Created and hosted by mainstream documentarian Ty Dickens, The Telepathy Tapes is a professionally produced, serious-seeming podcast that claims non-verbal people with autism are telepathic, can see the future, and can talk to the dead. They all meet each other in a “telepathic chat room” called The Hill, too. Basically, if The Telepathy Tapes is correct, everything we know about the mind and reality itself is incorrect.
The structure of The Telepathy Tapes is telling. It begins with the relatively "modest" claim that non speakers with autism can tell what people are thinking, even if they can't communicate it in traditional ways. The podcast seems to honor listener skepticism by acknowledging how "out there" its claims are, and it saves its more esoteric claims—a "telepathic chat room" where non speakers gather, communication through lucid dreaming, etc.—for later episodes, when presumably a baseline of belief has been established in listeners.
It feels designed to convince—there's a skeptical member of the podcast crew whose mind is changed, and there's even video evidence on the podcast's site (behind a paywall) so you can judge for yourself. But The Telepathy Tapes leaves an important piece of information out of its first, trust-establishing, episode: all of the non speakers' communications are being facilitated, usually by the person whose mind is supposedly being read.
A brief history of facilitated communication
Something like facilitated communication began in Europe in the 1960s and Australia in the 1970s, but it wasn't until 1989 that educator Douglas Biklen brought FC into the United States. Biklen and other early FC researchers tried the techniques with people with cerebral palsy, head injuries, Down syndrome, and autism, and reported extraordinary results: people previously thought of as unable to communicate at all were able to speak to their parents for the first time. Some wrote poetry, went to college, and gave TedX Talks. The scientific community was dubious, but not the mass media, which aired pieces like this:
The first such case was heard in 1990 in Australia and involved a 28-year-old woman who had severe disabilities. "Carla" was removed from her home by state authorities after messages obtained through FC indicated she was being sexually abused. Carla's parents' defense team conducted double-blind tests that demonstrated that the only meaningful responses obtained through FC were when the facilitator knew the questions being asked of Carla, ending the case. The rest of the FC abuse cases resolved in much the same way. The scientific community thoroughly debunked the claims of FC proponents, and FC disappeared from mainstream view. Until The Telepathy Tapes.
The videos provided by The Telepathy Tapes demonstrate the shortcomings of facilitated communication. Below is an image of a non speaker and guide using Spelling to Communicate, aka The Rapid Prompting Method or Spelling, a more recent variation of FC where the facilitators don't touch the subject. Many of the subjects in The Telepathy Tapes are spellers.
Credit: The Telepathy Tapes - Fair UseTo be fair, in episode 8 of The Telepathy Tapes, Dickens discusses the controversy around FC, but frames it in terms of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association suppressing spelling because of "outdated research, stigmas, and the long held belief that non speakers just aren't competent," leaving out the fact that no scientific study of spelling (or any other FC technique) has ever passed a double-blind study, a bar you have to clear long before you start talking about telepathy. As the ASHA puts it: "There is no research showing that RPM is effective in producing independent communication. Indeed, there is active resistance by RPM proponents to conducting research on the technique."
The ideomotor reflex and Facilitated Communication
The ideomotor reflex describes involuntary physical movements in response to ideas, thoughts, or expectations. Thinking about something can unconsciously trigger a physical action. This is why Ouija boards produce conversations with ghosts and how water dowsers can find underground springs. In Facilitated Communication, the facilitator is guiding the subject towards a specific response, even though they're not aware they're doing it.
Anyone can be fooled by ideomotor effect—intelligence and training doesn't make you immune—and realizing that you have been mistaken can be devastating. Watch this interview from 60 Minutes with a couple of smart, well-meaning facilitators to see what I mean:
In the early twentieth century, mathematics teacher and amateur horse trainer Wilhelm von Osten announced that his horse, Hans, could do math. To demonstrate, Von Osten would ask things like, "If the eighth day of the month comes on a Tuesday, what is the date of the following Friday?" and Hans would answer by tapping his hoof eleven times.
The panel separated Hans from its trainer to ensure he wasn't cueing the animal. They performed tests without any spectators to make sure no one else was helping the horse cheat. They wrote the questions themselves, and made sure Hans couldn't see the answers, but even under these conditions, Hans could still correctly answer math questions.
I'm not comparing non speakers with autism to horses, but Facilitated Communications and Clever Hans' math skills fall apart at the same point: If the subject can't see, hear, or touch the facilitator, or the facilitator doesn't know the "correct answer," there is no meaningful result.
The problem of testing for telepathy
"Traditional" Facilitated Communication can be disproved relatively easily by showing the non speaker an image, then showing the facilitator a different image, as you can see here:
The podcast even flips things upside down in a segment involving Uno cards. In this test, only the facilitator knows what Uno card has been chosen, but the subject guesses the right answer again and again. Instead of being seen as evidence that the communication must be from the facilitator because the subject hasn't seen the card, it's presented as evidence that the non-verbal subject is telepathic.
The Telepathy Tapes does offer a preemptive explanation for tests of telepathy that don't work. It's a familiar argument for why supernatural effects can't be demonstrated in a laboratory: psychic abilities, by their nature, resist scientific experimentation. The vibe of skepticism upsets the psychic balance, or the disbelief of the experimenters is too upsetting to the psychic, so the power can only be demonstrated to people who believe in them.
The problem with The Telepathy Tapes
Part of the argument of The Telepathy Tapes is that scientific skepticism is silencing the voices of non-verbal people. "Why should anyone deny the lived experience of parents who have found a connection to their children?" the podcast seems to ask.
That's not the only problem with the podcast. Mainstream society is denying or discounting the abilities of handicapped people is nothing new, and some autistic people really do demonstrate remarkable talents in different areas, but imagining non-verbal people have mystical powers distorts their lived experiences too.
"The deeper question such claims raise touches on how society perceives neurodiversity," explains Dr. Singh. "This fascination with telepathy can reflect a desire to ascribe unique, even mystical abilities to people with autism, which, though well-intentioned, may belittle their experiences. Rather than superpowers, we should focus efforts on supporting non speakers through accessible, evidence-based resources that help them interact with the world on their own terms."
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