings as evidence Cuba tried to turn people into newts, I'd like to know a bit more about what the recordings actually are.

PS
In at least one case the disorder probably wasn't somatoform. One person now has a hearing aid, but the question remains: What caused the loss of hearing that correlated with the story of sonic attacks? And was that person one of those who heard the weird noise or one of those who didn't?

It occurred to me that I myself have experienced the symptoms described by the American tourist mentioned above - several years before I went to Cuba for the first time:
These sensations occur in many people when they use the relaxation technique called autogenic training:


So the irony here is that this guy got all worked up when he experienced something that was actually signs that he was relaxing. :)
When you use this technique deliberately, you focus on your extremities: hands and/or feet, and usually you will soon feel warmth (and/or heaviness, and/or tingling). The sensation quickly disappears if you focus on something else - in particular, if you also get out of bed like he did! But, of course, if you don't do this deliberately and think that the tingling sensations are a sign that something is wrong with you, you may get scared and start annoying MDs for however long they put up with your hypochondria.

There is no such thing as "several kinds of somatoform disorders". There is only one kind: one in which inexplicable symptoms have presented.

You also don't know if all of alleged victims actually reported different symptoms, or if that's just something that's been reported or alleged by unnamed sources. For that matter, you don't know exactly how many people reported supposed symptoms - or whether in fact anyone ever actually did and the entire story from the very top to the very bottom is fabricated.

We can't have a meaningful discussion about this unless we're willing to take at least the consistently reported aspects as "accurate" in a face-value sense. And in such a discussion, there's a kind of obligation to be consistent: if we're going to treat one reported fact (such as that many different symptoms were reported) as credible enough that we can use it to rebut ideas, we can't reject another reported fact, given on equal terms with precisely the same (lack of definitive) provenance, as unusable or questionable based on that lack of provenance.

Earlier you claimed that there was a "dividing line between media speculation and what the government is actually claiming." Then you listed some things as government 'fact' that the government never stated nor confirmed.

Are claims made by AP reporters, where they give no clue as to their source, the same as the 'facts' officially confirmed by the State Department?

That's fair; the "facts" are those specific claims which the news media has attributed to government "sources", not official government statements.

Ok. So where did the AP get that recording? They aren't saying how or where they got it. They simply say they "were obtained".
Any ideas who gave it to them or why they aren't giving even the vaguest hint of a source?

For such a big piece of the mysterious puzzle, there are some very basic facts missing in the reporting. We have the 'what' but not the how, who, where, or why.

If we're going to assume for the discussion's sake that the AP didn't just completely invent the recording on its own, logically there can have been only two possible sources for the various recordings - the government investigators, or the victims who made them.

In the original article, the AP says it "has learned" that the recordings were being analyzed by the US Navy. Again, if this isn't a complete invention by the AP, it's the kind of fact that can only have come from a government source familiar with that development. This necessarily indicates that the government is in possession of the recordings. So the matter must be: either the alleged victims who made the recordings gave copies of them to the government and other copies of them to the AP, or the victims turned the recordings over to the government and a source involved in the government investigation gave copies to the AP.

The AP reports that it has played the recordings for some of the alleged victims who reported hearing sounds during their supposed incidents, and those victims positively recognized the sound in the recordings. Again, unless this is utter fiction, that makes it logically unlikely that the AP or whomever gave the recordings to the AP fabricated them.

Treatment of somatoform disorders. However, the point in this context is that the people afflicted seem to suffer from a variety of symptoms. And at least one of them now has a hearing aid. You might be able to talk a doctor into prescribing one, but if the story is real, it seems to indicate that at least one case is 'legit', but it doesn't prove that it was caused by a 'sonic attack'.

I know what the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was (and was about). I don't find the analogy all that relevant.

Yes, the AP claims to know some of the alleged victims who didn't record anything, apparently.

No, another just no.

Mirriam-Webster: somatoform disorder "Inexplicable" is a poor choice of words here. As for cause, there are multiple causes and related disorders.

Essentially the symptoms fall into related categories in that there is some sensation, pain or other and no correlating clinical findings.

We've got something. We have no idea what it is, but we choose to interpret it as an attack and to act accordingly …

Without a baseline hearing test and a viable timeframe plus other causes of hearing loss ruled out, all you have here is a guy goes in for a hearing exam and comes out with a hearing aid.

The difference is, Johnson knew the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was based on a lie. That's different from simply taking advantage of a convenient hysterical reaction. And in Trump's case, he has a history of believing crap like this.

There are other possible sources: Cuban government, Cuban spies, family of victims, Canadian embassy, Swiss Embassy, French Embassy, talented North Korean hacker... etc.... I don't doubt that the AP found it to be credible.

The odd thing is that whoever the source is, they didn't provide the story behind the sound. e.g., "AP sources say this sound was recorded at a diplomatic residence with technology provided to embassy staff last summer. This particular sound is said to be linked to a victim with mild head trauma and other undisclosed ailments that have been medically confirmed."
Odder still is that they don't acknowledge that these facts are missing. e.g "At this time, the AP is not at liberty to disclose confidential details relating to the recording..." (<---note that I have made up all those quotes as examples)

All we get is "we obtained this sound of the attack in Havana".

It's weird journalism, right?

*If it was made personally by a victim and then shared secretly by the government to other victims, then it really isn't authenticated at all, is it? It is the victims say-so. That is not a good source, especially for something that could be initially delusional. (I happen to have a lot of experience with 'proof' offered by delusional people! They are pretty clever!)

And therein lies part of the problem I'm trying to bring attention to, which is this fixation on a "sonic attack". The earliest reports revealing physical symptoms like brain injury were already pointing out that sound could not have been responsible for those injuries. While it was reported that government investigators initially considered a sonic weapon because of the number of "victims" positively heard sounds when they began developing symptoms, it was also reported that other supposed victims did not hear sounds.

So from a big-picture standpoint it would seem that, if something is going on here at all, sound could easily just be one component - and not necessarily a primary or particularly damaging one at that. If one takes time to actually read the earliest articles and those with new information to impart this impression isn't hard to come by at all - but it seems as if a lot of people, including some of this thread, would prefer to instead focus on "ZOMG sonic attack!" and insist that some kind of physically impossible BattleStarTrekWars science-fiction sound-weapon-device is central to the entire issue because that makes it easier to laugh at.

Of the recordings? Yes, out-of-context. But I think the other arguments I made effectively preclude any source other than the US government or the victims themselves.

I did look for what must be other people asking my same questions to the AP.

Oct 12 Josh Lederman tweet:
"We don't discuss our sources."

So there you have it! They aren't gonna say if the source was even human! haha

At best, I think they can say it's a recording of what the US government believes could very well be the exact or similar sound to what some of the victims claim to have heard at the time they were allegedly attacked.

I'm confused, are you now arguing it was either hysteria or the US government?:confused:

"Source" in that post refers to the AP's source for the recording they published.