FC’s Lesser-Known Side: Thoughts about the Telepathy Tapes (Episode 1)
This year marks the 33rd anniversary of the double-blind testing I participated in to determine authorship in a (false) allegations of abuse case I was involved in as one of my student’s facilitators. (See Boynton, 2012). I stopped using Facilitated Communication (FC), in part, because after the testing (which showed I was inadvertently controlling letter selection) I was advised to “wait for reliably controlled evidence” to prove communication independence in FC.
I’m still waiting.
The fact that I’ve been writing bi-weekly blog posts on the topic of FC for the past four years should give you an indication of just how much that experience impacted my life. I mention it because, of all the articles I’ve read and reviewed (the majority of the resources listed on our website), few have impacted me as deeply as the Telepathy Tapes, a podcast that features families of individuals with profound autism who are convinced that their children have telepathic powers (aided by the use of FC).
Image by Scott Rodgerson
I don’t blame the families for their beliefs. Lots of people have been deceived by FC. But these families turned to an academic, Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell for help and she didn’t disavow them of their belief in a technique that was discredited in the mid-1990s and that many major speech/language, behavioral, and autism organizations oppose. I’m sure at least a percentage of those listening to the podcast will think that FC died out after Frontline’s Prisoners of Silence came out in 1993.
Unfortunately, it did not.
Under sharp criticism and scrutiny in the early 1990s, proponents of FC went underground, preferring to “fly under the radar” rather than address the problems of authorship. (See Auerbach, 2015). Many proponents just changed the name of FC to supported typing, Spelling to Communicate, Rapid Prompting Method and more. We’ve collected over 20 pseudonyms for FC and listed them on our homepage. It is no wonder that people who don’t follow FC closely are confused about its existence. (See An FC Primer). But the common denominator with all of these techniques is facilitator interference with letter selection. On this website, we consider all facilitator-dependent techniques as part of an umbrella term: FC.
Image by Matt Paul Catalano
Listening to the podcast, for me, was like being hit with a tidal wave of misinformation by a credulous documentarian and an academic who should know better than to spread pseudoscience.
Sadly, there are at least nine more in-depth episodes in the podcast, plus the “promise” of a Season 2 and a documentary in the works. It’s enough to make a person’s head spin. Thankfully, Katharine’s going to review some of the episodes as well. I look forward to hearing her perspective on the series.
Ky Dickens, the documentarian and narrator, spends the last few minutes of Episode 1 lamenting about how the scientific community wasn’t going to accept the testing she’d spent so much time (and money) putting together. She says:
I was crestfallen and confused. We were so careful, there was no cheating, every mirror was covered, all the glass was covered. [The participant] was never even looking in the direction of the cues, we tested the blindfolds, we had petitions, people were looking at this from every angle, we had five cameras, everyone in that room saw with their own eyes that [the participant] consistently somehow could read her mother’s mind…
I start my review with her closing thoughts because, on a visceral level, I can understand the disappointment and confusion she experienced in those moments, but for very different reasons. Like Dickens, I understand what it’s like to believe in the “miracle” of FC, its “revolutionary” nature and a “promise” to release nonspeaking individuals from the bonds of silence (for me, it was as a facilitator and for Dickens it was as a documentarian) only to be hit with the cold reality that what I believed in was an illusion and (rightly) not accepted by the scientific community.
Dickens knew going into the project that the scientific community was dubious about Dr. Powell’s work with profoundly autistic individuals and telepathy (she and Powell discussed it in the episode), so I’m not quite sure why Dickens would have had such a strong reaction to Powell’s warnings that came after Dickens’ “tests” were completed (and of which Powell was an active participant). Maybe Dickens thought that if she displayed enough conviction—and appealed to Powell’s “authority” as an academic—strongly enough that others would unquestioningly believe in their claims as well. But that’s not how the scientific process works. Faith, anecdotes, testimonials, and poorly designed tests (however well-intentioned) are not evidence.
Image by Goh Rhy Yan
The podcast is predicated on the idea that FC-generated messages are independently produced and that the “communications” between the facilitator (so far only mothers) and their children are “telepathic.” It’s difficult for me to witness educators, parents, researchers and, documentarians, go down the same path that I (and many others) did in the early 1990s when there is now so much evidence that FC and its variants only “work” when the facilitator is within physical, visual, and auditory range of the individuals being subjected to it. The evidence resoundingly shows that facilitators, not the individuals being subjected to it, author the messages. Often facilitators are unaware of the extent to which they influence and control letter selection through verbal, physical and auditory cueing. (See Controlled Studies and Systematic Reviews).
Telepathy has never been scientifically proven, but, regardless, it can’t be tested with FCed individuals until facilitator control over letter selection has been ruled out (so far, testing has only ruled facilitator influence in). In my opinion, Dickens and Powell show an incredible lack of curiosity when it comes to testing for authorship in FC.
Listening to the Telepathy Tapes makes me long for journalists like Jon Palfreman, who produced Prisoners of Silence, or Michael Burke, who wrote about Syracuse University’s continued use of the discredited technique, or David Auerbach, who wrote about the persistence of FC as a pseudoscientific practice, to take a serious and in-depth look at the current state of FC and the beliefs of the proponents that keep it alive. The only mainstream reporter I’ve seen of late taking a (mostly) critical view of FC is Zaid Jilani, who questioned FC and its variants in an October 2024 article. I don’t include in this statement the science writers like Stuart Vyse and Jonathan Jarry who’ve regularly written about the problems with FC or academics like Katharine Beals who writes regularly for this website. (See links below). Some of the people who I consult with on a regular basis have been writing and speaking out about FC since before I was involved with it.
Dickens and I part ways when it comes to believing the existing body of work that disputes the validity of FC and of telepathy. I agree with the researchers who’ve proved, time and again, that FC does not—cannot—work as an independent form of communication. FC builds dependence on the facilitators, not independence for the individuals being subjected to it. And, while I believe that the people making the extraordinary claims are responsible for providing reliably controlled evidence to back up their claims, Dickens blames the lack of scientific acceptance of telepathic abilities and FC-generated “communication” in non-speaking, profoundly autistic individuals on ableism, greed, skepticism, and gatekeeping.
To me, Dickens’ views sound conspiratorial, particularly since no experts in speech/language communication or autism treatments—or critics of FC for that matter—were included in the episode to explain why FC can’t work and educate people about the many evidence-based methods and techniques currently available to individuals with complex communication needs. Neither were representatives from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) or other groups who have, for years, offered sizable cash rewards for any psychic or telepathic person willing and able to prove their capabilities under reliably controlled conditions. (Though, I’m told many have tried, to date, no one has collected the reward). The Center For Inquiry offers $500,000 for anyone who can “demonstrate any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power under scientific test conditions.” (See details here). Dickens often complains in the episode about the lack of funding for research into telepathic abilities. Surely, this offer has the potential of helping to reach her funding goals.
Throughout the episode, Dickens frames herself and her colleagues as the only ones in the world who are taking parents of individuals with profound autism seriously. She implies that anyone who dares to question their extraordinary claims of telepathic abilities subscribes to “materialism” and is “incapable of thinking outside of the box.”
It seems to me that for someone claiming to be a “science nerd” following scientific inquiry, Dickens leaves a lot of information out of her podcast(s). Maybe some of the answers to my questions are in the videos she says are available on the Telepathy Tapes website (for a fee, which she also fails to mention), but, as a listener to the podcast, I was deeply disappointed at the information she (apparently) chose to omit or downplay. I realize my first-hand and in-depth knowledge of FC (first as facilitator, then as skeptic) makes my listening experience somewhat unique, but I’m guessing most people in the general public listening to the podcast are not aware of FC and won’t fully understand why this episode is so problematic. I find it quite telling that the many experts who’ve helped me throughout the years to understand the mechanics and the psychology of FC are not included in the podcast. Perhaps they’ll be interviewed in later episodes.
Dickens doesn’t make clear in this first episode that the nonspeaking autistic individuals are being subjected to FC. Every time Dickens narrates that the client “typed or said this” or “wrote that,” she wants her listeners to believe the communications are coming from the autistic person independently—and without the influence of a facilitator. So, all the theorizing about how a person can type without looking at the letter board using a one-finger typing technique (they can’t) or what it feels like to be autistic is, highly likely (better than chance) not the words of the nonspeaking autistic participants, but rather the viewpoint of the (literate) parents or facilitators who are “assisting” the individuals in typing out their answers to the questions the facilitators know the answers to.
Dickens knew or should have known that reliably controlled testing of FC has shown that facilitators can and do control letter selection (whether they touch the individual or the letter board). But did she include any tests for authorship along with her telepathy tests? Not that I’ve heard so far. And, from the feedback I’ve received from our readers (thank you!) and from science writer Jonathan Jarry (see his review of the Telepathy Tapes here), I doubt it’s going to happen, but maybe Katharine and I will catch something in the episodes that other reviewers missed.
Dickens seems to understand the general concept of controlled testing, but, unfortunately, not only does she “wing it” (her words, not mine) by using spontaneous tests the purpose of which she says she doesn’t know (e.g., the popsicle stick test in which she blindfolds the participant and has her sort colored popsicle sticks into piles), she ended up focusing all her attention on the wrong thing. So much so, she missed the most obvious reason for the “telepathic” success (e.g., facilitator influence and control over letter selection).
Dickens made a big deal about buying objects from Amazon to be used in the testing. She wanted to control the purchases, where the testing took place, and how the tests would be conducted. She states several times that she wanted her testing to be (and believes that it was) “bullet proof.”
It wasn’t.
Image by Buddha Elemental 3D
The curse and the blessing of scientific inquiry is that you can’t just ask the questions you want to ask to prove your already-held belief. You must ask every question—even (or especially) if the questions run counter to what you believe to be true—and, in this case, the major question Dickens and her colleagues did not ask was whether the facilitators could be controlling the FC-generated communications. I can’t emphasize enough how huge an omission this was.
After one of Dickens’ impromptu tests (e.g. the popsicle stick test), someone even asked whether the participant “can see through her mother’s eyes.” The facilitated answer to the mother’s eyes question was “no.” That idea was even too far-fetched for the facilitator to believe.
I suspect the question came from someone who, deep down, understood that no one—and probably especially an individual with profound autism—can sort colored popsicle sticks into piles while wearing a “really intense and dark” blindfold. But in a room where a bunch of credulous adults seemed to be suffering from some sort of mass delusion, it made more sense to them in that moment that the participant could telepathically see everything in the room and read everyone’s minds (if they believed in her enough) than it was to admit that the mother might (unwittingly) be influencing the communications by touching her blindfolded daughter. Cues don’t have to be discernible to the naked eye to be effective. (See Clever Hans: It’s Not About the Horse)
But we, as listeners to the podcast, don’t actually learn until Episode 2 that the mother/facilitator in the popsicle stick test used a touch-based form of FC where she provided physical cues by touching the person’s arm, shoulder, neck and/or forehead.
Note: A review of the Telepathy Tapes by Zaid Jilani indicates that the mother was actually holding on to her daughter’s face during the popsicle stick test, which I find troubling on so many levels. In Episode 2, Dickens gives the impression that the mother was only touching her daughter lightly on the forehead with one finger during the test. Either way, there was obvious interference by the facilitator.
A “Mindfold” sleep/meditation mask was used in the testing to blind the participant from test stimuli. Everyone else in the room (including the facilitator) had access to the numbers, words, and pictures used in the testing.
I think that, when the question of the mother’s eyes came up, Dickens and her cohorts missed an excellent opportunity to ask what would happen to the individual’s ability to blindly sort colored popsicle sticks or select letters using a letter board if the family members (and in particular, the mother) were out of the room. How accurate would the popsicle stick sorting or letter selection be without assistance from the facilitator? Would the individual (with or without a blindfold) know how to spell words to form grammatically correct sentences at the same level of sophistication as when the (literate) facilitator was providing “support?” And, what would happen if the facilitator was blindfolded (e.g., prevented from seeing the test stimuli or the letter board) and the individual with autism was shown the object, picture, number or word that Dickens wanted typed?
As to the telepathy tests conducted and explained in the first episode, those prove nothing. It didn’t matter that the facilitators and the participants typed out letters, numbers, or names of pictures using FC or that the onlookers were impressed, because the facilitator was given access to the test stimuli in every single case (not to mention everyone else in the room except the autistic individual).
Dickens’ test controls were backwards. It would have been much more impressive had the participants (the individuals with profound autism) been shown the test stimuli and the facilitators, researchers, and camera operators had been blinded from seeing the answers to the questions. Dickens, Powell, and the others could have been the first group of researchers ever to prove that FC-messages were typed independently and free from facilitator influence in a controlled environment. Instead, their experiments showed that, when facilitators know the answers to test stimuli, the FC-generated messages are correct (even when the individuals are not looking at the letter board or are blindfolded).
Researchers have known about this since before FC was brought to the United States by Douglas Biklen from Syracuse University around 1989-1990. (See The Unusual and Excessive Hype of FC).
I admit, I am not looking forward to reviewing future episodes of the Telepathy Tapes, which, I understand are (and I quote from one of our contacts) “wiiiiiiiiiild.” We’ve covered the issue of FC and telepathy before. Magician and skeptic James Randi wrote about the topic in the 1990s (see blog post here) and I’ll link more information about FC and telepathy below. But I plan to listen to all the episodes because I think it’s important to hold educators and researchers—and documentarians—accountable, especially if they are making extraordinary claims. If Dickens, Powell, and their cohorts want the scientific community to accept their claims as valid, then they have the burden of providing scientifically rigorous proof of their assertions. In other words, they have a lot of questions to answer and their research has to stand up to scientific scrutiny. So far, it does not.
Here's a list of questions that came to mind for me regarding Episode 1. Other people may have more:
Did the organizers of this project understand the difference between anecdotes, testimonies, and rigorously controlled studies as “evidence” for proving the validity of authorship in FC and telepathy? Dickens continuously refers to parental stories of telepathy as “evidence” and “data.” These stories or observations of unusual occurrences are often a place to start scientific inquiry, but anecdotes and testimonials in and of themselves are not evidence.
Was facilitator influence over letter selection ruled in or ruled out—before testing the telepathic skills? Who is controlling letter selection? If so, why weren’t these authorship tests made available for public scrutiny? If not, why wouldn’t the researchers want to rule out facilitator influence before moving on to tests of telepathy?
Not that it matters significantly, but what style of FC was used? Traditional touch-based FC, Spelling to Communicate, Rapid Prompting, some other variant? Where was the facilitator trained? Or is this a technique the facilitator(s) made up without realizing it was FC? Why don’t Dickens and Powell let their listeners know the participants were “communicating” via FC? In the first episode, they mention using a plastic letter board or an iPad, but they don’t mention FC by name. Why the secrecy?
Can the autistic individuals in the study recognize and understand letters, numbers, common objects, color names, etc. independently and without interference from the facilitator?
Do the individuals have any independent written, spoken, or academic abilities?
What would happen to the accuracy of letter selection if the facilitator was blinded from seeing test stimuli and the letter board during FC-sessions?
Was the facilitator holding the letter board in the air or was the board stationary? Holding the board in the air greatly increases the chances of cueing as facilitators (often unconsciously) move the letter board back and forth, up and down, left and right to aid in letter selection.
Synesthesia (a real condition) was used as an explanation of why one of the individuals did not need to look at the letter board during letter selection. The FC-generated explanation was that the person could see reflections of the colors of letters (e.g., red for “c”) and, therefore did not have to look at the board. Central vision, not peripheral vision, is necessary to discern letters and numbers on a letter board. How does synesthesia affect eyesight? Does every letter in the alphabet, every number (0-9), and punctuation mark on the letter board have a different color? How would a person remember which colors go to which letters or numbers? Do the letters or numbers turn on and off like Christmas lights (e.g., only light up when the person wants the letter “r”) or do the colors all shine at the same time? How debilitating is synesthesia? Does the individual even know what colors are or their names?
Do the individuals in the study have independent motor skills (e.g., can they, for example pick up a chip off a plate, feed or dress themselves)? If so, what would prevent them from selecting letters on their own?
How accurate would a neurotypical person be at sorting colored popsicle sticks with a blindfold on? Or is this purported ability just another superpower only profoundly autistic individuals are supposed to have?
One of the facilitated messages was that the person could “read everyone’s mind,” but she’d only do it if the person believed in her. And yet she could not read her father’s mind. Are they saying that the father doesn’t believe in his own daughter? I’m curious to know if he was able to facilitate with her (it appears not, as they report she didn’t write anything). This is a family dynamic we’ve seen and time again (and why RPM founder Soma Mukhopadhyay took her son Tito out of the home—see blog post here).
At least in the case study emphasized the most on episode 1, the testing was not conducted in a naturalistic way or in an environment that was familiar to the autistic individual. They used blindfolds and partitions, not to mention five cameras and microphone equipment. Aren’t these the very items that proponents of FC say break the trust bond between facilitator and client and interfere with the FCed individual’s ability to communicate? How is it that this equipment adversely affects the performance of FCed individuals in reliably controlled testing for authorship, but clearly does not inhibit performance in a pro-FC test situation?
Do Q-EEGs measure any and all brain activity (not just supposed telepathic ones)? Could there be other reasons why there were increases in brain activity during the telepathy tests? For example, Dickens noted that one of the participants didn’t like the clip on her ear and that the caps put on the test subjects were tight and had a gel on them. If the test subjects are physically uncomfortable and in distress (even if minor), could the increased brain activity be attributed to that? What were the brain waves like when the individuals were communicating independently (e.g., without the interference of the facilitator)?
Dr. Powell described herself as a “neuropsychiatrist,” but Dickens refers to her as a “neuroscientist.” Why the shift in terms? It seems to me these two terms are not interchangeable.
Dickens claims Dr. Powell gave her an “incredible overview of all the research she’d done to date” but then doesn’t discuss it on the podcast. Unless I overlooked it, there was no resource list on the Telepathy Tapes website. What kind of research did Powell do? Was it peer reviewed? Has her work been critiqued by other academics?
Dickens and Powell conducted experiments on human beings in this episode (and, I’m assuming, in others). Generally, academics go through an Institutional Review Board (IRB) that is responsible for reviewing research protocols and materials to protect the rights and welfare of the individuals participating in the tests. Where is the oversight?
Do the telepathic abilities go both ways? So far, the tests only attempt to measure the autistic individual’s ability to read the facilitator’s mind. What happens if the autistic individual is shown a random word or number and the facilitator is asked to telepathically receive the test stimuli (without input from the researchers or the individual as to what word or number is being “sent”)?
References and Recommended Reading:
Controlled Studies
Ideomotor Response
Opposition Statements
Auerbach, D. (2015, November 12). Facilitated communication is a cult that won’t die. Slate.
Beals, Katharine. (2023). Autism Basics with Dr. Katharine Beals. Drexel University School of Education.
Beals, K. (2022). Cutting-Edge Language and Literacy Tools for Students on the Autism Spectrum. IGI Global. ISBN: 9781799894438
Beals, K. (2022). Students with Autism: How to Improve Language, Literacy, and Academic Success. John Catt Educational. ISBN: 9781915261373
Boynton, J. (2012). Facilitated Communication—what harm it can do: Confessions of a former facilitator. Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 6:1, 3-13. DOI: 10.1080/17489539.2012.674680
Burke, Michael. (2016, April 11). Double Talk: Syracuse University institute continues to use discredited technique with dangerous effects. The Daily Orange.
Heinzen, T., Lilienfeld, S., Nolan, S.A. (2015). The Horse That Won’t Go Away: Clever Hans, Facilitated Communication, and the Need for Clear Thinking. McMillan Learning ISBN 978-1464145742
Hyman, Ray. (2003, August 26). How people are fooled by ideomotor action. Quackwatch.
Jarry, Jonathan. (2024, December 13). The Telepathy Tapes Prove We All Want to Believe. McGill University Office for Science and Society.
Jarry, Jonathan. (2019, November 8). Who Is Doing the Pointing When Communication is Facilitated? McGill University Office for Science and Society.
Jiliani, Zaid. (2024, December 26). “The Telepathy Tapes” is Taking America by Storm. But it Has its Roots in Old Autism Controversies. The American Saga.
Jilani, Zaid. (2024, October 21). Parents with Non-Verbal Autistic children are Using a Miraculous Communication Method. But is it Actually a Mirage? The American Saga.
Kezuka E. (October 1997). The Role of Touch in Facilitated Communication. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 27(5), 571-593. DOI: 10.1023/A:1025882127478
Lilienfeld, S., et.al. (2014). The Persistence of fad interventions in the face of negative scientific evidence: Facilitated communication for autism as a case example. Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 8 (2), 62-101. DOI: 10.1080/17489539.2014.976332
Randi, J. (2017, July/August). The farce known as ‘FC’. Skeptical Inquirer, 41 (4).
Wegner, D.M., Fuller, V.A., and Sparrow, B. (2003, July). Clever hands: uncontrolled intelligence in facilitated communication, Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 85 (1), 5-19. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.1.5
Vyse, Stuart. (2024, August 19). A Life Shattered by Pseudoscience. Skeptical Inquirer.
Vyse, Stuart (2023, May 16). The Journal Nature Falls for Autism Pseudoscience. Skeptical Inquirer.
Vyse, S. (2021, March 30). Beware the Child Rescuers. Skeptical Inquirer.
Vyse, S. (2018). An Artist with a Science-Based Mission. Skeptical Inquirer.
Vyse, S. (2018, April 28). Syracuse, Apple, and autism pseudoscience. Skeptical Inquirer.
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