It is absolutely slate-pitch-y to mark that as "mass hysteria", especially given the way that it originally arose to public attention i.e. through specific opinions of people in power who themselves had no experienced the phenonmena. The piece is also just awful, lots of weasel words ie "appears", "on the surface", plus it side steps that "mass hysteria" is as unlikely to produce the brain matter changes as a supposed fantastical secret weapon. I'm the last person to want to whip up war fever by pinning a bogus cause on an unknown phenonmena. I'm also pretty tired of reading slates garbage.
Also, calling it a "bid for attention" is soft pedaling it I think, its pretty nakedly about clicks.
I think in this case "mass hysteria" is this particular author's shtick:
>Frank Bures is the author of The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Meaning of the World’s Strangest Syndromes.
His other article on Slate:
"Is PMS Real? Or is it just a figment of our menstruation-fearing culture?"
Also, calling it a "bid for attention" is soft pedaling it I think, its pretty nakedly about clicks.