“One of the prob­lems,” author Frank Bures said in a recent Atlantic inter­view, “is this whole dis­tinc­tion between real and not real.”

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 book exam­ines con­di­tions that the DSM‑V, a man­u­al used to diag­nose and clas­si­fy men­tal dis­or­ders, terms “cul­ture-bound syndromes.”

These con­di­tions are gen­er­al­ly observed in non-West­ern cul­tures.  As the book’s sub­ti­tle sug­gests, they include penis theft, which Bures describes as a con­di­tion in which “peo­ple feel like their gen­i­tals are being sucked into their body.”

In his inter­view with the Atlantic’s Julie Beck, Bures com­plains that Amer­i­can psy­chi­a­try’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion of these con­di­tions as “cul­ture-bound” sug­gests that they aren’t real.  He believes that our sci­ence-based under­stand­ing of nature is no more cor­rect and no less cul­tur­al­ly bound than that of non-West­ern cultures.

To prove his point, Bures tells Beck that “pre­men­stru­al syn­drome doesn’t exist in a lot of places” and sug­gests that it may be “relat­ed to Amer­i­can cul­ture.”  Beck, who through­out the inter­view was gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive of Bures’s point of view, char­ac­ter­ized that as “a very treach­er­ous thing to say.”

“Peo­ple might feel like you’re stig­ma­tiz­ing or dele­git­imiz­ing their expe­ri­ences,” she said.

“What a per­son in our cul­ture would feel if you said PMS is a cul­tur­al syn­drome,” Bures replied, “is the same thing that peo­ple in Nige­ria would feel, who’ve had their penis­es stolen.”

And for Bures that reveals cul­tur­al bias root­ed in West­ern science.

“That’s kind of the larg­er nar­ra­tive of West­ern­iza­tion,” Bures says.  “That once we get the cor­rect sci­ence and the cor­rect view of things that these old, prim­i­tive beliefs will all go away…If that was cor­rect, it would imply that we don’t have a cul­ture, or that our dis­eases are cul­ture-free and that’s obvi­ous­ly not the case.”

He ticks off a list of con­di­tions that he reck­ons are Amer­i­can cul­ture-bound syn­dromes: anorex­ia, big­orex­ia (exces­sive exer­cise), pet hoard­ing, wind tur­bine syn­drome (headaches, sleep­less­ness and oth­er prob­lems that peo­ple attribute to wind­mills), chron­ic fatigue syn­drome and gluten intolerance.

“You feel something’s wrong and you believe it’s caused by these things,” he says, “like gluten or wind tur­bines or hor­mones or mag­i­cal spells or some­thing like that.  Depend­ing on your con­cep­tion of those things, you could have cer­tain symp­toms that you’re, in a way, kind of gen­er­at­ing by believ­ing in them.”

My daugh­ter has celi­ac dis­ease.  Ingest­ing gluten trig­gers an autoim­mune reac­tion that dam­ages her small intes­tine.  Her con­di­tion was ver­i­fied by a bat­tery of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly valid tests that result­ed in a diag­no­sis.  When she adheres to a gluten-free diet, the symp­toms sub­side.  When she eats food with gluten, the symp­toms recur.

For a cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ist like me, this is sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that celi­ac dis­ease is, for­give the expres­sion, “real,” unlike the belief that “there was a fox spir­it wan­der­ing around vil­lages steal­ing people’s gen­i­tals at night.”

Not so for Bures, who said, “You could imag­ine that gluten intol­er­ance is a way of say­ing some­thing is wrong with our diet, our food, dis­ap­proval of the West­ern diet or some­thing like that.”

Bures’ point of view, though scarce­ly more pro­found than the mus­ings of a ston­er, dis­clos­es some of the deep­est con­tra­dic­tions of the mod­ern Left.

On the one hand, many on the Left regard sci­ence as an asser­tion of West­ern cul­tur­al suprema­cy. Dis­com­fort with West­ern sci­ence is evi­dent in antipa­thy among fac­tions on the Left toward vac­cines, infant for­mu­la and foods con­tain­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms.  It has recent­ly become an arti­cle of pro­gres­sive dog­ma that a person’s sex is not deter­mined by the XX and XY chro­mo­somes and, para­dox­i­cal­ly, that a “gay gene” will one day be identified.

On the oth­er hand, the Left embraces sci­ence when it can be used as a blud­geon against West­ern val­ues and liv­ing stan­dards. It smears those who reject the ruinous eco­nom­ic poli­cies advo­cat­ed by glob­al warm­ing enthu­si­asts as sci­ence “deniers,” moral­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly akin to those who claim the Holo­caust nev­er occurred.

Though we all are guilty of such incon­sis­ten­cies, this con­tra­dic­to­ry atti­tude toward sci­ence is espe­cial­ly prob­lem­at­ic for the Left, which views West­ern civ­i­liza­tion as the source of “white suprema­cy, cap­i­tal­ism, and colo­nial­ism, and all oth­er oppres­sive sys­tems,” as the Stan­ford [Uni­ver­si­ty] Dai­ly recent­ly assert­ed in an edi­to­r­i­al oppos­ing a West­ern civ­i­liza­tion course requirement.

Mod­ern sci­ence and its atten­dant tech­no­log­i­cal advances arose large­ly from that wretched civ­i­liza­tion.  It has, togeth­er with such notions as lib­er­ty, pri­vate prop­er­ty and the rule of law, helped make West­ern soci­eties pros­per­ous and free.

Sci­ence rests on the premise that we can observe, mea­sure and ana­lyze the world around us; that the­o­ries about nature must be sub­ject­ed to rig­or­ous exper­i­men­ta­tion to deter­mine their valid­i­ty. It asserts the abil­i­ty to study the observ­able uni­verse and dis­tin­guish what is true from what we imag­ine to be true.  It has through­out his­to­ry chal­lenged the most cher­ished assump­tions of West­ern elites, endur­ing Stal­in­ist show tri­als and papal inqui­si­tions. It doesn’t view “this whole dis­tinc­tion between real and not real” as a prob­lem, but as cen­tral to its mission.

It con­strains us to say that celi­ac dis­ease is real and penis thieves are not .