The Prize, the Sting, and the Objections to Both

Two of Randi's projects are still argued about. The first was Project Alpha, begun in 1979, in which two young amateur magicians he had coached presented themselves as gifted subjects to a newly funded university psi laboratory and were accepted, studied and reported on for a considerable period before the deception was announced.

Randi presented it as a demonstration of exactly the vulnerability he had been describing; critics, including some sympathetic to him, objected that the researchers had been deceived without consent, that the ethics were poor whatever the point being made, and that humiliating a laboratory does not settle a scientific question. The second was the standing prize, eventually one million dollars, offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation to anyone who could demonstrate a paranormal ability under conditions agreed in advance by both parties. It was never won, and was closed in 2015. Its defenders treat that record as informative; its critics point out that a single prize with negotiated protocols and a single adjudicating body is a publicity mechanism rather than a scientific instrument, and that serious researchers had no reason to enter. Randi held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1986 and remained active almost to his death in 2020.