Review of Diane Hennacy Powell’s Interview with Scott Barry Kaufman: Is there evidence for their claims? (Part 2)
This blog post is the second in a series featuring an interview Scott Barry Kaufman of “The Psychology Podcast” did with Telepathy Tapes promoter Diane Hennacy Powell. I mentioned in my last blog post, both Powell and Kaufman describe themselves as “open skeptics,” but as I started going through the transcript to highlight examples of anecdotes vs. evidence, I realized that there were so many anecdotal claims in the interview that I needed to adopt less of a narrative format for this blog post and more of a list to get through them all. Even so, I couldn’t fit everything in. I’ve focused on some of the telepathy issues in this blog post and will tackle some of the issues with FC next time.
Image by Thought Catalog
Anecdote: A magician performed a trick known as the book test on Powell. Even though the magician told Powell outright that it was a trick, Powell was so amazed by the experience that she now thinks the trick was “very akin to telepathy.”
An alternative explanation: The book test, well-known by mentalists or magicians, has the performer forcing a participant to make choices about which book to select, which page to turn to in that book, and which word to pick from the page. These are all key components that the performer has worked out ahead of time. Someone skilled in this trick can manipulate participants into believing the forced choice selections are random and made freely by the participant. I saw Banachek perform it at a live show a few years ago. And though the book test is a crowd pleaser, it’s not telepathy. It’s a cool trick. Google “mentalism book test” to find YouTube videos on the various ways it is done.
Image by Scott Rodgerson
Anecdote: One of Powell’s patients read her mind and predicted future events.
An alternative explanation. It is likely Powell’s patient was a good listener who knew how to use cold reading techniques to draw information out of her doctor. The patient only revealed information that Powell already knew, for example that her husband was a chemist and that one of 10 cities they might be moving to was San Diego. It is common for people to misremember so-called psychic predictions, and “sitters” or (those receiving the psychic reading) often don’t realize how much information they are revealing about themselves as they (the sitters) respond to the psychic’s questions. People who already believe in telepathy are predisposed to retrofit future events to what they remember of past psychic readings. There are many articles about psychics, as well as hot and cold reading strategies online. I enjoy watching the YouTube Channel Psychics Explained, but you might also enjoy this article on cold reading.
Image by Annie Spratt
Anecdote: Temple Grandin confirmed Powell’s belief that she (Powell) is a “pattern recognizer” based on a conversation they had.
Diagnosis outside a person’s area of expertise. Grandin’s educational and professional expertise is in animal sciences. And, though she has written many books and articles based on her experiences as a person with autism, she is not trained in speech/language pathology, psychology, neuroscience, or autism treatments. Grandin’s thoughts about how people think (e.g., visual, musical/mathematical, verbal/logical) are not always evidence based. The concept of learning styles and multiple intelligences has been debunked.
See: The Stubborn Myth of “Learning Styles” and Why multiple intelligences theory is a neuromyth
Omission of information that runs counter to Powell’s belief that ESP is a savant skill. Powell doesn’t mention this in the Kaufman interview, but Grandin in a November 2014 article made it clear that individuals with autism are not telepathic.
In response to the question “Children with autism frequently experience challenges with language. What role might that play in their communication with animals?” Grandin responded:
“Verbal language is not required for communication with animals. Many nonverbal children with autism really understand animals. Parents have told me that their nonverbal child has an almost telepathic ability to communicate with their dog. I explain that it is not telepathy. Instead, the child is observing subtle body posture changes that many people do not notice. The child is observing detailed changes in the dog’s behavior.”
Note: These observations by Grandin echo what science has revealed about the ideomotor and Clever Hans effects and contradict Powell’s belief in ESP, though she’s waffled quite a bit over the years on her stance regarding FC. For example, Grandin endorsed Valerie Gilpeer’s pro-FC book “I have been buried under years of dust: a memoir of autism and hope.” (See Katharine’s review of the book here). Given Powell’s dedication to the idea that ESP is a savant skill, I find it unlikely that she didn’t broach the subject with Grandin. I also find it interesting that Grandin’s stance on telepathy was omitted from the Kaufman interview.
Bernard Rimland’s chapter discussing parental reports of ESP as a savant skill is in this book published in 1978 and edited by George Serban.
Unproven and Anecdotal Claims that ESP is a Savant Skill
I’ve previously written about Powell’s claim that autism researcher Bernard Rimland believed ESP was a savant skill. In short, the reference Powell used to support this claim was a book chapter Rimland wrote in 1978 that documented parental responses in a questionnaire about their autistic children. Out of 119 responses from parents, four included on their questionnaires that they thought their autistic child exhibited psychic abilities. In the chapter, Rimland simply documented the responses. He didn’t confirm or deny the existence of ESP in people with autism, which fell short of the “low and behold” moment Powell made it out to be in an early episode of the Telepathy Tapes. (See What Did Bernard Rimland Actually Say About ESP and Savant Skills?).
In the Kaufman interview, Powell (anecdotally) claims that autism researcher Darold Treffert witnessed her telepathy experiments and went public with that information. I don’t have reason to doubt Powell knew Treffert, but frustratingly, Powell’s research and/or references to any of the testing, interviews, or other claims she made during the Kaufman interview are not in the show notes.
However, I did find two articles Treffert wrote about savant syndrome that mention ESP.
The abstract of a 2009 article by Treffert titled “The savant syndrome: an extraordinary condition. A synopsis: past, present, future” frames the piece as a “brief review of the phenomenology of savants skills, the history of the concept and implications for education and future research.” While I found the article fascinating, Treffert only briefly mentions Rimland’s 1978 list of savant skills that includes ESP but does not expand on the topic further.
In a 2015 article Treffert co-wrote with David L. Rebedew titled “The Savant Syndrome Registry: A Preliminary Report,” the authors discussed a registry that had been established “to document on a sizeable worldwide sample of individuals with savant syndrome, a rare but remarkable condition in which persons with developmental disabilities, brain injury, or brain disease have some spectacular ‘islands’ of skill or ability that stand in jarring, marked contrast to overall handicap.”
The authors noted that “the vast majority of documented cases of savant syndrome have stemmed from anecdotal reports of individual cases.” (emphasis mine)
They also refer to Rimland’s 1978 published findings that included ESP on a list of savant skills but failed to include the fact that only 4 out of 119 parents included this skill on their questionnaires, making ESP, if it exists as a savant skill, very rare.
In addition, Treffert and Rebedew reported that the registry “has its limitations” in that it “contains unsolicited cases brought to their attention in a non-uniform manner…the cases rely on parental accounts or reports of other caregivers, media accounts or, in some cases, personal observation.” (emphasis mine)
And, though Treffert and Rededew believed the reports “appeared reliable,” they were “not formally corroborated.” (emphasis mine) Further, the authors added this caveat:
”While to some caution is warranted regarding the mention of extrasensory perception, in Rimland’s sample as well as this one, some parents listed such phenomenon. Mentioning that such phenomenon are reported by others in this and other studies of savant syndrome is not the same as corroborating or documenting their validity. Rather, it merely acknowledges that extrasensory perception continues to surface in some studies of savant syndrome. Since extrasensory perception is mentioned quite frequently in the broader autism literature in general, there are studies underway to document or refute such phenomenon.” (emphasis mine)
To date, I have been unable to find any reliably controlled studies of nonspeaking individuals with autism that prove these anecdotal claims of ESP as a savant skill.
As predicted, I can’t get all my comments about Powell’s interview with Kaufman in this blog post. There is quite a bit more to be said about Powell’s claims regarding Facilitated Communication (FC) and autistic individuals’ ability to hear and make linguistic sense out of their facilitators’ subvocalizations, but for now I will close with this final thought.
I’d never heard of Kaufman before listening to this interview, but as I started fact-checking Powell’s claims, I became disheartened by how little the host pushed back on Powell’s claims regarding telepathy and (as we’ll see next time, FC). Both Kaufman and Powell claim to be “open skeptics,” and, indeed, Kaufman talked. about doing some testing with Powell and Simon Baron Cohen (Director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge) on the individuals featured in the Telepathy Tapes. I’d be interested to know how they define “open skepticism” because, from what I’ve been able to uncover with a bit of research, many of the statements made in the interview are anecdotes, not evidence. And at least a portion of those statements contain misleading, incomplete or incorrect information. Both Powell and Kaufman come across as authoritative on the topics they discussed in the interview and yet they don’t seem to understand that enthusiasm for and sincere belief in a topic is not evidence.
More information about and critiques of the Telepathy Tapes can be found in the Podcast section of our website.
References and Recommended Reading
Furey, W. (2020). The Stubborn Myth of “Learning Styles” – State teacher-license prep materials peddle a debunked theory. Education Next, 20(3), 8-12.
Jastrow, Joseph. (Winter 1938-1939). ESP, House of Cards. The American Scholar. Volume 8 (1), pp. 13-22.
Jastrow, Joseph. (1935). Wish and Wisdom: Episodes in the Vagaries of Belief. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company.
Richter, Ruthann. (2014, November 13). 5 Questions: Temple Grandin discusses autism, animal communication. Standford Medicine News Center.
Treffert, Darold A. (2009, May 27). The Savant Syndrome: An Extraordinary Condition. A Synopsis: Past, Present, Future. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences. Royal Society. Volume 364 (1522), pp. 1351-1357.
Treffert, Darold A. and Rebedew, David L. (2015, August). The Savant Syndrome Registry: A Preliminary Report. WMJ. Volume 114 (4), pp. 158-162.
Waterhouse Lynn. (2023, August) Why multiple intelligences theory is a neuromyth. Frontiers in Psychology. Doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1217288.