Wisdom

 

Yes, it´s time for a rant about FC again!

I was genuinely shocked when doing on-line research about FC and its derivatives. The technique is *obviously* fake. Even pro-FC´s documentaries can´t hide the fact that the poor autists are being heavily prompted by the facilitators...and often get the wrong answers anyway. Yet, FC is a world-wide movemennt?! Or cult. The implications are staggering.

Your local unfriendly Skeptic association often says that people (ordinary plebs) simply aren´t good observers or reliable eye witnesses. The FC phenomenon confirms this thesis *in freakin´spades*. Thousands of people apparently think they can communicate with their severely autistic children on a daily basis with this technique. And yet it´s all a puppet show and a delusion. It´s not like seeing a Bigfoot in the forest just once. 

This seems to have consequences for how we look at eye witness reports of the supernatural. For instance Fatima. Or the 500 brothers who supposedly saw the risen Christ all at once after his resurrection. Or...anything really.

But then it struck me. The FC cult is secular (there is a New Age version, too, but the mainline FCers seem to be secular). So we have a case where thousands of people see a *natural* phenomenon which simply isn´t there. Which reminds me of C S Lewis´ quip that while most reports of the supernatural are false, most reports about natural events are also false. Indeed! Most things we see are lies. 

But if that´s the case, we can´t be sure that the supernatural isn´t real. Maybe it still lurks somewhere out there...

The quest continues.   

Truth will out

 

Two more skeptical essays on FC and its later incarnation RPM. 

Truth will out: Review of Iversen´s "Strange Son"

Strange science in Iversen´s book

Strange son

 

More on "S2C" or FC. I´ve become autistically obsessed with this question! This is a review of the pro-FC book "Strange Son". Again: this is so obviously a hoax or a delusion that it´s baffling that so many fall for it. And yet, here we are... 

Actually, there are published authorship results for S2C...and they aren´t good

Generation Rescue?

 

The first video above is the pro-FC propaganda film "Spellers". The relevant section is at time stamps 3:45 - 6:35. The second video is a critique of the "spelling". It´s obvious even to a causal observer that some kind of not-so-subtle prompts are involved (it´s actually even worse). See also the link below, which goes to a skeptical essay about the film. 

This whole FC thing is *obviously* not true, so obvious that it´s frankly shocking to see how an entire movement/community/cult of "true believers" can be built around it. It makes me wonder about...a lot of things.     

A review of the movie "Spellers"

Overestimated

 

A (very interesting) critical review of a pro-FC book. Below are some excerpts (apparently, this version of FC is called S2C). Note that the extraordinary skills of the "type 3 autists" are patently absurd...unless we assume that the cause is supernatural/paranormal. Which may explain why some factions of the FC movement has morphed into an outright New Age cult!  

>>>In addition, we’re supposed to accept the usual claims about sudden manifestations of literacy, of prior knowledge, and of prior academic skills. From the moment Jamison starts S2C, his spelling is perfect. He types out “popcorn”, “movies”, and “cracker jacks”—even though, “because of Jamie’s diet, the kid has never seen a box of Cracker Jacks in his life.” He already knows—because he types it out—that “herbivore” is the “opposite of carnivore”.

>>>And, though Handley tells us that Jamison has shown no prior signs of being able to do math, it turns out he already knows basic arithmetic so well that he is able to quickly progress through algebra to calculus. (His letterboard “helper” for calculus also happens to be his calculus tutor).

>>>Jamison also already knows Spanish. As Handley explains in an interview with “Dr. Jack” (the prominent anti-vaxxer James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, who has most recently spoken out against the Covid vaccine), “Jamie’s Spanish is very good because his brother and sister took it in school and they would drill in front of him.”

(...)

>>>Occam’s Razor favors an alternative account. While experienced helpers are experienced at sending cues to spellers, novice parents take a while to get there. Novice spellers are less responsive even to the cues of experienced helpers; the three boards are at first a necessary supplement to those cues.

>>>Finally, what looks like sudden literacy, including the ability to spell words never seen before like “cracker jack,” unexpected stores of prior knowledge (herbivore), and arithmetic skills that were mastered without any active practice—all of which completely defies everything we know about how children learn things—all this output is actually authored (presumably subconsciously) by the helpers. 

>>>Or, to summarize this alternative account in two words: “Clever Hans.”

Review of J B Handley´s Underestimated

Crystals

 

Another criticism of Facilitated Communication (FC). See also previous blog post. One thing that struck me when reflecting on this problematique is that FC´s transition into the paranormal ("The Telepathy Tapes") is perfectly logical. 

FC makes sense only if you postulate that autistic people have highly evolved souls trapped in the wrong body. How else would severly autistic pre-schoolers or ditto elementary school kids suddenly be able to communicate in grammatically correct English or solve mathematical problems far above the grade-levels of their neurotypical peers? A true believer could further argue that the autistic child only establishes a telepathic link with the facilitator, not with anyone else, hence FC only works when the facilitator is around. Or how about the facilitator who communicated with a person who was *literally in a coma?* ESP could work as an explanation. And so on!

There is a New Age concept known as "Crystal Children" which fits neatly into the FC matrix. Who knows, maybe they really are connected somehow? The idea seems to be that children with severe mental challenges are really extremely spiritual and filled with ancient wisdom etc, etc. 

It´s rather common that alternative thinkers, when faced with difficulties proving the physical existence of a phenomenon, resort to supranaturalist explanations. Why is Bigfoot so elusive? Maybe because he isn´t a flesh-and-blood creature, but a woodland elf. Indeed, why is it so difficult to get conclusive evidence for any "alternative" claims? Maybe because they are caused by spirits who are tricksters and use fairy glamour to get away? Why can´t the US military ever down a UFO? Because the aliens are really angels or demons. Here we see a similar logic at play: the type 3 autists are immortal reincarnating savant-souls inhabiting (for whatever karmic reasons) a severly impaired body-mind. (Wait ten years and gender dysphoria will be "explained" in the same way: it´s an eternal - and eternally gendered soul - trapped in the physical body of the wrong biological sex.)

I happen to be open-minded to the paranormal / supernatural, so I actually consider this something of a problem. That is, people resorting to the preternatural in ad hoc fashion. Maybe a squatch is a woodland sprite, but if so, please freakin´ prove it, rather than using that claim as an escape hatch from the somewhat embarrasing fact that no physical specimen has ever been secured. Note also that in the case of FC, the failure rate under controlled conditions is 100%, which is a worse result than any experiment with telepathy or remote viewing I´m familiar with! 

If you need to associate an alleged physical phenomenon with controversial paranormal claims in order to make it sound more plausible, you really have no leg to stand on. 

Facilitated control

 

Only in America? A classical documentary from 1993, "Prisoners of Silence", exposing Facilitated Communication (FC). Or is it a cult? 

This is a prequel to the more recent Telepathy Tapes. Under controlled conditions, FC literally *never* works, which means that there is more (alleged/purported) evidence for supernatural phenomena! So ironically, the current paranormal version of FC might actually look *more* convincing than the old school secular ditto...

Ten years from now, somebody will make a similar documentary about, shall we say, certain aspects of Gender Ideology, just wait.

Spellers

 

The most recent American cult? A new podcast claims that nonverbal autistic children are really, really special and can communicate telepathically. Their immortal souls gather at a place called "The Hill" where they can paranormally learn new skills. Et cetera. 

Two of the links below goes to skeptical articles, the third is a (rather unconvincing) response from the Telepathy Tapes podcasters. 

I think it´s obvious that this is just the latest iteration of the New Age phenomenon known as Indigo children or Crystal children.  

The Telepathy Tapes prove we all want to believe  

Telepathy Tapes: A Dangerous Cornucopia of Pseudo-science

A critical commentary

Presume competence

 

Background material to the next blog post...

Facilitated communication 

List of abuse allegations