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Katharine Beals and team work hard, to the level of fanaticism, to discredit techniques used to help nonspeaking people with poor motor control or apraxia be able to communicate. Facilitated communication has been discredited by a small team who seem to make it their life's goal
They are not scientists, though. They are bullies. These are the same people trying to commandeer ground to discredit that sensory processing disorder affects behaviors. I have evidence of far more than a decade of academic and social bullying of autistic people at their hands
They are part of the crew responsible for editing the Wikipedia articles and having them removed for people like Tito Mukhopadhyay, who literally can use a pencil and write his words, yet they still try to invalidate his words. There's loads of evidence!
Katharine Beals tried to assert that the reason DJ Savarese, a nonspeaker with an award-winning documentary, fooled 120+ professionals with whom he worked into getting through high school and graduating college because they were too polite to admit he was a fraud and not capable.
So yes, facilitated communication has been discredited by a cabal of behaviorists because when nonspeakers can speak, it ruins their ABA sales pitch. They also HATE the phrase, "presume competence." Facilitated communication is a teaching method, not a science.
They call FC psuedoscience because they don't want people to believe that the humans they write off as "severe" have complex thoughts and deserve autonomy and to have opinions. But, many scientific disciplines go into FC. Let's break it down. It's super simple.
If someone has a spinal injury and is partially paralyzed, the first recourse will be physical therapy. It will involve a lot of help at the beginning. Therapists will have to help move the limbs of the person who has lost motor control. They are training that person's mind.
They are developing the neural pathways to control those movements. It takes concentration and focus and a lot of repetition. It doesn't always work. It works better for some than others. Or, say you have a child's gymnastics class. It's time to try back handsprings.
This is a dangerous maneuver with a high risk of injury, so there are often two people who spot that person and help them to build the muscle memory to make that move. Some kids get it quickly, some need a long time and lots of help. Same principle.
And if one person can helped to type who otherwise had no way to communicate, then it's not a throw-away idea. The good news is, LOTS of people have been helped with FC and RPM. If safeguards can be put into place to minimize the potential for facilitator influence, then great!
But a few people doing it wrong in the past and not using safeguards is not a reason to discredit something that works. It's a reason to protect against abuses, which could be easily done. That's not what they want. They want it to go away-- and those who use it.
If someone can write with a pencil or type independently, like Sue Rubin or Tito Mukhopadhyay, why would you try to discredit them, Katharine? Why not celebrate that autistic people with marked disability found a way to communicate their inner worlds previously unknown to us?
Katharine, do you know anything about trying to organize people to leave negative feedback on this book before it was even published? amazon.com/Communication-…
Here's a link to that page, plus a screenshot. facebook.com/SLPsAgainstPse…
Do you have anything to do with this, Katharine? Because this doesn't seem like you're against pseudoscience. It seems like you're against autistics. 
Because if you had any part of that, it would be really hateful. I mean, that would be some anti-autistic #altautism bullying. The world sees this, Katharine. No more operating against autistics with total impunity.
No more characterizing the neurodiversity movement as a bunch of radical extremists. You're the one who acts like an extremist. You're the one who operates within a very privileged network over the trajectory of autistic well-being while favoring cronyism over ethics.
Time to tell the truth. #iStandwithNonSpeakers #altAutism
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