Mass hysteria and not leaked chemicals was the likely cause of the symptoms experienced by those exposed in 16 per cent of hundreds of chemical leaks recorded in England and Wales between January 2007 and April 2008. That's according to an analysis by Lisa Page and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry of 280 chemical leaks recorded by the Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Haza
11 Vote(s)
July 30, 2010
June 22, 2010
Witchcraft or Mental Illness?
I don't believe in witches or ghosts or things that go bump in the night. I've always thought that the Salem witch trials were a result of mass hysteria (on the part of the persecutors) rather than a phenomenon of dark forces at work. And seeing Arthur Miller's The Crucible a few years ago, only confirmed my suspicions. So I was gratified to see Dr Quintanilla's poster at this year's meeting of t
5 Vote(s)
5 Vote(s)
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February 13, 2010
Faith-Based Birding 201: Fraudulent Photos and Federal Funding
tags: faith-based birding, mass hysteria, endangered species, extinct species, conservation, politics, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Campephilus principalis, IBWO, ornithology, birds, bpr3.org/?p=52,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paperThe Cornell Lab of Ornithology has posted a reward of $50,000 to be given to anyone who can provide "video, photographic, or other compelling information and lead
15 Vote(s)
15 Vote(s)
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September 17, 2009
Mass hysteria, crazes and panics
The Fortean Times has an article and some fantastic excerpts from a new encyclopaedia on mass hysteria, social panics and fast moving fads called Outbreak: The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behaviour.The book tackles some of the most curious and surprising outbreaks from medieval times to the present day, covering everything from medieval dancing plagues to modern day penis theft panics to
11 Vote(s)
11 Vote(s)
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June 24, 2009
Mass hysteria and dancing manias
The July edition of the The Psychologist has an absolutely fantastic article on the 'dancing manias' that swept through Europe in the middle ages and triggered an exhausting compulsion to dance.The piece looks at the history of these manias and discusses them in terms of dissociation, the 'unconscious compartmentalisation of normally integrated mental functions', which is something we discussed t
7 Vote(s)
7 Vote(s)
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