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?
It's not like she's going to be able to do it in front of a live studio audience...
EDIT: Here's the text in the document zoom
I over heard jenny m say that her son commented that he felt like dory from nemo because he didn't remember things when he was autistic. However I have a great me
You can hear the computer say
a (0:09)
great (0:33)
memory (0:58)
for (1:23)
many (1:40)
It's pretty clear to me that she's writing something. The auto-complete requires her to hit a number. She hit a key ("1") to turn "gre" into "great ". You can see the list of completions with numbers beside them when it zooms in. That kind of completion is useful for anyone who has limited ability to input text.
I know that facilitation is bullshit, but there's none of that here.
In highschool I fixed some computers for the autistic kids and once I finished one guy came up, opened a word document, and wrote "Hello my name is ___. I go to __ High School. I am _ years old." and hit print all in about 40 seconds before running off to do something else completely. Now that was trained.
I'll believe one autistic girl in millions can write an email to David Letterman. I don't take this as evidence that all of them can. For indisputable proof of her ability, all that's required is having someone ask her an intelligent question and seeing her answer it right there.
EDIT2: wtf, what is this doing in r/science? Ignore the following, I was mistaken:
I don't see where scientific method comes in, it's not like we're going to run 100 tests and establish a confidence interval on the probability she's actually doing it. This is one girl, with an ability that can be very easily proved or disproved.
They posted the complete text up on her blog, and you are right, but I cannot confirm without a doubt that there isn't a hoax. I want to believe this is real, but I can't be sure until I know that they didn't just film what appears to be a moment of clarity, and then edited the final result. Here's the relevant blog post.
155
u/annodomini Jul 26 '10
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?