Rose Rimler
Appearances
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
How often do they find it was, in fact, the person with autism who was doing the communicating?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Wow. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, so in the case with Betsy, the investigators concluded that the sex abuse allegations were totally unfounded.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
In the Betsy case, we do know what's going on here because the facilitator like came out and talked about it, wrote a paper about it. And she explained that, you know, she'd had some doubts in the beginning, like, oh, am I really am I moving Betsy's hand or is it really Betsy? It's kind of hard to tell.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But there was so much momentum and it was so exciting to think that she was making breakthroughs with her student that she kind of let herself believe in it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, I think that's usually what people think is going on. It's actually called the ideomotor effect, the Ouija board. You don't, everyone thinks they're not, well, I don't know. I would sometimes move the planchette on purpose, but... Many of us just think we're not moving it, but then it does move and especially might move to a letter that makes a lot of sense after the previous letter.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And how does that happen? There's also something called the Chevrolet pendulum illusion where you think you're holding the pendulum steady in the air. But when you think about moving it to the right or to the left or up or down, suddenly it starts moving that way. And you're like, I'm not even doing that. But it's just like your brain is sending these very tiny signals to your hand.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And that is enough to make very small movements that can have very big consequences, you know?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. Because just to be clear, these abuse allegations we're talking about, that's part of the Frontline documentary, not the telepathy tapes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Exactly. Yeah. So that's the question, right? Is that what they're doing? Yeah.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yes. In all of these cases, the person with autism is speaking via a facilitator. It varies in exactly what the facilitator is doing and how they're communicating, but there's always somebody else there that has to be there. It's not fully independent. And it's typically the parent who's the facilitator. Oh! Yeah. So the... The one whose supposed mind is being read.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, yes and no. So what they're doing in the telepathy tapes is not technically facilitated communication in the classic sense because they're not literally holding the person's hand and hovering it over a board. What they're typically doing in the telepathy tapes, they hold up a letter board and then the person with autism points it. And then they call out P-I-R.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And in fact, the host of the podcast, she said, she just said at one point, like, oh, there was this controversy with facilitated communication, but this is different. This is different. And the big thing that they point out is we're not really touching the kid in the same way that they were touching them before. This method is often called spelling to communicate or just spelling.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, she points out that it's problematic that the facilitator is also the transcriber of the message. Like if you're holding a letter board, A, you can move it around slightly, and B, you can say, oh, you've selected the letter P. Oh, now you've selected the letter I. That gives you a lot of latitude in deciding where exactly the person's finger went.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And also they are often touching. So like there's a hand on the back or in the case of the mom and the daughter from Mexico, the mom is often touching the daughter's forehead or holding her chin. In the telepathy tapes, did you watch the videos? I did. So there are videos available for some of the tests. You have to pay a small fee and become a member, but it's on their website.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And I did watch them. In fact, I watched some of them with Katherine. I didn't see any obvious examples where you see someone pointing at a T and the facilitator calls out P or something like that. But it's clear from these videos that typically the facilitator is really involved in one way or another.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So we watched one where the daughter is sitting next to the mom, but they have a partition between them. The mom is shown a random number generator on someone's iPad, and this random number, 978, is generated. Here I'm watching it with Catherine. The mom sees that the number is 978. They take away the partition. She's kind of gently touching her on her forehead.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
It really is. So Kai Dickens, that's the host. That's who we just heard from. She is typically a documentary filmmaker, but she heard about this phenomenon and she wanted to study it, document it. And so she ends up visiting a lot of people who have had this experience with autistic people in their lives.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Easily. We know that's true. And actually, the fact that this could be subconscious really explains a lot, I think. If the person facilitating is spelling out their own thoughts but doesn't realize they're spelling out their own thoughts, that explains why they might genuinely think, oh, my God, this person is reading my mind.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But there was one case that didn't really make sense. And I couldn't figure out how it was possible. This is a young autistic man and his mom. He seems to be able to read his mother's thoughts by typing them out independently on a keyboard. So in this case, no one's holding up a letter board for him. Kai describes them as not touching. And I watched the videos online. And that's true.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
There's nobody. They aren't touching. So their telepathy really does look pretty convincing. So for this, I called up Jim Todd. He's a professor of psychology at Eastern Michigan University.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Like with Catherine, I watched one of these videos with him. Can you see my screen?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So in this video, the son is sitting next to the mom. And he has like an iPad sort of device that when he touches the letter, the device says the letter out loud in like this robot voice. Uh-huh. So in this test, the mom is shown an image. The son can't see it. It's a picture of a crocodile. Okay. And the son is asked to spell out what his mom can see.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And we can see him pick out letters on this device. And the computer starts spelling out crocodile.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Did you see it? Did you see what Jim saw? Yeah. From the mom. Uh-huh. She played again. Okay. And look at the mom, not the son.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Every time he moves a, he selects a letter just before that she has moved.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I did reach out to Kai to ask specific questions like that. But her team said that she was too busy working on season two of the telepathy tapes and making a documentary about it as well. So she couldn't get back to us.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. I also reached out to the mom in the crocodile video and I didn't hear back from her either.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I will say, in the episode, they say a lot of stuff about how, oh, we can do this across the room. And then they start to do that, but then the son becomes uncomfortable and doesn't cooperate. And so they say, well, he needs to sit next to his mom for the emotional support. So, stuff like that happens. I mean, what's...
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
You can make that argument. I mean, in that video we just saw, it does seem like the young man is having a good time, like enjoying being with his mother. But I've seen plenty of other videos from other sources that show this technique where it doesn't really go that way. And Catherine has too.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
You know, I have noticed that, but I don't really understand necessarily what I'm seeing. I don't know much about people with severe autism. So when you see someone like kind of trying to get away or calling out or saying, I'm sad. There was a video of a girl who was doing this. I'm sad. I've seen it. That seems like she's saying she's sad. She doesn't want to be doing that.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, it certainly does. And in fact, a professional organization called the American Speech Language Hearing Association has explicitly said, don't use... These methods of communicating, this facilitated communication, the newer ones that are sometimes called like spelling to communicate or rapid prompting method, don't use them. The stuff happening on the telepathy tapes. Yes.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And one reason why is that they say these methods strip people of their human right to independent communication.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, yeah. As far as the whole people with autism are telepathic thing. Because, you know, the show goes on to say a lot of other stuff, extraordinary stuff. But all these extraordinary claims, they're all hinging on this supposition that the folks with autism can send messages to their parents or their teachers.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But we know now that the way they are doing this is with these like letterboard methods or similar methods that are totally bunk. And we can't trust that it's the kids' message coming through. In fact, we shouldn't expect that to be the case based on all we know about how unlikely this is to work.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, the stories were interesting and honestly really intriguing. Obviously, there's been skeptics here saying that something else is going on to explain this. So I wanted to find out what exactly was happening. And I got especially curious when I heard a scientist interviewed on the show say this.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I don't know if I'll be listening. But, you know, this doesn't put a cap on our episode because there is a lot more to talk about when it comes to the science of telepathy. There's a lot to tell you. I did promise you that, right?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, and I looked into that. So after the break, I'm going to tell you about telepathy The pretty like bonkers way that scientists have tried to test for telepathy and the results that are actually quite surprising.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Our first question comes from Kelsey on Instagram, and she asks, how do you wade through all the misinformation and inaccurate information to get to the truth?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Sounds good. Someone named Nishala, also on Instagram, she asks, have you ever considered doing stand-up? There is talent here. Oh!
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
That's five out of ten, I'd say, maybe. We'll let Nishala be the judge of that one.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, I talked about this with Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Chris French. Until recently, he was the head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths University of London. Okay. Anomalistic psychology means stuff outside the norm, maybe even the paranormal. Right, right, right.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Chris has spent much of his career looking at paranormal stuff in kind of a rigorous way. So he tries to figure out if it's real or if there's a more mundane explanation. So you're a professional party pooper?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay, so one common way to test for telepathy involves something called the Gansfeld Protocol.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So the Ganzfeld protocol, and by the way, Ganzfeld is German for whole field. So the experimenters set someone up in a very controlled, very subdued environment so that the telepathic signal has as much of a chance as possible to come through. So the people in the experiment will wear headphones with white or pink noise playing.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
They make sure there's nothing for them to see by putting on these goggles on their eyes.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So someone's in another room. In another room. In another room, and they're looking at an image or maybe a video clip. And they're really focusing on it, and they're really trying to send it to the other person.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So then after some time, the person takes off their silly ping pong goggles, comes out of the room. They're shown four images or four video clips. And they say, which is the one that was being beamed to you? So they pick one. And so if you were just picking by chance, you would get this right 25% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But lots of these studies find that people pick the right image or the right video clip more than 25% of the time. How much more? 32% of the time. Okay. That number comes from a meta-analysis that came out just last year. They looked at over 100 experiments done in the Gansfeld condition over the last 50 years. Uh-huh.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
It includes some studies on clairvoyance and other psychic phenomena tested using the Gansfeld protocol, but it's mostly tests of telepathy. And the authors concluded that there was a small but statistically significant effect here.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
That's not all. You can find something similar with other tests that have been done, like these telephone telepathy tests. You tell people that they're going to get a phone call from one of four specific people, and they have to guess as the phone is ringing which of these four people is the one calling them. By chance, they should get the right person 25% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
A lot of studies find they get it right more often than that, 30 or 40% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, so this meta-analysis, this Gansfeld one, it made a big splash among the telepathy crowd. No doubt. It was definitely referenced on the Telepathy Tapes podcast. And so I asked Chris about it. Did it rock your world?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. This isn't Chris's first radio, and it's not his first Gansfeld meta-analysis claiming a 30% hit rate. Okay. He said that there was actually something very similar back in the 90s. He was younger and more naive then, right?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Hi, Wendy. So, by telepathy, we mean the concept of beaming thoughts directly into someone else's brain or being able to read other people's thoughts.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, there's a few funny things that are going on here. So we know that in studies about paranormal stuff, if the test is done by a believer, they tend to find an effect. Well, if it's done by a skeptic, they tend not to find an effect. Like, imagine that you're more of a skeptic, like Chris, and you run one of these telepathy experiments, and you find that people guess right 25% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. 100%. And that's what I've been doing. So the last, you know, month or so. And it's, you know, it turns out scientists have been studying this for some time. And I learned a lot of really interesting stuff. Wendy, like, this has just been so fascinating to work on. It's been surprising. It's been infuriating. Sometimes it's fun. So there's like a lot to unpack here.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
As a skeptic, when you get a result like that, you might say, oh, okay. All right. No effect here. Done. Right? If you're a believer, you might look at that and say, I'm going to go look through the data again. I would have expected something else to happen. Hmm. So I'm going to go and I'm going to look through the raw data. Maybe I'll get rid of some outliers.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Maybe I'll find a piece of the data and I'll just look at this subgroup.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And vice versa, you know, if you're a skeptic and you get a result that says telepathy is real, you might start combing through that data very carefully, you know?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So to avoid this, there has been a movement, and this is especially true in psychology research, to pre-register your study. So you basically publish a protocol ahead of time saying, this is how I'm going to do the study. This is how I'm going to analyze my data. And then that can't happen, right? This like tweaking and nudging after the fact.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And when you look at that meta-analysis, they're not looking specifically at studies that were pre-registered. So it's really hard to know if we can trust them. Oh, no. This makes me so sad. I'm like, scientists, do your job properly. I know. Well, funny you should mention that because not long ago, there was a very concerted effort to do a proper study on psychic phenomena. Okay. Yeah.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So specifically, they were trying to replicate a study from 2011 on precognition. So like predicting the future, basically. Yes, yes, yes. The way this study worked, they had a computer program they were showing to people with a picture of two curtains. And they asked people, of these two curtains, which one has an erotic image hiding behind it? Oh.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
So that people would guess and then, only then, would the computer program assign the erotic image randomly to one or the other slot.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yes. Okay. Wow. In the original study, people got this right more than 50% of the time.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Which the authors suggested could mean they were actually predicting the future.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay. There was a lot of attention on this study at the time. No doubt. Yeah, and skeptics said...
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I believe so, yes. They actually controlled for people's sexual preferences. So if you wanted to see a willy, you might get to see a willy. If you wanted to see a boobie, you might get to see a boobie.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, so because a lot of skeptics said, like, we don't like this part of your methodology or this thing you did about your stats, what basically happened is that the skeptics and the believers got together, designed a new research protocol, designed a new study they both agreed on. They pre-registered it. They said, this is the protocol we're going to use. Great.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And this is how we're going to do it and how we're going to analyze it. Yes. It took five years. It took 10 labs participating. Yes. 30-ish authors, skeptics and believers working together to look to see, is there an effect here? Wow, a new future is possible. And what did they find? When all this was said and done.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And I'm just like excited to tell you about it. Great. It's all coming up after the break.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
We don't have the same exact thing for telepathy, but a lot of the... issues that this precognition study we're confronting are very similar to issues that people have with telepathy research. So I don't know. I think it's pretty damning to telepathy as well, but would love to see a similar group effort doing some of these studies.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
I was hoping you wouldn't ask me that. Yeah. Yeah. Are they reaching for quantum physics here? Yes, they are. Quantum entanglement specifically, which is about like this weird connection between subatomic particles where they seem to influence each other. And it doesn't matter how far apart they are.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And I did actually I did talk to a physicist who I was referred to by someone who's who's sort of telepathy friendly as a physicist who's also telepathy friendly. He's open minded about it. And I asked him, does quantum entanglement, could that explain how telepathy works? And he said, no. And I said, do we have any known physical explanation for how telepathy could work? And he said, no.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And he's like, look, maybe it happens. But if it's happening, it's happening outside of physics as we understand it. And I'm open to that. That's what I'm open to. Like there's stuff about the spirituality we don't understand.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
All right. So especially considering that there's no known mechanism that this could work. Looking at the research, the Gansfeld, the telephone telepathy stuff, you've got to believe one of two things. One is that the telepathy vibes are there. They're just very weak and very fickle. Or you can believe that there are no vibes. Right. What do you think, Wendy? Weak, fickle vibes or no vibes?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, which I think we underestimate when we come up with a paranormal theory.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
explanation the human mind the human body common shared humanity you know whatever that is like that is impressive enough to produce a lot of these incredible things that happen between people uh and that's good enough for me personally do you want to try all right we've been working together for a long time do you want to try send me uh think of an image think of an image okay i'm looking how about this i'll look at a painting on my wall
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay. I'm looking at it really hard. Wendy, I want to send this image to Wendy.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
A cat. A cat. No, but you know what's so funny? It's an ocean? No. You mentioned a jellyfish. You mentioned a cat. I do have pictures of both those things in my apartment. I just am not happy. That's not the one I'm looking at. I'm looking at a painting of flowers, poppies. Oh. The cat picture's right here. So if I'd happened to look this way, you would have gotten it right.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
They can click on the link to our transcript. That's where all the citations are. And that link is in the show notes. Excellent.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay, so first we're going to talk about some of the specific claims made in the show, The Telepathy Tapes. Then we're going to zoom out and talk about the body of research that scientists have done on telepathy. Great. Let's do it. So the show is about people with autism who are non-verbal or who speak very little.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
That's an idea that's been around for centuries, but it's having a bit of a moment right now, probably because of this very popular podcast called The Telepathy Tapes.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
What you hear over and over again on this podcast is that their family can never speak to them or really communicate with them until they learn this method of communicating where the non-verbal person points at letters on a board or picks at keys on a keyboard. And essentially they learn to painstakingly spell out words and communicate that way.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And then all of a sudden, this is where the telepathy comes in, they start spelling out things that they shouldn't know. So they'll like tell their parent, oh, I know that you went to Target today. But the parent's like, I never told them that I was at Target today. Or they might say, I know that you brought me cookies for a snack, but you left them in the car.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And that person's like, I never told you I was going to bring you cookies. I didn't tell you I left them in the car. How do they know these things? And they start thinking, this person can read my mind. Huh. So if that was all the podcast offered, these like little anecdotes, or there could be a million little explanations or coincidence or luck, you know, that wouldn't be that interesting. Okay.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
But where it gets really interesting is that the host of the show doesn't just take people at their word for this. She goes and she specifically does tests to test that they are in fact telepathic.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Well, so for example, in the first episode, she goes to visit a young woman from Mexico who is supposedly telepathic with her mom. And so like I described, this is a nonverbal autistic person who communicates by pointing at a board with letters and numbers on it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And so this is the kind of test that Kai sets up. So she'll show something only to the mom, make sure the daughter can't see it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And, you know, the the daughter can't see it. Sometimes she's blindfolded or they'll put a partition between the mom and the daughter. So the daughter can't see the picture. But then the mom says, OK, what am I looking at? Read my mind. What am I looking at? And we hear and I'll I'll play a little bit for you.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The daughter, even though she can't see the picture, she starts pointing at letters and she slowly spells out. Remember, this is a picture of a pirate or pirata in Spanish. Who?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yes, it was the top podcast on Spotify earlier this year. It actually knocked Joe Rogan off the number one spot briefly. And it's all about how telepathy is real.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, hearing the cameraman's reaction is pretty compelling because you're like, wow, he was actually in the room and looking carefully, right? And he said it seemed real. But the thing is, when autism experts hear about this, they immediately see a problem.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And it goes back to how people are communicating and the history of people trying to communicate with those who can't speak. I talked about this with Katherine Beals. She's an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere. And I talked to her specifically about this case. So does this impress you?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The perfect storm to see what's actually going on here. And Catherine says we got to go back a few decades. Actually, the story starts in Australia, Wendy. You'll be happy to know.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Someone there had invented a special way for people who can't speak to communicate. And in the 90s, this technique spread from Australia to the U.S. And it really took off here. It's a bit different from the way people are communicating in the telepathy tapes. With the letter board. The letter board. This is called facilitated communication. Here's how it works.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The non-speaking person sits in front of, you know, some kind of keyboard. Right. Next to them is a facilitator who gently holds their arm or their wrist and helps them select the letters on the keyboard that they want to select.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Not exactly. For some of these folks, they actually need someone to help guide their hands to the letters to use the keyboard, or they don't do it at all. Oh, okay. And so once this method started being used more and more, these incredible things started happening.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. If you look at the comments, you'll see people saying, this is revolutionary. This has moved me to tears. I'm a believer. My life has changed because of this podcast. And so, you know, I was very curious. And so I listened to it. I listened to the whole thing. Wendy, I know that you haven't listened to it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah. And this, as you can imagine, that's a huge breakthrough, right? And it got a lot of attention. It was all over the news. It was on TV. There was a primetime live episode. It eventually won an Emmy. Diane Sawyer reported on this as like this breakthrough. And you can hear how powerful this seemed.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
If only I could find a way to communicate. Yeah, your child has never spoken to you, has never said I love you. And now there's this thing that says there's a lot going on in their head and they can tell you about it.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Yeah, that is a concern that people were actually people from the beginning. Some people did have that concern because you're holding someone's arm and potentially moving it for them, even if you don't think you are. So it could be that the facilitator is controlling what this person is typing.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Exactly, that kind of thing. And there's always some skeptics out there. But for a while, because this is just so cool to people, they just kept chugging along. But then the cracks started to show in these very dramatic ways because in some cases, people were spelling out very disturbing messages. Some of their stories were told in a frontline documentary. It was called Prisoners of Silence.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
It came out in 1993. And here they are talking about a teenage girl with autism named Betsy.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Social services were called. Betsy was taken out of her home, put in foster care. An investigation was started. But the people working this case were like, can we really trust these allegations? They came from this unusual technique. Someone else is holding Betsy's hand and helping her point out letters, type. So what they wanted to know was, who is writing the messages?
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Is it the autistic person or is it the facilitator? So they set up tests. for Betsy and Katherine describe the kind of test that they did.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Kind of, with a key difference. They're showing two different pictures. They're showing one picture to the facilitator, so in this example, a picture of a shoe, and one picture to the person with autism, in this example, a hat.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Very fishy. Because that's what the facilitator saw, not what they saw. Yes.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
Okay, so let me tell you the premise. This show is about a very specific group of people. This is people with autism who are very limited in how they communicate and who require a lot of support. And the show says that people in this group are able to communicate telepathically with their family and with teachers and other people. And in fact, here is the show's tagline.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
In the telepathy tapes, the person with autism is being asked to spell out what someone else sees. And here they're being asked to spell out what they themselves see.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
The Frontline documentary is really useful because it actually shows what these tests were like. And they talk about what happened when they ran tests like this with Betsy.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
And that happened in every test they tried. Every single test.
Science Vs
Telepathy: Is It For Real?
In studies as well. Every single test? Yes, there was an autistic program in New York that had been using facilitated communication with 12 of their autistic students. Getting good results, they thought, but they said, oh, maybe we should test this, make sure. They tested each student in the same way. I asked Catherine what happened.