I’ve been introduced to a 20-year-old man with moderately severe autism, and who could be the poster child for FC. He does what they insist is “FC” at an advanced level, by which I mean that he types by himself, and has had private conversations without any FC person present, but who usually wants the soothing presence of a familiar person while he types (at least if the sentence is longer than a couple of words or on any subject other than food — and for his favorite food, he’ll happily tell you verbally what he wants, although it might take a try or two). I’m perfectly convinced that you can’t type sentences for someone when you have two fingers lightly resting on his elbow.

Having closed eyes doesn’t bother me: I can type with my eyes closed; can’t you? But some of these other things… Wow, I can’t believe that anyone would believe it. FC-generated statements are certainly not evidence of locked-in syndrome. It reminds me of the “psychic” who famously read a book on cold-reading techniques and realized that’s what she’d been doing her whole career.

Eh? What on earth are you talking about?

And boy oh boy that presenter is showing such compasion.
No, you show the process, then abreviate it. You don’t abreviate and not have one single, solitary report mention it.

This too; what on earth are you saying? You paragraphs don’t make sense

AND then there are the actual answers he’s given, even if you somehow get over the first two hurdles and still choose to believe that it really is the man himself you have to explain how come he’s so articulate

Why would he not be articulate?

Health Pain isn’t automated spam, he’s really communicating! You just don’t understand him because you don’t have the right connection with him!

On a side note, the brief, unsubstantiated mentioned I saw that a Doctor had tested him to see if was the patient communicating or not, can’t be believed either. He may very well be a great Doctor but that doesn’t mean he’s bound to be great at a test like that.

No 34 syas- Important to note here is that the doctor (who is apparently not his regular doctor, but only studied him as one of the subjects of his research), is sceptical about the facilitated communication too. He believes Rom can communicate (he has been communicating with his environment for three years now, first with his foot), is not in a vegetative state, but distances himself from the facilitated communication (which is done by personnel of the institute that takes care of Rom, which is not the same as the institute Dr. Laureys is working for).

This suggests that there might be more to it than a retake for the cameras. With the long and dishonourable history of FC, we also have a right to be cynical.

So yes, it may be legit. Or it maybe exploiting a man to get the book selling well and another terrible example of FC. Only time will tell.

In other words, when Ben points out something doesn’t seem ‘quite right’, don’t all go starry-eyed and ‘wow! you’re so right!’ just because it’s Ben. Use your own brain to peer-review his articles!

It’s obvious what’s going on in that video. Anyone who has worked in television can instantly spot it, as I did. It was a reconstruction for the camera to illustrate the patient spelling out words, done quickly to fit into a short news bulletin.

The patient obviously has poor motor co-ordination and to spell out a word likely takes several minutes. That news bulletin is 34″, and the clip of him spelling out words is about 15″, not enough illustrate the words being spelled-out for the news package if he spells them out in his normal speed.

To illustrate the ‘concept’ of man in coma spelling out words, the producer has obviously asked the nurse to re-construct what happens during a whole session. I can almost hear the producer now:

“Oh, he’s asleep is he? Oh dear we wanted to film today. Can you just take his hand and pretend that he’s spelling them out? That’s right, just point his hand to several letters to spell out a word for the shot”

So was the news package ‘faked’? Not *really*, but it was dishonest and rather silly because anyone watching it who hasn’t worked in television, that doesn’t understand how set-up shots are gathered, is instantly suspicious.

So rather than getting all excited about things, just chill and realise the story is still likely ‘genuine’. It’s just the way TV news has represented things, is not.

(I’ve been reading Gary Taubes and it’s starting to show.)

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p6vll
“Eddie Mair chairs the topical debate from Bracknell, Berkshire. The panellists are Northern Ireland secretary Shaun Woodward, shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May, David Laws, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on children, schools and families, and Dr Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science.”

The belief thing is alive and well elsewhere. In the case of AGW/CC it is largely taxpayer funded and with much bigger consequences! Bishop Hill’s blog has lots of links to explore.

Clearly any skepticism hasn’t lasted: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1230092/Rom-Houben-Patient-trapped-23-year-coma-conscious-along.html

At least some of the comments question FC.