Last November, with the Thanksgiving holiday bearing down on me, I awoke to a sensational media claim (again).  A 46-year-old Brussels man named Rom Houben, presumed to be in a coma for the last 23 years, had in fact been fully conscious for most of that time.  There was the evidence, right in front of me!  Mr. Houben was communicating with the aid of a computer.  Well, almost.  His right hand, firmly held by a “speech therapist,” with index finger extended, was typing on a computer keyboard.  The therapist was acting as a facilitator, sensing Mr. Houben’s fine motor movements and assisting him by moving his finger to the keys he desired.

As I looked closely, Mr. Houben’s eyes appeared closed.  Wouldn’t he need to see the keyboard? After all, he hadn’t had the opportunity to type in at least 23 years.  This all seemed to good to be true.  What was really going on here?

According to Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic Magazine, this was nothing more than an ideomotor effect, similar to what one sees with Ouija boards or dowsing rods in search of water.  The ideomotor effect is a subtle and subconscious brain effect on skeletal muscles resulting in movement that, in this case, the facilitator is expecting.  Mr. Houben was not communicating.  Rather the communication was coming from the speech therapist, though possibly without her awareness.

As Shermer points out, there is a simple way to test the claims of the facilitator.  Simply show the facilitator and Mr. Houben different pictures, each without the knowledge of the other, and see what is typed.  It appears that no one attempted such a test in the case of coma patients. In the 1990s, with autistic children, such tests results showed that what the facilitator saw got typed 100 percent of the time, never what the child saw.  This gives us good reason to doubt the veracity of the astonishing results claimed for Mr. Houben.

Why should we care?  After all the facilitator may be acting in good faith, and the results, even if bogus, often bring hope to desperate loved ones.  False delusions often lead to unintended consequences.  Reportedly, facilitators are taught that around 13 percent of their clients have been sexually abused.  This bias increases the very real possibility of falsely accusing a friend or family member, unconsciously, by the facilitator.  How would one defend himself from such an accusation?  Even if one considers this a remote possibility, facilitation costs time and money, and eventually results in the deep despair and anguish of loved ones when they realize the spurious nature of their hopes.  It is far better to face reality square in the face.  Only then can one’s financial and emotional resources be focused on finding real solutions if they exist, or ways of coping with impossible tragedies.

See Michael Shermer’s blog post of November 25, 2009 at the Huffington Post for a more complete discussion.

Douglas Schrepel is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and President of the Board of Directors of the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs.