That this article comes on the heels of the recently recommended book (nominally called _A Ribbon for Your Hair_; but in my mind, simply _Anna_) makes it all the more resonant. Contrasting the dignity with which Policoff communicates the memory of his daughter with the crassness on display with the FC examples is... powerful, to say the least.
I haven't enough information about the journalism industry to evaluate the NYT part. Though, I too am an American consumer in 2026, so perhaps I do.
This post is terrific. Do buy and read the Policoff, I would once again opine.
You've talked about many version is this - claims that NYTimes journalists and readers wish were true get far less scrutiny than claims that NYTimes journalists and readers wish were not true.
One easy trick to dramatically improve student performance? Little to any scrutiny despite decades or these claims being proven false.
Some kids are just stupid and you can't fix stupid? So much security that the article would never even be written.
And it's true about nearly anything they write about.
I’ve said it before but FC seems so obviously cruelly predatory on its face. Of course if I believed my child had a suppressed self who could express his love and personhood conventionally, there’s no force on earth I’d let stop me from releasing him. But it’s such an obviously “too good to be true” scenario that places charlatans, predators, and would-be saviors in positions of immense power to exploit, abuse, extort, and just plain string along their “clients” and their families.
I’m hardly surprised the Times is rehabilitating this trash but I’m curious what they stand to gain from it beyond their weirdly anti-psych bend of the last few years.
Except, you know, the data from the studies demonstrating that it doesn't work. And the link to the woman who used claims of FC to rape her patient. But I guess you live in a world where, if you want it to be true, it must be true.
I know about "the studies demonstrating that [FC] doesn't work." But nothing about a woman using it to "rape her patient." And you apparently think I "live in a world where" I want FC to be true, and therefore "it must be true."
But you are indeed just guessing. And your guess cannot be farther from the truth. I accept the data that FC doesn't work. At least most of the time. But I have not made up my mind yet that it NEVER works, even when it's between a facilitator and a high-functioning autistic like Woody Brown. Whose novel I am now reading. And whether it was written by him or by his mom or by both of them in collaboration is a question I have put on hold for the moment. It's an amazing read and I am learning a great deal about autism that I never knew before. You ought to try it yourself. It might change the way you think. But maybe you don't want to change the way you think. Maybe you live in a world where you just want FC not to be true, even in cases like Woody's, and therefore it must not be true.
The case of Anna Stubblefield, a FC practitioner who initiated a sexual relationship with her patient, an intellectually disabled man with cerebral palsy, is extremely well documented. She was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to 12 years in prison as a result.
Thanks for the additional info. I agree that FC can easily lead to abuse and that in the majority of cases it simply doesn't work. But I'm still not convinced that it NEVER works.
And just because it may, as it did in this case, lead to rape, doesn't mean it will always lead to rape. Or even to many rapes. I'm willing to wager that the number of rapes committed by Uber drivers is vastly higher. But that doesn't mean that Uber should be discredited or even banned as a legitimate mode of transportation. It needs to be better regulated.
In the case of Woody Brown, I can't imagine that that there is any danger that mom... And while I understand the concern of people like yourself that if a novel like "Upward Bound" receives a lot of attention in the media and even highly positive reviews, it will open the door to greater acceptance of methods like FC.
Nevertheless, it may be that "non-speakers" like Woody have no real alternative, just as I and many others like me have no real alternative to Uber.
And maybe your own scenario is "too bad to be true"? And the truth is much more complex and not either/or but somewhere in between? Or is your mind so made up that you won't even consider the possibility?
Not to be too mean to their audience, but presumably affluent middle aged women are a primary NYT subscriber demo and are more likely to be using or to have friends using FC in their social circle, given that this demo often has children later in life and would have the money to throw at something like this and a life history that enables the belief. The NYT similarly permitted Ross Douthat's "chronic lyme" saga to be recounted, which has about the same lack of scientific basis as FC does and appeals to a similar demo. If there were a NYT equivalent for the Joe Rogan bro demo, it would probably need to flatter or at least avoid offending that cohort's pseudoscientific obsessions, like microplastics, paleo diets, or testosterone "replacement" therapies for men in non-deficient ranges.
The gain here is just that they are going out on a limb to back the kinds of claims that some of their readers make which those readers have probably encountered skepticism about, so they're visibly taking those readers' side in a thing the readers know not everyone backs them up on. Because that act has obvious costs, it inspires loyalty.
I’m a white, affluent, middle aged mother that has socialized and worked with dozens like me in the last decade. I think your take is mostly spot on. I think the only thing you missed is how many of us are grappling with our own child facilitation schemes and delusions.
I don’t think there’s one of “us” out there that hasn’t felt some sort of anxiety over the transfer of our privileges to our offspring. How hard should we pull the stings and when? How well should we cover for them when they fuck up? How much of ourselves should we give? What should our expectations be?
In one light, FC is a very extreme form of any, run-of-the-mill intensive parenting we may practice or raise our kids around. It’s ventriloquism where most of us are lighthouse keepers to helicopter pilots.
So I can feel, in my friends’ and clients’ responses to the care of profoundly intellectually disabled children, real, palpable “there go I but by the grace of the genetic lottery” sentiment. When we’ve had too much rosé on our perfect patios, we enter the confession booth of meritocracy as religious practice, and many say in hushed tones that the worst of all fates they could imagine is real, vulnerable ID in their child. And our actions speak louder than our tipsy words. . . the lengths we’ll go to secure the papers that we hope will secure our kids’ bags! We act as if we have faith we can outsmart suffering and mortality and that it’s the best shot our children have of the same.
The irony, of course, is that in training him to perform his role in her FC performances, Mary Brown has almost certainly robbed Woody of opportunities to self-determine, to find purpose, dignity, and joy in his life. . . I don’t know their relationship IRL, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she has limited his life to an abusive extent.
The novel she almost certainly wrote almost or entirely by herself is all wrapped up in how unfairly others judge Woody. If Woody had the capacity to construct a narrative, my money would be on it centering a man with a mother that loved him enough to let the fuck go (maybe even to adult daycare).
So, yeah, FC “success” flatters the sensibilities, hits the dopamine jackpots, of lots of people with the affluence and narcissism to have deeply controlling, compulsive relationships with their children: a group very much overrepresented among NYT subscribers.
"FC seems so obviously cruelly predatory on its face."
But what if it's two-faced? Why can't FC be both?
On one side: a bunch of "charlatans, predators, and would-be saviors in positions of immense power" exploiting, abusing, extorting, and stringing along their “clients” and their families.
On the other side: parents who refuse to give up on their autistic children, just because a bunch of so-called "experts" who think they know it all have told them that their kids are hopelessly impaired and they should just institutionalize them.
Who are you to say that ALL of these children are beyond reach? And who are you to say that ANYONE who tries to help these people MUST by definition be a predator and a charlatan?
The world is not that simple. And there is much about autism that remains to be discovered.
But you and Freddie have already made up your mind. And anyone who dares to suggest otherwise will be immediately declared "delusional" and dismissed.
I dare to suggest otherwise. And I dare any of you to read "Upward Bound" and PROVE that Woody Brown is a hopeless imbecile and that it's all some cruel hoax perpetrated on the public.
And this time around, I'd like to hear directly from your puppet-master, the one who is pulling YOUR strings.
I don’t think Woody Brown is a “hopeless imbecile.” I think he didn’t write the novel attributed to him and that he should not have to write novels and produce works in English to be worthy of love, dignity, and respect.
As for poor Woody not having "to write novels and produce works in English to be worthy of love, dignity, and respect", maybe it hasn't dawned on you that Woody might be thrilled to finally begin to write novels--not to get love and dignity and respect--but because he has something to say.
And I don't really care what you have to say. All I really care about is what Freddie has to say. I'm still waiting for HIM to respond. To put himself on record, in his own words, not those of his parrots.
YES. Freddie's piece addresses NONE of the questions I have raised. He has steadfastly refused to take an actual look at any of the content of Mr. Brown's novel and to explain to the rest of us how he KNOWS Mr. Brown could not possibly have written any of it.
I want to see some EVIDENCE to back up his nasty accusations.
There's something like FC on the surface, where an adult who's had a stroke and can only move their eyes for the time being can still use that as a way to genuinely communicate with the help of a letter card or some eye tracking device. That's actually a scientifically valid thing.
The idea that we could use that on non-speaking children sounds compassionate - until you realise the horrible mistake.
Oh, and the experiences communicated by autistic people through FC don’t seem to rhyme coherently with anything we know about autism or disability but whatever
But maybe it doesn't "rhyme" because it doesn't fit your rhyme scheme? We don't know everything about autism -- and maybe what we think we know is preventing us from taking a fresh look?
Because ALL FC is fake? And there are never any exceptions to this iron-clad rule? Have it your way, but I much prefer to keep an open mind. Especially about high-functioning people on the autistic spectrum like Woody being unable to communicate verbally. Woody has a degree (with honors) from UCLA and an MFA from Columbia. Do you have a Masters degree?
Yes, I do, and I earned my masters degree without someone else conveniently doing all of my typing and talking.
I think it’s far more realistic and more kind to suggest Woody has humanity even if he doesn’t have degrees and will never communicate with words. There is no evidence that FC can be trusted and I think Woody and his peers deserve to be treated with dignity and care even if they will never earn a degree or write a novel or speak a sentence.
But that's the whole point. Woody DOES have the same kind of degree that you have. If you have a Masters, surely you know how hard it is to get one. Do you think he's just lesser than you because he can't type or verbalize without any help? But to you, someone else did ALL of the work for him -- so he couldn't possibly be smart. And he should stop seeing himself as a novelist and just accept the "care" that he so badly needs. Since you guys all know for sure what he needs much better than he does.
Holy moly. You keep mentioning how he has a masters degree and is therefore high functioning. But surely you understand that we don't accept that Woody himself did the work to get the master's degree, and so it's not evidence of him being high functioning.
Not surprised the NYT published this. l subscribe to the NYT--I trust it completely for news reporting (its recipes are good, too). But its coverage of AD/HD (which I have) has been abysmal. The articles' authors don't seem to understand that AD/HD is real, that it can be disabling, and that medication often helps. The NYT Magazine's April 13, 2025 article by Paul Tough is typical. AD/HD specialist Russ Barkley has an excellent 4-part series on You Tube about the many ways the article is truly f--d up.
The image I get from this piece and the other FC articles Freddie has written, is that of Johnny Carson with a gold turban on his head, card in hand being held against the turban that he is meant to accurately predict the contents of said card....
But there's nothing humorous about this. It's a travesty and appears for all intents and purposes to be a form of rape.
A form of rape??? Please explain how people with autism are being raped by FC? As in being pinned down to a bed and forced to endure unwanted abuse, a trauma they will have to live with for the rest of their lives? Like what Jeffrey Epstein did to underage women?
Yes, I read the article in Wikipedia. And found this surprising bit of info: "In July 2017, an appeals court overturned her conviction and ordered a retrial on the basis that it was a violation of her rights to not allow her to use facilitated communication as a defense." Have you anything to say about THAT?
This response is frustrating and seems to demonstrate a lack of curiosity on your part. You asked *how* FC could rape someone. Your question may have been rhetorical, but I told you how. I'd meant this case as an illustration.
On the merits of the case: what do you think: do *you* think Stubblefield's patient consented? Seriously? Have you looked at the facts of the case? Have you watched the documentary?
If there's a reasonable chance that it was rape, then this is a pretty good answer to your question "how is FC raping people?" In fact, it's much more than a reasonable chance. It's near certain. Regardless, your question about how FC could rape people has been answered, and it highlights the real dangers of FC. (Much more common with FC are false *accusations* of abuse against others, which are also quite bad.)
If you were sincerely curious about these questions, you would have done better than an irrelevant quote about legal proceedings which doesn't bear on her guilt. You would have looked at the facts of the case, realized that at the very least it *might have been* rape, and appreciated that you had learned something relevant. (Or were you already familiar with the case? If so, why would you ask how FC could rape someone? Therefore I suspect you were not familiar with case.)
Well, I am very familiar with the case now, and the fact that you consider my quote about her verdict having been overturned by a court of appeals "IRRELEVANT" says all I have to know about you.
I appreciated this essay (having not really known anything about FC one way or the other, except for what I dimly remembered from parenthetical asides in other writing of yours). My only critique is that Kayleigh's dance lessons are not that expensive and her parents aren't the audience doing audience-capture on the NYT. It's the parents of Amelia, Emma, and Charlotte you're thinking of. I suspect. We'll see who's right when our kids get to preschool (mine is just a little bit older than yours).
Ok, so according to you, Woody Brown cannot possibly have written "Upward Bound". In which case, I take this to mean that the facilitator - his mom - is the actual author of the book.
Have you actually READ any of it? I have. A sample is available online at OverDrive. Here's an example:
------------------------------------------
People can be elitist when it comes to speech. If you can't communicate, it must mean that you are mentally retarded. In the special ed room, math consisted of learning how to make change, and English meant picture books. Unlike Jorge, I had a ticket out. My parents refused to accept that I was an idiot. They saw this Indian lady on 60 Minutes who had taught her nonspeaking son to type and they tracked her down. I was three when I met Soma. She showed me how to point and make choices of words and letters. By the time I started school, I could spell and do simple math better than my neurotypical peers. The catch was that I needed an aide beside me to hold up the little laminated board with a QWERTY alphabet and basic punctuation marks on it. The aide needed to be trained to help me stay on task.
Autism on my end of the spectrum is like ADHD times a thousand. It's nearly impossible for me to untangle the many channels in my brain so that I can stay on a single station. It's like sitting in front of a bank of monitors that are all showing different events, and all are playing at top volume. The aide uses prompts, repeating the letter or word I've just pointed to, to keep me on track so that I can complete a thought. My brain can easily switch to another channel and the communication drifts away unfinished.
------------------------------------
Are you really saying all of this was written by his mom?? Who has never written a book. And that the NYT is fraudulently passing Woody off as the author? And there is absolutely no possibility that BOTH of them could be the co-authors and that they have written it together??? Or are you just so dead-set on debunking FC that none of this matters to you?
His mom is a story analyst whose worked in Hollywood for a while. Of course she could have written the book. And it's very obvious that this is fraudulent- the "Soma" mentioned here is Soma Mukhopadhyay, creator of Rapid Prompting Method, which is widely considered to be a rehashed form of FC, and is not accepted by any credible medical organization.
You're missing the point of my question. I'm talking about a different possibility -- not that his mom deliberately forged the book, but that it was somehow composed *unconsciously* -- in the back-and-forth between the two of them through the medium of the alphabet board -- and they jointly came up with the text of the novel without knowing exactly who said what. Has anyone considered such a possibility?
I have considered that possibility and thoroughly rejected it. Given the facts about FC, it is far more likely that the mother unconsciously projected her thoughts and wishes, steering and interpreting her son’s random motions into the words she wants him to be saying.
You mean ALL of the book is just her "projection"? Every last word and thought? And Woody is like some piece of dead wood she has imagined an inner life for? Or like a human version of Hans the horse? And Woody has made no contribution to the 183 pages of the novel? It's all just her fantasy and none of it his own? Seriously? Given "the facts" about FC? Maybe you are the one who is projecting.
That’s exactly what I mean. If someone isn’t verbal, they can’t very well communicate with words. Evidence suggests that people with severe autism like this are actually “minimally literate.” Given that, it’s hard to imagine how any communication at all of Woody’s thoughts would happen in this medium. You’re trying to argue out of sheer incredulousness, but there’s nothing any more weird about the idea that the mother is writing Al this than the idea, as Freddie notes, that spirits aren’t talking to us through Ouija boards.
If someone isn't verbal? But what if Woody is one of the many who do not suffer from "severe" autism? And he is merely somewhere "on the spectrum" and in fact is so functional that he somehow managed to earn a degree (with honors) from UCLA and then an MFA in creative writing from Columbia? To me, it's your inability to imagine such a possibility that I find incredulous. To you it's all black-and-white, either you are verbal or you are not. And nothing in between.
Yes, "widely considered" and "not accepted by any credible medical organization" -- as though the whole issue were a matter of settled law. But it hasn't been settled. Newer research indicates that your take on FC is way too simple. See, for example, this article from Nature, cited at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32398782/
Not actually published in Nature but rather an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by Nature. Many reported issues with this journal and it shows in the impact factor.
But if you want to throw around studies then this particular one has already been undermined.
The first article you cite says stuff like "All forms of facilitated communication leave wide open the possibility of cuing. The index finger typing - as opposed to ten-finger typing - allows the facilitators (or assistants) to see which letters the typing finger is approaching and react accordingly - if unwittingly."
Well duh. Of course the "possibility" of cuing (e.g. Clever Hans) will always be there in any "facilitated communication." It's not a bug. It's a built-in feature.
And has undoubtedly led to much abuse. But that doesn't mean FC will always be abused and therefore can NEVER be used, even between highly functional individuals like Woody Brown and people who assist him through the medium of a letterboard. He seems to think it works, even if you don't. And he has earned not one but TWO prestigious degrees from accredited universities, even though experts like you claim, without any evidence, that someone else did all the work for him.
Your jury has already convicted FC, where it now sits on death row awaiting the guillotine. My jury is still deliberating. I prefer an open mind. You prefer a closed one. Each to his own.
You keep calling Woody Brown highly functional, stating it as a plain fact. It sounds like your mind is closed on this question. (I'm not being serious here. It's always a dumb rhetorical trick to frame those you disagree with as close-minded.)
My apologies. I'm open to the possibility that in some cases, there may be some actual benefit to FC, despite all the obvious harm it can do. And you appear NOT to be open to that possibility. So ok, you're not "close-minded." What non-rhetorical term would you prefer?
And as for my stating that Mr. Brown is in fact "highly functional" -- I cite as evidence the interviews conducted with him by the NYT reporter in private. She seems to think he's quite intelligent. I don't think she'd say that on the record if that wasn't the case. If it turned out she was lying, she'd be sacked.
Just look at the contradictions in the passage. The narrator says he can’t focus on a single word without help, yet he quickly surpassed his peers in spelling and math?
It’s because an adult was doing the spelling and math all through school (perhaps without realizing).
Thank you for this. I couldn’t believe the article didn’t dig into all of this.
I’ve also been alarmed by the increasing number of spelling/S2C family influencers out there. There’s one young man in particular whose “spellings” get posted by his mother every week after his “sessions”. It makes me cringe.
Woody Brown is a summa cum laude graduate of UCLA, where he received top writing honors. He earned an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University in 2024.
Does THAT make you cringe too? I can't believe THIS article didn't mention that FACT and explain how Mr. Brown managed to do all of that.
He didn't. His mom, who conveniently has a master’s degree in English literature and worked as a professional writer for 20 years, was beside him throughout "his" degree work and "facilitated" all of his writing. Universities are terrified of being accused of "ableism" or getting sued (dad is a bigwig at Paramount) so they allowed this "accommodation" without any verification that he was really performing the coursework.
This isn't even some subtle ideomotor effect, he is literally tapping the board at random without looking and she just makes shit up. It's grotesque and embarrassing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwofBlN9PDs
To you and Ms. Bearup, it looks "like" he is tapping the board "at random." But maybe after years of working together thru the letter-board, they understand each other and you don't?
But neither of you two have even bothered to read their book and are just guessing and assuming, because you've already made up your minds.
Why would reading the book have any bearing on this discussion? It is a work of fiction. We are not discussing whether the book is good or bad; we're debating who wrote it.
All of the publicity focuses on Woody as the sole author, his autism, and the idea that this novel is somehow a window into his mind. It would not have received a fraction of this much attention if it was his mom's name on the cover. Nevertheless you seem to concede the point on some level by calling it "their book" and not "his book". Is it also "their degrees" and not "his degrees"?
I know that you really want to believe this story, and I can't refute the idea that what looks like gibberish tapping is some kind of highly developed secret code. All I can do is apply Occam's Razor and the fact that facilitated communication has been debunked over and over. All they have to do is show him communicating information that the mom wouldn't have access to (like pictures he was shown while she was out of the room) and I will change my tune. But of course no practitioner of "rapid prompting" will allow this test to be done, because it would debunk their pseudoscience just like it debunked FC.
This is new to me. (None of this is my usual area of concern, but FC seems like such an egregious case that my interest is piqued.) Care to explain for a n00b? Or even to point me to a quality link?
Sure - PECS is in pretty common use here in the UK - it involves a picture board that the individual points to, generally indicating their want or desire, such as to go to the toilet. Negative: Like with FC it can involve some coercion. Say, the individual is angrily banging the table and spitting because they want a treat. The care worker or teacher directs them to the PECS board and doesn't let them have their treat until they have pointed on the board that this is what they want (even if they already know what the individual wants). That's said, it's the kind of compliance/reward system used in almost every school, for non-autistic kids or otherwise... while on a gut level, I'm not keen on behaviourist approaches in the classroom, if you've got a wild classroom of 32 kids and bribing them with stickers works, I'm not going to judge you (or myself) for bribing them with stickers :p
More troublesome to me is the fact that PECS can invole guiding the individual's hand (I've not done this myself, only brought the picture board to the child). It's less of a case of outright projection than FC (since sometimes, as above, it may be pretty clear what the individual wants) but it doesn't respect bodily autonomy and is potentially coercive. That said, if an individual is unable to, say, recognise when they need to go to the toilet and how to deal with that, can we always respect their bodily autonomy? My ex-partner once had a member of the public angry at her at a careers fair saying that she and other care workers/ managers didn't respect the freedom of disabled people. With the customers she was working with, if they weren't prevented from crossing theroad on their own, they would have gotten run over. If locks weren't on certain cupboards, they would have drunk poison.
Positive: PECS is accessible for profoundly autistic individuals. You can argue that all individuals should be dignified through the learning of full sentences with a rich vocabulary, but that simply isn't cognitively possible for some severely impaired individuals. It's that kind of idealistic wish that leads to egregious nonsense like FC.
"We have to be absolutely clear here, we have to hold this line: facilitated communication and all of its various versions and names is a discredited practice that has never withstood rigorous research."
Two words: Helen Keller.
"The Times article never grapples with the evidence. Instead, it substitutes anecdote for science: the mother “realized” her son understood more than expected; the facilitator 'saw tension evaporate.'"
The emotive words are the tell: the NYT is written by, and for, AWFL's.
Helen Keller did not use facilitated communication. She died in 1968, before FC really got going.
And she was deaf-blind, not intellectually disabled.
If you're arguing that her books were at least partially ghostwritten, that's plausible but not at all the same thing. "Celebrity uses ghostwriter" is a very common and boring story.
That doesn't seem very FC-ish to me at all. It's all entirely congruent with the story of Keller as I've always been told it. If anything, the youthful plagiarism makes her seem more authentic; 11-year-olds are no respecters of intellectual property.
That her writing got worse when she lost her editors is not even a little bit suspicious. "Editor actually coauthor" is no scandal, especially not when the main author is a celebrity. This seems like the sort of thing that would, for an able-bodied person, be entirely unremarkable.
The video implying that there's something suspicious about her politics is also weird. A young person adopting the political stances of her adult role models...what could be more normal?
It is a serious accusation that the Times published this knowing it is false. A less serious accusation would be that its reporters and editors are gullible fools. I am reconciled to the latter, but would be discouraged to learn the former is true.
I'd like to see the scientific proof that the NYT published a book review of a book that it knew was not written by the author. Or even proof that the book review was written by "gullible fools."
I read the Guardian article on Woody yesterday. Separately from disproven FC stuff, I looked for research that would support the opposite conclusion regarding Woody’s abilities (that this was a product of him and not his mother). This is the only recent study I could find that would slightly support claims that Woody is the author of Upward Bound: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613241230709
FC is disproven, I get that. And these new variations, like 'Spelling2Communicate', seem to be rebrands of FC. This study was tiny but still makes me think that there could be an inkling of truth to some of the the claims around spelling/letter boarding but ONLY for a small subset of severely autistic people, and (obviously) only when they are using a keyboard or digital keyboard independently. Maybe I'm just latching onto this hallucinatory hope like FC people. Idk. Study was interesting to me even with the small sample size. I am not educated enough to comment on it past the abstract. I think the lack of video evidence of individuals 'spelling' independently is most telling.
"If the participants in the study were able to type out sentences without an assistant on stationary iPads with flashing letters, then why, when typing sentences that aren’t guided by flashing letters, do they need the letterboard to be held up by an assistant?
Such an assistant, as all the available evidence suggests, is the one most likely to be controlling the messages, including the message that this is “the most effective means of communication available to me.” And such an assistant, as all the available evidence suggests, may well be the only truly literate person involved in producing such messages."
...the one most likely to be controlling the messages? Why does it have to be one or the other who is in "control"? Why can't the whole process be one in which "control" passes back and forth *between* the two of them? And what exactly does a "truly literate person" mean? Are there no semi-literate people? At what point does an "illiterate" person become "literate"? Is there some magical threshold that must be crossed? And if so, how would you know where that threshold was located?
"Why can't the whole process be one in which "control" passes back and forth *between* the two of them" -- I think this is part and parcel of the problem. If it could be that via independent typing, subject and assistant would both would be independently communicating. FC/Spelling 'presumes competence' in being able to write independently while completely discounting any other forms of their communication eg body movement and any forms of vocalization. The issue of the letterboard needing to be held up by an assistant is not necessarily due to the need for an assistant but that it has never been shown to work when the facilitator is changed. You could have two facilitators the subject is equally comfortable with. You would expect either facilitator to give the same answer to the same question if they are truly giving voice to the subject. But they never do. FC/Spelling/RPM is not evidence based.
Of course they never do. They are different people! No two facilitators could ever give the same answer to anything, even if they were following a strict regimen and even if they were clones. And what's all this stuff about the need for "independent" communication? Maybe YOU need the communication to be independent -- in order to "objectively" validate your evidence -- but how do you know that Woody and his assistant need to be independent of each other? Maybe they are acting as collaborators, working INTERdependently?
Ok, I agree, but only if they were recording letterboard answers from the same person AT THE SAME TIME, then yes, they SHOULD be the same answer.
But if they each did it at different times... say a week apart or a year later, then they might very well not give the same answer. Or even if it were only ONE facilitator, recording the same person at different times, both the facilitator AND the person will have changed. Like Heraclitus said, you can't step into the same river twice... In a few years, even FC will have changed. It's just a tool, and like any tool, it can be abused or improved. If you're ok with that, then I am too, and maybe we can just stop there. It's up to you.
I'm responding to this comment somewhat randomly, but it could equally well respond to a number of your comments.
You seem to be arguing for nuance. Sometimes nuance is the wrong approach, and sometimes there's some nuance in some cases but not the ones under consideration.
It would be incredibly easy to test if Woody has *any* understanding of the words he's tapping. It's *always* been really easy to test this. Of course Woody hasn't been tested, which makes me think he probably doesn't have *any* literacy. The fact that everyone involved avoids message-passing tests, which you or I could easily conduct in 5 minutes or less, speaks volumes.
Yes, some disability advocates (and allegedly some non-speaking people) say that these sorts of tests are an offense against dignity, but that's a preposterous fig leaf. I agree that if it had been shown that FC works in many cases, then it would be undignified to expect a non-speaking person to prove their communication ability in every context. But that's not the case. We're being asked to believe that all FC-using nonspeakers have agreed to avoid the one test that would settle things in their favor, because of ...dignity. surely *somebody* must be willing to go on the record and prove that they can communicate through FC, but it doesn't happen.
So you "agree that if it had been shown that FC works in many cases, then it would be undignified to expect a non-speaking person to prove their communication ability in every context."
And what if it's just because so much suspicion and hostility has been stirred up by people like you, that none of them wants to come forward to offer that proof, knowing how likely it is that anything they try to "say" will be debunked and will only lead to further harassment and public humiliation.
And you expect Woody Brown to step forward and be the first? Would you step forward if you were Woody? I would not.
O Sweet Bastet's Tail! FC is just another way to say "coaching" and the facilitated person can't even do much about it.
Here comes The Great Satanic Ritual Daycare Panic all over again in 5..4..3..2..1
The shitrag NYT strikes again!
That this article comes on the heels of the recently recommended book (nominally called _A Ribbon for Your Hair_; but in my mind, simply _Anna_) makes it all the more resonant. Contrasting the dignity with which Policoff communicates the memory of his daughter with the crassness on display with the FC examples is... powerful, to say the least.
I haven't enough information about the journalism industry to evaluate the NYT part. Though, I too am an American consumer in 2026, so perhaps I do.
This post is terrific. Do buy and read the Policoff, I would once again opine.
You've talked about many version is this - claims that NYTimes journalists and readers wish were true get far less scrutiny than claims that NYTimes journalists and readers wish were not true.
One easy trick to dramatically improve student performance? Little to any scrutiny despite decades or these claims being proven false.
Some kids are just stupid and you can't fix stupid? So much security that the article would never even be written.
And it's true about nearly anything they write about.
I’ve said it before but FC seems so obviously cruelly predatory on its face. Of course if I believed my child had a suppressed self who could express his love and personhood conventionally, there’s no force on earth I’d let stop me from releasing him. But it’s such an obviously “too good to be true” scenario that places charlatans, predators, and would-be saviors in positions of immense power to exploit, abuse, extort, and just plain string along their “clients” and their families.
I’m hardly surprised the Times is rehabilitating this trash but I’m curious what they stand to gain from it beyond their weirdly anti-psych bend of the last few years.
There may be someone influential at the NYT who does FC with his or her own child. Just a guess.
Yes, just a guess. Like everything else in this article.
Except, you know, the data from the studies demonstrating that it doesn't work. And the link to the woman who used claims of FC to rape her patient. But I guess you live in a world where, if you want it to be true, it must be true.
I know about "the studies demonstrating that [FC] doesn't work." But nothing about a woman using it to "rape her patient." And you apparently think I "live in a world where" I want FC to be true, and therefore "it must be true."
But you are indeed just guessing. And your guess cannot be farther from the truth. I accept the data that FC doesn't work. At least most of the time. But I have not made up my mind yet that it NEVER works, even when it's between a facilitator and a high-functioning autistic like Woody Brown. Whose novel I am now reading. And whether it was written by him or by his mom or by both of them in collaboration is a question I have put on hold for the moment. It's an amazing read and I am learning a great deal about autism that I never knew before. You ought to try it yourself. It might change the way you think. But maybe you don't want to change the way you think. Maybe you live in a world where you just want FC not to be true, even in cases like Woody's, and therefore it must not be true.
The case of Anna Stubblefield, a FC practitioner who initiated a sexual relationship with her patient, an intellectually disabled man with cerebral palsy, is extremely well documented. She was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to 12 years in prison as a result.
Thanks for the additional info. I agree that FC can easily lead to abuse and that in the majority of cases it simply doesn't work. But I'm still not convinced that it NEVER works.
And just because it may, as it did in this case, lead to rape, doesn't mean it will always lead to rape. Or even to many rapes. I'm willing to wager that the number of rapes committed by Uber drivers is vastly higher. But that doesn't mean that Uber should be discredited or even banned as a legitimate mode of transportation. It needs to be better regulated.
In the case of Woody Brown, I can't imagine that that there is any danger that mom... And while I understand the concern of people like yourself that if a novel like "Upward Bound" receives a lot of attention in the media and even highly positive reviews, it will open the door to greater acceptance of methods like FC.
Nevertheless, it may be that "non-speakers" like Woody have no real alternative, just as I and many others like me have no real alternative to Uber.
Freddie linked the Stubblefield case for your convenience. If you still don't know it, that's on you, your credulosity, and your lack of curiosity.
Please thank your boss for me. His help in setting me straight is much appreciated. I'll send him my response soon.
And maybe your own scenario is "too bad to be true"? And the truth is much more complex and not either/or but somewhere in between? Or is your mind so made up that you won't even consider the possibility?
Are you under the impression facilitated communication works?
Not to be too mean to their audience, but presumably affluent middle aged women are a primary NYT subscriber demo and are more likely to be using or to have friends using FC in their social circle, given that this demo often has children later in life and would have the money to throw at something like this and a life history that enables the belief. The NYT similarly permitted Ross Douthat's "chronic lyme" saga to be recounted, which has about the same lack of scientific basis as FC does and appeals to a similar demo. If there were a NYT equivalent for the Joe Rogan bro demo, it would probably need to flatter or at least avoid offending that cohort's pseudoscientific obsessions, like microplastics, paleo diets, or testosterone "replacement" therapies for men in non-deficient ranges.
The gain here is just that they are going out on a limb to back the kinds of claims that some of their readers make which those readers have probably encountered skepticism about, so they're visibly taking those readers' side in a thing the readers know not everyone backs them up on. Because that act has obvious costs, it inspires loyalty.
I’m a white, affluent, middle aged mother that has socialized and worked with dozens like me in the last decade. I think your take is mostly spot on. I think the only thing you missed is how many of us are grappling with our own child facilitation schemes and delusions.
I don’t think there’s one of “us” out there that hasn’t felt some sort of anxiety over the transfer of our privileges to our offspring. How hard should we pull the stings and when? How well should we cover for them when they fuck up? How much of ourselves should we give? What should our expectations be?
In one light, FC is a very extreme form of any, run-of-the-mill intensive parenting we may practice or raise our kids around. It’s ventriloquism where most of us are lighthouse keepers to helicopter pilots.
So I can feel, in my friends’ and clients’ responses to the care of profoundly intellectually disabled children, real, palpable “there go I but by the grace of the genetic lottery” sentiment. When we’ve had too much rosé on our perfect patios, we enter the confession booth of meritocracy as religious practice, and many say in hushed tones that the worst of all fates they could imagine is real, vulnerable ID in their child. And our actions speak louder than our tipsy words. . . the lengths we’ll go to secure the papers that we hope will secure our kids’ bags! We act as if we have faith we can outsmart suffering and mortality and that it’s the best shot our children have of the same.
The irony, of course, is that in training him to perform his role in her FC performances, Mary Brown has almost certainly robbed Woody of opportunities to self-determine, to find purpose, dignity, and joy in his life. . . I don’t know their relationship IRL, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she has limited his life to an abusive extent.
The novel she almost certainly wrote almost or entirely by herself is all wrapped up in how unfairly others judge Woody. If Woody had the capacity to construct a narrative, my money would be on it centering a man with a mother that loved him enough to let the fuck go (maybe even to adult daycare).
So, yeah, FC “success” flatters the sensibilities, hits the dopamine jackpots, of lots of people with the affluence and narcissism to have deeply controlling, compulsive relationships with their children: a group very much overrepresented among NYT subscribers.
To be fair, deist religions are basically FC ("Come on god, say the gays are bad. You did it! I'm so proud of you" and so on.)
So it would seem the cultural terroir would be fecund.
Off topic and unhelpful
Thanks for the kind thought policing, but I disagree. We live in a society inclined to entertain FC
"FC seems so obviously cruelly predatory on its face."
But what if it's two-faced? Why can't FC be both?
On one side: a bunch of "charlatans, predators, and would-be saviors in positions of immense power" exploiting, abusing, extorting, and stringing along their “clients” and their families.
On the other side: parents who refuse to give up on their autistic children, just because a bunch of so-called "experts" who think they know it all have told them that their kids are hopelessly impaired and they should just institutionalize them.
Who are you to say that ALL of these children are beyond reach? And who are you to say that ANYONE who tries to help these people MUST by definition be a predator and a charlatan?
The world is not that simple. And there is much about autism that remains to be discovered.
But you and Freddie have already made up your mind. And anyone who dares to suggest otherwise will be immediately declared "delusional" and dismissed.
I dare to suggest otherwise. And I dare any of you to read "Upward Bound" and PROVE that Woody Brown is a hopeless imbecile and that it's all some cruel hoax perpetrated on the public.
And this time around, I'd like to hear directly from your puppet-master, the one who is pulling YOUR strings.
How are you still GOING?
I don’t think Woody Brown is a “hopeless imbecile.” I think he didn’t write the novel attributed to him and that he should not have to write novels and produce works in English to be worthy of love, dignity, and respect.
I've only just started.
As for poor Woody not having "to write novels and produce works in English to be worthy of love, dignity, and respect", maybe it hasn't dawned on you that Woody might be thrilled to finally begin to write novels--not to get love and dignity and respect--but because he has something to say.
And I don't really care what you have to say. All I really care about is what Freddie has to say. I'm still waiting for HIM to respond. To put himself on record, in his own words, not those of his parrots.
But…his post is really clear. Are you really gonna keep bothering people until he tells you what this piece already says?
YES. Freddie's piece addresses NONE of the questions I have raised. He has steadfastly refused to take an actual look at any of the content of Mr. Brown's novel and to explain to the rest of us how he KNOWS Mr. Brown could not possibly have written any of it.
I want to see some EVIDENCE to back up his nasty accusations.
So you’re going to bother me in sub threads until FdB replies to you? Even though he’s made his position on all FC extremely clear?
Also just fyi. I don’t know the dude. I can’t make him reply to you.
There's something like FC on the surface, where an adult who's had a stroke and can only move their eyes for the time being can still use that as a way to genuinely communicate with the help of a letter card or some eye tracking device. That's actually a scientifically valid thing.
The idea that we could use that on non-speaking children sounds compassionate - until you realise the horrible mistake.
Oh, and the experiences communicated by autistic people through FC don’t seem to rhyme coherently with anything we know about autism or disability but whatever
But maybe it doesn't "rhyme" because it doesn't fit your rhyme scheme? We don't know everything about autism -- and maybe what we think we know is preventing us from taking a fresh look?
Or it doesn’t “rhyme”because facilitated communication is fake
Because ALL FC is fake? And there are never any exceptions to this iron-clad rule? Have it your way, but I much prefer to keep an open mind. Especially about high-functioning people on the autistic spectrum like Woody being unable to communicate verbally. Woody has a degree (with honors) from UCLA and an MFA from Columbia. Do you have a Masters degree?
Yes, I do, and I earned my masters degree without someone else conveniently doing all of my typing and talking.
I think it’s far more realistic and more kind to suggest Woody has humanity even if he doesn’t have degrees and will never communicate with words. There is no evidence that FC can be trusted and I think Woody and his peers deserve to be treated with dignity and care even if they will never earn a degree or write a novel or speak a sentence.
But that's the whole point. Woody DOES have the same kind of degree that you have. If you have a Masters, surely you know how hard it is to get one. Do you think he's just lesser than you because he can't type or verbalize without any help? But to you, someone else did ALL of the work for him -- so he couldn't possibly be smart. And he should stop seeing himself as a novelist and just accept the "care" that he so badly needs. Since you guys all know for sure what he needs much better than he does.
Can you explain to me why you believe FC works despite it consistently failing to pass basic accountability measures?
Holy moly. You keep mentioning how he has a masters degree and is therefore high functioning. But surely you understand that we don't accept that Woody himself did the work to get the master's degree, and so it's not evidence of him being high functioning.
Not surprised the NYT published this. l subscribe to the NYT--I trust it completely for news reporting (its recipes are good, too). But its coverage of AD/HD (which I have) has been abysmal. The articles' authors don't seem to understand that AD/HD is real, that it can be disabling, and that medication often helps. The NYT Magazine's April 13, 2025 article by Paul Tough is typical. AD/HD specialist Russ Barkley has an excellent 4-part series on You Tube about the many ways the article is truly f--d up.
The image I get from this piece and the other FC articles Freddie has written, is that of Johnny Carson with a gold turban on his head, card in hand being held against the turban that he is meant to accurately predict the contents of said card....
But there's nothing humorous about this. It's a travesty and appears for all intents and purposes to be a form of rape.
A form of rape??? Please explain how people with autism are being raped by FC? As in being pinned down to a bed and forced to endure unwanted abuse, a trauma they will have to live with for the rest of their lives? Like what Jeffrey Epstein did to underage women?
They cannot consent to an action forced upon them by others.
An action? What action would that be? Please specify how these people are being forced to do something they don't want to do.
Actual rape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Stubblefield
Yes, I read the article in Wikipedia. And found this surprising bit of info: "In July 2017, an appeals court overturned her conviction and ordered a retrial on the basis that it was a violation of her rights to not allow her to use facilitated communication as a defense." Have you anything to say about THAT?
This response is frustrating and seems to demonstrate a lack of curiosity on your part. You asked *how* FC could rape someone. Your question may have been rhetorical, but I told you how. I'd meant this case as an illustration.
On the merits of the case: what do you think: do *you* think Stubblefield's patient consented? Seriously? Have you looked at the facts of the case? Have you watched the documentary?
If there's a reasonable chance that it was rape, then this is a pretty good answer to your question "how is FC raping people?" In fact, it's much more than a reasonable chance. It's near certain. Regardless, your question about how FC could rape people has been answered, and it highlights the real dangers of FC. (Much more common with FC are false *accusations* of abuse against others, which are also quite bad.)
If you were sincerely curious about these questions, you would have done better than an irrelevant quote about legal proceedings which doesn't bear on her guilt. You would have looked at the facts of the case, realized that at the very least it *might have been* rape, and appreciated that you had learned something relevant. (Or were you already familiar with the case? If so, why would you ask how FC could rape someone? Therefore I suspect you were not familiar with case.)
"Frustrating and lacking in curiosity" will be Bob's epitaph someday.
Well, I am very familiar with the case now, and the fact that you consider my quote about her verdict having been overturned by a court of appeals "IRRELEVANT" says all I have to know about you.
I appreciated this essay (having not really known anything about FC one way or the other, except for what I dimly remembered from parenthetical asides in other writing of yours). My only critique is that Kayleigh's dance lessons are not that expensive and her parents aren't the audience doing audience-capture on the NYT. It's the parents of Amelia, Emma, and Charlotte you're thinking of. I suspect. We'll see who's right when our kids get to preschool (mine is just a little bit older than yours).
Haha yeah my first though was “a brownstone liberal wouldn’t dare name their daughter Kayleigh” but otherwise spot on, standing ovation
Ok, so according to you, Woody Brown cannot possibly have written "Upward Bound". In which case, I take this to mean that the facilitator - his mom - is the actual author of the book.
Have you actually READ any of it? I have. A sample is available online at OverDrive. Here's an example:
------------------------------------------
People can be elitist when it comes to speech. If you can't communicate, it must mean that you are mentally retarded. In the special ed room, math consisted of learning how to make change, and English meant picture books. Unlike Jorge, I had a ticket out. My parents refused to accept that I was an idiot. They saw this Indian lady on 60 Minutes who had taught her nonspeaking son to type and they tracked her down. I was three when I met Soma. She showed me how to point and make choices of words and letters. By the time I started school, I could spell and do simple math better than my neurotypical peers. The catch was that I needed an aide beside me to hold up the little laminated board with a QWERTY alphabet and basic punctuation marks on it. The aide needed to be trained to help me stay on task.
Autism on my end of the spectrum is like ADHD times a thousand. It's nearly impossible for me to untangle the many channels in my brain so that I can stay on a single station. It's like sitting in front of a bank of monitors that are all showing different events, and all are playing at top volume. The aide uses prompts, repeating the letter or word I've just pointed to, to keep me on track so that I can complete a thought. My brain can easily switch to another channel and the communication drifts away unfinished.
------------------------------------
Are you really saying all of this was written by his mom?? Who has never written a book. And that the NYT is fraudulently passing Woody off as the author? And there is absolutely no possibility that BOTH of them could be the co-authors and that they have written it together??? Or are you just so dead-set on debunking FC that none of this matters to you?
His mom is a story analyst whose worked in Hollywood for a while. Of course she could have written the book. And it's very obvious that this is fraudulent- the "Soma" mentioned here is Soma Mukhopadhyay, creator of Rapid Prompting Method, which is widely considered to be a rehashed form of FC, and is not accepted by any credible medical organization.
You're missing the point of my question. I'm talking about a different possibility -- not that his mom deliberately forged the book, but that it was somehow composed *unconsciously* -- in the back-and-forth between the two of them through the medium of the alphabet board -- and they jointly came up with the text of the novel without knowing exactly who said what. Has anyone considered such a possibility?
I have considered that possibility and thoroughly rejected it. Given the facts about FC, it is far more likely that the mother unconsciously projected her thoughts and wishes, steering and interpreting her son’s random motions into the words she wants him to be saying.
You mean ALL of the book is just her "projection"? Every last word and thought? And Woody is like some piece of dead wood she has imagined an inner life for? Or like a human version of Hans the horse? And Woody has made no contribution to the 183 pages of the novel? It's all just her fantasy and none of it his own? Seriously? Given "the facts" about FC? Maybe you are the one who is projecting.
That’s exactly what I mean. If someone isn’t verbal, they can’t very well communicate with words. Evidence suggests that people with severe autism like this are actually “minimally literate.” Given that, it’s hard to imagine how any communication at all of Woody’s thoughts would happen in this medium. You’re trying to argue out of sheer incredulousness, but there’s nothing any more weird about the idea that the mother is writing Al this than the idea, as Freddie notes, that spirits aren’t talking to us through Ouija boards.
If someone isn't verbal? But what if Woody is one of the many who do not suffer from "severe" autism? And he is merely somewhere "on the spectrum" and in fact is so functional that he somehow managed to earn a degree (with honors) from UCLA and then an MFA in creative writing from Columbia? To me, it's your inability to imagine such a possibility that I find incredulous. To you it's all black-and-white, either you are verbal or you are not. And nothing in between.
Yes, "widely considered" and "not accepted by any credible medical organization" -- as though the whole issue were a matter of settled law. But it hasn't been settled. Newer research indicates that your take on FC is way too simple. See, for example, this article from Nature, cited at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32398782/
Not actually published in Nature but rather an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published by Nature. Many reported issues with this journal and it shows in the impact factor.
But if you want to throw around studies then this particular one has already been undermined.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17489539.2021.1918890
Further studies by the same group, and many others, have also been critiqued at https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org, e.g.,
https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/illusions-of-literacy-in-nonspeaking-autistic-people-a-response-to-jaswal-et-al-2024
The first article you cite says stuff like "All forms of facilitated communication leave wide open the possibility of cuing. The index finger typing - as opposed to ten-finger typing - allows the facilitators (or assistants) to see which letters the typing finger is approaching and react accordingly - if unwittingly."
Well duh. Of course the "possibility" of cuing (e.g. Clever Hans) will always be there in any "facilitated communication." It's not a bug. It's a built-in feature.
And has undoubtedly led to much abuse. But that doesn't mean FC will always be abused and therefore can NEVER be used, even between highly functional individuals like Woody Brown and people who assist him through the medium of a letterboard. He seems to think it works, even if you don't. And he has earned not one but TWO prestigious degrees from accredited universities, even though experts like you claim, without any evidence, that someone else did all the work for him.
Your jury has already convicted FC, where it now sits on death row awaiting the guillotine. My jury is still deliberating. I prefer an open mind. You prefer a closed one. Each to his own.
You keep calling Woody Brown highly functional, stating it as a plain fact. It sounds like your mind is closed on this question. (I'm not being serious here. It's always a dumb rhetorical trick to frame those you disagree with as close-minded.)
My apologies. I'm open to the possibility that in some cases, there may be some actual benefit to FC, despite all the obvious harm it can do. And you appear NOT to be open to that possibility. So ok, you're not "close-minded." What non-rhetorical term would you prefer?
And as for my stating that Mr. Brown is in fact "highly functional" -- I cite as evidence the interviews conducted with him by the NYT reporter in private. She seems to think he's quite intelligent. I don't think she'd say that on the record if that wasn't the case. If it turned out she was lying, she'd be sacked.
Just look at the contradictions in the passage. The narrator says he can’t focus on a single word without help, yet he quickly surpassed his peers in spelling and math?
It’s because an adult was doing the spelling and math all through school (perhaps without realizing).
My brother in Christ, this is 2026. You don’t even need to be a human to write a book
Thank you for this. I couldn’t believe the article didn’t dig into all of this.
I’ve also been alarmed by the increasing number of spelling/S2C family influencers out there. There’s one young man in particular whose “spellings” get posted by his mother every week after his “sessions”. It makes me cringe.
Woody Brown is a summa cum laude graduate of UCLA, where he received top writing honors. He earned an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University in 2024.
Does THAT make you cringe too? I can't believe THIS article didn't mention that FACT and explain how Mr. Brown managed to do all of that.
He didn't. His mom, who conveniently has a master’s degree in English literature and worked as a professional writer for 20 years, was beside him throughout "his" degree work and "facilitated" all of his writing. Universities are terrified of being accused of "ableism" or getting sued (dad is a bigwig at Paramount) so they allowed this "accommodation" without any verification that he was really performing the coursework.
This isn't even some subtle ideomotor effect, he is literally tapping the board at random without looking and she just makes shit up. It's grotesque and embarrassing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwofBlN9PDs
To you and Ms. Bearup, it looks "like" he is tapping the board "at random." But maybe after years of working together thru the letter-board, they understand each other and you don't?
But neither of you two have even bothered to read their book and are just guessing and assuming, because you've already made up your minds.
So maybe it's you who are just making shit up?
Why would reading the book have any bearing on this discussion? It is a work of fiction. We are not discussing whether the book is good or bad; we're debating who wrote it.
All of the publicity focuses on Woody as the sole author, his autism, and the idea that this novel is somehow a window into his mind. It would not have received a fraction of this much attention if it was his mom's name on the cover. Nevertheless you seem to concede the point on some level by calling it "their book" and not "his book". Is it also "their degrees" and not "his degrees"?
I know that you really want to believe this story, and I can't refute the idea that what looks like gibberish tapping is some kind of highly developed secret code. All I can do is apply Occam's Razor and the fact that facilitated communication has been debunked over and over. All they have to do is show him communicating information that the mom wouldn't have access to (like pictures he was shown while she was out of the room) and I will change my tune. But of course no practitioner of "rapid prompting" will allow this test to be done, because it would debunk their pseudoscience just like it debunked FC.
"Nevertheless you seem to concede the point on some level by calling it "their book" and not "his book"."
Apparently you've never had the experience of working together with anyone. Like with a really good editor who understands what you are trying to say.
If you'd read the book, you'd KNOW that Mom could not possibly have conceived it all on her own.
But you're so hung up on the idea of "sole authorship" that you can't even look.
The end result of a collaboration is never the product of a single individual. But it's Woody's book. And Woody's world. And Woody's mind.
I wonder if FC being championed again is linked to the pushback against Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) by some neurodiversity activists.
This is new to me. (None of this is my usual area of concern, but FC seems like such an egregious case that my interest is piqued.) Care to explain for a n00b? Or even to point me to a quality link?
Sure - PECS is in pretty common use here in the UK - it involves a picture board that the individual points to, generally indicating their want or desire, such as to go to the toilet. Negative: Like with FC it can involve some coercion. Say, the individual is angrily banging the table and spitting because they want a treat. The care worker or teacher directs them to the PECS board and doesn't let them have their treat until they have pointed on the board that this is what they want (even if they already know what the individual wants). That's said, it's the kind of compliance/reward system used in almost every school, for non-autistic kids or otherwise... while on a gut level, I'm not keen on behaviourist approaches in the classroom, if you've got a wild classroom of 32 kids and bribing them with stickers works, I'm not going to judge you (or myself) for bribing them with stickers :p
More troublesome to me is the fact that PECS can invole guiding the individual's hand (I've not done this myself, only brought the picture board to the child). It's less of a case of outright projection than FC (since sometimes, as above, it may be pretty clear what the individual wants) but it doesn't respect bodily autonomy and is potentially coercive. That said, if an individual is unable to, say, recognise when they need to go to the toilet and how to deal with that, can we always respect their bodily autonomy? My ex-partner once had a member of the public angry at her at a careers fair saying that she and other care workers/ managers didn't respect the freedom of disabled people. With the customers she was working with, if they weren't prevented from crossing theroad on their own, they would have gotten run over. If locks weren't on certain cupboards, they would have drunk poison.
Positive: PECS is accessible for profoundly autistic individuals. You can argue that all individuals should be dignified through the learning of full sentences with a rich vocabulary, but that simply isn't cognitively possible for some severely impaired individuals. It's that kind of idealistic wish that leads to egregious nonsense like FC.
Complex issues.
Relevant links:
https://therapistndc.org/the-problem-with-pecs/
https://sensoryclassroom.org/blogs/sensoryclassroom/why-i-don-t-use-pecs
Isn't this so discredited that there was a Law and Order episode about it like 20 years ago?
YES! Oh thank you my friend. I came down here to say "Michael Moriarty debunked this on the stand" but didn't think anyone would get it
It wasn't Michael Moriarty. It was Sam Waterston.
20 years ago, Law and Order was almost over. The episode aired 31 years ago.
Shit you're right. I knew it was a Chris Noth and figured it was Moriarty but I should have remembered those eyebrows
That was 31 years ago. This is now. And there is NEW evidence. Please see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32398782/ and try discrediting it scientifically.
"We have to be absolutely clear here, we have to hold this line: facilitated communication and all of its various versions and names is a discredited practice that has never withstood rigorous research."
Two words: Helen Keller.
"The Times article never grapples with the evidence. Instead, it substitutes anecdote for science: the mother “realized” her son understood more than expected; the facilitator 'saw tension evaporate.'"
The emotive words are the tell: the NYT is written by, and for, AWFL's.
Helen Keller did not use facilitated communication. She died in 1968, before FC really got going.
And she was deaf-blind, not intellectually disabled.
If you're arguing that her books were at least partially ghostwritten, that's plausible but not at all the same thing. "Celebrity uses ghostwriter" is a very common and boring story.
Until a couple days ago, I hadn't given her a first thought, never mind a second.
Then, by chance, I saw this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_th1EszK34
Which makes a persuasive, though not conclusive, case that her supposed accomplishments weren't all they were cracked up to be.
And FC happened long before FC really got going. The horse named "Clever Hans", for just one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
That doesn't seem very FC-ish to me at all. It's all entirely congruent with the story of Keller as I've always been told it. If anything, the youthful plagiarism makes her seem more authentic; 11-year-olds are no respecters of intellectual property.
That her writing got worse when she lost her editors is not even a little bit suspicious. "Editor actually coauthor" is no scandal, especially not when the main author is a celebrity. This seems like the sort of thing that would, for an able-bodied person, be entirely unremarkable.
The video implying that there's something suspicious about her politics is also weird. A young person adopting the political stances of her adult role models...what could be more normal?
Helen Keller could speak, so she didn’t need FC
AWFL?
Affluent White Female Liberal; also, AWFUL — Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.
T'anks!
It is a serious accusation that the Times published this knowing it is false. A less serious accusation would be that its reporters and editors are gullible fools. I am reconciled to the latter, but would be discouraged to learn the former is true.
I'd like to see the scientific proof that the NYT published a book review of a book that it knew was not written by the author. Or even proof that the book review was written by "gullible fools."
I read the Guardian article on Woody yesterday. Separately from disproven FC stuff, I looked for research that would support the opposite conclusion regarding Woody’s abilities (that this was a product of him and not his mother). This is the only recent study I could find that would slightly support claims that Woody is the author of Upward Bound: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13623613241230709
FC is disproven, I get that. And these new variations, like 'Spelling2Communicate', seem to be rebrands of FC. This study was tiny but still makes me think that there could be an inkling of truth to some of the the claims around spelling/letter boarding but ONLY for a small subset of severely autistic people, and (obviously) only when they are using a keyboard or digital keyboard independently. Maybe I'm just latching onto this hallucinatory hope like FC people. Idk. Study was interesting to me even with the small sample size. I am not educated enough to comment on it past the abstract. I think the lack of video evidence of individuals 'spelling' independently is most telling.
https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/illusions-of-literacy-in-nonspeaking-autistic-people-a-response-to-jaswal-et-al-2024 omg nvm
The conclusion states:
"If the participants in the study were able to type out sentences without an assistant on stationary iPads with flashing letters, then why, when typing sentences that aren’t guided by flashing letters, do they need the letterboard to be held up by an assistant?
Such an assistant, as all the available evidence suggests, is the one most likely to be controlling the messages, including the message that this is “the most effective means of communication available to me.” And such an assistant, as all the available evidence suggests, may well be the only truly literate person involved in producing such messages."
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...the one most likely to be controlling the messages? Why does it have to be one or the other who is in "control"? Why can't the whole process be one in which "control" passes back and forth *between* the two of them? And what exactly does a "truly literate person" mean? Are there no semi-literate people? At what point does an "illiterate" person become "literate"? Is there some magical threshold that must be crossed? And if so, how would you know where that threshold was located?
"Why can't the whole process be one in which "control" passes back and forth *between* the two of them" -- I think this is part and parcel of the problem. If it could be that via independent typing, subject and assistant would both would be independently communicating. FC/Spelling 'presumes competence' in being able to write independently while completely discounting any other forms of their communication eg body movement and any forms of vocalization. The issue of the letterboard needing to be held up by an assistant is not necessarily due to the need for an assistant but that it has never been shown to work when the facilitator is changed. You could have two facilitators the subject is equally comfortable with. You would expect either facilitator to give the same answer to the same question if they are truly giving voice to the subject. But they never do. FC/Spelling/RPM is not evidence based.
Of course they never do. They are different people! No two facilitators could ever give the same answer to anything, even if they were following a strict regimen and even if they were clones. And what's all this stuff about the need for "independent" communication? Maybe YOU need the communication to be independent -- in order to "objectively" validate your evidence -- but how do you know that Woody and his assistant need to be independent of each other? Maybe they are acting as collaborators, working INTERdependently?
Yes, if two facilitators were recording letterboard answers from the same person, they should be the same answer.
Ok, I agree, but only if they were recording letterboard answers from the same person AT THE SAME TIME, then yes, they SHOULD be the same answer.
But if they each did it at different times... say a week apart or a year later, then they might very well not give the same answer. Or even if it were only ONE facilitator, recording the same person at different times, both the facilitator AND the person will have changed. Like Heraclitus said, you can't step into the same river twice... In a few years, even FC will have changed. It's just a tool, and like any tool, it can be abused or improved. If you're ok with that, then I am too, and maybe we can just stop there. It's up to you.
I'm responding to this comment somewhat randomly, but it could equally well respond to a number of your comments.
You seem to be arguing for nuance. Sometimes nuance is the wrong approach, and sometimes there's some nuance in some cases but not the ones under consideration.
It would be incredibly easy to test if Woody has *any* understanding of the words he's tapping. It's *always* been really easy to test this. Of course Woody hasn't been tested, which makes me think he probably doesn't have *any* literacy. The fact that everyone involved avoids message-passing tests, which you or I could easily conduct in 5 minutes or less, speaks volumes.
Yes, some disability advocates (and allegedly some non-speaking people) say that these sorts of tests are an offense against dignity, but that's a preposterous fig leaf. I agree that if it had been shown that FC works in many cases, then it would be undignified to expect a non-speaking person to prove their communication ability in every context. But that's not the case. We're being asked to believe that all FC-using nonspeakers have agreed to avoid the one test that would settle things in their favor, because of ...dignity. surely *somebody* must be willing to go on the record and prove that they can communicate through FC, but it doesn't happen.
So you "agree that if it had been shown that FC works in many cases, then it would be undignified to expect a non-speaking person to prove their communication ability in every context."
And what if it's just because so much suspicion and hostility has been stirred up by people like you, that none of them wants to come forward to offer that proof, knowing how likely it is that anything they try to "say" will be debunked and will only lead to further harassment and public humiliation.
And you expect Woody Brown to step forward and be the first? Would you step forward if you were Woody? I would not.