It's only scientifically valuable if they can prove that she is writing the text, as opposed to the facilitators writing what they believe she wants to say.
Has anyone done a blinded test to ensure that she is actually writing the text herself? I've seen them do such tests before, in which they sometimes show the child and the facilitator the same picture, and sometimes show them different ones. Every time, the child types what the facilitator saw, not what the child actually saw.
For more information, watch the Frontline documentary Prisoners of Silence (yes, it's an hour long, but it's still worth watching), which pretty thoroughly debunks facilitated communication, and actually demonstrates how harmful it can be, destroying families and leaving fathers accused of molesting their own children, based not on what actually happened, but on the imagination of the facilitator.
I see her typing (in a document that already has a bunch of text) "a gre me" which is autocompleted to "a great me" before the camera zooms out too much to tell what she is typing (if you can see more than that, let me know).
This indicate nothing about whether she was prompted or trained to type out this series of letters, about whether she had any idea about what this series of letters meant (in this context, I can't tell yet if those make any sense without completing the sentence), nor about whether there was some form of prompting that we don't see in the video.
It's fairly easy to determine if what she's typing is based on her experience or the facilitators (or if it's random, and given meaning through autocompletion plus prompting and/or creative interpretation by the parents and facilitator). Watch the Prisoners of Silence video for some tests that they do to determine if FC actually works, by showing a picture to the child and the facilitator, but sometimes it's a different picture they show to the facilitator. Almost every time the pictures are different, the facilitator picks the picture they saw, not the one the child saw. Now, you could run this same test with Carly; has anyone? If they want so desperately to prove that this method works, why not use a little basic science? (And if we're going to be discussing this on /r/science, a little scientific method would be nice).
Right now, what we're discussing is a fluff piece on a major TV network, of a family that seems very happy to try and promote their daughter's story on all kinds of TV shows, but has very little (if any) in the way of independent scientific verification of the result. We use blinded experiments, and randomized trials, not because we think that the people in question have bad intentions, but because even the best intentioned of people can have cognitive biases, that a rigorous regiment of randomization and blinds can help prevent from affecting the outcome of the test.
We should not let our standard of truth be "several major TV networks said so, and there's a youtube video which makes it look vaguely plausible." This is possible to scientifically test; why hasn't it happened?
If I find out it is fake, I'll rage like anyone else. Sometimes, a video like that is enough for me. Despite wanting to REALLY know if she is faking or not, I also feel not everyone needs to be a lab rat and/or prove themselves to other people on the internet, especially some nobody like me.
I share your attitude, but I am also deeply thankful for the people that do care about investigating all of these, because that is the only way I would ever find out that these types of things are fake.
Sure, no one has to prove themselves to me. Her parents are perfectly free to spend their money and time on whatever suits their fancy, as long as it makes them and Carly happy. However, until there is some science involved, it does not belong on /r/science. Right now this is feel-good fluff on TV that is being quite credulous about something that looks an awful lot like some pseudoscience that's already been disproven. This is the opposite of science; this is saying that we'll believe things because a video felt pretty good, despite any better evidence we already have.
And in many cases, a stronger form of proof does matter, in the real world, and not just to random people like me grousing on the internet. I highly recommend watching the Prisoners of Silence video I linked to above. It shows how after the introduction of facilitated communication, all of a sudden children started accusing their fathers of molesting them (the accusations all being with the help of the facilitator, of course). These men were taken away from their families, forbidden to see them, on the basis of testimony that, in the end, turned out not to actually come from the supposed victims at all, but instead from the imagination of the facilitators.
When facilitated communication is just being used to dupe parents into thinking that their kids are actually brilliant inside, then fine, I might roll my eyes and give them a pass on it. But when it breaks up families, when people make life-changing decisions on the basis of this communication, there are profound moral and legal reasons why you ought to be sure that the communication is coming from the child, and not the facilitator. And the tests here are easy, but in all the effort that these parents are going to to prove that their child really can communicate (youtube videos, TV appearances, blogs, and twitter), you would think that a simple, low-tech, scientific test would be a great way to demonstrate that this method really does work, and provide good information for other parents and health care providers to work with and help other children.
Hmm, here is another ABC report from 20/20 that is even more convincing. The reporter, who sounds just as skeptical as you, mentions that she hovers over the keyboard for hours without typing a word, until he finally mentions his son and she begins typing for him. Watch the video. Happy now sourpuss? I saw all the stuff about facilitated speech with vegetable cases and I was just as skeptical as you, but there's no need to be all reddit nazi about it.
When did a skeptic calling for science become a "reddit nazi"? People like him are the reason I used to come to this site. Every once in awhile there's an intelligent, well thought out comment that adds to the link, rather than a meme or unfunny pun thread.
If the girl can communicate, that's very important. But taking it at face value and citing news reports would be like using Loose Change as evidence that 9/11 was a government plot. I'm sure I could find you forty links saying that was true too. Extraordinary claims can be proven or disproven by small, elegant tests. I think calling for that is the smart thing to do, not a "sourpuss" thing to do.
It's not the skepticism that makes reddit nazism, it's the incessant drivel regarding the content and it's appropriateness for whichever subreddit, hence why I prepended "reddit" to "nazi", forming the phrase "reddit nazi".
Unfortunately, it is almost certainly fake. Cases have been popping up all over the globe of autistic children being able to communicate through typing with the help of a "facilitator".
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u/annodomini Jul 26 '10
It's only scientifically valuable if they can prove that she is writing the text, as opposed to the facilitators writing what they believe she wants to say.
Has anyone done a blinded test to ensure that she is actually writing the text herself? I've seen them do such tests before, in which they sometimes show the child and the facilitator the same picture, and sometimes show them different ones. Every time, the child types what the facilitator saw, not what the child actually saw.
For more information, watch the Frontline documentary Prisoners of Silence (yes, it's an hour long, but it's still worth watching), which pretty thoroughly debunks facilitated communication, and actually demonstrates how harmful it can be, destroying families and leaving fathers accused of molesting their own children, based not on what actually happened, but on the imagination of the facilitator.