Talk:Facilitated Communication

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User:QIM produced this page. I'm the primary advocate for FC on the net and also have a leading autism advocacy on the net. I know personally and have worked with Rosemary Crossley who created Facilitated Communication Training FCT

My "Autismlist" is here:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/autismlist/?yguid=147071382

My Facilitated Communication advocacy is here:

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/autismfc/?yguid=147071382

I have participated in most of the major autism forums on the net since 1996 and have been a residential worker for over thrity years. I'm presently associated with The Meyerson Foundation for my autism advocacy.

In conjunction with my autism advocacy I am also a men's advocate and was a major contributor to the masculism page since the inception of Wikipedia. We love Wikipedia!! They are very fair and professional here and I should know since the masculism page was one of their more difficult and popular venues at Wikipedia.


There's a lot of duplication between this and Facilitated communication - lower-case c. The lower-case spelling is preferred on wikipedia, which frowns on excess capital letters ... could you take your material from this article and weave it into the old one? Right now we have two articles with (virtually) the same title and a lot of overlap - very confusing to readers. If you think "facilitated communication training" needs a separate article, then it could be created under that title. - DavidWBrooks 14:07, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Facilitated Communication has been clearly shown NOT to work. It has been repeatedly tested, double-blind, and found to be a farce. I object very strongly to this endorsement by Wikipedia. It is misinformation of the most dangerous kind

James Randi James Randi Educational Foundation www.randi.org randi@randi.org

Posted by 65.3.11.183 to the article, moved to talk by Hadal 17:52, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've advertised this page on the general autism discussion lists and that's why pseudoscientist James Randi made his magical appearance so fast. Here's what I wrote to the autism lists about James Randi's magnificent entrance here:

James Randi, the famous and rich skeptic paranormal investigator, has left a note in the "discussion" area of Wikipedia about the page on FC upbraiding wikipedia for supporting the article I wrote. In the old days it was the psychics who used to make money, now it's the skeptics. As far as I'm concerned both groups are religious fanatics.

As for Randi's research abilites, this says it all in regards to his attempt to research FC:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_1_25/ai_68966515/pg_2

"Randi realized at once, even before making the trip from his home in Florida to Madison, what was going on.

Even if a researcher went into a study like that he would never admit it for fear of losing credibility as an object researcher. Randi started his career as a magician and escape artist. He simply transferred his scam from one area to another, much like psychics do.

User: Tom Smith QIM

[edit] although it does not work there should be an entry

Yes. But I think there has to be an article about FC that gives all this information. For instance that there are resolutions from many professional societies against it and that it works in most cases by the Ouija-effect and that it often hinders the communication with the person with speech impairment. I think there has to be an entry. And I wait for the merging in order to start editing.

user: Allmuth

This assumption of "FC not working" simply isn't true either from a scientific standpoint or from the standpoint of autism treatment and communication in general. One thing is for certain, FC IS communication and as such has tremendous therapeutic effects as well as potential for teaching independent communication, which has already been proven. We are dealing with human beings in autism who have free will. This point is often lost on skeptics who take one look at an autistic and automatically think they are retarded and as such have no free will. Bad assumption. The double blinds may prove that the communication is not valid RELIABLY, but they doesn't prove anything for why there is a validation problem. It may appear to be the facilitator UNCONSCIOUSLY making the communication, but science isn't based on appearances. We don't know why or how FC works or doesn't work, but we do know it works as communication and as a way to teach independent communication. Do we want to deprive autistics of this valuable tool when we have so few tools that work for them? Do we want to insist on maintaining our prejudices and preconceptions about retardation in autism when even "hard scientists" at the MIND Institute have taken a good look at what is happenning and say the jury is still out on FC and that there is a distinct possiblity we have it wrong and that it's not retardation that is symptomatic of autism, but just the reverse, it's high IQ?

User QIM

[edit] Merge isn't delete

Regardless of its validity, having two overlapping articles is confusing and silly. They should be merged - which doesn't mean the result has to make sweeping conclusions one way or the other, just that there isn't enough difference between Facilitated communication and Facilitated Communication to warrant two articles! - DavidWBrooks 12:40, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] who is authorized to merge the articles?

I propose that we postpone the discussion about the content of the article until they are merged. As QIM is the author of both articles I think he should be the one to merge them. Or is't this correct? Is anyone allowed to merge them? user: Allmuth

Anybody can do any editing/writing on Wikipedia - that is its strength (and its weakness). So if you want to merge, give it a shot. The more voices we get, the better, especially since this article - like many alternative-health articles - could become a battleground between true believers and total scoffers, if we're not careful.
Here's the way to merge: Don't touch Faciliated Communication (upper-case C), but edit Facilitated communication (lower-case C, the Wikipedia style) to incorporate material from both articles. Put an italic note at the top of this article (upper-case C) noting what your are doing. Ask for comments on both pages. Once the lower-case C article seems to be roughly settled, we'll turn the upper-case C article into a redirect to the lower-case C article, thus preserving the Talk on this page. - DavidWBrooks 19:18, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I hadn't looked at the first article for a long tme and forgot that I started it. Merging the way you said above is fine with me but I'm alittle busy right now to do it. I'll try to get to it in the next few days. Thanks Dave. *QIM