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TAM 2014 "Live Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge"

wardenclyffe

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wardenclyffe
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Dec 9, 2008
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This is the annual thread in which I encourage wild speculation about the MDC event at The Amazing Meeting. If anyone has any idea of what is going on, please feel free to let us know.

This thread can also be used by TAM attendees to let us know what they find out when they get there and to report on the event itself.

I once successfully predicted that Anita Ikonen would participate in the Challenge. I was mistaken, it was a "Challenge Event" and not the Challenge.

I've had me feelers out, but I have no idea what it's going to be this year, real challenge, "challenge event" or otherwise.

Any ideas?

Ward
 
Considering we just got out of a workshop covering the process of the MDC and we'll be seeing the live challenge at TAM in an hour and a half, I'd say, yes, like Pepperidge Farm®, JREF remembers.
 
Claim
Applicant emits energy from right hand that other people can sense in their right hand. This works even through certain materials, such as cardboard. Applicant can verify that his power is working when he can feel it in his own left hand.

Test
Applicant and a control person with no paranormal power (approved by applicant) will take turns performing the action. Human subjects have been chosen by applicant in a non-blinded pre-test. One by one, subjects will be blinded and their hand will be placed in a cardboard box.

Nine trials, one subject per trial.

For each trial, there are two sessions. The applicant and control, in randomly selected order, will take turns moving their hands near the box. This action is screened even from the audience so no one knows who goes first/second.

The subject is notified when each session starts and when it ends. After each trial, the blinds are removed. The subject is asked for each session if they felt something Then it's revealed who went first.

Possibilities:

If subject felt nothing in either session, miss.

If subject felt something in one of the two sessions, and that session matches up with applicant's turn in the trial, result is hit. If not, miss.

If subject felt something in both sessions, subject is asked which was stronger, 1 or 2? If subject's answer matches applicant's turn, result is hit. If not, miss.

Applicant must be successful in 8 out of 9 trials.



First Trial
Session 1, subject felt something
Session 2, subject felt nothing
Control went first.
Result = Miss

Second Trial
Session 1, subject felt something
Session 2, subject felt something
Which was stronger? 2
Applicant went first.
Result = Miss

Two misses ends the challenge.
 
The applicant was from China, a practitioner of qigong if I remember correctly. Although, not formally trained, because the Masters felt his powers were stronger than students who'd been studying for years, so he figured, why waste time in school?
 
They did not mention how they assembled the pool of subjects he could chose from. However, the selection process took place on Saturday, so they had to be in Vegas. I would not think they would have been TAM attendees.

I did see an MDC Subject Sign-In sheet at the entrance to the conference floor on Saturday.
 
gerdbonk said:
They did not mention how they assembled the pool of subjects he could chose from. However, the selection process took place on Saturday, so they had to be in Vegas. I would not think they would have been TAM attendees.

I did see an MDC Subject Sign-In sheet at the entrance to the conference floor on Saturday.
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Interesting. I think the background of the test subjects is very important for this type of test. If they were skeptics, it opens JREF to accusations that the subjects were actually feeling the energy but were faking that they could not.

This is the type of test where it would seem necessary for the applicant to supply his own test subjects who he could trust to tell the truth. If the test were properly blinded, the JREF should not have to care whether they are telling the truth or not because the lies would be as random as the truth (if the "power" were not genuine).

I look forward to finding out where the subjects came from, exactly.

Ward
 
Sounds like it, but an Emily Rosa test requires the applicant to say when he feels some special energy. It sounds like this test requires test subjects to say when they felt the applicant's special energy. It relies on the truthfulness of the test subjects rather than the ability of the applicant.

Ward
 
wardenclyffe said:
Sounds like it, but an Emily Rosa test requires the applicant to say when he feels some special energy. It sounds like this test requires test subjects to say when they felt the applicant's special energy. It relies on the truthfulness of the test subjects rather than the ability of the applicant.

Ward
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The subject does not know who is participating in the session, the applicant or the control person. Could their lying favor one over the other?

Although, it occurs to me a variant control would have been to tell the subject a session had started, but with no one actually near the box.
 
gerdbonk said:
The subject does not know who is participating in the session, the applicant or the control person. Could their lying favor one over the other?
Although, it occurs to me a variant control would have been to tell the subject a session had started, but with no one actually near the box.
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It should not matter, but since the JREF was in control of the venue, it would not take much for them to tip-off the subjects. I'm in no way suggesting that they would do this and I'm certain they did not.

But this test is not much different than a psychic sending thoughts to a subject in another room. In this case it's not a thought, but a feeling. In the thought test, the applicant is almost always required to bring their own subject so the testing organization cannot be accused of having their own subjects mess up the test on purpose to avoid paying the prize money. "You could read my thoughts, but you pretended not to."

Ward
 
wardenclyffe said:
But this test is not much different than a psychic sending thoughts to a subject in another room. In this case it's not a thought, but a feeling. In the thought test, the applicant is almost always required to bring their own subject so the testing organization cannot be accused of having their own subjects mess up the test on purpose to avoid paying the prize money. "You could read my thoughts, but you pretended not to."

Ward
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Yes, I agree with this. All I can say is that the applicant chose the subjects from the supplied pool and agreed to move forward with the test using them.
 
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I'm certain that the test subjects (did more than one participate since the test ended after only two trials?) were honestly trying their best. I just think it's a bad precedent to have the testing organization supply the test subjects for this type of test. The applicant (if their powers are real) should have plenty of family and friends who are eager to help. The applicant can trust them because he knows they honestly want to help him prove his powers. The testing organization can trust them because the test is properly blinded. Everyone's happy. It will not surprise me if this applicant blames his failure on JREF's test subjects.

I'm willing to bet that the JREF proposed that he bring his own test subjects with him. He balked either because of the expense of bringing them or (more likely) he has no trusted friends or family. The JREF wanted the test to happen badly enough that they waived that requirement. That's my guesswork.

The fact that the applicant approved of the subjects is a point in JREF's favor, but I think the JREF knew better but preferred to have this test rather than no test at all.

Ward

P.S. This is pure speculation from the limited knowledge I have of how the subjects were selected for this test.
 
His selection process was to run a non-blind version of a session with each. He believed that those selected possessed sensitivity to his power. He admitted afterward during the Q&A that his power "is not God" and will not work on everyone.
 
wardenclyffe said:
I'm willing to bet that the JREF proposed that he bring his own test subjects with him. He balked either because of the expense of bringing them or (more likely) he has no trusted friends or family. The JREF wanted the test to happen badly enough that they waived that requirement. That's my guesswork.
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He said he had supportive friends and family. I recall he mentioned coming to America specifically to be scientifically tested. He was having trouble getting labs to take him seriously and felt the MDC would give him credibility.
 
Yeah, that's why he should bring people that he knows his power works on. Otherwise it's easy to say, "I guess it just didn't work on them."

Were the non-blind "qualifying heats" seen by the audience? Did he question the potential subjects about what they felt?

Sorry for grilling you like this. I'm just jealous that you got to see the test and I did not.

Ward
 
wardenclyffe said:
Yeah, that's why he should bring people that he knows his power works on. Otherwise it's easy to say, "I guess it just didn't work on them."

Were the non-blind "qualifying heats" seen by the audience? Did he question the potential subjects about what they felt?

Sorry for grilling you like this. I'm just jealous that you got to see the test and I did not.

Ward
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We did not see the pre-tests. I do not recall hearing that the qualifying process involved interviews, but the subjects would have had to acknowledge "feeling" him as he did say there was no way he could detect whether he was having an effect or not, psychically or otherwise.
 
wardenclyffe said:
Sorry for grilling you like this. I'm just jealous that you got to see the test and I did not.

Ward
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There is some humor in this. I talked to Banachek on Thursday to see if I could get some hints about what they were cooking up and he mentioned that they were still working on the protocol and there was still a possibility for a cancellation. He and Jamy mentioned in various stage appearances during the conference the amount of work they were still putting into this, with the applicant making changes and JREF trying to figure out if they could even get the thing set up in time. Basically, JREF really sweat on this one.

Then the guy tanks in the minimum amount of trials.
 
gerdbonk said:
The subject does not know who is participating in the session, the applicant or the control person. Could their lying favor one over the other?
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Yes, very easily. If you assume the claimant actually has magic powers, the test subjects will be able to tell which he is with 100% accuracy. They could therefore simply lie and say they don't sense anything when they know they do.

A larger test with many independent subjects would be much harder to fake - since you would expect to see a 50% hit rate by chance, so a 0% hit rate would look very suspicious if everyone lied, and without any communication between them it would be difficult to fix a specific hit rate. But with such a small test, just having everyone lie when they feel the magic would produce exactly the results that did occur without looking at all suspicious.

Note that obviously I don't think this actually happened, the applicant simply doesn't have magic powers and this is exactly the sort of result you'd expect. It's just that it's a pretty useless test, since just planting one or two people among the subjects will guarantee failure even if the magic is real. Importantly, note that many people who come here make exactly that claim - that people really do detect their magic (usually telepathy) but lie about it either through fear or because of some hidden agenda. So it's important for an MDC test to account for this possibility not just in theory, but because it's an actual common complaint about this sort of testing.
 
The part I have trouble with is this paranoid idea that skeptics don't want there to be psychic powers. I don't believe in such things, but I still think it would be hella cool if I (we) turned out to be wrong. I can't imagine that anyone is so desperate for there not to be such powers that they'd go so far as to sabotage a test. Especially given the near-certainty that you'd be found out before long. One test failing doesn't prevent other interested parties from running their own tests. If someone actually had real psychic powers, it couldn't possibly stay a secret for long.

Unless, y'know, it was something like the government deliberately trying to hide the knowledge from the general public or something like that. In which case, there's probably little most of us can do about it, except wait for the inevitable leaks that should happen within a year or so (assuming the data isn't already in the Snowden files or in some Wikileaks dump).

So, um, yeah, what say we move the conspiracy theories to the conspiracy theory section? :)
 
There were LOTS of ways it could have been rigged.

I was sitting front row, dead center.

It could have been, as described above, where the subjects were instructed to answer the reverse of what they actually experienced.

It could have been that Richard (who was on stage and telling the subjects when the sessions began and ended) and Banachek (who was behind the curtain) colluded with the subjects such that Banachek could indicate to Richard which subject was up by his tone of voice or choice of words and Richard could have indicated to the subject which session to choose by the way he touched them or spoke to them when letting them know that the sessions were beginning or ending.

I haven't put much thought into the ways the subjects could have been informed of which way to answer if they were in collusion but it wouldn't take long to come up with quite a laundry list of possibilities.

I don't think anything like this happened - but as a test I don't know that this was particularly 'bulletproof' as far as the applicant's side of the test might be concerned.

There were really NO ways for the applicant to cheat (that I can think of) but there were a number of ways for the JREF to do so. If this was 'for realsies' (apparently if the applicant succeeded he would have had to repeat this under different controls to win the prize) then I think it would have been best for the applicant to provide his own subjects.

Please note that I am on record twice now as stating categorically that I DO believe the test was fair - that I DO NOT believe that any cheating was involved - and that the applicant lost based on his own ability or lack thereof so flame not this poor traveller.

On a final note - I was surprised to hear that successful completion of this test would NOT have resulted in the applicant winning the prize but rather he would have gone on to another phase. Is this typical?
 
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xtifr said:
The part I have trouble with is this paranoid idea that skeptics don't want there to be psychic powers. I don't believe in such things, but I still think it would be hella cool if I (we) turned out to be wrong. I can't imagine that anyone is so desperate for there not to be such powers that they'd go so far as to sabotage a test. Especially given the near-certainty that you'd be found out before long. One test failing doesn't prevent other interested parties from running their own tests. If someone actually had real psychic powers, it couldn't possibly stay a secret for long.

Unless, y'know, it was something like the government deliberately trying to hide the knowledge from the general public or something like that. In which case, there's probably little most of us can do about it, except wait for the inevitable leaks that should happen within a year or so (assuming the data isn't already in the Snowden files or in some Wikileaks dump).

So, um, yeah, what say we move the conspiracy theories to the conspiracy theory section? :)
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Believers in the supernatural believe this kind of conspiracy. I don't think any of the contributors to this thread (yet) believe it. But it's incumbent on a skeptical testing organization to take that conspiracy arrow from their quiver.

Ward
 
ZapMePlease said:
There were LOTS of ways it could have been rigged.

I was sitting front row, dead center.

It could have been, as described above, where the subjects were instructed to answer the reverse of what they actually experienced.

It could have been that Richard (who was on stage and telling the subjects when the sessions began and ended) and Banachek (who was behind the curtain) colluded with the subjects such that Banachek could indicate to Richard which subject was up by his tone of voice or choice of words and Richard could have indicated to the subject which session to choose by the way he touched them or spoke to them when letting them know that the sessions were beginning or ending.

I haven't put much thought into the ways the subjects could have been informed of which way to answer if they were in collusion but it wouldn't take long to come up with quite a laundry list of possibilities.

I don't think anything like this happened - but as a test I don't know that this was particularly 'bulletproof' as far as the applicant's side of the test might be concerned.

There were really NO ways for the applicant to cheat (that I can think of) but there were a number of ways for the JREF to do so. If this was 'for realsies' (apparently if the applicant succeeded he would have had to repeat this under different controls to win the prize) then I think it would have been best for the applicant to provide his own subjects.

Please note that I am on record twice now as stating categorically that I DO believe the test was fair - that I DO NOT believe that any cheating was involved - and that the applicant lost based on his own ability or lack thereof so flame not this poor traveller.

On a final note - I was surprised to hear that successful completion of this test would NOT have resulted in the applicant winning the prize but rather he would have gone on to another phase. Is this typical?
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There has always (or at least for the past couple of decades) been a preliminary test (which no one has ever passed) followed by the real test. This reduces the possibility of a single lucky shot and it also allows the JREF to try and figure out if someone was cheating and how. They've never had to do that since no one has ever passed the prelim.

Ward
 
ZapMePlease said:
On a final note - I was surprised to hear that successful completion of this test would NOT have resulted in the applicant winning the prize but rather he would have gone on to another phase. Is this typical?
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I don't this has happened enough times for precedent to be established. Each TAM event is its own one-time thing.

Based on gerdbonk's post #28 I suspect the protocol was loosened quite a bit just to have the test take place. This would seem to be a reasonable basis for declining to accept it as a definitive preliminary test.

ETA: How long did the two trials take?
 
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Cuddles said:
Yes, very easily. If you assume the claimant actually has magic powers, the test subjects will be able to tell which he is with 100% accuracy. They could therefore simply lie and say they don't sense anything when they know they do.
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You are correct. I simply did not consider the possibility of an actual power.

I think the concerns raised here are important enough to contact the MDC team about. It is possible they considered the subjects might lie and may have brought that up to the applicant. And he may have expressed trust in his chosen subjects. He did agree to the protocol.
 
SezMe said:
ETA: How long did the two trials take?
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It was pretty quick. It took longer to explain the protocol than to run the test.

The subject put their hands in the box for 30 seconds to 'get the feel' then took them out. They put them back in 30 seconds or so later for basically one minute while either Jami or the claimant applied their 'powers'. Then they took them out. Within a minute they did this with the other person applying their powers and then they rated the experience. All told each test took maybe 3 minutes - up to 5 by the time they recorded it. Two trials - 10 minutes perhaps.

To be honest it was the part of TAM I was kinda most looking forward to but it turned out to be hopelessly boring. It was almost sad in a way watching this guy who really seemed to believe he had 'the power' get blown out without even making a 50/50 random hit.

The q&a was pretty predictable as well - all the same questions that are asked year upon year - what does the power feel like, why do you think you failed today, does this change your mind about having the power... same old same old.

I guess, being a skeptic, it was about all I could have reasonably expected. I suppose at some level I really hope someone can actually pull it off. But then I'd like to win the lottery too! :)
 
wardenclyffe said:
There has always (or at least for the past couple of decades) been a preliminary test (which no one has ever passed) followed by the real test. This reduces the possibility of a single lucky shot and it also allows the JREF to try and figure out if someone was cheating and how. They've never had to do that since no one has ever passed the prelim.

Ward
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I didn't realize that. This was my first live attendance. I've watched all the previous ones online but I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention to the details. What you say makes sense, though.
 
ZapMePlease said:
To be honest it was the part of TAM I was kinda most looking forward to but it turned out to be hopelessly boring.
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In a hallway conversation I had with Banachek a couple days before the test we discussed the "boring" aspect of the live challenges and he emphasized that, while they would like to provide an entertaining presentation, the test protocol is the priority. He even mentioned that part of this year's test would take place out of sight of the audience. There was no other way to do it.

Jamy Ian Swiss also mentioned this from the stage when they were explaining the test. They simply can't worry about whether the audience is being entertained. They require silence from observers. Bringing George Hrab in to tell jokes during the slow parts could invalidate the whole thing.

I agree with this approach. I also do not find the tests boring because I am interested in the process of these tests.
 
gerdbonk said:
... I agree with this approach. I also do not find the tests boring because I am interested in the process of these tests.
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As do I (agree with the approach). All the same - science isn't always fun to watch. Ask anyone who has sat and watched their gel electophoresis run for an hour :)

All the same - I'll still look forward to it next year and I'll still try my damnedest to get there to see it. Oddly I'll still be rooting (silently) for the applicant. It'd be so cool if someone actually COULD do some of this stuff. The April fools MDC was really fun.
 
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gerdbonk said:
In a hallway conversation I had with Banachek a couple days before the test we discussed the "boring" aspect of the live challenges and he emphasized that, while they would like to provide an entertaining presentation, the test protocol is the priority. He even mentioned that part of this year's test would take place out of sight of the audience. There was no other way to do it.

Jamy Ian Swiss also mentioned this from the stage when they were explaining the test. They simply can't worry about whether the audience is being entertained. They require silence from observers. Bringing George Hrab in to tell jokes during the slow parts could invalidate the whole thing.

I agree with this approach. I also do not find the tests boring because I am interested in the process of these tests.
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You are in Los Angeles? Do you work with the IIG (www.iighq.org) and their tests for $100,000?

Ward
 
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