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The procedure is controversial, since a majority of peer reviewPeer reviewPeer review is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. Peer review requires a community of experts in a given field, who are qualified and able to perform impartial review...ed scientific studies conclude that the typed language output attributed to the clients is directed or systematically determined by the therapists who provide facilitated assistance. Some peer-reviewed scientific studies have indicated instances of valid FC, and some FC users have reportedly gone on to type independently.

Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units... psychologist Daniel WegnerDaniel WegnerDaniel M. Wegner is an American social psychologist. He is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is known for his work on mental control and conscious will, and for originating the study of transactive memory and... has argued that facilitated communication is a striking example of the ideomotor effectIdeomotor effectThe ideomotor effect is a psychological phenomenon wherein a subject makes motions unconsciously. As in reflexive responses to pain, the body sometimes reacts reflexively to ideas alone without the person consciously deciding to take action..., the well-known phenomenon whereby individuals' expectations exert unconscious influence over their motor actions. Even FC users and proponents do acknowledge the possibility of facilitators at times "guiding" users, consciously or unconsciously. Other theorists (Donnellan and Leary, 1995) argue that autism is in significant part characterized by dyspraxia (a movement disorder), and that there exists a synchronistic "dance" to communication in all mammalian social interaction which accounts for the mixed results in validation studies.

Stephen von Tetzchner, the author of another leading textbook on Augmentative and Alternative CommunicationAugmentative and alternative communicationAugmentative and alternative communication is communication for those with impairments or restrictions on the production or comprehension of spoken or written language.-Definition :... has done theoretical research about facilitated communication. In his opinion "The existing evidence clearly demonstrates that facilitating techniques usually led to automatic writingAutomatic writingAutomatic writing is the process or production of writing material that does not come from the conscious thoughts of the writer. Practitioners say that the writer's hand forms the message, with the person being unaware of what will be written...., displaying the thoughts and the attitudes of the facilitators."

Facilitated Communication (FC) is a technique for allegedly aiding those with communication impairment, such as some people with autism, to communicate through typing or pointing at a letter board. The idea is that some children have greater cognitive ability than is apparent through their verbal skills, but they lack the motor skills to type or write. The facilitator in FC is trained to hold and support their client’s hand, to help stabilize it, so that they can type out their thoughts.

FC was enthusiastically embraced by the special education community in the late 1980s and early 1990s but problems quickly emerged, namely the question of authorship – who is doing the communicating, the client or the facilitator?

The scientific evidence came down clearly on one side of that debate – it is the facilitator who is the author of the communication, not the client.

The type of mercury used in thimerosal is generally cleared from the body within six weeks, which in theory would render it harmless. But according to those researchers who believe that the preservative causes autism, babies born during that 20-year window were injected with many times the "safe" level as determined by the FDA -- and some, they feel, were genetically incapable of clearing the doses of mercury from their bodies. Mercury is, in fact, a neurotoxin, and the theory is that the recent leap in autism diagnoses can be directly tied to thimerosal.

In 2004, the Institute of Medicine undertook a comprehensive review of all the published literature on thimerosal and autism and concluded that the available evidence demonstrate that there was no link. The CDC launched a series of studies that examined the relationship between the incidence of autism and the amount of mercury a child received in the first 6 months of life and also found no relationship. Although all published credible studies have found no link between thimerosal and autism, some continue to be unconvinced.

At present, the thimerosal controversy continues, even though the removal of thimerosal from vaccines has not resulted in lower rates of autism diagnoses.