I’m sorry to say that the James Randi Educational Foundation One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge is coming to an end as of 2010.

James Randi is a stage magician who has spent the latter part of his career debunking paranormal claims and charlatans (most famously spoon-bender Uri Geller and TV psychic Sylvia Browne). His claim is that “paranormal” powers are often nothing but the same illusion techniques used by magicians and other entertainers — and that they should be recognized as such.

To further this goal, Randi and his supporters created the “One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge” as a “put up or shut up” incentive for paranormalists. To win the prize, all someone had to do was:

1. State (with specificity) what paranormal powers the challenger has, including what constitutes a successful demonstration of those powers.
2. Demonstrate those powers in a controlled, scientifically-valid setting in front of independent witnesses

Depending on your point of view, the challenge has not had a lot of success.

• There have been no prize winners. If you’re James Randi’s accountant, that’s a good thing. James Randi himself would have a lot of explaining to do if someone did manage to win the prize, but I think that he’d be excited (even pleased) if someone did manage to demonstrate real paranormal phenomena under reliable testing. He’d certainly get a lot of personal attention in any case. On the other hand, the fact that nobody has won gives him some credibility. The lack of success is definitely a bad thing for those who claim paranormal powers.
• There have been over 1,000 challengers. That’s a good thing for Randi, as it lends some legitimacy to his challenge. It’s a good thing for the paranormalists, because it shows that they’re not afraid and/or not faking: they’re ready to stand up to scrutiny.
• None of the challengers so far have gotten past the initial rounds of testing (before the main event in front of witnesses and the rest of the world). Some have tried and simply failed. Some won’t agree to a testing procedure (which both Randi and the challenger must agree to; it’s designed to be scientifically valid and prevent “cheating”). Some are rejected by Randi because their claims would put themselves in mortal danger (one claimed to be able to survive on nothing but air for months; testing that would almost certainly kill the challenger and open JREF up to legal action). Some can’t even explain what it is they can do with any degree of accuracy. Randi writes:
  

  Our expectations at first were that we’d attract major personalities by this means, but they’ve avoided having to take the test by simply not applying; those who have actually applied are generally honestly self-deluded persons who have difficulty stating what they can do, which can be understood if they really don’t know what they’re experiencing; we at JREF have gone through involved procedures to help them recognize their problems. Usually, they have indicated that they don’t know what real scientific rules are, when it comes down to their actually being properly tested.

  This is bad for the challengers, as it destroys their credibility. It’s good for Randi as it validates his claims.

• None of the big uncanny fish (Geller, Browne, John Edward, or any other celebrity) have applied to take the challenge. This cuts both ways for both Randi and the paranormalists. Avoiding the challenge suggests that the big names are faking (since they won’t prove that they have their purported abilities), but they’re not shown to be frauds outright, and thus can continue to dupe the believers. Randi gains some credibility by demonstrating that the celebrities are scared of the challenge, but misses the big payoff of finally exposing one of them as charlatans.

Since the last point is what the challenge was supposed to accomplish, it’s failure means that the challenge as a whole is very much tarnished. Randi has now decided to move on and use the cash to fight the battle on other fronts.

I think that that’s probably the right move, but I still feel disappointment at the news. Having a million dollar prize available was a great tool for forcing the hand of paranormalists: if they were confident in their supernatural abilities then they should be willing to demonstrate them, especially when there’s a big financial reward involved.

We live in an age of prizes. The X Prize (for getting to space without government money; recently won by a team lead by Burt Rutan) is the poster child for the new wave of competition focused on achieving humanistic goals. There’s now many such prizes, including several new X Prizes, the DARPA Grand Challenge, and the Philanthropists are getting involved too, as they’re finding that they get better results from prize competitions than they did from outright grants. Even upstart NetFlix has gotten into the game.

Seeing the JREF Challenge die is a sorry thing. I hope that someone else creates something similar in its place. Even if it never draws a serious challenge, its existence is still valuable to humanity.