Facilitated Communication

[couch_sloth]

In the most recent issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (not online yet), James Randi has an article entitled The Farce Known as 'FC' (facilitated communication).
I had thought that 'FC' was gone after a PBS FRONTLINE special thoroughly discredited the technique in the early 1990s.

The Slate article below compares FC to a cult, in that its practitioners are sincere believers who ignore the evidence. Many appear to still believe in it because of the emotional investment they've put into the technique. And it reminders me a little bit of groups like Scientology in that a few of these believers have recently put a lot of money into repackaging and promoting this method. e.g. To promote it in schools.

http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...doscience_harms_people_with_disabilities.html

Facilitated communication claims to give a voice to noncommunicative disabled people. A facilitator physically supports a disabled person to assist him in communicating through a keyboard or other device. FC has been repeatedly documented to produce the ideomotor effect, or “ouija board” effect, in which a person unconsciously influences his or her own motor behavior, in this case guiding a disabled person’s hand as a consequence. The literature showing the ideomotor effect in FC is voluminous. In these cases, the facilitator speaks “through” the FC user, believing or pretending that the disabled person is communicating, while in fact presenting the facilitator’s own words.

An older Skeptical Inquirer article:
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/facilitated_communication_the_fad_that_will_not_die

There is also the bizarre case of Anna Stubblefield (The former chair of philosophy at Rutgers University at Newark). Stubblefield is a FC practitioner who was sentenced to 12 years in prision for raping one of her clients. Stubblefield insists that she and this severely retarded man are in love with eachother (That he pronounced his love for her via FC).
Just a couple weeks ago an appeals court overturned her conviction, and there is to be a retrial:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news...-disabled-man-sees-her-convictions-overturned

 

[ronburgundy]

So, I think there are two separate important questions related to facilitated communication.
The first is "Are some subset of these patients actually trying to make tiny subtle movements to communicate?"
The second is "Are the methods used by the facilitators at all a reliable and valid method of interpreting such communication attempts?"

AFAIK, the debunking of FC is entirely about the second question and really does not address the first question. If FC methods are invalid (due in large part to the huge opportunity that give for the facilitators own thoughts and feelings to determine the outcome), then they cannot speak to whether any of the patients are actually trying to communicate a message.

I wonder if any effort has been made to use do something like have the patients place their hands on an electronic mat that is highly sensitive to the slightest changes in pressure within very precise coordinates of the mat. You could ask the patient questions and ask the same question more than once, and simply analyze the patterns for any non-randomness. Although it would not reveal what their response is, any non-randomness would be evidence that the patient is trying to give a response to the questions.

 

[Bronzeage]

To be fair, facilitated communication is at least as accurate as tarot cards and ouija boards.

 

[connick]

To be fair, facilitated communication is at least as accurate as tarot cards and ouija boards.

Where is the "Like" button?

 

[Keith&Co.]

It's the 6-pointed star between Blog This Post and Reply.