In the August edition of Scientific American, professional skeptic Michael Schermer took on facilitated communication (FC) for autistic children, a tactic that had been thoroughly discredited in a Frontline piece on PBS back in 1993 entitled “Prisoners of Silence.” Sue Othmer and I had watched that episode at the time, and our reaction was very much the same as Michael Schermer’s. When FC was evaluated under controlled conditions, some facilitators were playing a larger role than they should have, and what appeared on the letter board was often the fulfillment of their own expectations rather than the wishes of the autistic child. In their zeal to demonstrate to the scientists just how useful FC could be, they had in fact achieved the very opposite.
Recently a study showed that some people react badly to statins. Statins have been in use for twenty years, and if some people respond badly to them, then that has also been a fact for about the same number of years. So why was a study needed? And if a study was needed, why did that same reasoning not prevail many years ago? It’s surely not that the facts have been changing. Rather, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the facts that we have already known all along.
It is probably worth observing that sometime over the past several years the milestone was undoubtedly passed in which the one millionth person benefited from one or another of our neurofeedback protocols, implemented on one or another of our three generations of neurofeedback systems: NeuroCybernetics, EEGer, and Cygnet. It’s difficult to be too precise about these estimates, in contrast to counting hamburgers at McDonalds! So the estimate is deliberately a conservative one.
If the placebo is such a big deal, why is it not being diligently studied? Why is the ‘cause’ of the placebo ‘effect’ not being looked for? If this is such a huge factor that it governs all drug studies, surely it deserves some attention in its own right.
Quick update on the weekends events. Check out www.BrainSummit.com/neuro for a re-play of this week’s talks. Also check out www.eeginfo.com for the new east coast intro classes in Boston/Cambridge, and Atlanta.
Years ago an event occurred in Los Angeles that every resident at the time surely remembers. An elderly man plowed through an open-air market in Santa Monica for which a street had been dedicated. There had been no evasive maneuvers, and the man may even have accelerated the vehicle during the encounter. Quite a number of people were killed or injured.
The EEG Info Newsletter circulates via email at least once a month. A variety of topics related to the Neurofeedback / EEG Biofeedback field are covered in over 300 articles.
In the August edition of Scientific American, professional skeptic Michael Schermer took on facilitated communication (FC) for autistic children, a tactic that had been thoroughly discredited in a Frontline piece on PBS back in 1993 entitled “Prisoners of Silence.” Sue Othmer and I had watched that episode at the time, and our reaction was very much the same as Michael Schermer’s. When FC was evaluated under controlled conditions, some facilitators were playing a larger role than they should have, and what appeared on the letter board was often the fulfillment of their own expectations rather than the wishes of the autistic child. In their zeal to demonstrate to the scientists just how useful FC could be, they had in fact achieved the very opposite. 
