Lets move on to a particular kind of evil, Facilitated Communication.
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Facilitated communication (FC) is a process by which a person referred to as the "facilitator" supports the hand or arm of a communicatively impaired individual while using a keyboard or other devices with the aim of helping the individual to point and thereby to communicate."
This is actually helpful in a few situations and on the surface it doesn't look too different than other methods we have of helping people communicate. And that is just it, the people it does work for can obviously attempt to communicate in the first place, and would probably benefit from better methods. For the most part, FC is unnecessary and inefficient even in the few individual cases where it can work, unless it is a stepping stone to something more self-reliant. Many children can benefit from speah therapy, develop a gesture-based language, or use technological augmentation on their own. But these things are hard and take time to get results, FC is offered up as an easy breakthrough and often at the exclusion of other methods.
The problem comes when this is applied to severe autism or retardation.
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The American Psychological Association has issued a position paper on FC, stating that "Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that facilitated communication is not a scientifically valid technique for individuals with autism or mental retardation" and describing FC as "a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy."
Many people accept that FC can be used to connect to a mind that has never made significant attempts itself to engage in communication. Parents believe their children who have never spoken before are somehow suddenly conveying concepts and emotions. Some individuals are unable to even look at the keyboard or the screen, yet somehow are still believed to be picking the letters.
Of course it's been shown that the person assisting FC is really the one doing the communicating. As you can guess, this is easy to test. We tell the individual a secret word, but not the facilitator, and ask for it to be typed. That's it. That's all it takes to tell if the experience is real. When the facilitator is unable to produce the secret word, we know something else is going on. In many cases simply changing the facilitator changes the tone of the communication significantly.
The explanation lies in the ideomotor effect. The same phenomenon which convinces people Ouija boards and dousing rods are real.
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The ideomotor effect is a psychological phenomenon wherein a subject makes motions unconsciously. As in reflexive responses to pain, the body sometimes reacts reflexively to ideas alone without the person consciously deciding to take action."
So because of this effect, even the facilitator can believe the patient is doing the talking, and not them. One of the most common things for a first timer to communicate is "I love you mommy". Imagine trying to tell someone who's child just expressed love for the first time ever that it was not real. It's an appeal to wishful thinking that is near impossible to overcome.
So what's that harm? Even is it isn't real, if the parents believe it, who cares as long as everyone feels love. Well you don't have to think about it too much before the problems arise.
One possible result is that the child 'requests' life changes that they don't really want. These can just be harmless changes in clothing or hairstyle preference, it can also lead to significant changes in medical and educational treatment. Also, many children simply do not want to do it, and scream to get away. FC practitioners hold the belief that what the child is saying does not reflect what he is thinking, it's a common thing to tell parents.
And of course, there is this,
We took Josh for a physical. We felt somewhat reassured when the doctor reported no physical signs of sexual molestation. But that reassurance was soon to evaporate.
I asked Josh's teachers and therapists how he could communicate like this. "He can talk," I said, "but he cannot read, write or spell." They said they could not explain it, but that FC was a miraculous new 'thing" that unlocked hidden intelligence.
Although we were doubtful, we trusted these professionals. And we wanted to believe our son was intelligent enough to have taught himself to read, write and spell. We went along with their recommendation that Josh should continue using FC.
As months passed, it continued to be facilitated that Josh was being abused, was not protected by his family, or wanted to leave home to be safe. At one point, the police were called in to investigate claims he was making "plots and ploys to murder" his family.
I allowed the police to question Josh because they agreed to provide me with a videotape of the interview. It was heartrending to watch 43 minutes of Josh struggling with the facilitator, using spoken language to repeatedly say, "Can I stop now? Can I go back to the room? No, no, no! I don't want to do this." He repeatedly yanked his hand away from hers, turned the typewriter off and looked around the room while she "facilitated," concentrating intently on the keyboard. When an officer suggested that our son might want to stop, the facilitator repeated the FC lore--what he says isn't valid; just pay attention to what is typed. The investigation continued.
A few weeks later, Josh's grandfather was accused of sexual abuse. My involvement was implied by a facilitated statement about "the ploy by my mother to appear normal."
We were distraught. If our son had been abused by anyone, we certainly wanted to know, but none of this made sense. Josh had never spoken about anything remotely resembling sexual molestation. Yet his teacher claimed this communication was coming from him.
A final "facilitated" police interview resulted in a typed sheet describing specific graphic sex acts involving me. I was hysterical after reading the accusations. School personnel then said they were convinced that, although these were his words, Josh was lying. The detective in charge decided not to file any charges.
Despite that decision, I cried for weeks. I was terrified my child would be taken away from me, or that I might be arrested or forced to leave my home. I couldn't understand how the sweet, funny, talkative child I loved could have done this. Or why.
Then I discovered he didn't do it. We experimented with our own electric typewriter. I had believed Josh's hand could not be pushed to keys he didn't want to press, but I soon discovered that, holding his hand, I could spell whatever I wanted. If I looked away from the keyboard, the words turned to gibberish.
At our insistence, the school stopped using FC with Josh. His recovery from FC began the day he entered a new classroom. After months of having his spoken language ignored, he was finally being valued for himself again.
Story in more detail here
And of course, this is not isolated. Many, many children who undergo facilitated communication end up accusing someone of abuse, rape or neglect. Families lose their children, face expensive court battles, and become estranged from loved ones based on something which has no demonstrable validity. Even at it's most benign, it still robs parents of truly knowing who their child is. This should be an easy pseudoscience to expose, but it is kept alive and well by wishful thinking, aka faith.
