James Randi: This Cruel Farce Has To Stop
randi.org
randi.org
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3439467496200920717&...
Example:
" PLEASE HEED MY NEED
I NEED TO HEED
OTHERS
I THIS REASON THINK
THE WORLD
THEY NEED HEED
LIKE WE HEED
BROTHERS" -- Facilitated Communication "by" a 2nd grader
* In a blind-test where guides where shown different pictures than disabled kids; 100% of the time, in 180 tests, the children failed to communicate the pictures they have been shown to the guide. In fact, 100% of results were the images show to the guide!
* The chief evangelist of FC accepts that cases were the children were not even looking at the keyboard were unacceptable and unscientific, but he blamed the guides for being too eager to communicate on behalf of the kids. However, there is plenty of footage of him observing a session where the children were either asleep, looking at the ceiling, or generally not paying any attention. And he made no effort to correct the actions of the guide. Similar practices were also shown of his top aides and students.
* As soon as FC was deployed, there were large scale allegations of child abused, where children were removed from homes and some parents to told to sever all contact with their kids. This prompted one family to inquire about the practices of FC, and after writing to main Autism think-tank in Washington D.C. discovered thousands of similar claims were made in FC sessions. Later tests showed children could not communicate such messages and charges were dropped, but no FC guide was ever charged with wrong doing.
* Millions in public money were spent on FC and an international network of FC practitioners and vendors sprung throughout the U.S.
* A video is shown of the inventor of FC where she is helping a patient choose his fate on whether to stay at home, go to nursing care and other options. The patient is immobile and has a head-mounted pointer where he is choosing the options, and he clearly choose to go into a nursing home. However, when a line is drawn positioning the board, you could clearly see the "guide" ever so slightly moving the board down until the patient makes his "judgment". [This viewer found it curious that the patient was perfectly capable of random movements and jerks, but not accurate slow movement. Not even I can hold a pen so steady with such precision.]
* The final straw was the sight of an autistic kid communicating through a guide, and using this opportunity before a massive audience to attack the opponents of FC and expressed doubts in their academic honesty and their desire to help children!
I upvoted your comment to nullify a downvote, because I believe that downvotes should be reserved for offensive content.
[ Its a political position, context free, and orthogonal to your intent, so I hope you can forgive the upvote... its not personal. ]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1207843... [audio]
...assuming, of course, that the doctor is credible and competent (and not only relying on FC).
(I also noticed that HN's resident neuroscientist was downvoted for taking the story seriously.)
I work at the same university and I have already had the occasion to talk with him. He's not the kind of guy to buy phony stuff. I'd be very surprised if he accorded any credit to FC, even though the patient's family might do.
BTW, he works in the same lab as the people who publishes the early birds/night owls paper featured on HN a few months ago.
There are various telltale signs of consciousness that can be detected by PET scan. Vegetatve patients have their associative cortices deactivated, especially the precuneus that's known to be involved in the processing of information about oneself.
Furthermore, you can detect using PET that the activity of the cortex and the thalamus are correllated in controls, but not in vegetative patients.
These results have been published 15 years ago, I supposed that they've been reproduced since that time. The main criticism that they received was that they were passive measurements.
The imagery experiment requires he subject to perform the various tasks during several blocks of 30 seconds inside the MRI scanner. Vegetative subjects only show a brief activation of the primary auditory crtices while the instructions are given. Controls show an activation of different higher level areas involved on the task.
The patient of the Owen paper (Science 2006) showed an cortical activation comparable to controls although she was completely non communicative and remained so during several months.
I don't know what test were performed for the patient discussed in this HN thread, but I know that they have more than enough reliable tests to detect awareness in non communicative patients.
Look at it through the lens of two-from-four thinking. http://www.cawtech.freeserve.co.uk/nat_neg.2.html
We think it is a binary question: does the message originate with the patient or the facilitator. Think harder; there are two binary questions. Where does the message really originate? Where does the facilitator think it is coming from?
It is very tempting to think that these two questions are pretty much the same and most always have the same answer. This gives us two of the four possibilities: it really works, its is deliberate fraud.
The piece by Doug Wheeler opts for the third of the four possibilities
>The effect was powerful and personally devastating, as feared.
Most of the facilitators were unaware of the illusory nature of facilitation, so the bottom dropped out of their world, like a cuckcolded husband discovering that the child wasn't his. (except the other way round, kind of, it is the weirdness that makes this so interesting.)
So there is one story about the people in comas and another different story about healthy people being sucked in by a powerful illusion. The scary part of the second story lies in the escape route. An outsider insists on doing careful experiments. Those inside the illusion are annoyed at the waste of time, but unconcerned by the possibility of a negative result.
So when Madoff conned lots of people was there a similar illusion at work? People were convinced that he persuaded them that he was legitimate. But he could have been in a coma, and his investors facilitators, producing the message: these are great, safe investments. The standard narrative credits Madoff with extra-ordinary powers of conmanship. That has implications for us as potential marks. We must look outside and be vigilant against an external enemy. But if the facilitators experience is part of wider picture we never suspect that key communications are not coming from him but from us.
If anyone associated with Syracuse is reading this, I have to ask, is this a source of embarrassment to the students and faculty, or does the administration view this "institute" as a revenue source?
But is being exploited by "FC" yo-yo's who are either naive or corrupt.
Unfortunately great numbers of naive and corrupt are readily available.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34109227/ns/health-more_health_n...
Not sure why Randi got so upset (or which report set him off). Even if the typing is a fraud, the injury and the realization that he was locked-in don't seem to be.
Randi does good work. In the case though I think he jumped in too quickly.
Essentially the FC is evil because its pretending to be communication from a loved one and it isn't. He could have some actual capacity for communication and its being ignored because of the FC.
Imagine if he does have the capacity to understand whats happening? Finally they notice he's conscious and then they proceed to ignore him while some bitch makes up pretty stories to tell his family and then writes a book.
It also might provoke a discussion on how we might REALLY be able to tell what the poor bastard is "saying", instead of using his hand as a fucking keyboard wand.
From the guidelines
However I tend to agree with this comment - is this 'Hacker News'worthy?
I especially object to the downvote on this post - I think downvoting shouldnt be used unless the post is clearly offensive.
It think this is legitimate comment - HN needs to preserve Freedom of Speech and not become a self-serving myopic site where people are afraid to speak their mind for fear of losing karma brownie points.
Im hoping that down votes happen less when people speak their mind.. and that downvotes are on average reserved for clearly offensive content.
I think the issue needs some introspection, hence I risked being downvoted.
But I get what you're saying, and that's why we have moderators. Left to its own devices, a crowd is unable to self-moderate and keep something like HN from drifting into popularity cascades.
This is especially true when people are given information about what other people think (the score, the position on the home page, comments) before voting themselves.