To follow up on the part of your post about Randi, while this does seem like it would qualify as a paranormal ability, it might be hard to fit it into a test protocol for the purposes of the million dollar challenge.
Note that I have nothing to do with Randi or his organization, so if you were thinking of pursuing the challenge, obviously you’d have to contact them and see what they thought, and if a test protocol could be agreed upon. I also understand it wasn’t you doing the wart talking, so my comment would apply to one of the people doing this.
I can see problems creating a test. As has been stated, warts go away on their own sometimes. I had some warts as a child (also on my knees, I wonder if that’s a common place?), and they would come and go. So testing this would likely involve several rounds, with control groups and the whole works in order to come up with results that could be considered reliable. Also, each round of testing could not be done under controlled observation in a day or two. It would takes weeks at a minimum, and except for unusual circumstances, the subjects would be away from observation for most of that time.
Also, what kind of placebo do you use to test against? If there is a curative effect here and it is the placebo effect, that could make it tricky. My belief is that Randi is looking for people who have special powers (as hard as that is to define), not just someone who demonstrates the fact that people respond in different ways if you tell them strange things.
But again, I’m not Randi or any part of his organization. It’s possible that if you contact them and submit a valid application (after qualifying under their new rules) that a test protocol could be worked out that would satisfy you both, and be a proof that the healing came from the power of the healer, and wasn’t just a statistical anomaly or a standard immune system response to some ordinary stimulus.
However, if you could work out such a test protocol, and then pass the test, you’d be not only rich, but likely famous at some level.
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I don’t buy the idea that the wart guy takes a gamble on the warts going away in a couple weeks when people have had them for years. I think it would be an extroidinary example of beating the odds for a person to be able to win this gamble often enough to not be completely discredited as a fraud, considering the relatively small window he has to work with in the long life cycle of warts.
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Actually, here I disagree with you. I think this is exactly the kind of think a scammer might do.
He knows that out of all the people he sees, some will get better and will be perfectly happy. Some may get a little better, or not get better, but won’t be ticked off enough to come back and complain.
Some will come back, but remember that the people who went in the first place are very likely to be predisposed to believe. So when they come back, he tells them some BS story (you didn’t have enough faith, you got infected again, you didn’t tell me you had green car, etc.) and “treats” them again. And again, if needed. And with every round of treatment, the odds are that more and more of the cases get completely better on their own, get a little better or no better but give up and don’t come back.
For the rest of the cases, he tries to convince them that they are a “hard” case and refers them to someone else. After all, does your doctor give you your money back or quit seeing people because they can’t cure the pain in your feet? No, they send you to a specialist.
So whether they make money by actual charging or by “spontaneous” donations from happy customers, or are just in it for the fun, or are themselves fooled and think they’re helping, it fairly easy to see how this could be kept up as an ongoing process.