[mcairo]

The JREF Million Dollar Challenge is a brilliant media stunt and loudspeaker for the "skeptical"/debunking movement. Unfortunately, it isn't scientific in the sense that the challenge is actually a method of disproving an individual person's claim of paranormal ability, not an open-minded exploration of anomalous results produced by a claimant as compared to a control, where cold reading, hot reading and the probability of chance guessing has been sufficiently eliminated as possible explanations.

There are many reasons why I would not want to take Mr. Randi up on his challenge, bias being the obvious first, but after reading the revised JREF Million Dollar Challenge rules , I realize that, at this moment, the first part of rule #12 excludes me from applying.

Rule #12: This offer is not open to any and all persons. Before being considered as an applicant, the person applying must satisfy two conditions: First, he/she must have a “media presence,” which means having been published, written about, or known to the media in regard to his/her claimed abilities or powers. This can be established by producing articles, videos, books, or other published material that specifically addresses the person’s abilities.

So, I've come up with my own challenge. The intuitive to inquirer (i2i) Challenge. This gives us the very media friendly, and very apropos of the larger objective phonetic acronym - "eye to eye".

Challenge Premise: An intuitive (medium) and an Inquirer (control) travel to a public space in a randomly chosen city and each will approach 40 randomly chosen people (the subject), and each will conduct a spontaneous reading for this randomly chosen set of test subjects.

The objective of the experiment is to see if under the same test conditions, the intuitive (medium), can score higher across the 40 random readings than the inquirer (control) can.

The intuitive and the inquirer will not do readings for the same 40 people, as they will both be present for all readings, and one hearing the other's "hit" information would unfairly unbalance the process and bring into question the experiment results.

At no point will the intuitive or the inquirer will be allowed to choose the subjects. This shall be done by a third party (the Proctor) who is independent and has been chosen and accepted by both the intuitive and the inquirer prior to the experiment.

At no point prior or during the reading will the intuitive or the inquirer be allowed to engage in verbal conversation with the subject. The only form of communication allowed during the reading will be the flashing of either "hit" or "miss" cards by the subject in response to the data presented by either the intuitive or the inquirer.

At the end of the experiment, all the scores from all valid readings will be added up and statistically measured against one another.

A valid reading will be defined by the following criteria -

1. Reading will not be more than ten (10) minutes in length
2. A reading will consist of two parts - 1) Identification and 2) Information sections.
3. In the Identification section, identification of the deceased (the Source), must be identified by their exact relationship to the subject
4. When referencing a specific parent or sibling, descriptors such as step, adopted and half are not considered necessary.
5. If the Source is a parent, the parent must be identified by either "mother" or "Father". Siblings and cousins must be identified by their sex and age relationship to the subject (i.e. older or younger)
6. A "Miss" card during the identification section will automatically disqualify that reading.
7. Comments about the subject's personality (i.e "you're ambitious and creative") will not be accepted as positive validation.
8. Comments about other family members must first be preceded by identifying that family member with at least 2 genealogical descriptors (your older sister, your father's brother, etc.)

If all the conditions mentioned above are met, the reading will be declared valid, and the Proctor will score the reading by counting the hit to miss ratio.

Unlike the JREF Million Dollar Challenge, the Marcel Cairo i2i challenge carries no cash prize. It is a challenge for bragging rights only, with the hope of energizing the public discourse of scientifically conducted consciousness survival studies and the desire to inject both respect and decency in the ongoing dialog between the Psi and skeptical communities.

I am interested in all comments, observations, objections and questions regarding the nature or construct of this challenge.

Thanks,
Marcel

P.S. BTW, in the first edition of this challenge, I would be the intuitive.