Robert Bartholomew

Bartholomew first obtained a radio broadcasting certificate studying at SUNY Adirondack in 1977 followed in 1979 by a bachelor's degree in communications at Plattsburgh. By 1984 he had been awarded a master's degree in American sociology at State University of New York.[2] In 1992 he gained a masters in Australian sociology from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia followed by a doctorate in sociology from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. Finally, in 2001 he gained his teaching qualification from Upper Valley Teachers Institute in social studies.[2]

Bartholomew has also lived and worked in Malaysia and in 2009 worked in sociology at International University College of Technology.[3] In April 2010 he took up a teaching position at Botany Downs Secondary College in Auckland, New Zealand. He is currently an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.[2]

In 2012, Bartholomew published Australia's forgotten children: The corrupt state of education in the Northern Territory: A case study of educational apartheid at an aboriginal pretend school in which he uncovered human rights abuses of indigenous Australian aboriginal children who were being exposed to harmful asbestos in the Northern Territory with the knowledge of the Northern Territory Department of Education.[4]

Bartholomew's principal area of academic contribution is in the field of mass psychogenic illness, previously known as mass hysteria, both historical and present day cases, an area he has been studying for over 25 years.[5] He has written extensively about 600 notable instances including the Salem witch trials,[6] the 2011 Le Roy illness, which Bartholomew has described as "the first case of this magnitude to occur in the U.S. during the social networking era",[5] and present-day manifestations, most of which he has said have yet to be studied in-depth by sociologists.

As we enter the 21st century, epidemic hysteria will again mirror the times, likely thriving on the fear and uncertainty from terrorist threats and environmental concerns. What new forms it will take and when these changes will appear are beyond our capacity to predict.[7]

In 2016, Bartholomew investigated the 2012 case of an outbreak of hiccups in Danvers, Massachusetts (originally Old Salem village), in which 24 young people were stricken with apparently uncontrollable hiccups. After requesting and reviewing state documents from the original investigation, he concluded the most likely explanation was a psychogenic conversion disorder affecting the (predominantly) girls involved. He publicly stated the Massachusetts Department of Public Health had "knowingly issued an inaccurate, incomplete report...They have an obligation to issue accurate diagnoses, and patients have a right to know what made them sick" and filed official complaints of malpractice.[8]

Bartholomew has also drawn attention to the role of the internet in acting as an "echo chamber" for spreading moral outrage; for example on social media, pedophile allegations used as political weapons by supporters of the far right against liberal celebrities, which mirrors earlier public outrage which took the form of the Red Scare (particularly McCarthyism) and the Lavender scare against homosexuals in US government positions.[9]

Bartholomew is frequently interviewed as an expert on topics as diverse as the "Pokémon Panic" of 1997,[10] the spread of UFO conspiracy theories,[11] the 2016 clown panic (which he suggested was a moral panic fueled by social media in response to a fear of strangers and terrorism),[12] the viral spread of online fads such as Pokémon Go,[13] and the suspected sonic attacks on embassies in Cuba and China which began in 2017,[1][14][15][16][17][18] about which he said:

I am convinced that we are dealing with an episode of mass psychogenic illness and mass suggestion. If these same symptoms were reported among a group of factory workers in New York or London, I think you would get a very different diagnosis, and there would be no consideration to a sonic weapon hypothesis.[19] There is also another possibility to consider here: government officials trying to defend their initial diagnosis.[16]

In 2020 he co-authored Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria, a book on the sonic attack controversy in Cuba with Professor Robert W. Baloh, a neurologist at the UCLA Medical Center. The authors document dozens of similar examples of disorders that have essentially the same features as "Havana Syndrome", but were given different labels, from the 18th century belief that sounds from certain musical instruments were harmful to human health, to contemporary panics involving people living near wind turbines.[20] In March 2020, Bartholomew was invited to attend a medical conference in Havana, Cuba, on the "attacks", where he repeated the claim that stress-induced mass psychogenic illness was the most likely cause.[21][22]

In 2017, Bartholomew was elected a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[51][52]

• Dancing mania
• Hysterical contagion
• Seattle windshield pitting epidemic