What a real million-dollar challege looks like
Note: Blogger seems to be screwing up the formatting of this post. I've contacted tech support, but in the meantime, the text will look a little screwy.
James "the Amazing" Randi's million-dollar challenge has long been one of the prominent features of faux Skepticism. It was originally open to "any person or persons who will demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind under satisfactory observing conditions." Then he dropped the "of any kind." Now he's finally downgraded it to an invitation-only event.
I maintain that Randi's challenge is, quite simply, fraudulent. In fact, it has to be fraudulent, because the thing it's aiming to prove- that the paranormal does not exist- is an inherently meaningless statement. And in promoting a fraudulent challenge, Randi is, like so many Skeptics, using sensationalism and media stunts to make sure that people believe the right things, while eroding their ability to think critically.
First, what would a real million-dollar challenge look like? Look no further than the X Prize foundation. They have extremely well-defined, clear-cut challenges. What the claimants are being asked to do, and what constitutes successful completion of the challenge, are straightforwardly and unambiguously defined in detail and in advance.
If the X Prize foundation were to offer an X Prize for telepathy, it might look (in part) like this:
"Claimants will be placed in two windowless rooms in separate buildings. They must be able, without using any technological device, to transmit a string of 30 Zener cards with 90% accuracy in one hour in order to claim the prize."
Suppose someone figured out that telepathy was real. I'm not saying telepathy is real. I'm just asking that, for the sake of argument, you accept the science fictional premise that someone discovers a "radio gland" in the human brain, and learns how to use it to send and receive messages via radio to other properly trained people. And, that the scientific community as a whole comes to accept that this phenomenon is real. I think it's reasonable to think that they could win the X Prize outlined above.
But what about Randi's challenge? I maintain that they would never, ever be able to win Randi's $1 million, any more than an evolutionist could ever win Kent Hovind's $250,000 challenge. Randi could rig the challenge without breaking the rules as stated.
First of all, Randi could declare that telepathy isn't paranormal, but is instead an established part of science, and thus isn't eligible for his challenge. (Remember, I posited that telepathy had already passed extensive peer review.) If he wanted to be a little more subtle, he could claim that brain radio isn't telepathy as traditionally understood, and point to old writings by pseudoscientists who claimed that telepathy was a faster-than-light phenomenon, or was the result of quantum entanglement, etc.
He could also insist on a test beyond the known capacity of telepathy. For example, he could insist on the transmission of information more complicated than Zener cards. After all, the test is made up on a case-by-case basis, and must be agreeable to both Randi and the claimant. Usually Skeptics hoot about claimants who demand favorable test conditions, but the sword cuts both ways.
Lastly, Randi has a catch-all escape hatch. If all else fails, he can unilaterally declare that he doesn't like your attitude, and that the test is over. That's right- the stated rules actually grant Randi the right to take his marbles and go home. In fact, I have already forfeited my right to participate in the challenge: "The following are some examples of the type of behavior than can result in the rejection of your claim... Making Libelous Accusations (such as insisting that the Challenge itself is a Sham/Fraud or that Randi himself is a liar and a cheat who will never award the prize money even if the Applicant Passes the Tests)."
Sound farfetched? Actually, Randi has already disqualified a number of phenomena on the grounds that they supposedly aren't paranormal:
How interesting! So the claims really are paranormal. But Randi is redefining them as "not paranormal" because he can't test for them, or thinks they're ridiculous. Why would he do this? Why not simply state, "The following paranormal claims are not eligible, because we cannot properly test them"? Because then Randi wouldn't be able to claim that the challenge is open to "any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind." And if he did that, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive a media stunt. (Imagine how ludicrous an honest description of the challenge would be: "Randi offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon that he doesn't find ridiculous.")
More interesting is his rejection of crop circles:
By contrast, Randi declares that the following phenomena do count as paranormal. Presumably, they have, in Randi's mind, not been "definitively proven to be the result of hoaxes or mass hysteria."
Personally, I don't know of any serious scientists who are writing peer-reviewed papers asserting the reality of pyramid power, perpetual motion machines, or auras. And yet, these supposedly have more validity than crop circles, which are supported by peer-reviewed research. If Randi is being honest about his challenge, that would suggest that the head of the James Randi Educational Foundation is himself ignorant of the available research on the subjects he's preaching about.
On the other hand, if the challenge is just a media stunt, the explanation is obvious. Randi knows that his $1 million is safe if he offers it to dowsers and faith healers. But crop circles are a different matter. They're in the same position meteorites were once upon a time. They're rare, they're extremely difficult to explain in terms of contemporary science, and researchers had to rely heavily on eyewitness testimony that meteorites really fall from the sky, just as modern meteorologists have to rely on eyewitnesses who claim to have seen crop circles forming. It may be a long shot, but there is nonetheless a slim possibility that crop circles might pan out. Not only would Randi lose $1 million, but the dowsers and faith healers would never let him forget it. Best to claim- falsely- that crop circles are conclusively disproven, and therefore "not paranormal," and keep the money safe.
Not only is Randi's challenge fraudulent, it necessarily must be fraudulent. The problem is that Randi is trying to prove that the "paranormal" doesn't exist. But Randi himself admits that the term "paranormal" has no clear-cut definition. (But don't worry- just submit your claim, and Randi will tell you whether or not it's eligible long before his money is in any danger.) And if the term "paranormal" isn't a clearly defined category, then statements like "the paranormal does not exist" are meaningless.
Yes, there are plenty of phenomena like dowsing or pyramid power that are unambiguously paranormal, and unambiguously false. But there's also a big grey area. Ball lightning, for example, shares a lot of qualities with paranormal phenomena. It's rare, it was for a long time considered false, research into it relies heavily on eyewitness testimony, it has resisted explanation for a very long time, and it appears to violate the laws of physics. (Specifically, a ball of hot gas should cool quickly, and should rise due to buoyancy. Ball lightning does either, and thus seems to violate the laws of conservation of energy and universal gravitation.) Is ball lightning paranormal? Of course not. If it were, Randi would have to pay someone $1 million. What about the Tunguska event? Also not paranormal. The floodgates would really open if Randi were to open the challenge to cryptozoologists. Yes, the Loch Ness Monster is unambiguously nonexistent. But, the giant squid and the coelacanth are unambiguously real. If Randi opened the challenge to Bigfoot and Nessie, he would have to draw a line somewhere. And not only would he have to justify including Bigfoot but excluding the giant squid, there's always the possibility that he would draw the line in the wrong place, and end up having to pay out the challenge once the Flores man controversy is settled. Nonetheless, for a "not paranormal" subject, CSICOP sure spills a lot of ink over it in Skeptical Inquirer.
And remember when I said that Randi could always declare brain radio to be, technically, not the same as telepathy? He's already done it. "Palmistry" and "physiognomy" are eligible for the challenge. But geneticists have found correlations between facial and hand features and traits such as susceptibility to heart disease. (By the way, there's nothing particularly astonishing about this, if you know how chomosomes work.) Presumably, if you can look at someone's hand and declare that they have a 22% greater chance of dying of a heart attack, that's palmistry. So why hasn't Randi declared that the paranormal is real, and paid out his challenge? Simple- the genetic correlations between hand and face shape and heart disease are not quite the same thing as palmistry. For that matter, scientists can levitate small animals using magnetic fields, but that doesn't count as levitation. Call it Randi-mandering, because Randi has extensively gerrymandered the definition of "paranormal" with one goal in mind: keeping that money safe in its vault.
In the absence of any clear-cut definition of "paranormal," the challenge becomes not only fraudulent, but meaningless. Why is Randi so eager to test the paranormal, if he can't even tell us what the word means? The answer, as I've said several times before, lies in the fact that Skeptics aren't really skeptical. Teaching true critical thinking is hard. Much easier is snookering people into believing things that happen to be true- snookering them using the same kind of sensationalism and media stunts that people like Uri Geller use. And, having done so, Skeptics like Randi can pretend that by indoctrinating people into their catechism, they have taught real critical thinking. If Randi were to genuinely educate people about critical thinking, and abandon his stance on the meaningless category of "the paranormal," he wouldn't be able to stand in front of a camera and grandly declare that he has $1 million available to anyone who can demonstrate any paranormal phenomenon whatsoever. Skeptics wouldn't have a ready supply of sadly deluded fools to sneer at, and might have to look at their own thinking instead. Randi's job would be much harder- but it would be much more honest.
Update:
While researching Randi on the web, I found this interesting tidbit:
This is, of course, one of those odd, self-damning excuses. We're supposed to believe that Randi is entitled to an "out" (and he clearly has one, as detailed above) because someone might cheat. But that means, in effect, that the test really means that Randi will give away $1 million at his discretion. Randi is in effect admitting that he is cheating at his own challenge, and justifying it on the grounds that the other side might cheat, too.
James "the Amazing" Randi's million-dollar challenge has long been one of the prominent features of faux Skepticism. It was originally open to "any person or persons who will demonstrate any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind under satisfactory observing conditions." Then he dropped the "of any kind." Now he's finally downgraded it to an invitation-only event.
I maintain that Randi's challenge is, quite simply, fraudulent. In fact, it has to be fraudulent, because the thing it's aiming to prove- that the paranormal does not exist- is an inherently meaningless statement. And in promoting a fraudulent challenge, Randi is, like so many Skeptics, using sensationalism and media stunts to make sure that people believe the right things, while eroding their ability to think critically.
First, what would a real million-dollar challenge look like? Look no further than the X Prize foundation. They have extremely well-defined, clear-cut challenges. What the claimants are being asked to do, and what constitutes successful completion of the challenge, are straightforwardly and unambiguously defined in detail and in advance.
If the X Prize foundation were to offer an X Prize for telepathy, it might look (in part) like this:
"Claimants will be placed in two windowless rooms in separate buildings. They must be able, without using any technological device, to transmit a string of 30 Zener cards with 90% accuracy in one hour in order to claim the prize."
Suppose someone figured out that telepathy was real. I'm not saying telepathy is real. I'm just asking that, for the sake of argument, you accept the science fictional premise that someone discovers a "radio gland" in the human brain, and learns how to use it to send and receive messages via radio to other properly trained people. And, that the scientific community as a whole comes to accept that this phenomenon is real. I think it's reasonable to think that they could win the X Prize outlined above.
But what about Randi's challenge? I maintain that they would never, ever be able to win Randi's $1 million, any more than an evolutionist could ever win Kent Hovind's $250,000 challenge. Randi could rig the challenge without breaking the rules as stated.
First of all, Randi could declare that telepathy isn't paranormal, but is instead an established part of science, and thus isn't eligible for his challenge. (Remember, I posited that telepathy had already passed extensive peer review.) If he wanted to be a little more subtle, he could claim that brain radio isn't telepathy as traditionally understood, and point to old writings by pseudoscientists who claimed that telepathy was a faster-than-light phenomenon, or was the result of quantum entanglement, etc.
He could also insist on a test beyond the known capacity of telepathy. For example, he could insist on the transmission of information more complicated than Zener cards. After all, the test is made up on a case-by-case basis, and must be agreeable to both Randi and the claimant. Usually Skeptics hoot about claimants who demand favorable test conditions, but the sword cuts both ways.
Lastly, Randi has a catch-all escape hatch. If all else fails, he can unilaterally declare that he doesn't like your attitude, and that the test is over. That's right- the stated rules actually grant Randi the right to take his marbles and go home. In fact, I have already forfeited my right to participate in the challenge: "The following are some examples of the type of behavior than can result in the rejection of your claim... Making Libelous Accusations (such as insisting that the Challenge itself is a Sham/Fraud or that Randi himself is a liar and a cheat who will never award the prize money even if the Applicant Passes the Tests)."
Sound farfetched? Actually, Randi has already disqualified a number of phenomena on the grounds that they supposedly aren't paranormal:
The following things have been ruled NOT paranormal and/or NOT eligible for the Challenge in the past:
UFOs. "Bigfoot" & "Yeti" (or other legendary creatures). Anything that is likely to cause injury. "Cloud-busting". Claims of a Religious or Spiritual nature. Exorcism and/or Demonic Possession. The Existence of Chakras. The Existence of God[s]. Reincarnation. The Existence of the Soul or "Astral Bodies".
UFO's aren't pararnormal? You could have fooled me! Randi explains further:
Many of the NOT PARANORMAL claims are listed as such solely because they cannot be properly tested for.
...
There are some claims that are far too implausible to warrant any serious examination, such as the "Breatharian" claims in which the applicant states that he can survive without food or water. Science conclusively tells us all we need to know about such matters, and the JREF feels no obligation to engage applicants in such delusions.
How interesting! So the claims really are paranormal. But Randi is redefining them as "not paranormal" because he can't test for them, or thinks they're ridiculous. Why would he do this? Why not simply state, "The following paranormal claims are not eligible, because we cannot properly test them"? Because then Randi wouldn't be able to claim that the challenge is open to "any psychic, supernatural or paranormal ability of any kind." And if he did that, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive a media stunt. (Imagine how ludicrous an honest description of the challenge would be: "Randi offers $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate a paranormal phenomenon that he doesn't find ridiculous.")
More interesting is his rejection of crop circles:
Other claims, such as "Crop Circles" and UFO's are rejected because they have been definitively proven to be the result of hoaxes or mass hysteria.
By contrast, Randi declares that the following phenomena do count as paranormal. Presumably, they have, in Randi's mind, not been "definitively proven to be the result of hoaxes or mass hysteria."
Dowsing. ESP. Precognition. Remote Viewing. Communicating with the Dead and/or "Channeling". Violations of Newton's Laws of Motion (Perpetual Motion Devices). Homeopathy. Chiropractic Healing (beyond back/joint problems). Faith Healing. Psychic Surgery. Astrology. Therapeutic Touch (aka "TT"). Qi Gong. Psychokinesis (aka "PK"). The Existence of Ghosts. Precognition & Prophecy. Levitation. Physiognomy. Psychometry. Pyramid Power. Reflexology. Applied Kinesiology (aka "AK"). Clairvoyance. The Existence of Auras. Graphology. Numerology. Palmistry. Phrenology.
Personally, I don't know of any serious scientists who are writing peer-reviewed papers asserting the reality of pyramid power, perpetual motion machines, or auras. And yet, these supposedly have more validity than crop circles, which are supported by peer-reviewed research. If Randi is being honest about his challenge, that would suggest that the head of the James Randi Educational Foundation is himself ignorant of the available research on the subjects he's preaching about.
On the other hand, if the challenge is just a media stunt, the explanation is obvious. Randi knows that his $1 million is safe if he offers it to dowsers and faith healers. But crop circles are a different matter. They're in the same position meteorites were once upon a time. They're rare, they're extremely difficult to explain in terms of contemporary science, and researchers had to rely heavily on eyewitness testimony that meteorites really fall from the sky, just as modern meteorologists have to rely on eyewitnesses who claim to have seen crop circles forming. It may be a long shot, but there is nonetheless a slim possibility that crop circles might pan out. Not only would Randi lose $1 million, but the dowsers and faith healers would never let him forget it. Best to claim- falsely- that crop circles are conclusively disproven, and therefore "not paranormal," and keep the money safe.
Not only is Randi's challenge fraudulent, it necessarily must be fraudulent. The problem is that Randi is trying to prove that the "paranormal" doesn't exist. But Randi himself admits that the term "paranormal" has no clear-cut definition. (But don't worry- just submit your claim, and Randi will tell you whether or not it's eligible long before his money is in any danger.) And if the term "paranormal" isn't a clearly defined category, then statements like "the paranormal does not exist" are meaningless.
Yes, there are plenty of phenomena like dowsing or pyramid power that are unambiguously paranormal, and unambiguously false. But there's also a big grey area. Ball lightning, for example, shares a lot of qualities with paranormal phenomena. It's rare, it was for a long time considered false, research into it relies heavily on eyewitness testimony, it has resisted explanation for a very long time, and it appears to violate the laws of physics. (Specifically, a ball of hot gas should cool quickly, and should rise due to buoyancy. Ball lightning does either, and thus seems to violate the laws of conservation of energy and universal gravitation.) Is ball lightning paranormal? Of course not. If it were, Randi would have to pay someone $1 million. What about the Tunguska event? Also not paranormal. The floodgates would really open if Randi were to open the challenge to cryptozoologists. Yes, the Loch Ness Monster is unambiguously nonexistent. But, the giant squid and the coelacanth are unambiguously real. If Randi opened the challenge to Bigfoot and Nessie, he would have to draw a line somewhere. And not only would he have to justify including Bigfoot but excluding the giant squid, there's always the possibility that he would draw the line in the wrong place, and end up having to pay out the challenge once the Flores man controversy is settled. Nonetheless, for a "not paranormal" subject, CSICOP sure spills a lot of ink over it in Skeptical Inquirer.
And remember when I said that Randi could always declare brain radio to be, technically, not the same as telepathy? He's already done it. "Palmistry" and "physiognomy" are eligible for the challenge. But geneticists have found correlations between facial and hand features and traits such as susceptibility to heart disease. (By the way, there's nothing particularly astonishing about this, if you know how chomosomes work.) Presumably, if you can look at someone's hand and declare that they have a 22% greater chance of dying of a heart attack, that's palmistry. So why hasn't Randi declared that the paranormal is real, and paid out his challenge? Simple- the genetic correlations between hand and face shape and heart disease are not quite the same thing as palmistry. For that matter, scientists can levitate small animals using magnetic fields, but that doesn't count as levitation. Call it Randi-mandering, because Randi has extensively gerrymandered the definition of "paranormal" with one goal in mind: keeping that money safe in its vault.
In the absence of any clear-cut definition of "paranormal," the challenge becomes not only fraudulent, but meaningless. Why is Randi so eager to test the paranormal, if he can't even tell us what the word means? The answer, as I've said several times before, lies in the fact that Skeptics aren't really skeptical. Teaching true critical thinking is hard. Much easier is snookering people into believing things that happen to be true- snookering them using the same kind of sensationalism and media stunts that people like Uri Geller use. And, having done so, Skeptics like Randi can pretend that by indoctrinating people into their catechism, they have taught real critical thinking. If Randi were to genuinely educate people about critical thinking, and abandon his stance on the meaningless category of "the paranormal," he wouldn't be able to stand in front of a camera and grandly declare that he has $1 million available to anyone who can demonstrate any paranormal phenomenon whatsoever. Skeptics wouldn't have a ready supply of sadly deluded fools to sneer at, and might have to look at their own thinking instead. Randi's job would be much harder- but it would be much more honest.
Update:
While researching Randi on the web, I found this interesting tidbit:
For example, CSICOP founding member Dennis Rawlins pointed out that not only does Randi act as "policeman, judge and jury" but quoted him as saying "I always have an out"! (Fate, October 1981).There is some controversy over what, exactly, Randi means by this. Some claim that it means Randi has an "out" as a safeguard against cheating.
This is, of course, one of those odd, self-damning excuses. We're supposed to believe that Randi is entitled to an "out" (and he clearly has one, as detailed above) because someone might cheat. But that means, in effect, that the test really means that Randi will give away $1 million at his discretion. Randi is in effect admitting that he is cheating at his own challenge, and justifying it on the grounds that the other side might cheat, too.
posted by Wintermute at 11:25 PM
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