I highly doubt mass delusion is real. What other illness is always diagnosed not with supporting evidence, but lack of evidence for alternatives? It’s a bizarre leap given the known incompleteness of medicine, that only gets more bizarre when you dig into specific examples: it happened before the discovery of pathogens, yet we assume doctors didn’t miss a pathogenic cause? Everybody who drinks a certain batch of Coca-Cola gets sick, but if it’s not a contaminant that was tested for, it must not be a contaminant? It spreads more between people who spend more time together, and this is considered evidence is spreads via psychological closeness?
No, this is the same old bullshit: doctors, like politicians and businessmen, depend on an image of expertise, and an assertion of mass psychogenic illness is a non-disprovable way to preserve it when evidence-based diagnosis can’t.
No, this is the same old bullshit: doctors, like politicians and businessmen, depend on an image of expertise, and an assertion of mass psychogenic illness is a non-disprovable way to preserve it when evidence-based diagnosis can’t.