Contra Benn Jordan, data center (and all) sub-audible infrasound issues are fake - By Andy Masley
TL;DR
Andy Masley says Ben Jordan built a data-center scare story on misread sources — he argues Jordan’s flagship “acoustic weapons” framing repeatedly cites papers that either say the opposite, concern audible low-frequency noise instead of infrasound, or are weak anecdotes like Vic Tandy’s ghost story.
The core scientific claim is simple: ordinary environmental infrasound hasn’t been shown to cause a distinct health syndrome — Masley leans on decades of reviews plus examples like Marshall et al. 2023, the Finnish wind-turbine project, and Health Canada’s 1,238-household study, all of which found no convincing below-threshold infrasound harm.
He draws a hard line between real noise pollution and fake infrasound mysticism — data centers, wind turbines, drilling, and landfills can absolutely create audible noise that disrupts sleep and raises stress, but Masley says Jordan keeps smuggling “inaudible harm” into those real complaints without evidence.
A recurring theme is the nocebo effect, not hidden physiology — Masley highlights studies by Fiona Crichton and Keith Petrie showing people report worse symptoms when primed to expect harm, even during sham exposure, and says that pattern better fits many infrasound complaints than a physical mechanism.
Masley’s harshest criticism is methodological, not just factual — he calls Jordan a “high-status Alex Jones” because the videos feel rigorous and empathetic while flashing WHO documents, medical papers, and lab gear that, in Masley’s reading, mostly serve as credibility theater rather than support.
When the video finally gets to data centers, Masley says the key bait-and-switch is ‘symptoms are real, infrasound isn’t the cause’ — he points to outliers like xAI’s Memphis Colossus and says the genuine harms there are methane turbines, local air pollution, and audible rumble, not some invisible infrasonic weapon.
The Breakdown
Opening salvo: this isn’t a rebuttal, it’s a takedown
Andy Masley opens by calling Ben Jordan’s data-center infrasound video a “moment-by-moment disaster” and frames it as a case study in how polished, highbrow misinformation spreads. His tone is part incredulity, part sociology lesson: the vibe is trustworthy explainer, the conclusion is conspiracy theory.
Infrasound 101, and why decibels matter more than spooky vibes
Before touching Jordan, Masley lays out the physics: infrasound is below roughly 20 hertz, hearing thresholds rise sharply at lower frequencies, and the decibel scale is logarithmic, so “a little louder” can mean thousands or millions of times more energy. His central point is that the levels known to cause direct bodily effects are far above what people get in homes near data centers, turbines, or other ordinary infrastructure.
What the literature actually says: lots of study, very little support
Masley spends a long stretch on the research history, from NASA and Air Force high-exposure studies to newer public-health reviews. He keeps returning to three anchor examples: Marshall et al. 2023’s 72-hour sleep-lab experiment, the Finnish wind-turbine project whose final report is literally titled “Infrasound does not explain symptoms related to wind turbines,” and Health Canada’s 1,238-household turbine study — all presented as evidence that ordinary environmental infrasound doesn’t produce a distinct disease.
The first Ben Jordan video: paper after paper, source after source, allegedly backwards
Then Masley starts the autopsy. He says Jordan flashes papers that are not meta-analyses, workplace reports that explicitly say measured levels are not known to cause harm, and reviews about audible low-frequency noise while narrating them as evidence about inaudible infrasound. The emotional hook here is how easy the video is to trust while, in Masley’s telling, every on-screen citation quietly undermines the spoken claim.
Ghosts, eyeballs, and haunted-cellar science
The weirdest stretch is Masley’s demolition of the Vic Tandy material. He says Jordan presents “The Ghost in the Machine” as a famous study when it was really a one-person anecdote in a parapsychology journal, later followed by a cellar story featuring witnesses including self-described witches, and ultimately contradicted by Goldsmiths’ controlled haunt experiment where suggestability predicted experiences, not infrasound.
Road trips, Yellowstone, SpaceX — and the rhetorical power of dramatic examples
Masley thinks Jordan’s South Dakota, Yellowstone, tornado, and SpaceX segments are visually effective but scientifically slippery. Yes, storms, geysers, rockets, and seismographs all prove infrasound exists and travels far; no, Masley says, none of that shows residential exposure is dangerous, and the spectacle mainly helps sell the feeling that modern infrastructure is bathing everyone in invisible menace.
The deeper accusation: anti-institutional vibes over actual replication
One of Masley’s strongest meta-critiques is that Jordan primes viewers to distrust mainstream science itself. He zeroes in on Jordan’s separate video about the replication crisis, arguing Jordan flips the meaning of the crisis, dismisses credentialed expertise, and positions his own n=1 experiments as epistemically meaningful — which, for Masley, explains why decades of negative infrasound findings get brushed aside.
Finally, data centers: real noise, fake infrasound, and the xAI exception
In the data-center section, Masley says Jordan deliberately blends three things together: real resident symptoms, real audible noise pollution, and unproven infrasound harms. He treats xAI’s Memphis Colossus as a genuine scandal because of up to 35 unpermitted methane turbines and local pollution, but insists the suffering there is being misdescribed when Jordan turns it into a story about inaudible acoustic weapons rather than audible rumble, stress, and conventional environmental harm.