You've probably seen the recent news stories about the Belgian man who spent 23 years supposedly in a coma, but actually fully conscious – but unable to communicate. A Poe-esque horror story...
Well, not so fast. There are two separate lines of evidence that the poor man is actually conscious. One of these lines of evidence is based on brain scanning, which the researcher involved cautions is “experimental” and “speculative”. The other line of evidence is based on “facilitated communication” – the notion that a skilled facilitator can assist the patient in communicating.
Facilitated communication (FC for short) has a long and heart-breaking record. Hundreds of parents of autistic children were bilked out of thousands of dollars by supposed FC experts claiming they could help their children communicate. Experts have thoroughly demolished every claim of FC, yet it persists (though thankfully at a much reduced level). Basically the FC experts just made it all up, collecting a nice fee in the process.
So when I heard that the Belgian man was communicating “with the assistantance of an FC expert”, all my red flags went up. My favorite debunker of FC was James Randi, the magician and well-known skeptic, famous for his debunkings of junk science in general. So this morning I went poking around at his web site, and voila! – Mr. Randi has been writing about this incident already, calling it a cruel farce and a vehicle for the FC expert to get a lucrative book deal.
Read the whole thing, and watch this little video of the FC expert in action. Then make up your own mind about whether this poor Belgian man is being exploited or assisted...
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