Imagine this: You work for the Vice President of the United States as Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor. One day, as you’re walking down stairs near the White House, you feel as if you are “physically struck by a piercing pain” on the right side of your head. Despite your high-ranking status, you do nothing. A year later, you have two similar dizzy/vertigo episodes, feeling like you’re “just gonna fall right into the ground.” Now what do you do? Report these incidents to your security people? Get a medical check up? Or…wait for it…years later, go on the once-venerable CBS new magazine 60 Minutes to be interviewed for a segment on the so-called “Havana Syndrome”?

This, in a nutshell, is Olivia Troye’s tale; the quotes above are from her interview. Her story sounds familiar to me, and probably to any of the estimated one in three people over 40 who have suffered from vestibular dysfunction, that is, when your body suddenly, without warning, loses its sense of balance. It’s usually attributed to a temporary inner ear problem. In Ms. Troye’s case, rather than discussing it with her physician (who would probably have reassured her, as mine did) she went full-on melodramatic, presenting her rather mundane story as evidence for nefarious sonic or microwave weapons aimed at the White House.

Havana Syndrome is misnamed; surely it should be Havana Syndromes, plural. Since first reported from staff in the U.S. and Canadian embassies in Cuba’s capital in 2016, something weird happening to their bodies has since been noted by US intelligence and military personnel in India, China, Europe and, per the above, Washington DC. In addition to those frightening experiences suffered by Ms. Troye, Havana Syndrome includes hearing “strange grating noises,” ringing in the ears, and impaired cognitive ability. Does this represent a combined, worldwide attack on our diplomatic and military staff at home and overseas? Or the result of something more mundane like, um, crickets?

The “crickets” idea came about after staff in the US Cuba embassy made audio recordings “in a series of unnerving incidents later deemed to be deliberate attacks” (quoting from a 2017 Associated Press story, after AP obtained one of the recordings). Two biologists subsequently matched the calling song of the Indies short-tailed cricket by such parameters as waveform, pulse repetition rate, power spectrum and oscillations per pulse to the recording. Similarly, JASON (“an independent group of elite scientists” which advises the government, according to Wikipedia) concluded that the sounds in eight recordings made by Havana embassy staff were “most likely” caused by insects. It was, the group wrote, highly unlikely that microwaves or ultrasound beams were involved, because, “No plausible single source of energy (neither radio/microwaves nor sonic) can produce both the recorded audio/video signals and the reported medical effects.” Here’s a link.

The “cricket” explanation is just one of several put forward, none of which point to foreign powers messing with the heads of our men and women in Havana, or anywhere else. In addition to vestibular dysfunction, these include tinnitus and psychogenic illness. (The latter essentially says that if you’re anxious and primed by, for instance, the media, to believe you may get sick, you might suffer from the symptoms being reported, even though there’s no corresponding physical cause.)

Unhappily, in this age of sensationalism and fake news, 60 Minutes jumped on the “If it bleeds, it leads” bandwagon, omitting interviews with any skeptics who might have offered any such prosaic responses to the program’s wild claims. (We’re being attacked by invisible weapons!) It’s all very reminiscent of their segment on UFOs that I wrote about last May. By the way, the cricket solution was plastered all of the news five months before the 60 Minutes show.

None of which definitively rules out the possibility that foreign powers are secretly attacking us, of course, any more than extraterrestrial alien UFOs are invading our skies. Somehow, though, crickets and/or inner ear problems and/or psychosomatic reactions to stress just aren’t as sexy as covert microwave or sonic weapons.

William of Ockham’s long-ago response to problem-solving still has something to tell us. Paraphrasing: When in doubt, start off with the simplest solution.