Facilitated communication is the name given to a procedure in which a comatose patient, or someone who is otherwise significantly impaired, guides their hand over a touchscreen keyboard to type a message, while their hand is being held by someone else. This method came under increased criticism lately, when the case of the Belgian man that allegedly came out of a coma after more than 23 years surfaced. Those close to him say that he is leaving them messages through facilitated communication, but scientists warn that everything having to do with this method needs to be “red flagged.”

“If facilitated communication is part of this, and it appears to be, then I don’t trust it. I’m not saying the whole thing is a hoax, but somebody ought to be checking this in greater detail. Any time facilitated communication of any sort is involved, red flags fly,” the Director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, Arthur Caplan, explained. As for the statements that the Belgian man may or may not have made, there is no way of telling whether they are genuine or not. The method is not new, as it first appeared in the 1970s. Though 40 years have passed, controversies about it are as vivid as when it was discovered.

The video that went around the world in a day shows the patient flanked by another person, who is guiding his fingers over the keyboard. “I believe that he is sentient. They’ve shown that with MRI scans. You see this woman who’s not only holding his hand, but what she’s doing is directing his fingers and looking directly at the keyboard. She’s pressing down on the keyboard, pressing messages for him. He has nothing to do with it,” James Randi said after viewing the footage. He has been skeptical about the method since the 1990s, when he conducted a thorough investigation on its use with autistic children.

Caplan also argues that, after more than 20 years spent in a coma, the mental functions of the patient would degenerate considerably, due to inactivity. Therefore, it's doubtful that he had managed to recount his ordeal with such precision as evidenced in the video. “You’re going to lie for 23 years in a hospital bed with almost no stimuli, and then sound completely coherent and cogent? Something is wrong with that picture. The messages are almost poetic. It sounds too lucid, like someone prepared these things to say. I’m not saying it’s all a fraud, but I want to hear a lot more,” the expert added, quoted by Wired.