Can message-passing anecdotes tell us anything about the validity of RPM and S2C?

Abstract

Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) and Spelling to Communicate (S2C) are pseudoscientific methodologies used with non-speaking and minimally-speaking individuals that involve an assistant and a keyboard or letterboard. RPM and S2C share several key characteristics with – and, indeed, are arguably variants of – facilitated communication (FC), a methodology that likewise involves a non-to-minimally-speaking individual, an assistant, and a letterboard/keyboard. Cases of FC that predate RPM and S2C have been broadly debunked by rigorous message-passing tests (tests of message authorship), with results uniformly indicating that it is the assistant, not the facilitated person, who controls the communicative output. Resistance by RPM and S2C practitioners means that RPM and S2C have not been similarly assessed, yet proponents of these methodologies have cited purported message-passing successes in everyday life as evidence of validity. This article discusses what rigorous authorship testing requires and why anecdotal reports of informal message-passing events are not evidence of authorship. In critiquing published reports of anecdotal message passing, this article identifies some reports which, despite their inherent unreliability, nonetheless suggest that messages generated by RPM and S2C can be as fully controlled by facilitators as messages generated by traditional FC.