A quick note on the eve of June. Although it is not officially summer and the weather is still rainy and cool here in New England, I’m in a summery mood.

The Telepathy Tapes is the gift that keeps on giving. In a Skeptical Inquirer extra, I reveal how the producers of the wildly successful but thoroughly pseudoscientific podcast attempted to silence one of their critics—but failed. Janyce Boynton, a former facilitator turned advocate against the use of facilitated communication, operates the YouTube channel FCisNotScience, and since the arrival of the Telepathy Tapes podcast, she has been producing analyses of some of the videos posted on the podcast’s website. Boynton’s videos show how the nonspeaking people could easily be controlled by their facilitators. In a bullying move, the podcast producers leveled a copyright strike against Boynton, but with the help of pro bono legal support, she fought back and won.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I spoke at the annual convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis International in Washington, DC. The title of my talk was “Identity, Advocacy, & Autism Pseudoscience,” which is a topic I have been speaking about for the last year. Unfortunately, there is no publicly available video of the talk, but I can share a picture of me at the podium courtesy of my son, Graham Vyse.

As many of you know, I have an interest in 19th-century spiritualism. For quite some time, I have been trying to get access to the archives of the American Society for Psychical Research in New York City with no luck. Recently, I took a deep dive into the goings-on at the ASPR, and what I discovered was shocking. My May column for Skeptical Inquirer recounts “The Demise of the American Society for Psychical Research.” A sad tale.

That’s all for now.

SV