Talk:Facilitated communication

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Welcome to the Facilitated Communication Talk page.

• /Archive 1: September 2004 - January 2006
• /Archive 2: February 2006 - April 2006
• /Archive 3: April 2006 - February 2008

Major rework

I just completed a first pass to a major rework of the article. What I did, for the most part:

• Rewrote lead;
• Removed weasel wording where obvious;
• Excised all self-published sources used as references (those are not reliable sources);
• Elided assertions supported only by those sources for the most part— some might remain; and
• Cleaned up the external links to remove self-published material.

There are still a lot of iffy claims that need better support from sources or to be removed altogether. I didn't clutter the lead with refs given that everything there is supported in the main prose. That's strictly a stylistic preference, if someone wants to move refs around to cite in the lead, I'd find it ugly but understand.  :-) — Coren ^(talk) 16:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

The article could use a picture to show what facilitated communication is in practice, but I don't have one on hand. Surely there is one we can use somewhere? — Coren ^(talk) 16:29, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Nice job pruning the article, Coren; it needed it badly, and you did a good job. I added back in a little nuance, based on good sources. Will keep an eye out for a picture. cheers, Jim Butler (t) 07:25, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Nice catch, you're right that the claims of independent typing needed to go in the lead too. — Coren ^(talk) 12:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi Coren -- regarding this edit, the number of peer-reviewed scientific studies finding evidence of communication coming from FC users is on the order of a dozen, and several are cited in the article. (Some examples: Cardinal et. al. 1996, Weiss et. al. 1996, Sheehan & Matuozzi 1996, Simon et. al. 1994. Note that the last one showed both cueing and real authorship; they are not mutually exclusive). AFAIK, the total number of peer-reviewed studies on FC is on the order of several dozen (see Pubmed). So the studies showing real authorship constitute what I think we call a "significant minority view". I'm cool with the use of "concluded" instead of "reported" as long as we use similar language for the ones showing real authorship, since the latter are every bit as peer-reviewed as the former. (Of course, reviewers have critically discussed the study design of both the former and the latter, and we report that too...) BTW, I'm going to restore a reference regarding dyspraxia (it got dropped prior to your revisions), since that's as much a central tenet of FC as literacy. cheers, --Jim Butler (t) 05:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed it is. As to the other point, I suppose that even with poor methodology, they still quality— feel free to reinsert "most". But "conclude" is the correct term, however. — Coren ^(talk) 12:18, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

People-first language

Editors will inevitably have varying preferences over whether to use people-first language, i.e. phrases such as "people with autism" as opposed to "autistic people". A couple of recent edits [1][2] inserted people-first language throughout the article, sometimes to awkward effect. Since there are good arguments both for[3] and against[4] people-first language, and Wikipedia has no particular guideline on the matter, I suggest we simply use whatever language flows best in context. Hence this edit. (Personally I feel the debate over people-first language is a rather peripheral one in the overall movement for disability rights.) regards, Jim Butler (t) 01:22, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Same here. --Jim Butler (t) 22:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

who cares? is this some political correctness nonsense? just use what sounds better, duh. (i'm autistic and really don't give a f*ck one way or another) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.127.244.117 (talk) 21:49, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

External links

I recently cleaned up this article's external links to comply with our guidelines and there were some reliable sources which didn't belong in the external links section, but because they can be cited as references, they could be of use to anyone looking to build up the article. I'll leave them here for convenience if anybody wants to use them to cite material.

• Message-Passing: Part Of The Journey To Empowered Communication, by Mayer Shevin and Annegret Schubert
• Learning About Independent Typing From People Working To Achieve It, by Douglas Biklen, with comments from Lucy Harrison, Larry Bissonnette and Sharisa Joy Kochmeister
• Independent typist: Lucy Blackman
• "Prisoners of Silence": Frontline show on FC aired October 19, 1993
• Facilitated communication advocated in CNN-funded documentary - Critical review of "Autism Is A World" from Behavior Analysis Association of Michigan
• Pseudoscience in Autism Treatment - Critical review of "Autism Is A World" from Pasadena Weekly

ThemFromSpace 02:23, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Independent Typing

The article clearly points out that the phrase "independent typing" as used in the article is not really a description of typing without external help.
Instead it is meant to describe typing where facilitator is not holding the hand of the typist - but may be holding his/her shoulder, keyboard etc. or must be present in the room.
Because of that, "independent typing" or other phrases that may be used to describe what is actually "limited facilitating" should be put in quotation marks throughout the article in order to indicate the use of a generic phrase which actually has a very specific meaning. Specifically, as it is used here:

Some peer-reviewed scientific studies have indicated instances of valid FC, and some FC users have reportedly gone on to type independently.[2]

Right now, the use of the phrase gives appearance that "FC users" can actually communicate on their own, without any outside intervention - which is later explained not being so ("hand-on-shoulder support").
Alternatively, rewrite that sentence into something like:

Some peer-reviewed scientific studies have indicated instances of valid FC, and some FC users have reportedly gone on to type independently, i.e., without being touched by another person or with minimal support.

85.92.240.232 (talk) 19:09, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It's always best to stick close to sources. I fixed [5] the sentence in the lead to reflect the exact wording of the source (Beukelman and Mirenda). Now it says: "Some peer-reviewed scientific studies have indicated instances of valid FC, and some FC users have gone on to type "either independently or with minimal, hand-on-shoulder support". Further discussion of the meaning of "independent" is discussed in the article. --Middle 8 (talk) 21:39, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

The sentence "Some peer-reviewed scientific studies have indicated instances of valid FC, and some FC users have gone on to type "either independently or with minimal, hand-on-shoulder support" should be removed entirely because it references a book, not the actual studies. This kind of indirect reference is not valid for scientific literature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.52.103.144 (talk) 16:44, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

What policy on WP says books are bad sources? Actually, the book cited re independent typing is the kind of secondary source that is ideal on WP. See WP:RS#Scholarship. Whether every sentence in the lead needs a citation is a matter of stylistic preference as long as the body of the article includes adequate cites. --Middle 8 (talk) 20:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Category:Pseudoscience?

An editor recently added category:pseudoscience to the article; I removed it for reasons that I hope were clear in my edit summary: per WP:PSCI WP:FRINGE/PS (note: see my reply below re shortcuts) and WP:RS#Academic_consensus, we need a proper source showing FC is "generally considered pseudoscience" by the scientific community. Such a source would be on the order of a mainstream scientific academy, such as those found in List of scientific societies explicitly rejecting intelligent design and Scientific opinion on climate change. Lacking such a source, per WP:PSCI WP:FRINGE/PS, FC is an "alternative theoretical formulation" and/or "questionable science", and as such "should not be described as unambiguously pseudoscientific while a reasonable amount of academic debate still exists on this point" (emphasis mine). That means we shouldn't use the category, since inclusion in the category is a binary condition, ergo unambiguous. However, it's fine to cite reliable sources within the article who do consider it pseudoscience, just as it's fine to cite reliable sources who don't.

One other note: the body of scientific literature on FC is relatively quite small; according to PubMed it's on the order of a few dozen, with something like 10%-25% (including some prominent academics) stating that there is more than just ideomotor, ouija-board stuff going on. 10%-25% is what WP considers a "significant minority view" (see the boxes at the top of this talk page). So, it's not as it we're talking about a tiny minority that is widely discredited. cheers, Middle 8 (talk) 01:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

You write, "Lacking such a source, per WP:PSCI..." I believe this isn't a correct summary of what PSCI says. Can you quote the full source? I think that nowhere in WP:PSCI does it say this. Edit reverted. Dogweather (talk) 08:25, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Very late reply: I see the problem; someone changed the shortcut. The page to which I was referring is Wikipedia:Fringe_theories#Pseudoscience (shortcut WP:FRINGE/PS, not WP:PSCI). For readability, I'm crossing out the "WP:PSCI" above and inserting "WP:FRINGE/PS". I think that should make sense now. Such logic has been used in a number of other pages to demarcate when category:pseudoscience should be used. I understand Dogweather's revert above because the incorrect shortcut made my comment make no sense. Having fixed it, I'm going to remove the category again. regards, Middle 8 (talk) 05:58, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

There was already a source from American Psychologist, concluding that it's pseudoscience and not anti-science. The source appears to have been cited in a lot of other papers (I keep stumbling upon it while searching in google scholar).

I added a book by Terence Hines. People with journal access should check Science and Pseudoscience in Communication Disorders.

I am also adding Science, Skepticism, and Applied Behavior Analysis. "Claims regarding the effectiveness of sensory integration therapy, facilitated communication, and inclusion qualify as pseudoscience"

An article in Behavioural and Social Issues slams the scientific evidence, and, while it doesn't say "pseudocience", it was originally published in Skeptic (magazine)'s issue of "pseudoscience in psychology. Book Destructive trends in mental health: the well-intentioned path to harm lists FC under the chapter "Pseudoscience, Nonscience, and Nonsense in Clinical Psychology". Also " These treatments share many of the features of pseudoscience described earlier."[6]. "[Gina] Green contrasts science with pseudoscience (...) She uses the research on facilitated communication as a good example of pseudoscience that led to (...)" Controversial therapies for developmental disabilities: fad, fashion, and science in professional practice. From the same book in page 436 "Today, despite ample evidence that facilitated communication is an ineffective, pseudoscientific technique (Herbert et al., 2002; Jacobson, Mulick, & Schwartz, 1995), several Web sites are (...)". Also from the same book in page 70 under chapter "Historical approaches to developmental disabilities" "(...) facilitated communication (...), which is both dubious and pseudoscientific in nature.". In Response to disaster: psychosocial, community, and ecological approaches Chapter "The sale of pseudoscience" p 310 gives FC as an example of pseudoscience that gets sold via persuasive marketing. Behavior Analysis Association of Michigan has a signatory against FC "The promotion and use of facilitated communication and other pseudoscientific interventions for developmental disabilities (...)"[7].

And this one appears to be a textbook, p 56 "Facilitated communication meets many of the criteria of pseudoscience because demonstrations of benefit are based on anecdotes or testimonials"Abnormal Child Psychology

I think that these are sources enough for the category. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:53, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi Enric -- I don't think you have read the section of WP:RS that I linked in the thread-starter. See WP:RS/AC, which couldn't possibly be clearer (including the statement about OR). We can have 100 V RS giving the opinion of various peoples' (or statewide public organizations, like BAAM), and that doesn't suffice on WP to establish what the scientific community thinks. We've been over this before, and the logic has been accepted on other pages. Either a source meeting the threshold exists or it doesn't. There may be one for FC, but it hasn't been found yet.

Respecting the integrity of sourced scientific consensus is what allows Wikipedia to identify egregious, obvious, widely-agreed-upon areas like intelligent design, climate change denialism, AIDS denialism, etc., as unambiguous pseudoscience. So the policy cuts both ways, and topics like this where there is no consensus are treated accordingly. That is, we cite RS's according to their weight, and we'll have a fair amount saying it's pseudoscience; we can't use the category, but the point is still made in the article. I trust this is all obvious stuff? We have to go with sources and WP policy, not our own opinions about what is pseudoscience. Unless you find a source within the next few days, would you mind reverting? There's no point edit warring over lack of a source. regards, --Middle 8 (talk) 09:52, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

The article doesn't assert a scientific consensus for FC=pseudoscience, which means that WP:RS/AC is irrelevant here.

WP:FRINGE/PS is the correct page here, and it says that "generally considered pseudoscience" is enough for inclusion in the category. I listed several good-quality mainstream sources explaining why FC is objectively pseudoscientific, or directly classifying FC under pseudoscience. FC has no substantive evidence backing it[8], so, we are not talking about an evidence-supported science that happens to be bad-mouthed by a few vocal critics.

The strongest source comes from American Psychologist, the second journal in psychology by impact factor. The first journal by impact factor is Psychological Bulletin, and the only article mentioning "facilitated communication" seems to be debunking FC among other techniques Revisiting a century-old Freudian slip--From suggestion disavowed to the truth repressed. You haven't presented any good-quality RS saying or implying that FC is "generally considered established science", you are just using your own original research on percentages of papers. On the other hand, I have presented high-quality mainstream RS saying that FC is pseudoscience. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:57, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

And it's not listed in List of topics characterized as pseudoscience *sigh*. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:24, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi Enric, you wrote: The article doesn't assert a scientific consensus for FC=pseudoscience, which means that WP:RS/AC is irrelevant here. I have no idea what you mean by this, but let me reword so you can show me where I'm wrong.

If you want to use Category:Pseudoscience because you say it's "generally considered pseudoscience", you have to show that the topic is "generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community". You need a source to show that. That's why WP:RS/AC is relevant. It tells you the kind of source you need. The sources you give are (for the most part) adequate RS's to cite, but not to categorize. Journal articles don't show what the sci community thinks, nor do a collection of them; your apparent assumption that a collection of them suffices is OR. WP:RS/AC is completely clear on that. You are listing sources, so you obviously believe sources are necessary to use the category. But your sources don't suffice to show that the topic is "generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community". Where is that logic incorrect?

One more thing: You wrote: You haven't presented any good-quality RS saying or implying that FC is "generally considered established science". I don't need to. I'm not trying to call it generally established science. You're trying to call it generally considered pseudoscience. Per WP:BURDEN, you need to show why you're right, and that requires a source meeting WP:RS/AC. A topic can be in between, as WP:FRINGE/PS notes. To summarize, we use WP:FRINGE/PS for demarcation and WP:RS/AC for what kind of source is needed. If scientific academies are parsimonious in calling things pseudoscience -- and they are, preferring to use the term for particularly flagrant, potentially harmful instances -- then that is what we follow on WP. regards, Middle 8 (talk) 02:06, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

P.S. It would be acceptable to put this topic on List of topics characterized as pseudoscience. The criteria for inclusion in lists are looser. Lists can be annotated and we can show who says a topic is pseudoscience. The best sources should be used, and I wish that the article were clearer (in the body, not the footnotes) about which topics have stronger sources. (But I'm done trying to get that accepted, since a number of editors there seem to think CSICOP and the Institute of Medicine are equally wonderful for demarcation, and that's so absurd I won't even bother to address it.) Anyway, the way the list is, you can put this topic there with (some of) your sources above. --Middle 8 (talk) 02:21, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

There is a lot of mainstream RS saying that FC is pseudoscience. I am finding:

• Teaching of Psychology journal "(...) pseudoscientific psychological beliefs are harmful in several ways (...) Therapists who use facilitated communication (Mulick, Jacobsen, & Kobe, 1993) in an effort to

elicit language from autistic children are instilling false hopes in parents." FC is listed as "Questionable or unsubstantiated psychotherapies", in class 11 of their "Courses in the Science and Pseudoscience of Psychology: A Model Syllabus", in a list of websites "This site features useful articles and resources concerning questionable and potentially pseudoscientific psychological treatment procedures, including (...) facilitated communication for infantile autism".

• interview in Association for Science in Autism Treatment "Q: What lessons should advocates of scientifically-validated treatments learn from the resilience of so many pseudoscientific treatments? (...) pseudoscience will pop up in the most unexpected places—like in your otherwise clever colleagues' verbal behavior. (...) [names two scientists who have "fallen" for FC]" [9]
• American council on science and health "Pseudoscientific Treatments. Many current treatments for autism and certain other psychiatric disorders are reasonably describable as pseudoscientific. It is generally held in the scientific community that there are no hard and fast criteria for discerning pseudoscience from science. Nevertheless, pseudoscientific treatments have common distinctive features.(...) Below we describe four examples of dubious treatments for autism that we regard as pseudoscientific. (...) Facilitated communication (...) The Bottom Line. Health claims favoring novel, undertested, and/or pseudoscientific treatments for autism should be taken with a large grain of salt."[10]
• The Clinical Psychologist, A Publication of the Society of Clinical Psychology, vol 51 issue 4, fall 1998. "Pseudoscientific Practices in Modern Clinical Psychology. (...) As clinical psychologists in turn-of-the-century America, we are confronted with the specter of pseudoscience in many guises. The past decade alone has witnessed (...) a proliferation of demonstrably ineffective treatments for infantile autism and related disorders (e.g., facilitated communication), (...) The recent fiasco regarding facilitated communication for infantile autism serves as a much-need reminder of the serious damage that can result when novel psychological treatments are disseminated without adequate critical scrutiny – and, on the positive side, of how the research and writings of academics can play a crucial role in falsifying dangerous and pseudoscientific claims (see Jacobson, Mulick, & Schwartz, 1995)."Pseudoscience in Contemporary Clinical Psychology: What it is and what we can do about it
• The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice "FC is a scientifically discredited technique that nonetheless continues to be widely promoted in the United States by Dr. Douglas Biklen (...) Additional information on pseudoscientific treatments for autism can be found (...)", then quotes a news piece from Pasadena Weekly called "PSEUDOSCIENCE IN AUTISM TREATMENT", then a letter from the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health "Their appointment of Dr. Biklen as Dean is a major step backward in the vitally important effort to promote science and combat pseudoscience in mental-health care.".
• Material for college-level course. Psychology and Scientific Thinking Study Guide. "According to your authors, why can pseudoscience lead to harm? Consider the facilitated communication fiasco. Describe several different types of harm that resulted from people using facilitated communication prior to its being tested."[11]
• material for university course "Pseudoscience in Mental Health Practice (...) Autistic children can communicate their thoughts through “facilitated communication” via a keyboard" (lecture #2) Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, Part I PSYC 4500: Introduction to Clinical Psychology
• another textbook. Beginning behavioral research: a conceptual primer, Prentice-Hall "Jacobson et al. argue that a recent example of the reliance on pseudoscientific research practices to establish the efficacy of a therapeutic intervention is the controversial case of facilitated communication. (...) You may also want to [make your students] discuss whether treatments that have become popular based solely on pseudoscientific evidence are really that detrimental"[12]
• advice for students in Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice "Essays centered on science studies might ask: Why is Facilitated Communication considered a pseudoscience?" A Student’s Guide to Studying Weird Things
• Child and adolescent development: a behavioral systems approach "Box 15.1 Science, Pseudoscience and Antiscience in Autism Treatment (...) One pseudoscientific treatment for autism that was popular in the 1990s is called "facilitated communication."[13]
• Popular psychology: an encyclopedia, Greenwood "``As with most instances of Pseudoscience in psychotherapy, unfortunately, the story does not end there. The Facilitated Communication Institute at Syracuse University, (...)``"[14]
• Psychotherapy as religion: the civil divine in America University of Nevada Press. "Lilienfeld et al. (2003) clearly identified the characteristics-"subjective and unreliable methods" (p. xiii)-that define pseudoscientific clinical interventions such as (...) facilitated communications (...)" [http://books.google.es/books?id=76u5JeJAHZQC&pg=PA3&dq=pseudoscientific+%22facilitated+communication
• Navigating the Mindfield: A Guide to Separating Science from Pseudoscience in Mental Health "[despite the confi]dence that facilitated communication is an effective, pseudoscientific technique (...)" [15]
• Teaching critical thinking in psychology: a handbook of best practice, Wiley-Blackwell "a recent German review of the literature concluded that FC "has failed toshow clinical validity, shows some features of pseudoscience, and bears severe risks of detrimental side effects" (Probst, 2005, p. 43)"
• Introduction to scientific psychology, Springer, "Like other, more recent pseudoscientific theories, such as facilitated communication (see Chapter 3), alien abduction, repressed memory syndrome, and ESP, to name a few, phrenology"
• The positive side of special education: minimizing its fads, fancies, and follies, R&L Education, "Jacobson et al. (1995) discussed FC in terms of pseudoscience (...) and antiscience (...) and concluded that "FC is a pseudoscientific procedure serving antiscientific ends""[16]
• The research basis for autism intervention, Springer, "In spite of the lack of research evidence, FC called for a redefinition of autism as motor apraxia rather than (...) This example of pseudo-science was leveraged to new heights when FC promoters used it as evidence for accusing parents or caretakers of physical or sexual abuse (...)"[17]
• Science and ethics: can science help us make wise moral judgments?, Prometheus books, "facilitated communication (...) many of these treatments fall under the broad rubric of pseudoscience, meaning that they possess amny of the superficial trappings of science but precious little of its substance"[18]
• Autism spectrum disorders: identification, education, and treatment, Routledge, "[Park in Voodoo Science] explores the general process by which some well-meaning persons are unintentionally drawn to promote pseudoscientific or even antiscientific treatments. (...) The rush of enthusiasm that accompanied the practice of Facilitated Communication can be offered as a fairly recent example of this phenomenon in autism."
• Language disorders in children: an evidence-based approach to assessment and treatment, "Facilitated Communication: Beacon of Hope or Pseudoscience at Its Worst?"[19]
• Start with a story: the case study method of teaching college science, National Science Teachers Association NSTA Press "The public is infatuated with pseudoscience. Our tabloid newspapers and television produce a steady stream of alien abductions, ESP, UFOs, and facilitated communication—all of them treated seriously" [20]
• Echoes and reflections: on media ecology as a field of study, Hampton Press, "It is for this reason that facilitated communication has been labeled a pseudoscience and charlatanism by some (see, for example, Maurice, 1993a; Siegel , 1996; in contrast, Cohen, 1998, is willing to wait for more evidence before"
• Allegations of sexual abuse by nonverbal autistic people via facilitated communication: testing of validity, journal Child Abuse & Neglect "what prevented the many sceptics in the field from outrightly rejecting FC was its pseudoscientific mantle through (...)"[21]
• invited paper in 2006 ASHA annual convention "We have been burned before. In the 1990s many SLPs inappropriately embraced Facilitated Communication (FC) as a treatment approach because they thought they observed that it worked. Once it was tested using scientific methodology, it was found to not work. Pseudoscientific methodologies can persuade clinicians to provide the wrong treatment." [22]
• Facilitated Communication in America: Eight years and counting, Skeptic magazine, 1998, "Hopefully, the FC story will remain an aberration to academia. (...) For the time being, FC, unlike Cold Fusion, lives on with the blessing [of] one of the nation's largest universities. (...) Thus, FC remains a tool for raising money at Syracuse despite its rejection by the scientific community, and thus stands as a classic example of pseudoscience in the service of emotion."
• "[Gina] Green said that, despite its utter failure in controlled tests and having been dubbed a “classic example of pseudoscience,” FC has succeeded as a “social movement.” " [23] (That was probably (Thompson, 1993) Thompson, T. (1993). A reign of error: Facilitated communication. Kennedy Center News, 22, 3-5. It was cited in a 1995 review of evidence [24] That review also cites Green herself a few times.)

There are reviews on topics like "distinguishing pseudoscience in psychology", textbooks, psychology university courses, scholar books on psychology.... I had trouble finding any positive evaluation of FC at all. You, on the other hand, have shown zero sources for FC being a valid science. Removing the category would be plain disruptive, since you would be asserting that FC is not "generally considered pseudoscience", despite the huge amount of scholar RS calling it so. --Enric Naval (talk) 05:59, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

The point being: you are asking for an unreasonably threshold of sourcing, while at the same time providing zero sources that contradict the already provided sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:17, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Why do you continue to list same type of references -- several of which aren't even RS, let alone MEDRS -- rather than address my reasoning based on WP policies & guidelines? Please, let's stick to reciprocal discussion and not talk past each other.

You say that I'm setting an unreasonable threshold, but all I'm doing is citing WP policy, as I explained. I also explained that WP:BURDEN places the burden of evidence on your side. Nonetheless, to address your concern about sources supporting FC: you might start with the article, which includes some primary sources (probably OK in an area with only a few dozen actual studies), secondary sources, and mention of some heavy hitters who are pro-FC (cf. WP:WEIGHT: "If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents"). I've got some stuff to add. But this isn't about who can find the most links to individual opinions.

Flooding the article talk page with lots and lots of Google hits (again, some not RS's, let alone MEDRS's) does nothing to advance your position. It's the same illogic that a pseudoscientist uses when he cites dozens of testimonials in lieu of a single decent source. It's apples and oranges. Some of your sources are V RS or MEDRS for individual opinion, but that's all they can be cited for. They are not a random sampling, and we have nothing close to a sample size, so any science major would tell you that we can't use them as a barometer for the views of the greater scientific community. (And even if we did have a random, valid sample, the effort would be OR here.)

It's sensible to require different types of sources depending on the assertion made. It's WP policy and also common sense. Yes, Googling will give you the general idea that a substantial number of people don't buy FC, but it's not a scientific approach, and it's not encyclopedic.

It would be nice to see a reply to the substance of my comments rather than another list of extraneous sources.

regards, Middle 8 (talk) 00:43, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I see no rebuttal for over 10 days, so am removing the category. --Middle 8 (talk) 06:47, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

any proof? anything at all?

so has there ever be any real proof that's even slightly convincing? i'm thinking along the lines of f.e. showing the handicapped person a picture or some such. then letting the facilitator back in the room and see if he can made the handicapped person describe the picture. done at a few different times and locations to circumvent the 'he was nervous/asleep' argument. asking them to describe events from their childhood is obviously not be reliable: to much risk of vague always-right descriptions, and even more crap along the lines of 'you have sexually molested your child and now it confides in me' whenever the facilitator feels frisky and her mind starts to wander to sexy-times. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.127.244.117 (talk) 22:07, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

yes; just look at the studies cited in the article that reported evidence for it. There aren't very many peer-reviewed studies, only four dozen or so, about a dozen of which find evidence for FC. Each side of the debate criticizes the others' methodology. This is an instance where the majority of scientists and doctors don't buy it, but a "significant minority" (to use Wikipedia terminology) do. Read the introduction to "Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone" for a review by a scientist sympathetic to FC. In daily life, users find evidence for is when users disclose information unknown to the facilitator, or when they ask for something and are visibly relieved when that thing is provided. Ideally, FC shoudn't be used alone; other forms of communication should be used, ideally ones that aren't so prone to error.

Also, on sexual abuse cases, it's gone both ways: there have been allegations of abuse that turned out to be incorrect, but there have also been some that turned out to be true. There's no easy way to deal with sexual abuse allegations involving people with impaired or otherwise highly atypical communication, whether FC is involved or not. --Middle 8 (talk) 08:49, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Intro section

The new intro section had a much more positive tone than the rest of the article. I tried to match the its tone to the rest of the article. I also removed the reference from a book, which didn't seem like it belonged alongside the findings from peer-reviewed journals (since books are not peer-reviewed). Axlrosen (talk) 03:31, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Certainly a reasonable edit. Some of the references in the material you removed had gotten corrupted over succeeding edits, but I'm pretty sure you are right that none were peer-reviewed. Still, they can be good sources, as when a respected researcher offers his or her opinion about a germaine topic (e.g., Margaret Bauman commenting on dyspraxia in the quarterly newsletter of the Autism Society of America; source is not online but it's discussed and quoted here). This doesn't need to be in the lead but I'm making a mental note to myself to make sure that dyspraxia ia adequately referenced in the article somewhere, since it's of fundamental importance to the topic. --Middle 8 (talk) 09:05, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

and a comment about sources generally

Continuing the above thread from my post on 09:05, 22 January 2011: oops, actually, going back to this, I see that the book was "Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone", ed. Doug Biklen. That's published by a university press and is part of a series that has two named editors. Certainly a MEDRS per WP:MEDRS#Books. I've been meaning to add some material from that anyway, so I'll restore the edit removed above. Also, I don't see why the mention of independent typing was removed from the lede since it's mentioned in its own section. Some of the sources look dicey, but the basic point (that independent typists exist) is referenced to high-quality sources. There are a few of blog-like or newsletter-ish sources, but some are by well-known authors who have gotten stuff through mainstream peer-review, so they're acceptable per WP:BLOGS. I'll have a look at the "Independent Typing" section and prune out any sources that aren't ok. And then we need to do the same with the whole article, as WLU mentioned below awhile ago. regards, Middle 8 (talk) 09:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Primary sources

Per WP:MEDRS, wikipedia is meant to be based substantially on secondary sources - for peer reviewed articles, that means systemic reviews, meta-analyses, etc. Articles like this one which concluded that it is still nonsense. We do not summarize the literature, we summarize the review articles - and it appears the latest review article has little positive to say on the topic. If I make the time, I may edit the article in light of this. Based on an extremely cursory glance at the page, I'm guessing there is substantial misuse of primary sources. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:17, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Note the APA's stance [25]. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 12:24, 3 February 2011 (UTC)