Mick Hartley

James Marriott in the Times gives a scathing review to The Telepathy Tapes, a podcast from one Ky Dickens:

The Telepathy Tapes is animated by contempt for all the values that underpin science: respect for evidence, a willingness to be wrong, a commitment to what is actually true instead of what you wish were true. In a happier time Dickens would have merely been an anonymous crank. Right now her podcast is at the top of the charts in Britain and America….

Over the course of the podcast Dickens relates a series of “experiments” that “prove” autistic children can correctly guess which numbers and words their parents are thinking of. In fact, video clips posted online apparently show the parents “cueing” their children in various ways — by subtly pointing or shifting their bodies. Naturally there is plenty of breathlessly recounted anecdotal evidence as well. One mother, Monisha, attests that on one occasion she was watching television and discovered that her son, who was upstairs in another room, knew all about the programme even though he had not been sitting next to her. “Whoever is looking for data,” Monisha says, “Achille is the data.” Statisticians like to observe that the plural of anecdote is not data. Well, the singular of anecdote is certainly not data.

All this is accompanied by much chuckling, patronising commentary on the foolishness and small-mindedness of scientists. “The reigning philosophy in science is something called ‘materialism’,” Dickens explains wearily. This means scientists dedicate themselves to “things we can measure and observe”. How ludicrous of scientists to dedicate themselves only to things they can measure and observe. The idiots! “Telepathy,” Dickens says laughing, “falls waaay outside the materialism lane.” Sadly, “there’s just not a lot of support” for people who “are thinking outside the box”.Somewhat inevitably listeners can provide support themselves through the crowdfunding appeal on the Telepathy Tapes website, which aims to raise a modest $450,000. After all, who could think of a worthier or more urgent medical cause than funding research into telepathy?

Dickens turns out to have remarkably grand ideas about her place in scientific history. “If what the families were saying was true,” she exclaims breathlessly, “this research could completely shift our paradigm, how humanity sees itself and consciousness.” After all, she says, “it’s not abnormal for scientific breakthroughs to be met with scepticism. That happened to Galileo when he proposed that the sun and not the Earth was the centre of the universe. It happened to Gregor Mendel when he introduced his theory of genetics.” For the avoidance of doubt, Ky Dickens is not the next Galileo.

And telepathy is only the beginning. Soon we’re onto the subject of whether non-verbal autistic children can see ghosts (of course they can) and the magical qualities of stones and crystals. One mother explains to Dickens that stones have “a very unique set of traits” and transmit mysterious vibrations. “I googled this myself and it’s true,” says an awed Dickens. Write that on the gravestone of our civilisation.

Echoes here of the old Facilitated Communication scam, which was supposed to allow people with communication problems like autism to "speak" through a keyboard while being guided by a facilitator. Unsurprisingly it turned out that these facilitators were the ones doing the communication.

There is widespread agreement within the scientific community and among disability advocacy organizations that FC is a pseudoscience. Research indicates that the facilitator is the source of the messages obtained through FC, rather than the disabled person. The facilitator may believe they are not the source of the messages due to the ideomotor effect, which is the same effect that guides a Ouija board and dowsing rods….

Facilitated communication has been called "the single most scientifically discredited intervention in all of developmental disabilities".

The mention of Ouija boards is apt. Different age, same old credulity.

Autism, perhaps understandably, has attracted more than its fair share of crank theories – most famously Bruno Bettelheim's Refrigerator Mother Theory, which blamed autism on lack of maternal emotional warmth: a doubly cruel acccusation for the unfortunate mothers of autistic children.

More nonsense to fill in that daft ideas shaped hole, alongside gender theory…