Robert began his career as a radio journalist in New York State including WWCN, a CNN affiliate in Albany. He has written extensively on belief in the supernatural, and investigated cases on the margins of science including The Amityville Horror and The Conjuring. As he notes, “people often ask me if I believe, but it’s not a question of belief, it’s a question of evidence – and the evidence is not there.” In 2020, he co-authored a book on the myth of Havana Syndrome with UCLA Neurologist Robert Baloh. While their findings were initially met with skepticism, in 2023 the United States intelligence community reached an identical conclusion. The following year Dr Bartholomew gave Congressional testimony where he affirmed the psychological origins of the syndrome. An Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland, Robert has taught History, Social Studies, English, and Global Studies in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
His book Exotic Deviance (2000) is a pioneering study on the misclassification of mental disorders in non-Western cultures. Professor Arthur Kleinman, then chair of the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard University, served as the head of his PhD Committee and called it “clear, competent and comprehensive.” His book Hoaxes, Myths & Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking (2003) was endorsed by Robert J. Sternberg, then President of the American Psychological Association. During the 2001 anthrax scare, he co-wrote key articles in the British Medical Journal and the British Journal of Psychiatry on the psychological roots of the post-September 11 bio-terror scare.
About Robert
Robert Bartholomew is a medical sociologist who has written a series of books on the racial segregation of Māori in New Zealand including No Maori Allowed (2020), now in its 15th printing, and We Don't Serve Maori Here (2022). He is also known for his writings on social panics and outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness. Robert has investigated and identified the source of several mysterious illness outbreaks including a high-profile incident at Melbourne Airport in February 2005 which sickened 57 people; the spread of vocal tics in 18 students at a school in Danvers, Massachusetts during 2012-13; and a historical episode which baffled authorities in Virginia in 1933-34. His findings were published in the Medical Journal of Australia, The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Southern Medical Journal, respectively.
In American Intolerance: Our Dark History of Demonizing Immigrants (2017), he examines the history of racial intolerance in the United States against African and Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, Germans Jews, and Muslims. Robert has lived with the Malay people in Malaysia and Aborigines in the Tanami Desert of Central Australia. He holds a doctorate in sociology from James Cook University in Australia, a Masters in American Sociology from the State University of New York at Albany, and Masters in Australian Sociology from The Flinders University of South Australia. He has been featured in a National Geographic series on modern myths and appeared on The History and Discovery Channels, Al Jazeera’s ‘Inside Story,’ and 60 Minutes Australia. His other books include: A Colorful History of Popular Delusions, Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior, and Social Panics & Phantom Attackers: A Study of Imaginary Assailants. His most recent work is The Science of the Māori Lunar Calendar: Separating Fact From Folklore.
Robert has published in the following peer-reviewed journals:
The British Medical Journal
The British Journal of Psychiatry
Journal of the American Medical Association
Medical Journal of Australia
American Journal of Epidemiology
Nursing Science Quarterly
The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health
Southern Medical Journal
Canadian Medical Association Journal
Medical Principles and Practice
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
The Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics
Psychological Medicine
The International Journal of Social Psychiatry
The Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy
The New England Quarterly
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica
Professional Psychology: Research and Practice
The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion
New Zealand Sociology
Swiss Medical Weekly
Oregon Historical Quarterly
Australian Folklore
Technology: Journal of the Franklin Institute
Feminism & Psychology
Michigan Historical Review
Canadian Military History
Delaware History
Deviant Behavior
Teaching History: Journal of the History Teachers’ Association of New South Wales
Educational Studies
Transcultural Psychiatry
Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review
The American Anthropological Association's Anthropology Newsletter
Anthropology of Consciousness
Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
Sociological Inquiry
Books by Robert Bartholomew
Havana Syndrome
(with Robert W. Baloh, M.D.)
American Intolerance: Our Dark History of Demonizing Immigrants
(with Anja Reumschüssel)
A Colorful History of Popular Delusions
(with Peter Hassall)
The Martians Have Landed! A History of Media Hoaxes and Panics
(with Ben Radford)
Hoaxes, Myths & Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking
(Ben Radford)
Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior
(with Hilary Evans)
Panic Attacks: Media Manipulation & Mass Delusion
(with Hilary Evans)
Social Panics & Phantom Attackers: A Study of Imaginary Assailants
(with Paul Weatherhead)
The Mysterious Northwoods: Strange Tales from the Adirondack & Green Mountains (with Paul Bartholomew)
Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns & Headhunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness & Social Delusions
Sorry Mate, We Don’t Cut Maori Hair
(with Catherine Tamihere)
The Untold Story of Champ: A Social History of America’s Loch Ness Monster
Exotic Deviance: Medicalizing Cultural Idioms – From Strangeness to Illness
No Maori Allowed: New Zealand’s Forgotten History of Racial Segregation
We Don’t Serve Maori Here: A Recent History of Māori Racism in New Zealand:
From the Segregation Era to Golliwogs
Australia’s Forgotten Children: A Case Study of Educational Apartheid
The Hiccupping Schoolgirls of Danvers, Massachusetts
Mass Hysteria in Schools: A Worldwide History Since 1566
(with Robert Rickard)
UFOlore: A Social Psychological Study of a Modern Myth in the Making
Monsters of the Northwoods
(with Paul Bartholomew, William Brann & Bruce Hallenbeck)
Ovnis y Entidades en Malasia y el Sudeste Asiático: Una Perspectiva Islámica ante un Enigma Global
(with Ahmad Jamaludin)
The Science of the Māori Lunar Calendar: Separating Fact From Folklore
Reviews
Exotic Deviance
“Bartholomew demonstrates deep scholarship in the reviews of cross-cultural behavioral conditions... and is clear, forceful and effective.”
– Professor Arthur Kleinman, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard University
Hoaxes, Myths & Manias
“…an entertaining and enlightening book.”
– Robert Sternberg, former President of the American Psychological Association
American Hauntings
“Robert Bartholomew and Joe Nickell…give us…natural explanations for apparently supernatural phenomena, demystifying…human psychology.”
– Michael Shermer, New York Times bestselling author of The Believing Brain
The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior
“…a work of immense erudition and scholarship….”
– Simon Wessely, Professor of Psychological Medicine, King’s College London
The Untold Story of Champ
“Bartholomew’s study provides a meticulously researched overview of the historical context behind popular fascination with the Lake Champlain monster.”
– Peter Dendle, Associate Professor of English, Penn State University
American Intolerance
“Clear, accessible, and compulsively readable, it is an important read, especially at our present historical moment.”
– David Livingstone Smith, Professor of Philosophy, University of New England
A Colorful History of Popular Delusions
“A delightful and entertaining romp through false beliefs, tall tales, fads, crazes, and urban legends of all kinds. Enlightening and eye-opening…”
– Scott Lilienfeld, Professor of Psychology, Emory University
Havana Syndrome
“The world needs more Bartholomews and Balohs who question and test official explanations and are prepared to roll their sleeves up and dig into these fascinating cases.”
– Keith Petrie, Professor of Health Psychology, University of Auckland
Social Panics & Phantom Attackers
“A thorough account of a myriad of horrifying and society-shaking crimes perpetrated by monstrous boogeymen – psychopaths, satanists, sexual deviants, witches, enemies of the state… Probably none of these crimes actually happened.”
– David Scott, writer & producer for Discovery, History, & National Geographic
Little Green Men
“…a source of well-documented information to those interested in mass psychosocial phenomena, and as fascinating leisure-time reading to the general public.”
– Wolfgang Jilek, M.D., former Chair of the World Psychiatric Association
UFOs & Alien Contact: Two Centuries of Mystery
”...a work of serious scholarship. ...It is rare that one finds in a single volume such a wealth of historical detail processed through powerful analytical tools of social psychology.”
– Michael Crowe, Professor Emeritus in Humanities, University of Notre Dame
Mass Hysteria in Schools
“Bartholomew and Rickard provide a convincing analysis… as to why these events occur.”
– Glenn Dawes, Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology, James Cook University
The Science of the Māori Lunar Calendar
”I recommend The Science of the Māori Lunar Calendar as a thorough examination of the current status of claims made about these topics, and I hope we see more of it in New Zealand.”
– Nicholas Matzke, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland