I responded to this point in somewhat more depth in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17367375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1736737

I responded to this point in somewhat more depth in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17367375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17367375 What bothers me is not the idea that another animal could understand language, but the very poor evidence being presented for it in the case of Koko. That coupled with how much coverage Koko got from media and celebrities can skew people's view of the scientific process and standards for evidence. And very similar kinds of pseudoscience have been used with humans with non-verbal autism, in something called "facilitated communication," which has turned out to be entirely based on the facilitator's thoughts. This has caused real harm to people, with parents being accused of sexual abuse of their children, when it was all just imagined by the facilitator. So what bothers me is the extreme carelessness of scientific process, and heavy amounts of self-promotion and publicity with extremely little skepticism, as that can lead people to not properly evaluating other similar claims like FC.