http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html
1.1 How long has this Challenge been open?
The Challenge was first introduced in 1964 when James Randi offered
1,000 to anyone who could demonstrate paranormal powers in a controlled test. The prize has since grown to One Million Dollars.
1.2 How many people have applied for the Challenge?
Between 1964 and 1982, Randi declared that over 650 people had applied. Between 1997 and 2005, there had been a total of 360 official, notarized applications. New applications for the Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge continue to be received every month.
1.3 Has anyone ever passed the preliminary test?
No.
1.4 Has anyone taken a formal test?
Yes. However, the vast majority of applicants and claimants for the Million Dollar Challenge have not taken a formal test, because none of them have passed the preliminary phase of the Challenge.
![1,000 of his own money to the first person who could offer proof of the paranormal. During a live radio panel discussion, James Randi was challenged by a parapsychologist to "put [his] money where [his] mouth is", and Randi responded by offering to pay](http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/wp-content/ql-cache/quicklatex.com-ec92d1d7fdf8658bb2bb4d7995abaab6_l3.png "Rendered by QuickLaTeX.com")
1,000 to anyone who could demonstrate paranormal powers in a controlled test. The prize has since grown to One Million Dollars.I would generally think in light of this, paranormal phenomenon are mostly non-existent. I have a lot of skilled gambling friends (some have made millions) and the question of prayer or paranormal phenomenon occasionally comes up when they consider it as a possible angle to make more money. The consensus is that no skilled gambler made money using the paranormal or prayers.
Nevertheless, there are surprisingly modest numbers of Christians who are skilled gamblers who use mathematics to extract advantage in the gambling world. Perhaps the most known names are Doyle Brunson (became a Christian after miraculous healing) and Kevin Blackwood, the others are anonymous for good reasons.
It doesn’t seem that miracles follow any formula, but it seems there are events way out of expectation which some could call miraculous, imho. There was some paranormal phenomenon in my family. I don’t like to talk about it too much because it was creepy. Materialism was in many ways a safer place to be psychologically for me, and hence my interest in science rather than seances, but I think there is a sinister spiritual realm out there for sure which generally eludes the scientific method.
If there is an active spiritual realm out there, it is taking great pains to elude James Randi’s challenge, otherwise James Randi is right, there is no paranormal realm. Analogously, if there is an Intelligent Designer, like paranormal phenomenon, He is avoiding direct means of communicating His existence and has chosen to leave designs and remain mostly out of notice ever since the act of creating the designs. If the Intelligent Designer communicated through the heavens as in the account of Moses, we might not be having the debates we’re having…
I think highly of James Randi’s challenge and for its exposure of many charlatans. I think most religious beliefs are rooted in superstition, coincidence, irrationality and gullibility. I especially saw the casinos profiting from these human weaknesses, and I admit I indirectly profited by other people’s gullibility since I preyed on the casinos who preyed on the gullible.
That said, neither can I run away from personal experience or observation. I briefly met astronaut Charles Duke when he spoke at Campus Crusade for Christ. He walked on the moon, was an Annapolis Naval Academy and MIT Engineering graduate. He was a skilled fighter pilot and then found fame and fortune before becoming a Christian. After his conversion, he testifies of having his prayer for a blind girl answered by when her sight was restored. He probably wouldn’t pass the James Randi challenge either, but neither, given Duke’s career accomplishments, does he have much incentive to be making up fanciful stories, especially in an increasingly anti-Christian climate.
The most successful gamblers I know hate superstition and use of intuition, they love cold hard numbers and rationality. But still, many of the highly successful professional gambler’s I know are split over whether they believe in the paranormal or not. It seems this question is something all their high powered math cannot conclusively answer given the little evidence we have in hand.
No wonder you believe in ID.
Petrushka moves the goal-post:
That’s not what you said, petrushka. What you said was:
Now, given that I have twice linked to an enormous listing of recordings uploaded to youtube and claimed to be of the paranormal, why don’t you put on your big-boy pants and admit you were wrong, instead of attempting to move the goal-posts?
No, I missed it. Do you have anything that isn’t bullshit? something that isn’t garden fairies?
Is there such a thing as a fair die William?
Put on your big boy pants and answer the question.
William, the complaint originally was that Randi wasn’t being fair. So I have been thinking of videos of performances that could be repeated under controlled conditions to rule out fakery.
What you linked to is crap of a kind that has been around for centuries. Except now everyone has video editing software. There are even iPhone apps that will insert a ghost into any live scene you happen to be recording.
No, I may have failed to express myself clearly, but I have been thinking entirely of how one could justify being tested by Randi.
petrushka said:
And so you think that the proper justification for being tested by Randi would be by uploading a video to YouTube when, as you say in the same post, “everyone has video editing software” and “There are even iPhone apps that will insert a ghost into any live scene you happen to be recording”? The latter of which is bizarre, given your prior comment: “But to get the attention of the world, you could start with an iPhone video and work your way up.”
Perhaps you didn’t just fail to articulate yourself – perhaps you failed to think through the whole concept behind your blanket assertion that paranormal claims have dwindled as recording technology has advanced, which is obviously, overwhelmingly not the case.
Given that there is widespread belief (founded or not) in the various paranormal communities that Randi is a dishonest fraud that will do whatever it takes, including ruining the lives of other people, to keep his reputation (and money) intact, I would imagine that by now most of the people actually applying to get Randi’s money (if any) are people just trying to outsmart the protocols and force Randi to give up the million. At this point the only value the challenge can possibly have is rhetorical.
I shudder to think of how bad Randi must feel at being disrespected by the paranormal community.
No, when I say paranormal claims have diminished, I am not thinking about bullshit ghost videos and camera trickery.
I am thinking of rather mundane claims of ESP and psi and such, which are presumed to be powers possessed by individuals, and which can be demonstrated in a setting that rules out cheating.
In other words, serious claims.
One does not need to start with Randi. One could find a local TV station host and work one’s way up. Or simply chat with a stage magician and demonstrate that you can do something he can’t explain. There are endless possibilities.
My claim is that people like Uri Geller quickly fade away when there are lots of cameras.
Yes, why bother to do even cursory research when imagination will do?
William:
William,
Your gullibility knows no bounds. From here:
I think William needs bring a better standard of evidence to the table.
But I think he’s probably correct that the paranormal community has reasons to dislike Randi.
Given the varying quality of all this evidence, would it not be useful to establish some sort of protocol so we can fairly assess such claims?
Given there are unscrupulous charlatans out there, we should make such a protocol as far as possible immune to such manipulation.
Given there are good faith claimants, we should ensure the protocols are mutually agreed upon and reasonable/justified.
William, could you help out? I believe you have an interest in the veracity of the evidence – could you suggest a framework for a protocol that would allow us to fairly test claims of PSI/ESP etc?
William, do you have any ideas of what such a protocol might cover or better yet an example of a specific claim (you’ve mentioned a fair few now, care to get specific) and a few thoughts on ways to ‘test’ that claim?
Petrushka said:
You mean, like lab-controlled triple- and quadruple-blind ongoing experimental research the results of which are published and open to scientific scrutiny, like Bieschel’s mediumship studies, or orther scientfic research like the ongoing Ganzfeld experiements, the recent Scole Experiments and the Afterlife Experiments?
Once again, your claim is just not backed up. The amount of scientific research into the paranormal has increased with the advent of better technology and recording media. It hasn’t diminished at all.
Why don’t you want to talk about anything specific then, if it’s all so great? You’ve been asked to name an example that you personally find impressive, rather than listing the mere fact such research exists (as you keep doing, over and over – we know it exists!).
Or is it just that you’ve latched onto something that someone has said, and now you are not going to let go until you’ve won this damm one as you *know* you are right and they are wrong? Then you can go away again for a while, having “won a round”?
Can’t say I’m surprised you won’t answer my silly question about dice.
Bullshit studies. Joseph Rhine spent 20 years doing psychic research and came up empty. You expect a circle of true believers can do double blind research?
Here’s the standard of research. Honor system among professional mediums.
Yep, OMagain, this is exactly what Petrushka meant.
Rather than William’s quarrelsome “misunderstanding” of Petrushka’s point.
One of the things the Rhine studies at Duke University established is that the tighter the controls, the less phenomena. The shyness factor.
They also established how difficult it is to eliminate experimenter bias.
Randi is being pretty generous to negotiate mutually acceptable protocols. But then he know a lot of stage magic, so he can protect against fraud.
keiths
keiths,
I admit that the Scole experiment could be entirely fraudulent – so could virtually anything I have no first-hand knowledge of. All I can do is read about a thing and evaluate it as best I can; however, I commit no belief in a thing as “true” that falls outside of my personal experience.
Now, we have the Scole Experiment website and the materials they have produced. http://www.thescoleexperiment.com/section_11.htm It makes certain representations that are open to third party scientific criticism. Anyone can check it out and decide for themselves. However, I don’t claim the Scole Experiment for more than it is: material that is referred to by others as evidence for the paranormal/psi. That is what it is claimed to be. In a minimal way I consider it “evidence”, but for me personally, being essentially the claims of others, I don’t give it much weight. But then I don’t give the claims of priests, experts or scientists much weight either. That’s just how my system works.
Then you present a quote for some skeptic website that contradicts the protocols the Scole site says it implemented, as if the information on your site “proves” something. For me, the information on the scole website doesn’t prove anything, because it’s just some guys making a claim and presenting what they say is evidence for something. I never claimed it was convincing evidence. I never claimed to believe it. I represented it for what it is – information claimed to be scientific evidence for the paranormal. I’ve also pointed at such research that has published scientific papers. I don’t claim that evidence is convincing, I just refer to it for what it is.
From the Scole website:
The skeptic site:
Those two characterizations of the Scole events are incompatible.
From your skeptic site (which you quoted above):
From the Scole website:
Again, incompatible statements and characterizations.
At best, the skeptic website makes an inferential case that the Scole Experiment could have possibly been fraudulent on the part of the mediums (I doubt anyone will claim that all those who observed the experiments are part of a hoax conspiracy). IOW, as frauds, they banked on being able to completely fool a room full of trained observers, including a professional magician and several experts in various related fields, over the course of 5 years in several different countries and never have their secret methodology exposed. Not one slip-up, ever in all that time. Despite trying their best and putting forth on-the-fly tests, they never caught the frauds flat-footed.
Sure, it might be that they were the Lex Luthor and Brainiac of medium hoaxers. It’s possible it is all an elaborate hoax; but there is no positive proof that any of it was ever hoaxed. Five years of tests and 15 or so years later, all the critics have produced is the inferential possibility that the mediums could have been very sophisticated frauds; but there is no positive evidence of fraud whatsoever.
For you, however, you seem to think that what is written on the website you refer to represents “the truth” about the Scole experiments. Even though all it provides is an inference from a supposed lack of strict protocols and optimum testing conditions that the results could have been fraudulent, you appear to have passed judgement that the positive evidence gathered through the experiments must have been fraudulent – even though no evidence of fraud has been shown! How did you come to that conclusion?
Why else would you say my gullibility knows no bounds, unless you fully believe that what the skeptic website says about the Scole experiments is true, and that the evidence produced by the experiment is fraudulent in nature, even though there is no evidence it is?
Between the two of us, keiths, you are the one that has jumped to a conclusion that is not supported by any evidence whatsoever – that the mediums involved were frauds bent on fooling the investigators. I, on the other hand, am open to the view that they were frauds, or that they were genuine. The only positive evidence that exists to date (as far as I know of) is that they were genuine. Still, however, I have no belief invested in that conclusion.
It is you, keith, that appears to be so gullible that you will read some website that provides absolutely no positive evidence of fraud at all, but merely points out potential cracks in the protocols that could conceivable have permitted fraud, and from that leap to the utterly unfounded belief that it was in fact fraud, must have been fraud, and anyone who remains open to the idea that perhaps the mediums were genuine is “gullible”.
William, in a field that has been dominated for thousands of years by frauds, cracks in protocol render any and all results worthless.
I’d like to add that in the case of most of the published psi research, all any critics have ever done, to my knowledge, is expose supposed protocol issues that had the potential for generating erroneous results or allowing fraud; they have provided no positive evidence that the data generated was erroneous or was fraudulent.
Therefore, to characterize such research as having been “debunked” or “destroyed” is simply erroneous. Because research had the mere potential for contaminated/erroneous results or for fraud doesn’t “debunk” or “destroy” the research at all; it just calls for further research and for the implementation of better protocols, which researchers have been more than willing to do. Bieschel is at the forefront of developing those very protocols and opening them up to outside scrutiny.
That’s death to any study that has protocol issues, because the entire field has since the beginning of recorded history, been dominated by fraud.
You don’t seem capable of understanding that protocol is THE issue. the only relevant issue. No one who follows a decent protocol gets results. Never.
petrushka said:
All scientists are human, petrushka; they all make mistakes; there are no perfect, error-proof, fraud-proof tests. What must be examined is the weight of the positive evidence compared against the inferential possibility that fraud might have occurred or something might have contaminated the results.
To rest your objection on the fact that no test is perfect and apply it solely to that which you insist does not exist is textbook selective hyperskepticism.
Can you support this assertion?
Joseph Rhine, 20 years of looking for ESP and such.
You, yourself, have given evidence that positive results have had protocol issues.
What you are refusing to face is that Psi is not just any old science. All sciences have had occasional frauds. The way you deal with this is to have the key experiments replicated by someone skeptical of the result. You have the protocols analyzed by skeptical critics. Sometimes years go by, but if the results are important, someone will find the errors.
Skeptic magazine and Skeptical Enquirer have been doing experiment replication for many years. When adequate controls are in place, the phenomenon disappears.
Psi is dominated by fraud. It is always going to be the default assumption for anyone with half a brain.
Where has it been shown that the number of claims that actually stand up are “falling”? Is there some group that has scrutinized the vast number of youtube uploads claimed to be of authentic paranormal activity and has verified them to have non-paranormal explanations?
Give us a reason to care. Really, why should anyone bother?
You think protocol is an option. Why should anyone take you seriously?
There are kinds of woo that don’t involve psychic phenomena.
Health claims, hundred dollar a foot speaker cable, hyper-expensive digital audio cable. I’ve run into some of those debates.
There are people who just can’t think.
Where has it been shown that “PSI” claims are anything other than bogus?
Come on, William, this scatter-gun approach is utterly unconvincing. One example that holds up will be enough.
Remember what Einstein, on being told of the publication of 100 Scientists against Einstein said: “If I were wrong, one would be enough.”
He did give a couple of names. I hope those aren’t his best.
Petrushka said;
What are you talking about? The only Joseph Rhine I know of published the book Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years which indicated the existence of ESP in some individuals. Rhine: “founded scientific research in parapsychology as a branch of psychology, founding the parapsychology lab at Duke University, the Journal of Parapsychology, the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, and the Parapsychological Association.” – wiki
From here: http://www.williamjames.com/Science/ESP.htm
Rhine thought he had proven the existence of ESP. So when you say:
I’m wondering whether you have, once again, poorly stated something?
I’ll take that as a “no”, you cannot support your blanket assertion.
I never said or implied that protocols were optional. Why should anyone take you seriously when you make up things like that, and when you make blanket assertions you cannot support?
Alan Fox said:
Lots of research, historical and current, I’ve already referred to. Try and remember, criticisms of protocol is not the same as something being demonstrated to be “bogus”.
You apparently are confused about what I’m argument I’m actually making. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything.
I have no idea how you think this applies to any of my posts.
Rhin may have believed something, but his results failed two attempts at replication. Again, as methods were improved, the phenomena disappeared.
Rhine was also somewhat famous for inventing the concept of negative esp to explain long runs of below chance results.
My best friend from high school went to Duke and participated in some of those experiments, although I believe the original Rhine had retired.
I will give Rhine credit for attempting good work and for not involving himself in any obvious fraud.
The field remains void of any positive results, at least for any phenomena that could be considered useful. Say to a gambler or to a spy.
That’s just as well… What argument are you intending to make then?
It’s bizarre. .. materialists here seem to think that if a phenomena can possibly have been faked, or if research can be shown where information contamination was possible, or where fraud was possible, then the research or the phenomena has then been positively debunked, disproven, or destroyed, even when there is no positive evidence that such things actually occurred.
No experiment is fraud-proof or error-proof. None. Does this mean that since it is possible that results were erroneous, contaminated or fraudulent, it is fair to say that all scientific experiments, indeed all research, has been debunked?
Good point.
I just looked in and wondered why this thread was still burbling on.
Alan Fox,
The title was misleading anyway. The book (Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein) contained short signed statements by 28 authors, and excerpts from publications by 19 others. 73 other “authors” (20 of them already dead) were simply listed as Einstein’s opponents without contributing a word. Strangest of all, only two of the “critics” (actual contributors) can be described as physicists (Karl Strehl, a “private scholar” without an academic position, and Jean LeRoux, who was however primarily a mathematician). It’s highly reminiscent of some more recent lists of “dissenters”.
William,
Which of the following is more likely to be true?
1. Psi is real, but it only shows up in poorly designed studies, and disappears when the protocols are improved.
2. Psi isn’t real.
It’s simpler than that, William. If a “phenomenon” can’t be repeated, there is nothing to see. Phenomena that hide from scientific scrutiny, that cannot be repeated, cannot be separated from imagination.
We can all do our own scientific experiments. We can check facts for ourselves. Fraud gets debunked because it cannot be repeated.
I repeat, we don’t have to speculate. We can get our hands dirty and try to repeat other’s results.
(My answer is 2, BTW)
petrushka said:
You mean, attempts to replicate Rhine’s results failed. Rhine’s research at the time indicated ESP was genuine in some subjects. Which is why your statements seem so odd.
You seem to be drawing an equivalence between changes in protocol that resulted in negative findings with “improved” protocols. While changing the protocols might produce more negative findings, that doesn’t necessarily mean the protocols are better in gauging the existence of the phenomena or understanding it because those protocols, or who and how they are implemented, might actually be interfering in the phenomena.
Not because it is “shy”, but because we are talking about mental phenomena that is rooted in the mind and supposedly some kind of mental substrate or transmission energy that can be affected by the conditions of the experiment, the state of the test subject, and the minds of those conducting and around the experiment. Just as “how you conduct the test” physically affects the outcome of a double-slit photon experiment, “how you conduct the test” may physically affect the outcome of psi experiments.
Which is why Bieschel advises psychologically screening mediums and using environments the mediums find friendly and non-threatening.
Not so according to documented/declassified information about remote viewing.
Really? In what way?
Just checking, is “remote viewing” accurately summarized in this Wikpedia article?
Alan Fox said:
Are you claiming that psi/paranormal activity hasn’t been repeated in any experiment or set of experiments?
No. That something cannot be repeated doesn’t indicate it was fraudulent. However, what psi phenomena that has been indicated in some of the research I’ve referred to do you claim “cannot be repeated”? Spirit photography has been repeated many times. EVP and ITC paranormal phenomena is repeated worldwide by countless people. Not sure what your claim here is.
Sop in decades of research, involving thousands of subjects, Rhine found a handful who tested consistently above chance.
Can you not think of anything wrong with this thinking?
Take your time.
How you conduct the test determines if the photon behaves like a particle or a wave.
I’ve never heard of any experiment successfully demonstrating “paranormal activity” ever, anywhere, at any time. Have I missed such an event?
Is a photon a wave or a particle? Does the double-slit experiment tell us?
No it hasn’t. It doesn’t happen.
William,
Isn’t it funny how the protocols that might be interfering with the phenomena just happen to be the protocols that would reveal fraud if it were taking place?
Uri Geller exposed on the Tonight Show