Skepticism about Facilitated Communication
David L. Boucher
> Apparently the successes are anecdotal and the failures are what you get
> when you do controlled trials.
> If successes can only occur _without_ experimental controls due to
> problems with trust and maybe some kind of telepathic/empathic disbelief
> that the autistic subject picks up from the experimenter, then F/C will
> become a fringe therapy, unsupported and ridiculed. None of us want
> this to happen.
But if the messages produced by FC do not in fact originate in the mind
of the autistic person, isn't that exactly what SHOULD happen?
It seems to me that almost all of the mail on FC has been concerned with
gaining acceptance for FC, but there has been very little concern with
whether or not it actually works. A while back there was a post of a
message from Dr. Rimland about how FC had been misused in a number of
instances to bring false charges of sexual abuse. I wonder how any of
you who are so entusiatic for FC would feel if it were used by misguided
facilitators to have YOUR child taken away from you and placed in some
nice, caring mental institution for years while the courts sort things
out.
That is just one reason why it is absolutely IMPERATIVE that FC must not
only be scientifically demonstrated to work as a general procedure, but
also that it should be demonstrated that it actually works on EACH
INDIVIDUAL PERSON on whom it is routinely used. It is quite possible
that in some cases, perhaps in all cases, the messages might be produced
by conscious or unconscious cues from the facilitator. If that is
happening, then it is a total VIOLATION of the autistic person to
represent those thoughts as coming from him or her.
It is particularly disturbing to see so many postings arguing a priori
that FC would probably fail any objective test, that it is some kind of
paranormal phenomenon that is disrupted by some kind of mental
emanations of disbelief that must accompany any attempt to find out
whether or not it actually works, and yet still it MUST BE ACCEPTED on
blind faith, like some kind of religious dogma. To characterize FC in
that way is to put it in the same league as faith-healing, astrology,
and the 'spectral evidence' used in 17th-century witchcraft trials. I
find myself thinking of medieval physicians who would slap leeches on
people or submerge them in ducking-ponds to drive out evil spirits, and
as long as at least some of the patients survived, nobody questioned
whether or not the treatment actually did any good. Very little
progress was made until people started asking the question, "HOW do we
know that treatment a, b, or c really WORKS?" instead of just accepting
things on faith or anecdotal evidence.
Double-blind tests do not have to be intrusive. They could be carried
out under the same conditions and setting as facilitation normally takes
place, except that the facilitator would wear headphones so that he/she
could not hear the questions asked. Tests could be carried out over a
stretch of weeks or months to allow the subjects to become comfortable
with being tested. And if there is really no way of knowing whether or
not the thoughts expressed through FC are truly those of the autistic
person, then I question the value of foisting it off on autistic people
no matter how comforting it may be to their caretakers.
- D. Boucher
ps. I am the father of an HFA son, and have a number of the the
characteristics of HFA's I have seen described on this list. I have
even been suspected of telepathy, which is rather ironic since I don't
believe in it, but I do tend to be very observant... ;)