I’m on Aron Ra’s facebook page and he asked his community to look into this, so I did. One person pointed us to Facilitated Communication. Which is all this is. But the podcaster, and a real doctor, try to convince you that no one has looked to this, that the science is not settled, that they just want answers, that it seems spiritual, that they can’t believe their eyes, and on and on.
As the wiki notes, there is a long list of orgs that oppose this, and multiple studies that have shown it is not only wrong, but it is dangerous. Kids have reported abuse using these typing pads, when no abuse actually happened. The podcasters don’t address this. I only listened to two of the ten episodes, but I don’t know how much more time I’ll waste on it.
I post it here, because it is skyrocketing in viewership, and you might here about it.
The bigger issue here is that we have all the information we need at our fingertips, but we want to believe something else. By “we”, I don’t include myself, or the many people I know through skeptic organizations, or my friends who hate conspiracy theories, or scientists who are really scientists, or millions of others. I do include billions of people, some who legitimately don’t have access to the resources I do, but more and more do everyday, and they ignore it.
The woman driving this is Ivy League. In Episode 2 she says she reviewed the studies and then “didn’t make the mistake of accepting them as settled science”. That is conspiracy theorist language. When the internet was new and WIRED magazine was saying it will solve all these problems, I was not hopeful, and I wondered if I was just being cynical. I wasn’t. Information on its own does not change minds. There are now many studies ON THAT. But just like all the other studies, THOSE get ignored.
Because of this, something like seeing autism look like telepathy gets dredged up now and then and becomes a popular idea. Never mind that it’s been studied. People love saying, “I saw this thing and it looked amazing and NO ONE IS STUDYING IT”. If you show them the studies, they say, “YEAH BUT, THEY DISMISSED THE EVIDENCE THAT I SAW.”
I don’t know how to fix this. I’m going to have a taco.