No one was publicly saying what caused the symptoms. But again and again, I would see suggestions that the diplomats were being attacked with a sonic weapon. A sound rifle, perhaps.

When the United States escalated the dispute by expelling 15 Cuban diplomats on Tuesday, Michael decided he wanted to learn more about this strange idea. I decided to try to find something out — not as a political reporter but as a science writer. My article was published on Thursday.

I have been contributing articles about science to The Times since 2004. For the past four years I’ve written a weekly column called Matter. I usually base my ideas on scientific research that has matured far enough that it is beginning to get published in peer-reviewed journals. The biggest challenge in writing these is that there’s so much data to learn about, to mull and to transform into a narrative that will be compelling to nonexperts.

I knew that an article on sonic weapons would be very different from the ones I usually write. Consulting with Gardiner Harris, who covers international diplomacy for The Times and has written several articles about this case, I learned there was not even an official medical report.

I decided to try to draw some boundary lines for all the speculation swirling around the story. Is the idea of a sonic attack plausible, based on what scientists know about sound and the human body?