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The article appears to present McDonald's authorship of the papers as a fact. There should be a place for some mention of the skepticism of McDonald's independent communication.
Sufficiently serious issues arose to provoke formal statements of concern from professionals and parents in 1988, and a government-sponsored investigation in 1989. Despite Crossley's resistance to objective testing (on the basis that FC users refused to cooperate when their competence was questioned), some small-scale controlled evaluations were conducted in the course of that investigation. When the facilitator's knowledge about expected messages was well-controlled (more on this later), and the accuracy of messages was evaluated objectively, the effect disappeared. The disabled individuals were unable to communicate beyond their normal expectation. Instead, it appeared that the facilitators were authoring most FC messages, apparently without their awareness. These early studies suggested that FC was susceptible to a somewhat unusual kind of abuse: Allowing others to impose their own wishes, fears, hopes, and agendas on nonspeaking individuals. http://web.archive.org/web/20021217224216/http:/www.skeptic.com/02.3.green-fc.html Ordinary Person ( talk) 23:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
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I went and actually looked up R v Health Commission of Victoria; Lipton, George; Maginn, Dennis; ex parte Anne McDonald since everything I can find about it simply refers to a section of Annie's Coming Out (though that has multiple quotes from the judgement and more). [1] A section that seems relevant is part of Patricia Margaret Minnes' affidavit:
However in my opinion the results of this assessment cannot be considered objectively reliable and valid until such time as Anne is shown to perform at a similar intellectual level under experimentally controlled conditions. In my view there are at least three variables which need to be controlled, namely – (a) the nature of support to Anne's arm, (b) the amount of information available to the supporting person regarding the response requested of Anne, and (c) the nature of Anne's responses. In my opinion these factors can be controlled and until the assessment is made under objectively reliable experimental conditions in my opinion the results of Mr. Healey's assessment cannot be taken as conclusive.
Of course, they didn't actually do that because of time pressure, and the judge concluded:
While the possibility must be recognized that Miss Crossley is misleading observers into the mistaken belief that it is the mind of the applicant which finds expression in the selection of letters, either by reason of intentional deception on the part of Miss Crossley, or in consequence of less reprehensible and more obscure psychological processes, that possibility cannot in my judgment be regarded as at all probable.
Anyway, it may be of some use. -- tronvillain ( talk) 18:36, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
References
Also potentially useful may be In the Matter of Anne Therese McDonald, a protected person within the meaning of the Public Trustee Act 1958. [1] It was preceeded by this and this. It was the ruling in which "Anne Therese McDonald, an infirm person (certified as such on the ground of physical infirmity), was desirous of making a contract with Penguin Books Australia Limited, whereby she and Rosemary Crossley as joint authors would write a story of her hospital experiences and Penguin Books would publish the book." It also mentions J. Jenkinson's earlier order that the Health Commisioner of Victoria and Drs. Lipton and Maginn should, "not hinder the departure of the applicant from the premises known as St. Nicholas' Hospital Carlton in the company of Rosemary Crossley." Anyway, on the basis of an 11 page report by a "Senior Master Jacobs" on McDonald and Crossley, Justice Murphy concludes:
I formally order that pursuant to s.39(d)(ii) I will order the Public Trustee to sign and seal a certificate in the form in the Fifth Schedule to the Public Trustee Act 1988 that Anne Therese McDonald has ceased to be an infirm person for the purposes of the Public Tree Act 1958.
The judgment doesn't contain the details of Jacobs' report. -- tronvillain ( talk) 19:31, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
References
Hi all, i have undone the redirect/merge of this article as i believe McDonald to be notable enough for a standalone article. She was the subject of a book Annie's Coming Out and of an award winning film Annie's Coming Out. The newspaper references also show international coverage from independent sources. Coolabahapple ( talk) 06:29, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
Wait - this was never closed? This needs to have a final decision. Sgerbic ( talk) 18:52, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Anne_McDonald&type=revision&diff=909866022&oldid=909854877
If the article is to be kept, since she was allegedly communicating through the debunked FC technique, the article must be reworded so her achievements are in the passive tense. The only difference is that I would change "through the work of the fraudster" to "through the scientifically discredited work of". Ylevental ( talk) 13:31, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, my edit comment ( see here) about spa ip refers only to the 2nd edit (although the rest is relevant:). Coolabahapple ( talk) 12:33, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Is there any source that actually confirmes that McDonald had an intellectual disability at all?
Surely the entire point of her situation was that she could not independently communicate, so that absent the at best dubious authorship of her 'facilitated' communications, she couldn't participate in any assessment so her level of cognition was a total unknown.
I'm a little concerned that the common presumption that someone without access to verbal communication has an intellectual disability has crept in here somewhere. If one sets aside FC, it's just an unknown.
FlyingMeeces ( talk) 22:32, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
How on earth can intellect possibly be assessed in someone without (proven authorship/independent) communication? My instinct says that the absence of proof of authorship can’t be used as proof of lack of understanding - it must just be a great big unknown. FlyingMeeces ( talk) 18:56, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
For some reason, Sgerbic feels that it's relevant to include Anne McDonald's brother's later comment on having had family visits at the institution they had placed her in – "At age 16 she weighed 12 kilograms (26 pounds). Her brother Ewan remembers visiting his sister often on Sundays, the family taking her for outings and buying her treats.[2]" – despite the uncontroverted evidence that she was visibly starved in the institution and despite the fact that he is in this quote remembering events from forty years previously when he was a young child. OK, but if it is relevant then it is surely more relevant to quote the uncontroverted contemporary newspaper evidence that she had never been on outings and had not been outside the hospital in eleven years (The Age, Melbourne, 31 March 1975: "Anne McDonald... will leave hospital for the first time in 11 years tomorrow – because of the strike by psychiatric nurses. ... Anne's father, Mr. Angus McDonald, of Seymour, said last night... "we were told it would be distressing for her to leave the hospital environment."" Here, that is, Sgerbic is striking out, without any discussion on the talk page, clear evidence that his favoured source is, at best, mistaken. This is surely not permissible. I can see the argument for cutting Ewan McDonald's comment, but if Sgerbic demands that it be included it must surely be demonstrated to be in error. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhondag ( talk • contribs) 05:13, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Sgerbic cut the disproof of brother Ewan's claim with the comment "I have asked you NOT to edit this page unless you discuss changes on the talk page first. Please refrain from giving your opinion of what the citations say." All very well, except that now that they are on the Talk page there is no discussion: Sgerbic does not attempt to defend his propagation of inaccuracies. Unless there is to be some actual reasoning involved, I can't see why I can't put the refutation back. 27.32.136.134 ( talk) 04:49, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
Individuals with a conflict of interest, particularly those representing the subject of the article, are strongly advised not to directly edit the article. See Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. You may request corrections or suggest content here on the Talk page for independent editors to review, or contact us if the issue is urgent. |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The following Wikipedia contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view. |
Text and/or other creative content from Anne McDonald was copied or moved into Rosemary Crossley. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
The article appears to present McDonald's authorship of the papers as a fact. There should be a place for some mention of the skepticism of McDonald's independent communication.
Sufficiently serious issues arose to provoke formal statements of concern from professionals and parents in 1988, and a government-sponsored investigation in 1989. Despite Crossley's resistance to objective testing (on the basis that FC users refused to cooperate when their competence was questioned), some small-scale controlled evaluations were conducted in the course of that investigation. When the facilitator's knowledge about expected messages was well-controlled (more on this later), and the accuracy of messages was evaluated objectively, the effect disappeared. The disabled individuals were unable to communicate beyond their normal expectation. Instead, it appeared that the facilitators were authoring most FC messages, apparently without their awareness. These early studies suggested that FC was susceptible to a somewhat unusual kind of abuse: Allowing others to impose their own wishes, fears, hopes, and agendas on nonspeaking individuals. http://web.archive.org/web/20021217224216/http:/www.skeptic.com/02.3.green-fc.html Ordinary Person ( talk) 23:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
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I went and actually looked up R v Health Commission of Victoria; Lipton, George; Maginn, Dennis; ex parte Anne McDonald since everything I can find about it simply refers to a section of Annie's Coming Out (though that has multiple quotes from the judgement and more). [1] A section that seems relevant is part of Patricia Margaret Minnes' affidavit:
However in my opinion the results of this assessment cannot be considered objectively reliable and valid until such time as Anne is shown to perform at a similar intellectual level under experimentally controlled conditions. In my view there are at least three variables which need to be controlled, namely – (a) the nature of support to Anne's arm, (b) the amount of information available to the supporting person regarding the response requested of Anne, and (c) the nature of Anne's responses. In my opinion these factors can be controlled and until the assessment is made under objectively reliable experimental conditions in my opinion the results of Mr. Healey's assessment cannot be taken as conclusive.
Of course, they didn't actually do that because of time pressure, and the judge concluded:
While the possibility must be recognized that Miss Crossley is misleading observers into the mistaken belief that it is the mind of the applicant which finds expression in the selection of letters, either by reason of intentional deception on the part of Miss Crossley, or in consequence of less reprehensible and more obscure psychological processes, that possibility cannot in my judgment be regarded as at all probable.
Anyway, it may be of some use. -- tronvillain ( talk) 18:36, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
References
Also potentially useful may be In the Matter of Anne Therese McDonald, a protected person within the meaning of the Public Trustee Act 1958. [1] It was preceeded by this and this. It was the ruling in which "Anne Therese McDonald, an infirm person (certified as such on the ground of physical infirmity), was desirous of making a contract with Penguin Books Australia Limited, whereby she and Rosemary Crossley as joint authors would write a story of her hospital experiences and Penguin Books would publish the book." It also mentions J. Jenkinson's earlier order that the Health Commisioner of Victoria and Drs. Lipton and Maginn should, "not hinder the departure of the applicant from the premises known as St. Nicholas' Hospital Carlton in the company of Rosemary Crossley." Anyway, on the basis of an 11 page report by a "Senior Master Jacobs" on McDonald and Crossley, Justice Murphy concludes:
I formally order that pursuant to s.39(d)(ii) I will order the Public Trustee to sign and seal a certificate in the form in the Fifth Schedule to the Public Trustee Act 1988 that Anne Therese McDonald has ceased to be an infirm person for the purposes of the Public Tree Act 1958.
The judgment doesn't contain the details of Jacobs' report. -- tronvillain ( talk) 19:31, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
References
Hi all, i have undone the redirect/merge of this article as i believe McDonald to be notable enough for a standalone article. She was the subject of a book Annie's Coming Out and of an award winning film Annie's Coming Out. The newspaper references also show international coverage from independent sources. Coolabahapple ( talk) 06:29, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
Wait - this was never closed? This needs to have a final decision. Sgerbic ( talk) 18:52, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Anne_McDonald&type=revision&diff=909866022&oldid=909854877
If the article is to be kept, since she was allegedly communicating through the debunked FC technique, the article must be reworded so her achievements are in the passive tense. The only difference is that I would change "through the work of the fraudster" to "through the scientifically discredited work of". Ylevental ( talk) 13:31, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Sorry, my edit comment ( see here) about spa ip refers only to the 2nd edit (although the rest is relevant:). Coolabahapple ( talk) 12:33, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Is there any source that actually confirmes that McDonald had an intellectual disability at all?
Surely the entire point of her situation was that she could not independently communicate, so that absent the at best dubious authorship of her 'facilitated' communications, she couldn't participate in any assessment so her level of cognition was a total unknown.
I'm a little concerned that the common presumption that someone without access to verbal communication has an intellectual disability has crept in here somewhere. If one sets aside FC, it's just an unknown.
FlyingMeeces ( talk) 22:32, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
How on earth can intellect possibly be assessed in someone without (proven authorship/independent) communication? My instinct says that the absence of proof of authorship can’t be used as proof of lack of understanding - it must just be a great big unknown. FlyingMeeces ( talk) 18:56, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
For some reason, Sgerbic feels that it's relevant to include Anne McDonald's brother's later comment on having had family visits at the institution they had placed her in – "At age 16 she weighed 12 kilograms (26 pounds). Her brother Ewan remembers visiting his sister often on Sundays, the family taking her for outings and buying her treats.[2]" – despite the uncontroverted evidence that she was visibly starved in the institution and despite the fact that he is in this quote remembering events from forty years previously when he was a young child. OK, but if it is relevant then it is surely more relevant to quote the uncontroverted contemporary newspaper evidence that she had never been on outings and had not been outside the hospital in eleven years (The Age, Melbourne, 31 March 1975: "Anne McDonald... will leave hospital for the first time in 11 years tomorrow – because of the strike by psychiatric nurses. ... Anne's father, Mr. Angus McDonald, of Seymour, said last night... "we were told it would be distressing for her to leave the hospital environment."" Here, that is, Sgerbic is striking out, without any discussion on the talk page, clear evidence that his favoured source is, at best, mistaken. This is surely not permissible. I can see the argument for cutting Ewan McDonald's comment, but if Sgerbic demands that it be included it must surely be demonstrated to be in error. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rhondag ( talk • contribs) 05:13, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Sgerbic cut the disproof of brother Ewan's claim with the comment "I have asked you NOT to edit this page unless you discuss changes on the talk page first. Please refrain from giving your opinion of what the citations say." All very well, except that now that they are on the Talk page there is no discussion: Sgerbic does not attempt to defend his propagation of inaccuracies. Unless there is to be some actual reasoning involved, I can't see why I can't put the refutation back. 27.32.136.134 ( talk) 04:49, 16 February 2023 (UTC)