Merged The challenge is coming to an end.

[Cuddles]

I think one of the problems is that the JREF really doesn't seem to be any good at publicising what they do. The only things I really know anything about are the challenge and Swift. If the challenge goes, what will the JREF actually do? Sure, there's TAM, but an annual event can't take up that much time. There's the scholarships, but they're hardly well known, and it's not all that clear what they're actually for. There's Randi's lectures, but I have no idea how often he does them or what he talks about, and apart from some videos of very old talks, there's really nothing about them made public as far as I can tell.

And that's it. For someone involved enough to become a moderator on the forum, all the JREF seems to do is the challenge and a few little things we don't hear much about. If the challenge goes, what is left? A look on the calendar shows very little happening, and the little that is is mostly other organisations. Maybe there is actually much more going on, but they're not making it easy to find out.

As far as many people are concerned, the challenge is the JREF, and if it's going to go, we need to know what the JREF will be afterwards. "We'll tell you later" just doesn't cut it, and sounds suspiciously like "We haven't decided yet". I agree that there is lots the JREF could do with a million, but before I can support its removal from the challenge, I need to know what it actually will be used for.

 

[Antiquehunter]

Hey - you're channelling me, Cuddles. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

 

[Spindrift]

Couldn't JREF get an insurance policy for the prize money? Lloyds of London will insure almost anything. I don't know what the actuarial risk would be, but if the insurer was serious, they'd know it's basically a no lose situation. You could probably get a much larger prize for less than the interest on putting the $1M into a money market.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I feel a bit ticked off at this news. When I learn more about the circumstances, maybe I will feel better.

But, right now, I wish I was a multi-millionaire, so I could re-donate the money, and keep the challenge going.

I wish I was an unscrupulous multi-millionaire gangster who could have a hit man systematically take out leading psychics.
It would be illuminating to see whether they were able to predict their own demise and assist the police to forestall the gunman.

(Think of it as "evilution" in action)

 

[Overman]

This is horrible news. I have spoken about the challange to many people for many years. I have even said 'well prove it and you win a million' to many people.

What a load of crap. The million dollar challange is worth way more than a nomonal million. If think they can spend the money better, good for them, but if they fall short, it is a horrible blow to skepticism.

 

[tkingdoll]

This is horrible news. I have spoken about the challange to many people for many years. I have even said 'well prove it and you win a million' to many people.

And did any of them enter the challenge?

Do you honestly believe that the chance for you and a few others to occasionally say "well prove it" to people they disagree with is worth a million dollars? What actual, tangible, measurable effect does it have? Compare that to, say, creating a critical thinking teacher's pack for every school in the USA, for example. Or funding a lobby group to fight the growth of creationism. Etc.

You can do a lot more with money than you can with ideology.

 

[Overman]

Agreed, but can you think of any other focal point of PR for skepticism? Randi's challange stands as probably the most visible item. I believe it would be wiser raise x thousand for a great PR job and push that Million Dollar Challange!

Why could the JREF just try to raise money for the items you are referring to?

Isn't that what they are going to have to do anyone one they have spent this million?

So you spend the million on stuff that doesn't 'stick', and now you are in the same boat (as far as cash on hand is concerned) except you no longer have the great PR gimmick of the Million Dollar challange!

What will the JREF do then? Will its goals shift or change? I remember a couple of threads from last year about the focus or goal or the JREF and is it effective. Most people seemed to think they had dropped a ball they never intended to pick up.

I was critical of the JREF for not reaching or attempting goals that they had never intended to to, but they still had the challange.

Is this now just a place to gather skepics for posting and Randi's main page rants (I dig them, but often they are just rants rather than any paticular insight)?


I guess my main concern is
a) What are the JREF's goals?
b) Are those good goals?
b) Would they have been able to be accomplished without taking away the Million?

 

[Larry Barrieau]

There have been some good reasons given to keep the challenge like posts 11, 22, 37, 50, 105, 108, and of course the brilliant 36. But I'm not yet swayed by the 'spend it' crowd.

Teek: Your example,"oh really, you have ESP? Well, James Randi offered a million dollars for ten years to anyone who could demonstrate paranormal ability, and not one single person even made it through the preliminary test. When push came to shove, none of them could do what they claimed. What does that tell you?"
If I were the applicant, I think my answer would be, "That's because no one in the past had real powers. I do."

The zero dollar challenge may seem classier but there are a couple of problems with it. 1. It will draw very little public attention. 2. It's been done. Some would be applicants have declared the money aspect of the challenge too gauche for them. They have been told to not take the money but give it to a charity instead. Be a hero, save some lives - but no.

The challenge is the essence of JREF. When Randi is introduced on stage, radio and TV, the hook is the MDC. The average person sits up and takes notice when a million dollar prize is offered.

What will we do with the money? Spending the million won't take long in today's economy and then it's gone. What shall it be spent on? Any concrete ideas? I can change my mind.

 

[volatile]

I think one of the problems is that the JREF really doesn't seem to be any good at publicising what they do. The only things I really know anything about are the challenge and Swift. If the challenge goes, what will the JREF actually do? Sure, there's TAM, but an annual event can't take up that much time. There's the scholarships, but they're hardly well known, and it's not all that clear what they're actually for. There's Randi's lectures, but I have no idea how often he does them or what he talks about, and apart from some videos of very old talks, there's really nothing about them made public as far as I can tell.

And that's it. For someone involved enough to become a moderator on the forum, all the JREF seems to do is the challenge and a few little things we don't hear much about. If the challenge goes, what is left? A look on the calendar shows very little happening, and the little that is is mostly other organisations. Maybe there is actually much more going on, but they're not making it easy to find out.

As far as many people are concerned, the challenge is the JREF, and if it's going to go, we need to know what the JREF will be afterwards. "We'll tell you later" just doesn't cut it, and sounds suspiciously like "We haven't decided yet". I agree that there is lots the JREF could do with a million, but before I can support its removal from the challenge, I need to know what it actually will be used for.

Couldn't have said it better myself, frankly.

 

[BPSCG]

What actual, tangible, measurable effect does it have? Compare that to, say, creating a critical thinking teacher's pack for every school in the USA, for example. Or funding a lobby group to fight the growth of creationism. Etc.

You think you can do that with a million dollars? And even if you do, once that money's been spent, it's spent. The Randi million has been doing its work for ten years.

I'm with the people who want to see it continue. Up to now, we could tell the woos there was an easy million bucks waiting for them. Now they can go on the attack and ask why JREF isn't offering it any more. "What's JREF afraid of? What's he trying to hide?"

With regard to who takes over JREF after Randi is gone, does anyone know if he's done any succession planning?

 

[IXP]

I am on the side of those who think the MDC was a great weapon. I cannot imagine any other use of the money that will have the lasting effect that MDC has.

As to changing anyone's mind: There are plenty of skeptics on this board who started out as believers. I have to think that the MDC had something to do this. Even the woos who come here with plans to win the Challenge are actauly educated by the process. No, most of the them don't throw away their beliefs, but the way they start hedging when it comes down to negotiating a protocol indicates to me that they have started thinking about their "powers" a different way.

I am very sorry to see the Challenge go, and hold little hope that the money can be put to better use, though I would be happy to be proved wrong in this case.

IXP

 

[The Atheist]

Couldn't JREF get an insurance policy for the prize money? Lloyds of London will insure almost anything. I don't know what the actuarial risk would be, but if the insurer was serious, they'd know it's basically a no lose situation. You could probably get a much larger prize for less than the interest on putting the $1M into a money market.

You're close - Lloyd's won't touch it with a barge-pole, but others will.

With regard to who takes over JREF after Randi is gone, does anyone know if he's done any succession planning?

He's tried but failed to put a successor in place, there's a recent thread in this sub-forum.

 

[HarryKeogh]

Do you honestly believe that the chance for you and a few others to occasionally say "well prove it" to people they disagree with is worth a million dollars?

Yes. The Million Dollar Challenge is very likely a reason Randi has gotten himself on national and international TV so many times. And of course, it didn't even cost JREF a million dollars. They just had to stick the money in an account that generated income that they used every year.

IMO, If donations were pouring in they wouldn't have canceled the challenge. They wouldn't say it's too much work and we've given the woos enough time. But I think they just need the money to make ends meet and if that's the case I don't blame them. But I am skeptical about their reasons given for ending it.

 

[The Atheist]

But I think they just need the money to make ends meet and if that's the case I don't blame them. But I am skeptical about their reasons given for ending it.

The timing straight after the loss does give it that kind of look. Not to mention 31 December being the last day of JREF's financial year and they would accordingly have a fairly good idea of what this year's number is going to be. Any odds on a loss?

 

[krelnik]

The Atheist already has a $2 million NZ challenge set up

I was surprised that this was the only other challenged mentioned in this thread, and so late in the thread. If you check on Skepdic's page on the the JREF Challenge and scroll down, you'll see that there are at least nine other persons or organizations in six different countries on four different continents, that offer almost identical paranormal challenges.

Assuming I worked the currency converter properly, the total of those nine prizes as of today is $1,751,529.99 USD. (Even without The Athiest's prize, it's still a quite healthy $219,630.90 USD).

If you don't think any of those prizes (or the total) look impressive enough, I encourage you to pick out one of those organizations and donate them a nice round figure earmarked for their challenge. I believe most of them are non-profits, so you'll get a nice tax write off (or two--one in 2008, one in 2009).

So anyone claiming we are losing a weapon in the fight against woo, take note. The weapon is not going away. It is just changing its web/email address as of March 6th, 2010. Maybe a nice side effect of this will be that as JREF renews its focus on education, these other organizations will get a nice boost in publicity for their activities.

--Tim Farley

 

[dglas]

One of the few debate resources available to all of us is now gone. Everyone at the individual level could point at it and say, "Put up or shut up." Now, it's gone and its passing will be a source of derision and satire. Let the snickering begin.

But then, I'm an atheist and the JREF has gone to pains to exclude me. Forget I said anything.

The relentless downward spiral continues...

 

[Santa666]

Just another voice

I know many people have had their say, but I would like to chime in as well.


The MDC is much, much more than a one-shot revolver for the everyday citizen to challenge paranormal claims, it's very much like a baited hook. A great many people "believe" in the supernatural, but they don't give over their thought processes to it. Ask a random person if they believe in god, they might say yes, in fact, they might say yes "just because", they might say yes because they truly believe, they might say yes because that is what they think you want to hear. Now ask that same person to explain WHY they believe in god. This question is much more difficult and requires a minimal amount of thinking. You might even get someone to ask themselves the question again, and then you have them "hooked".

The above is a "cheesy" example but the MDC is just like asking "WHY". If a fence sitter were to hear or see what could be described as a paranormal event, discussion about the challenge can easily become a baited hook to draw them in.

"Why is some guy offering 1,000,000 dollars to prove what looks to be an obvious supernatural event?"

The above question is the hook for the MDC. It could very easily draw someone to this site to find out "WHY" and to learn more. Those that already know about the challenge tend to quickly land on one side or the other of the fence, but it's those who have never heard of James Randi, or the MDC, or the JREF, to whom this "gimmick" can serve as beacon.

James Randi IS the JREF, and intimately intertwined is the MDC. My feelings would be that the MDC should be the main drive of the JREF, with some fine tuning of course. Use the MDC as an educational tool. Teach others about critical thinking and double blind studies and self evaluation using the MDC as the focal point. Have a classroom design a test protocol, and then try and figure out where the flaws are. Show the general public WHY psychics and other charlatans should not be trusted. RSLancaster's site, StopSylviaBrowne.com, would be a perfect example of this. And all of it could stem, at least partially, from the MDC. This challenge and money should be a stepping stone and reference, not just "that thing the JREF does, but no one pays attention to".


Ok, I am done with my two cents.


Santa

 

[The Atheist]

Looked worth more than $0-02 to me.

How are people outside of this forum seeing it? It hasn't made much impact through Google, which gave the following:

Dawkins Hardly raised a ripple, with only half a dozen posts, supportive.

Some "Shroomery" place with four or five posts which say nothing [allowable in this forum].

A "Bad Idea" blog which actually thinks it's a good idea. That the site has a psychic ad on it may or may not be relevant.

Some atheist group on MSN which really likes the challengers being smacked around, but don't offer any real opinion on its removal.

And a Techo forum where the details were posted but have attracted no comment at all.

I think the minimal interest outside of this forum tends to support the idea that the challenge isn't providing value for money.

 

[tkingdoll]

You think you can do that with a million dollars?

Me? Yes, that's what I do. My last campaign reached over 82 million people.

As for the money being gone once it's gone, money attracts money. A sufficiently well-publicised and well-solicited fundraising campaign brings in far more money than it costs, if the donor feels they are getting something tangible for their money.

These things are not difficult if placed in the hands of experts.

 

[BenBurch]

I'd say its done its job. And two freaking years is far more than enough notice for anybody to get a haircut and a new suit and take the challenge.