Parents of kids with severe autism are willing to try anything - unfortunately, a lot of people who claim to be experts in psychology and communication disorders don't understand science and may continue to try things long after they have been debunked. 

Hope and desperation among parents, along with cluelessness among people trying to help,  make the autism community especially vulnerable to interventions and "therapies" that have been thoroughly discredited. Yet they persist. 

In a new commentary in Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, the authors describe a litany of treatments for autism that have been attempted with little or no success over the years, including gluten- and casein-free diets, antifungal interventions, chelation therapy, magnetic shoe inserts, hyperbaric oxygen sessions, weighted vests, bleach enemas, sheep-stem-cell injections and more.

As a case study, however, the article focuses on one intervention in particular: Facilitated Communication, or FC.  

Facilitated Communication purports to allow previously nonverbal individuals with autism and related disorders to type by using a keyboard or letter pad. A facilitator offers support to the individual's arms, allowing him or her to type words and complete sentences.  Soon after its introduction into the United States in the early 1990s, however, Facilitated Communication was convincingly debunked. Studies overwhelmingly demonstrated that facilitators were unconsciously guiding the hands of individuals with autism toward the desired letters, much as individuals using a Ouija board unknowingly guide the planchette to certain numbers and letters.

"The emotional appeal of FC is very powerful and understandable," says Scott Lilienfeld, a psychologist at Emory University. "And no doubt the overwhelming majority of people who use FC are sincere and well-meaning. The problem is, it doesn't work."

In some cases, the authors note, FC has resurfaced with minor variations in the technique and a new name, such as "rapid prompting," or "supported typing."

By reviewing published surveys of practitioner use and canvassing the popular and academic literatures, Lilienfeld and colleagues show that FC continues to be widely used and widely disseminated in much of the autism community despite its scientific refutation. They examine a number of potential reasons for the surprising persistence of FC and other autism fads. They note that the inherent difficulties in treating autism may give rise to an understandable desire for quick fixes of many kinds.

They underscore the pressing need for experts in the autism field to better educate the public about not only what works for the condition, but also what does not.

"Hope is a great thing, I'm a strong believer in it," says Lilienfeld. "But the false hope buoyed by discredited therapies can be cruel, and it may prevent people from trying an intervention that actually could deliver benefits."

Article: "The persistence of fad interventions in the face of negative scientific evidence: Facilitated communication for autism as a case example," Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention. Co-authors are Julia Marshall (also from Emory) and psychologists James Todd (from Eastern Michigan University), and Howard Shane (director of the Autism Language Program at Boston Children's Hospital).