Tinted Lenses

let's another person not involve with the person that was in Coma help with the typing.
let's blindfold the woman facilitating the typing. She is suppose to be helping the man during the typing and not guiding the device towards the keyboard. Well, that means that the woman doesn't need to see the keyboard at all, just sense were the man is trying to guide the device.

let's show the man a 4 digits number and then ask the facilitator to help the man type the number he just saw. I bet she will have excuses for not being able to type the number.

On the one hand, I cannot believe people still accept Facilitated Communication. FC is so discredited it was even on an episode of Law and Order at least a decade ago, where they ripped it apart. If TV writers can figure out that the facilitator should be blinded in order to ensure an accurate test, it should be possible for the general public too.

On the other hand, I can see why his loved ones are strongly motivated to believe that he's still "in there" and wants to communicate with them. The desire to have one's loved on back can overpower reason. Still, for the rest of us it should be so obvious that this is bunk. On the part of the facilitator, this borders on fraud.

What's troubling here is not merely the fact that the pseudoscience of "facilitated communication" appears to have been swallowed whole, and over-credulously, by a very large number of folks in the mass media. But now that the problem has been raised, they appear to be on the defensive about it. For instance, the NY Times Lede blog posted an entry which essentially says that FC has critics -- but nevertheless insists it's for real in Houben's case (if in no other known example), and the critics are not to be believed.

The proof? The word of a doctor involved in his case. Sorry, but that's not good enough. No one already connected to this case has any business claiming to verify the validity of FC here. Moreover, this doctor and the reporter(s) know that. I think it's outrageous that they actually expect the criticism to die down.

What the mass media ought to do ... if they had any integrity ... would be to admit there's more here than meets the eye, that FC is (at best) deeply flawed, and work on a genuine verification. Then ... if the FC turns out not to be verified ... they need to "man up" (for lack of a better term) and admit they let this story get the better of them.

Anything less than this is an insult to readers/viewers/listeners ... and is a disservice to Houben's family, which I daresay has already been through quite enough as it is.