LONG COVID WITH A LATIN FLAIR:

This would not be the first time that victims of a dubious condition have received compensation. During the 1980s, keyboard operators in a certain region of Australia experienced an epidemic of over-use injuries dubbed repetition strain injuries (or RSI). However, keyboard operators in other countries had dramatically lower numbers of neuromuscular complaints. This was also true for other regions of Australia. There is now considerable evidence that those affected were experiencing an array of mundane symptoms that Australian medical community and victims attributed to a new cause. Others were suffering from anxiety. Complicating matters was the lure of potential compensation payouts (Bell 1989; Lucire 1986).

During the nineteenth century in the early days of rail travel, accidents were common, resulting in a flurry of claims by British passengers seeking compensation for spinal injuries. Many victims walked away with no obvious physical injury only to later report an array of symptoms such as back pain and headaches; this became known as "railway spine." Despite a lack of objective evidence confirming the condition, it was widely accepted in the medical community that the victims were suffering from inflammation of the spinal cord resulting in spinal compression. A consensus eventually emerged that the symptoms of railway spine were in fact the result of psychological trauma (Jones and Wessely 2005, 2).

Havana Syndrome, RSI, and railway spine all feature a lengthy list of ambiguous, commonly reported symptoms, yet governments saw fit to offer the victims compensation. Even after the new scientific consensus emerged that each condition was a social construction, a small number of scientists continued advocating for the old paradigm, refusing to admit their error, perhaps out of embarrassment or the belief it could harm their reputation. There is even a name for this behavior: belief perseverance, a form of confirmation bias whereby people select certain information and ignore contrary material that does not support preexisting views. The history of science is replete with examples where scientists have advocated for a particular position only to have their claims discredited. Instead of admitting this, they refuse to accept the consensus of the scientific community and continue to double down on their claims.

In 1923, American sociologist William Isaac Thomas wrote, "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences" (Thomas and Thomas 1929). This is not more evident than in the case of Havana Syndrome. Instead of letting the evidence drive their beliefs, people too often let their beliefs drive the evidence. This resulted in people seeing what they wanted to see. 

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