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The most downloaded podcast on Spotify is no longer The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogans long-running show has been overtaken by The Telepathy Tapes, a new, 10-part documentary series that aims to explore the supernatural abilities of non-speakers with autisma subject a lot of people are getting very wrong.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, ifThe Telepathy Tapes is correct, everything we know about the mind and reality itself is incorrect.Im the opposite of convinced. Despite its captivating production, sincere interviews, and experts with advanced degrees, everything presented in The Telepathy Tapes has a non-supernatural explanation. Nothing here is even new: its all slightly spun versions of claims that were debunked over 100 years ago.Explaining the extraordinary claims of The Telepathy TapesThe 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 claimsa "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. Much of episode one, "Unveiling the Hidden World of Telepathic Communication in a Silenced Community," consists of descriptions and recording of scientific-seeming tests where non speakers seemingly read the minds of others, and the podcast's more extreme claims are built on these foundations. It feels designed to convincethere'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 communicationFacilitated communication (FC), also known as supported typing, is a technique which claims to allow non-verbal people to communicate. The theory is that non speakers lack the fine motor skills to speak, write, or point, but if they are supported by another person who steadies their hands or holds their elbows, they can point at or type, the letters they want and thus communicate. Proponents liken the technique to a person with wobbly ankles using a cane to help them walk. 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: But along with these uplifting stories came numerous allegations of sexual abuse, and the thus the necessity to prove the veracity of Facilitated Communications in court. 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 Use RPM involves pointing to letters "to form words on a letter board, typing device, and/or by handwriting." One of its prime rules is the facilitator doesn't touch the non verbal person. But as you can see in the image above, the communicator holds the letter board, which allows the facilitator to move to the board to provide the "communication," but that's only one way facilitators could be guiding their partners' responses.To 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 CommunicationMost claims of paranormal or psychic abilities are spread by conmen or magicians, but this doesn't seem to be the case for Facilitated Communications and spelling. I don't doubt that proponents of spelling believe it's real. I don't think facilitators are consciously guiding their subjects, and I don't think the parents are trying to trick anyone. But there's an explanation for all of this that doesn't involve the supernatural: the ideomotor reflex.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 effectintelligence and training doesn't make you immuneand 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: The kind of unconscious "cueing" that seems to explain FC can work even if the facilitator isn't guiding the subject's hands or touching them at all. People can pick up on subtle movements and give a desired response. So can horses. The strange case of Clever Hans, the horse who did mathIn 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. Clever Hans, the intelligent horse, drew crowds, but also skepticism, so a panel of professionals consisting of a veterinarian, a circus manager, a cavalry officer, a number of schoolteachers, and the director of the Berlin zoological gardens was convened to test the claims. 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. The panel initially concluded the that there was no trickery involved, but they passed the investigation on to psychologist Oskar Pfungst, who looked deeper. Pfungst's more rigorous tests showed Hans could only give correct answers when the questioner knew the answer and the horse could see the questioner. Clever Hans was a smart horse, but its seeming ability to do math was actually the result of reading the ideomotor movements of the questioner, whose body language would change unconsciously when the right answer was arrived at. (Unrelated sidenote: After Wilhelm von Osten died, Hans was drafted into World War I as a military horse and "killed in action in 1916 or was consumed by hungry soldiers.")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. In many cases in The Telepathy Tapes, the facilitator is the parent of a non speaking child, and unspoken communication between thema subtle guiding of the hand, a small change in posture, a change in breathing, etc.seems a more likely explanation than mind reading.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: But telepathy, as presented in The Telepathy Tapes, is "protected" from this kind of scrutiny. Because the mind that is supposedly being read is that of the facilitator, there's no way of presenting information that the facilitator doesn't know, and no way of separating the non speaker from the facilitator. 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. In later episodes of the podcast, the claim is made that some of subjects can read everyone's mind. This should make it easy to test telepathic powershave a third party write down a number without showing it to anyone, then have the non speaker read their mind and facilitate the resultbut tests of this type aren't conducted in The Telepathy Tapes. Nor are there any test involving subjects who have more than one facilitator. I suspect this is because those tests would fail.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. And no one can prove that isn't true, but it highlights the difference between an invisible force that is supported by research, like electricity, and one that isn't, like telepathy: Electricity doesn't care if you don't believe in it: Flip the switch and the lights will come on, whether you think they will or not.The problem with The Telepathy TapesPart 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. "These assertions carry the serious danger of undermining more empirically grounded modes of communication," explains Dr. Sham Singh, a psychiatrist at WINIT Clinic. "There are scientifically validated tools and techniques that let non speakers express their thoughts and emotions. These include augmentative and alternative communication devices and interventions based on behavioral science. To dismiss these in favor of unproven methods of telepathic communication risks undermining the progress that many individuals and their families have made with established methods."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."
