The mandatory "Million Dollar Challenge is a fraud" thread

Great Debates
81

Again, I’m not sure what you mean. If you say “I can do this truly amazing thing one out of every 10 tries” or “once a week” or “once a month”, any of those claims can be tested.

Why should he adjust the test, once its been agreed on? And are these adjustments being asked for before or after the test? If you claim “I can dowse for flowing water”, and we test it, and then you fail, and then you say “no, wait, I needed X and Y and Z to be true in order to dowse”, well, that’s a new and different claim. You clearly failed the first test. (I don’t know what his rules are about applicants re-applying.)
I’m not saying Randi’s sweet and friendly and has a belly that shakes when it laughs like a big bowl of jelly. But can anyone come up with any coherent argument that his challenge is not as fair as it possibly could be?

82

Here you go:

83

I predicted when I first started reading this thread that Diogenes would eventually write the word “Cite”, and I was right! Sign me up for that cool million! :smiley:

84

There is a log of recent challenge applications and the dialogue up to the test here.

I think you will find that most of the applicants are raving lunatics at worst and incomprehensible at best. Sad. It would be nice if some more reasonable, although deluded, people would apply, but I think it speaks volumes that such types do NOT apply. Certainly the John Edwards, “John of God”'s, Van Praaghs, and Sylvia Brownes are staying as far away as possible.

A typical exchange goes like this:

APPLICANT: I was hit on the the head, and now I have incredible, supernatural, paranormal powers! You owe me $1,000,000!

KRAMER (for JREF): Thank you for your inquiry. We require a notarized application form before we consider your claim.

AP: You’re all a bunch of frauds! OK, here’s the application. Pay up or else!

K: Thank you for your application. You claim to be able to tell the future. To devise a fair test of your ability, please tell us how you propose to prove this.

AP: I can tell which card is on the top of the deck. At least sometimes.

K: “Sometimes” is not a paranormal claim. Anyone can do that. How many times can you predict the next card in a stack of 100 random ones?

AP: 5 times? What do you want from me?

K: That is pretty close to chance. We do not pay to see someone demonstrate the laws of chance. Can you predict 90 out of a 100 cards?

AP: Sure, on a good day, but my powers come and go. I can’t do it on demand. I did this for some friends last week, and they were amazed. Can’t you take their word for it and pay me the money?

K: No, only a demonstration under proper observing conditions will do. We need to rule out fraud and chance. We want to test your actual claim, not how you can fool people.

AP: Randi doesn’t have the money, anyway. You’re all crooks! No wonder no one likes you – they can never win. Fuck you, Randi.

K: Since the claimant does not wish to agree to a protocol, this correspondence is closed.

85

The double standards of Randi supporters never ceases to amaze me. Why exactly do you choose to betrate ME for my statement? I was responding to Musicat who said “It is also important to know that for the test to proceed, the testing body is satisfied with the conditions, and so is the claimant. Let me say that again: the claimant agrees to the conditions and is 100% confident that he can perform exactly as claimed under them.”

Why, exactly, did you not attack **him **for saying that? Is it because you’ll allow Randi supporters to get away with anything, but you’ll attack Randi opponents for saying the exact same thing?

Of course, I stand by my claim. I’m not basing it on what Musicat wrote, but on what Randi himself has said. When someone claims they weren’t given a fair test, Randi’s response has been: Well he was totally sure he could do it, right up until the moment he failed.

Yeah, I can. I’m just searching for links to the actual information. I hope to post it tomorrow.

Yeah?

My powers tell me that I’ll post the facts, and you’ll ignore them and make personal attacks on me. That’s what usually happens.

86

Sadly, Randi fails to test for that. He wants claims that can be done on demand.

You misunderstand. I’m talking about trying to negotiate a test. Randi tells the applicant the conditions Randi wants. Applicant says he doesn’t like the test on offer. Randi refuses to adjust it. Randi tells applicant : that’s the test on offer, take it or leave it.

87

Randi not being immortal (or at least we don’t yet have sufficient evidence to claim the contrary), is it surprising that he preferes tests that can be demonstrated within a reasonable amount of time? It might be possible to support claims of minor psychic abilities if you run ten thousand or more trials, but who has the time?

Y’know, we really need to offer Randi a membership here so he can weigh in. Frankly, it’s getting tiresome for all the rival speculations of whant Randi would or wouldn’t do. I’ll pay for him.

88

[QUOTE]

Well that was very entertaining. Peter Morris, have you followed this link? I await your “tomorrow” cites with great interest. What time tomorrow do you predict this information will be available?

89

Well, Randi has dealt already with criticisms to the challenge before:

The Penta water saga is a good example of the procedure to meet the challenge, and the typical evasions the people who drop from the challenge go to:

http://www.randi.org/jr/08-24-01.html

Part two here (scroll down):
http://www.randi.org/jr/08-31-01.html

That is not true at all, as the exange with the Penta water demonstrated, BTW in part two of the Penta saga Randi says that:

90

From reading the exchanges that Musicat linked to, it appears as if it’s like pulling teeth to get these people to even commit to a clear statement as to what they can do. They make vague, unquantifiable claims about what they can do and then they get huffy when JREF tries to get them to articulate a clear, testable proposition about what they can do.

One applicant claimed to be a psychic who could give physical descriptions of dead people but couldn’t say who they were. She also said that she could “read” subjects and would say the color of a car which would have meaning to the subject in the future. She also said that if the had children she could tell their ages but (get this) she could only see their “emotional” ages, not their chronological ages.

How is any of that supposed to be testable?

A lot of the JREF applicants are clearly schizophrenic or otherwise deluded ([real example] I’m not a human being. I have neanderthal DNA. Ask the Secret Service, they’ll tell you. What? where’s my money? Didn’t you ask the Secret Service like I told you?) and others just don’t seem to understand the conditions at all. I read quite a few of those exchanges and I didn’t see anything I thought was an unreasonable claim by JREF (indeed it seems to be a rare event when anyone is willing to commit to a testable claim). I actually stopped laughing after a while and started feeling sorry for those constantly have to field half baked demands for money from the mentally ill and dissembling frauds. Even basic literacy from the applicants seems to be in short supply.

I did not see JREF stipulating to any terms until an applicant would come right out and say what they could do. It seems like whenever it sinks in that they’ll actually have to PROVE something they storm out in a huff and accuse JREF of being fraudulent. I can see now why so few people actually make ut to the formal test. Even a coherent application is something of a rara avis at that place.

91

While I was Down Under, I had two persons apply for the JREF million-dollar prize. One was a “healer” who said he could alleviate pain by simple waving of his hands, the other was a dowser/diviner who claimed he could reliably detect gold. Cited by Gigobuster

This experiment design doesn’t exactly increase my faith in Randi. I can’t imagine that six trials on 6 people can prove anything statistically significant although this depends somewhat on the “healer’s” claims. More importantly, the degree to which the healer is convinced of his own power might very well contribute to any possible placebo effect.

92

Now that Dean’s been elected DNC chair, my amazing powers have returned. :slight_smile:

93

A note: Healers usually claim to be able to heal people. That is, make them well. Simply feeling ‘better’ tends to be several degrees less than they claim. If his powers, assuming typical claims, were what he claimed them to be, then all six would have pointed to the right one, as opposed to simply one choosing him, which is what chance would expect.

94

I have an idea.

Rather than Peter Morris saying that Randi is inflexible, and others saying, “No, he isn’t,” why don’t we approach it this way: Peter Morris, suggest a protocol that strikes YOU as a fair trial for a given ability.

In other words, describe a paranormal ability, and then describe what sort of test would be fair.

95

The way I interpret the test design is that there were six subjects and six “healers” (one applicant plus 5 non-healers, all trying to perform healing). Healers and Healees were randomly matched up, the work performed, then this procedure was repeated six times. IANAStatistician, but that seems like the results would pretty strongly rule out chance if the effect was real. Yet chance is all they got.

Remember – this is only the preliminary test. Naturally, the actual $1mil test would be more stringent, as there is more at risk.

96

Here’s my own view of an experience some would describe as precognitive. Please note that I have no evidence to suggest that paranormal powers exist. At the time, though, I thought this was a good indication. I was younger, then.

I was on the phone with my then-girlfriend, just having a typical air-headed high school boyfriend/girlfriend discussion. All of a sudden, for no reason I am aware of, in the midst of a blink, I hallucinated the color purple. Regular, ordinary people hallucinate every now and then, it’s just not something talked about very often It was almost like I could see it, but knew it wasn’t there. It was like being able to focus on what’s really going on while at the same time seeing a haze of purple. I immediately brought this up to my girlfriend and wondered aloud what it might mean. After all, this sort of thing had not ever happened to me before in my frame of reference, and I was not then familiar with the idea of sane people hallucinating.

3 days later, I’m on stage. I didn’t know I would be on stage at the time I was having the hallucination. Our class is testing the various spotlights. Some practical joker shines the red and blue ones right on me. I see purple of the same shade I had imagined (or so it seemed to me). I also told my then-girlfriend, quite excitedly, when I got home.

At the time, I thought I had a prescient experience, strengthened by the fact that I had someone else to back up my story. Now, I interpret the experience differently. I understand that in a world of so many billions, where each person lives thousands of days, sometimes very improbable things (me hallucinating purple, then experiencing purple a few days later) will occasionally happen. They may even happen to me, specifically.

Here is an experience that no one will describe as prescient. I had a friend who had tried to kill himself before. I was walking around outside one day and thought of him while feeling irrational panic. I went inside to call him on the phone immediately (I thought I was psychic, remember). He picked up the phone and was fine, actually. We had a nice long conversation about nothing in particular.

In my life so far, I have had plenty of dreams, hallucinations, feelings of panic for no good reason, etc. In every instance I’ve been able to, I’ve acted on them (because, even though I don’t have anything to suggest belief in the paranormal, the disquieting feeling WILL NOT go away, as it is a strong mental product of evolution). In only two instances out of more than I can remember has any hallucination, irrational fear, or dream actually coincided with an actual happening.

The two I remember will be with me always, because we are trained to look for patterns in our lives. The many others where nothing happened… most of them will be forgotten. This leads me to believe that a dream means nothing more than a dream, and a random impulse across the brain says nothing about any kind of paranormal powers.

We are specialized to see patterns where none exist. We are evolved to look for the cause of events that have no visible causes. This tendency causes some of us to say homeopathy works, to write testimonials for reconstituted snake oil, and to believe that when our impulses and the future coincide, that we are in some way precognitive. However, evidence trumps beliefs. I might like to believe that there is nothing wrong with that brand new car being offered to me for $5000, but evidence and logic suggests differently. I might like to believe that some special $20/bottle water will cure cancer, but the scientific method suggests otherwise. I might like to believe that some form of consciousness exists after death, but the thing that contains my consciousness (to our best scientific knowledge) is my brain, which decays.

I might like to believe that I am something truly special, that I have some unique power that few others have access to, but the atoms that make me up are objectively not very different from those that make up any of you. If I am to differentiate myself, it will not be through some special unique power I have to predict the future, but through my actions which make my own little part of the universe a better place for everyone.

Humanist
Proud supporter of the James Randi Educational Foundation

97

Y’know, it just sticks in the back of my mind… of course the Randi test WILL flunk any claim of a psychic power that cannot be brought about predictably in a controlled environment – a.k.a. “on demand” and with full “confidence of success”. That is what he’s testing for, and those are perfectly fair conditions for testing such a claim. Random freak occurrences are NOT what it tests for, nor what it should bother testing for, and people who feel they have random freak occurrences of psi should NOT seek to validate themselves by dismissing the Randi Test.

If an individual, by some off-chance of brain architecture caused by a cosmic ray particle hitting his fetus in-utero, has a propensity that when his blood sugar is high he is more sensitive to pick up eddies in the space-time continuum if one happens by his location at that time, then that’s an interesting curiosity, but as significant as having eyes of two different colors. (And BTW, notice how I just rendered the phenomenon of seeing the future completely naturalistic.)
The Randi test looks for phenomena that can be observed predictably, reliably and in a controlled fashion, or at least reproducibly. If psychic phenomena are irreproducible, not controllable, and no theory can be formulated on which to make predictions, then that’s fine and dandy (though useless to me, but you were not born for my use) yet it does not render the test a fraud in itself. Such a psychic phenomenon would be nothing more than a freak happenstance, and I would at best give that claim the patient toleration I give someone who claims Jesus Himself calls upon her every evening to come preach to me.

That Randi has become more self-righteous in his old age is another story. Seems to be human nature that opinionated people, with time, either turn into ranting old cusses or become so mellowed out they stand for nothing any more. Still, the test is valid for what it was designed.
And Lute, you described déja vu. I have experienced and witnessed the phenomenon myself, but I have also witnessed the phenomenon of “recovered memories” that makes me aware that memory is remarkably unreliable. Sure I remember foreseeing X thing years before it happened, but how do I know my “memory” of having envisioned it in Year A wasn’t planted there, backdated, by my own subconscious in Year B?
So the Challenge is not a fraud: it’s a way to call out the frauds.

98

So how does that prove or disprove that the paranormal exists?
It doesn’t.
His test is biased.
He has no intention of ever conceding to the notion of the paranormal ever, his mind is made up. He will forever confirm his own expectations because he doesn’t look for anything that goes beyond his hardline.

Here’s something. Perhaps the best way to judge his fairness and true intentions is to look at the tests that had results that were most favorable to the tested (although not entirely successful). Does anyone know or have any documentation of the most successful Million Dollar Challenge test that has ever been taken? Something that showed more than chance results. Something that showed, however small, that there might be statistically something more than chance going on? Surely there must be one test that stood apart from all others in partially fulfilling the conditions that were agreed upon? Does he suppress this information and slant the outcome reports and write a biased view or resort to acrobatic reason to explain it away?

99

JREF doesn’t claim that it can disprove the paranormal, it’s supposed to give others a chance to prove it.

How so? I’m still waiting to see a single unfair condition. I’d also like to know what you think would be a fair test.

He’s also offering you a golden opportunity to prove him wrong.

axtually, yes he does. That’s exactly the point of JREF is to offer a reward for anyone who can go beyond the 'hardline."

In other words, failures.

No. No one has done anything outside of ordinary chance. If they had they would have won.

No. Randi is not involved in the testing process and all the tests are video taped and fully documented.

100

I’m pretty sure Randi never claimed it did (though in recent years with all that “bright” stuff, I’ll admit he might have lost patience and gotten a bit more radical). There already exist volume upon volume of physics textbooks claiming the paranormal (or anything else in apparant violation of the laws of physics) doesn’t exist, Randi supplies a viable route to counter-claims, with the cherry of a cool million as incentive.

Well, whether or not Randi himself publishes this info, there must be somebody out there who believes he/she has paranormal abilities and was screwed by Randi’s tests and who wrote about it. Can you find a credible account of such?

Randi’s reasoning is downright quadrliplegic compared to the backflips of his opponents.