Talk:Facilitated communication

	This Parapsychology related article has been awarded BRONZE status for quality. It's getting there, but could be better with improvement. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

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bronze?

lots of sources here Fuzzy "Cat" Potato, Jr. (talk/stalk) 07:35, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. Bongolian (talk) 07:52, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

discussion of biased edits

The entire section headed Evidence for FC in Some Cases is sourced from poor quality research from FC proponents, it needs cleaning up, clarifying or deleting. ^{— Unsigned, by: 2a02:c7d:69d1:3200:9d30:685e:8041:3c7d / talk}

Recent edits

Stop pushing this pseudoscience. It's thoroughly debunked. --RationalWikiman2718 (talk) 00:33, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

The sources cited in the article itself suggest that while not completely reliable, it is not as pseudoscientific as you say. Furthermore, your contributions show a consistent bias on this subject in a way that is incompatible with our mission. Quite frankly, such a display of continued ableism is absolutely unacceptable for this wiki. Please take the time to read this before replying. [1] --Logos (talk) 23:59, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

1. Logos, you're being a dick. It's not fucking ableism to call this pseudoscience. Fuck off with that shit. No really. They might be wrong, but they're not judging people with disabilities at all.

2. You cite an editorial that claims that an absence of quantitative studies somehow indicates improvement in the field beyond its early days of being, well, unadulterated bullshit as your primary evidence that it's not pseudoscience. That should give you pause to consider your position further.

3. Their edits have a central theme of treating FC as pseudoscience, but that's not a fucking bias.

If you can take 1, 2, and 3 to heart, you can have a conversation where you start to resolve this dispute. If you look at what actual doctors are saying in 2018 in their research it's "Purveyors of false treatments frequently claim their treatments are effective, despite a lack of evidence. In some cases, these treatments can lead to dire results.". ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 03:32, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

ikanreed

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The evidence is unequivocal: FC always fails in double blind experiments. Those studies suggesting that FC has any validity are of terrible quality and no reputable journal has ever published them. Rationalwiki has already classified it a parapsychology, which means that you (and some other editors) are pushing for a fringe view. --RationalWikiman2718 (talk) 03:38, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Noted, and the article has been reverted. However, I am concerned that this view unintentionally pushes the view that non-verbal autistics are incapable of communicating until proven otherwise, and I would prefer this article calls more attention to accepted AAC measures which have been proven to work in order to avoid this implication. --Logos (talk) 04:28, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

That is a good point. There are legitimate augmented and alternative communication techniques which can provide non-verbal autistics with varying levels of communication, however FC is not one. It would be a good idea to give a nod the these legitimate techniques. --RationalWikiman2718 (talk) 06:54, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

A couple of interesting things missing from this article

This article is pretty good and thorough, but I think there are two big things missing from it that would be helpful to, especially, autistic people wanting to learn more about the "debate" around facilitated communication:

• Why so many autism-rights and neurodiversity groups, like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, support facilitated communication (in ASAN's case, include people who "communicate" with it on their board) and condemn groups that say it is pseudoscience. Honestly, RationalWiki is one of the few places on the Internet that is both pro-neurodiversity and anti-FC (for instance, a lot of people who sound the alarm against FC also advocate the abusive and debunked ABA "therapy" as an "alternative" e.g. here), and I think it could be helpful in telling sensible autistic people and advocates how to engage with pro-FC claims from within neurodiversity movements.
• What makes it different from the scientifically-credible AAC, which is used by some autistic people to communicate, too. And how to tell if a particular autistic "communication method" falls under one or the other, and therefore is sound or not. (And also, to counterpoint claims that saying FC doesn't work and shouldn't be supported means that non-verbal autistic people have no means to communicate.)

I think if these were featured, this article would be perfect. As it is, these are things I'm finding really difficult as a skeptical autistic person, to find anywhere online. --2601:14D:4100:CB11:19F8:9FF1:FACE:9C24 (talk) 00:41, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Stuff mentioned in previous section is really important! Can we add it?

So I came here to say something pretty similar to what's in the previous section: we really should have stuff about why so many otherwise-reputable neurodiversity organizations support FC, and also how to tell the difference between it and valid communication methods. Can we add that? I don't know enough about this to do it, but it would be really helpful if someone would and it's been over two years since that suggestion was added. Anyone? 2601:14D:4700:478C:57C:EE04:6753:B751 (talk) 22:12, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

In fact, looking through this talk page, this is not the first time it's been mentioned that we should probably have some information about AAC (alternative and augmentative communication), and what makes it different from FC, and why AAC is scientifically sound and FC is not. It's kind of a big omission in the article, especially as RationalWiki doesn't seem to have another article on AAC. 2601:14D:4700:478C:C9B0:9D26:85B9:639B (talk) 22:19, 5 July 2024 (UTC)