Facilitated Communication

michelln. 22/02/2010 1:01:04 AM wrote:Reminds me of the Belgian case where the guy was in a coma and was apparently communicating. This was by a bogus method called "Facilitated Communication" where it's the person facilitating that's doing the communication and many people were sceptical of the claims. There is some new information, the researcher has repudiated his claims the patient was communicating.

The Belgian skeptics were involved in testing this, and despite the tests proving it was the facilitator talking and not the patient the mother has been stated as saying "In a phone conversation today Mr Houben’s mother told us that she still believes in FC, because “sometimes it had produced answers that only her son could have known”. It's so easy to latch onto an apparent hit, and ignore the misses let alone the whole weak base of facilitated communication. Without the whole transcript and context of what was apparently said you can't tell. Often it's the person being 'read' that unwittingly supplies information and cues, or sees hits in general statements that could apply to many people at one point or another, having retroactively applied it to suit a given situation. For instance, relationship problems are common, as is going on holidays. Most of us, if we buy a lottery ticket will be bound to win something at some point. Might be small, but that's not the point.

Now can anyone explain how these spirits that are communicating are so chatty and definite one minute and have then to resort to rattling through the alphabet and guesses with names?