Robert Bartholomew

And people have even modeled infectious disease spread by how it would jump from the handful of individuals it started with and spread outward.

Okay, so what is this about? A medical sociologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand named Robert Bartholomew is the sage about this.

And what he has speculated is that these mass psychogenic illness breakouts of trembling, of tics, of laughter, of crying, of fainting, etc., are occurring at times of severe stress.

Interestingly, consistently, these schoolgirl outbreaks in East Africa were in missionary schools, where these were some pretty stern taskmasters.

You know, I suddenly became such an expert, I suppose, on this strange episode from 1938.

I ended up working with Robert Bartholomew, who's undoubtedly the world expert on mass hysteria and social panics.

And we wrote a book together called Social Panics and Phantom Attackers.

that detail the history of all these kinds of things.

I don't know how many investigators Joe took under his wing or collaborated with as trusted colleagues, but it was a lot.

I know he worked with Hayley Stevens, Robert Bartholomew, Stephen Novella, Jim McGaha, Robert Schaefer, Massimo Polidoro, and I'm sure many, many others.

I know he spoke about collaborating with James Randi and other founding members of CSICOP.

He venerated his own mentor and fellow Kentuckian, Robert A. Baker, and the magician and author Melbourne Christopher.

It is not a study of Lavender Town music.

A later analysis by Benjamin Radford and Robert Bartholomew, published in February 2001, considered whether a media-amplified psychogenic component contributed to the broader reports surrounding the television event.

Their argument is an interpretation of the wider pattern of reported illness.

It should not be used to claim that every viewer had the same condition, that symptoms were fabricated, or that the documented incident did not happen.

Many of the symptoms were consistent with what theologians and exorcists of the time believed were signs of demonic possession.

In fact, Dr. Robert Bartholomew, in his paper Protean Nature of Mass Sociogenic Illness, argues that many of these convents housed young women who were typically coerced by their elders into joining, and much of the rigid discipline included disproportionate punishment, including flogging and solitary confinement.

Bartholomew claims that these are the perfect conditions for incidents of MPI.

Humans are social animals, after all.

Maybe this is the equality that David Seymour wants us to go back to, but wouldn't you love a sign that read, "No racists allowed" instead? The documentary, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you, um, locate it and watch it.

It was based on a book by a guy called Robert Bartholomew, which was published in 2020, and the book explored the history of racial segregation and discrimination against Maori in the district of Pukekohe.

I watched it for my second time, and was angry a second time.

My daughter, watching it with me for her first time, was angry, too, but she had an additional strong feeling, different from mine.