ARE THE NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA HELPING OR HURTING?
The FC debacle reveals just how dangerous pseudoscience can become. In the early 1990s, FC was hailed by practitioners and the media as a miracle that allowed disabled people to share their thoughts and feelings for the first time. In many instances, the facilitator holds the autistic persons hand and helps him to type out a message on a keyboard with one finger. People diagnosed as mentally retarded or autistic took their facilitators to school and suddenly became model students and began writing poetry and short stories. Parents and teachers were swept up in the frenzy of the sudden and newfound verbal skills of their autistic children and students. Then the phenomenon took a strange and disturbing turn. An inordinate number of children and their facilitators started accusing their parents or others of sexual abuse. Parents and caretakers were arrested, children were placed in foster care, and many lives were ruined. Not until it reached this level of controversy did people begin to
