Reborn Coma Man’s Words May Be Bogus

[Johnny Asia]

�I believe that he is sentient. They�ve shown that with MRI scans,�
said James Randi, a prominent skeptic who during the 1990s
investigated the use of facilitated communication for autistic
children. But in the video, �You see this woman who�s not only holding
his hand, but what she�s doing is directing his fingers and looking
directly at the keyboard. She�s pressing down on the keyboard,
pressing messages for him. He has nothing to do with it.�

According to Randi, facilitated communication could only be considered
credible if the facilitator didn�t look at the keyboard or screen
while supporting Houben�s hand, and helped him type messages in
response to questions she had not heard, thus ensuring that Houben�s
responses are entirely his own.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has offered a million dollar
prize to a valid demonstration of facilitated communication, and Randi
invited Houben to participate. �Our prize is still there,� he said.

In the Der Spiegel interview, Houben and his facilitator recounted his
ordeal. �I would scream, but no sound would come out,� they wrote. �I
became the witness to my own suffering as doctors and nurses tried to
speak to me and eventually gave up.� Of the correct diagnosis, they
wrote, �I will never forget the day they finally discovered what was
wrong � it was my second birth.�

According to Caplan, Houben�s apparent lucidity after spending more
than two decades in complete isolation � circumstances known to be
psychologically and cognitively damaging � is hard to believe.

�You�re going to lie for 23 years in a hospital bed with almost no
stimuli, and then sound completely coherent and cogent?� he said.
�Something is wrong with that picture. The messages are almost poetic.
It sounds too lucid, like someone prepared these things to say. I�m
not saying it�s all a fraud, but I want to hear a lot more.�

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/houben-communication/

Reborn Coma Man�s Words May Be Bogus

* By Brandon Keim
* November 24, 2009

Rom Houben�s account of his ordeal, repeated in scores of news stories
since appearing Saturday in Der Spiegel, appears to be delivered with
assistance from an aide who helps guide his finger to letters on a
flat computer keyboard. Called �facilitated communication,� that
technique has been widely discredited, and is not considered
scientifically valid.

�If facilitated communication is part of this, and it appears to be,
then I don�t trust it,� said Art Caplan, director of the University of
Pennsylvania�s Center for Bioethics. �I�m not saying the whole thing
is a hoax, but somebody ought to be checking this in greater detail.
Anytime facilitated communication of any sort is involved, red flags
fly.�

Facilitated communication came to prominence in the late 1970s after
an Australian teacher reportedly used it to communicate with 12
children rendered speechless by cerebral palsy and other disorders.
Over the next two decades, it gained some adherents in patient and
medical communities, but failed to produce consistent results in
controlled, scientific settings.

Researchers said that facilitators were unconsciously or consciously
guiding patients� hands. Multiple professional organizations,
including the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental
Disabilities and the American Academy of Pediatrics, say that
facilitated communication is not credible.