A Federal Autism Committee Calls uses coded language to call for FC in autism accommodations, cognitive evaluations, school classrooms, Medicaid funding, and research — Facilitated Communication

‍One of the key players in the autism world is the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC). The IACC is a federal advisory committee that advises the government on autism policies and priorit...

facilitatedcommunication.org

Can a Blind Person Successfully Use RPM?: The Challenges of learning to make requests with tangible objects in individuals with multiple disabilities including visual impairments — Facilitated Communi...

Since the Telepathy Tapes came onto the scene at the end of 2024, we at facilitatedcommunication.org have periodically received emails from proponents and critics alike asking our opinion about the ...

facilitatedcommunication.org

California Endorses Dangerous Autism Pseudoscience | Skeptical Inquirer

California Endorses Dangerous Autism Pseudoscience Stuart Vyse On July 21, 2026, the California State Council on Developmental Disabilities (SCDD) adopted a ...

skepticalinquirer.org

Thoughts About “Epistemic Violence” and Criticizing Facilitator-Dependent Techniques: Review of Schlosser and Prabhu 2024 — Facilitated Communication

In today’s blog post, I want to highlight a 2024 article titled “ Interrogating Neurotypical Bias in Facilitated Communication, Rapid Prompting Method, and Spelling 2 Communicate Through a Humanistic ...

facilitatedcommunication.org

News Roundup Part II, January-July 2026: news analyses and commentaries — Facilitated Communication

News Roundup Part II, January-July 2026: news analyses and commentaries In my last post, I went through the various news reports that appeared since the start of the year; in this one, I focus on th...

facilitatedcommunication.org

Whose Voice Is It? A Family and Professional Guide to FC/RPM/S2C and authorship (Elleseff -Part 2) — Facilitated Communication

Today’s blog post is a follow-up from last week’s article by Tatyana Elleseff titled “ Beyond the Buzzwords: How SLPs Can Evaluate Clinical Trends, Pseudoscience, and Evidence-Based Claims .” Tatyana ...

facilitatedcommunication.org

News Roundup: January-July 2026 — Facilitated Communication

‍Most of the many FC/RPM/S2C news stories published since my last news roundup in January are the usual fare: miraculous stories of individuals originally considered cognitively disabled, but whose ...

facilitatedcommunication.org

Beyond the Buzzwords: How SLPs Can Evaluate Clinical Trends, Pseudoscience, and Evidence-Based Claims (Elleseff - Part 1) — Facilitated Communication

Abstract: In speech-language pathology, unsupported clinical claims often appear credible because they are attached to emotional testimonials, neuroscience language, parent urgency, professional trai...

facilitatedcommunication.org

When did the FC leadership know about the fatal flaws in their technique? (Part 4 – Crossley’s Tips) — Facilitated Communication

This is the fourth and final blog post in a series analyzing a Facilitated Communication Digest article dated May 1993 and published by Syracuse University’s Institute on Community and Inclusion (IC...

facilitatedcommunication.org

What’s wrong with thinking that FC works for some people? — Facilitated Communication

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S5E31: Katharine Beals on Facilitated Communication and Educational Pseudoscience

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Zach Groshell. Education is filled with myths. Some are harmless. Others shape curriculum, teacher training, intervention programs, and the l…

educationrickshaw.com

Beyond the Buzzwords: How SLPs Can Evaluate Clinical Trends, Pseudoscience, and Evidence-Based Claims - Tatyana Elleseff

Abstract: In speech-language pathology, unsupported clinical claims often appear credible because they are attached to emotional testimonials, neuroscience language, parent urgency, professional train...

tatyanaelleseff.com

When did the FC leadership know about the fatal flaws in their technique? (Part 3 – Cummins and Prior) — Facilitated Communication

Today’s blog post is the third in a series exploring when the FC leadership became aware of the significant (and fatal) flaws in their technique (e.g., facilitator cueing and control over letter selec...

facilitatedcommunication.org

A conversation about cueing with someone involved in the Telepathy Tapes who wishes to remain anonymous — Facilitated Communication

‍Last spring someone who has been involved in the Telepathy Tapes podcast reached out to me, and we had a phone call primarily centered on the role of cueing in facilitated communication. We spoke, in...

facilitatedcommunication.org

The Failure of Facilitated Communication: A Conversation with Janyce Boynton | Skeptical Inquirer

In this video interview, I talked with Janyce Boynton, a former facilitator in the pseudoscientific practice of facilitated communication (FC), who saw the light and now educates the public about the ...

skepticalinquirer.org

When did the FC leadership know about the fatal flaws with their technique (Part 2 - The IDRP) — Facilitated Communication

This is the second in a series exploring the question of when the leaders in the Facilitated Communication (FC) movement knew about the fatal flaw in their technique (e.g., that facilitators, not thei...

facilitatedcommunication.org

Warnings From a Former Believer — Facilitated Communication

I had a boring 9-to-5 desk job and always wondered whether there are miracles out there in the universe. Naturally, the viral podcast The Telepathy Tapes grabbed my attention—so much so that I wan...

facilitatedcommunication.org

Arguments and ad hominems: A night at the Higashi School and “disappeared” footage from a podcast — Facilitated Communication

Barry Prizant was a no-show at a forum that I mentioned in my last post : a forum at the Boston Higashi School on a variety of Facilitated Communication (FC) known as Spelling to Communicate (S2C). A...

facilitatedcommunication.org

When did the FC leadership know about the fatal flaws with their technique? (Part 1) — Facilitated Communication

The other day, I was listening to a podcast featuring two Speech/Language Pathologists (SLPs) discussing their concerns about the Telepathy Tapes and Spelling to Communicate (S2C). I enjoyed their...

facilitatedcommunication.org

Systematic Review of Authorship in Rapid Prompting Method, Spelling to Communicate, and Variants: Outcomes, Significance and Clinical Implications

This is a systematic review of authorship in Rapid Prompting Method (RPM), Spelling2Communicate (S2C), Spellers Method and variants, techniques akin to Facilitated Communication which are increasingly promoted for use on autistic individuals or people with intellectual or developmental disabilities who are minimally- or non-speaking. In this systematic review, RPM/S2C or variants had to be evaluated as an intervention using a research design capable of empirical demonstration of authorship. The resulting empty review documents a persistent knowledge gap which, in the context of increasing popularity and similarity to Facilitated Communication, constitutes a finding with clinical significance. Controlled authorship trials of RPM, S2C, and Spellers Method are warranted. Given the instrumental similarities between RPM, S2C, Spellers Method, and traditional Facilitated Communication, these methods should be discontinued (if in use) or not adopted until independent authorship studies have shown that these methods are indeed valid. Ethical implications of the findings are also discussed.

hdl.handle.net

If It Sounds Too Good to Be True… — Facilitated Communication

There is a new novel out this week that is already all the buzz. It is titled Upward Bound , and it is ostensibly written by a 28-year-old profoundly autistic nonverbal man, Woody Brown.

facilitatedcommunication.org

Disturbing Facilitated Communication & Telepathy Tapes

YouTube video by Psychics Explained - Grief Vampire Edition

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Who Is Really Communicating? The Hidden Divide in Facilitated Communication — Facilitated Communication

Few topics in disability and communication have generated as much controversy as assisted communication methods such as Facilitated Communication and related approaches including Rapid Prompting Metho...

facilitatedcommunication.org

The Scandal of Woody Brown’s Upward Bound | Skeptical Inquirer

April is Autism Acceptance Month, and NBC’s Today Show marked the occasion by announcing their “Read with Jenna Book Club” selection for April—Upward Bound, ...

skepticalinquirer.org

The Scandal of Woody Brown’s Upward Bound | Skeptical Inquirer

April is Autism Acceptance Month, and NBC’s Today Show marked the occasion by announcing their “Read with Jenna Book Club” selection for April—Upward Bound, ...

skepticalinquirer.org

Empty Reviews are not Context-Free: Implications for RPM and S2C  — Facilitated Communication

In a recent podcast (“Uniquely Human”), Dr. Prizant suggested that my work on empty reviews is inconsistent: that one cannot draw conclusions in the absence of evidence, yet I discourage the use of RP...

facilitatedcommunication.org

So that’s why FCed individuals don’t look at the letter board! A review of the article “Association between Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Vision Problems” — Facilitated Communication

In today’s blog post, we’ll be looking at a study sent to us by an FC proponent (thank you!). The article is titled “ Association between Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and vision problems. A systemat...

facilitatedcommunication.org

facilitatedcommunication.org