Marcel Cairo's i2i Challenge

[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.

[mcromer]

Hi Marcel.

Would you be willing to take your proposal to Open Source Science for feedback?

I'd like to post it there. I think the general idea is good, but I'd like to get suggestions from the folks there about how to conduct the challenge in the most convincing way possible.

[Topher Cooper]

People being given a reading in the presence of the reader will, inevitably give off conventional signals. Cold readers consciously look for these signals but people can and do unconsciously pick up such signals as well. So if your "intuitives" do have some paranormal ability this experimental design will not be able to distinguish it from conventional abilities.

You might consider a design based on psychometry rather than face-to-face readings.

[mcairo]

Originally Posted by Topher Cooper

People being given a reading in the presence of the reader will, inevitably give off conventional signals. Cold readers consciously look for these signals but people can and do unconsciously pick up such signals as well. So if your "intuitives" do have some paranormal ability this experimental design will not be able to distinguish it from conventional abilities.

You might consider a design based on psychometry rather than face-to-face readings.

Topher, your statement above sounds like you have extensive experience in mediumship or conducting experiments with mediums. Is this the case, or are you merely repeating the accusations of sideline skeptics?

While it is true that people's facial expressions hint to their inner mood or outer reaction to a certain piece of information, I have yet to meet a person whose facial expressions reveal that their aunt on the mother's side has been dead for more than 10 years. Remember, the rules of my challenge don't allow verbal exchanges between the subject and the intuitive/inquirer. However, I would not object to a screen partition placed between myself and the subject. I want to eliminate the excuse of "cold reading" from the process.

As far as psychometry goes, I don't do psychometry, so that option is moot.

[mcairo]

Originally Posted by mcromer

Hi Marcel.

Would you be willing to take your proposal to Open Source Science for feedback?

I'd like to post it there. I think the general idea is good, but I'd like to get suggestions from the folks there about how to conduct the challenge in the most convincing way possible.

No problem, Matthew, you can post it anywhere you like, but when the wolves come out, you better have my back.

I just want everyone to remember, this challenge is more of a friendly invitation to Mr. Randi and his supporters, than the "perfect" psi experiment. I really would like to diffuse some of the antagonism and nastiness that surrounds the JREF Million Dollar Challenge. Let's just do this, have fun and not try to suffocate each other with mean spirited insults. We all know that nobody on either side will buy into the other's argument, but if we can elevate the public dialog about "consciousness survival" in a scientific manner, then i think both sides win.

[Topher Cooper]

I haven't personally done much formal testing of mediumistic claims -- though I've done some observation, and even participated in some. I am familiar with the psychological literature (not Skeptical -- just mainstream experimental literature) as well as the techniques used by psychic entertainers and prestidigitators, and have experimented with these (conventional) phenomena. I believe that people have much greater subconscious ability to react to subtle cues and to make brilliant deductions than they are aware of.

I do believe in psi. I also believe that many people mistake the astounding capabilities of the human mind, in themselves and others, for psi.

Given those capabilities -- to demonstrate that non-conventional communication is taking place you have to eliminate the conventional communication channel. That you are unaware of using such channels does not suffice -- particularly for anyone but you.

That's not Skepticism (note the capital "S") -- its just science.

Your experiment might be interesting. It might demonstrate the astounding capabilities of the human mind. It just doesn't demonstrate, as it stands, the astounding parapnormal capabilities of the human mind.

A screen would help, but is not sufficient. The problem is -- we don't know the limits of those conventional capabilities and sound would still be a factor.

How about two isolated rooms a significant distance apart with a camera in the readee's and a screen in the intuiter's room. Transcripts of the intuiter's statements would be edited to remove any information that might identify the readee (e.g., something hinting at hair color) and to include only the type of information you indicate. Reedee's would be given lists of statements taken from their own and from others' "readings" as well as statements from the "Inquirer" for themselves and for others. Their task is to identify statements that apply to them. The inquirer would make his/her reading simultaneously with the intuiter.

This design is not perfect -- it depends on the reliability of being able to effectively edit out conventional hints -- but with some careful design it could be pretty tight.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by mcairo

I really would like to diffuse some of the antagonism and nastiness that surrounds the JREF Million Dollar Challenge. Let's just do this, have fun and not try to suffocate each other with mean spirited insults.

Amen, brother.

[joki]

I think the protocol from Gary Schwartz triple blind study, which was published recently and can be downloaded from his website, has an acceptable study design. This should be interesting for Marcel s offer.

[mcairo]

Thanks everyone for all the input and ideas, but here's the point you are all missing. Do you know that no one has ever been accepted for the JREF Million Dollar Challenge? No one has ever passed their "preliminary" testing. Strange, isn't it? Why aren't the people who are so happy to point out supposed "design flaws" in my challenge, attacking James Randi's challenge?

My i2i challenge is a PR opportunity just as the JREF challenge is. Its purpose is to draw media attention to consciousness survival research (not to me). In the last Skeptiko podcast, the hot topic was "evidence" and the skeptical community's claim that there wasn't any "real evidence" for consciousness survival. So, my i2i challenge, though not perfectly designed, is a way for the Psi community (in a non adversarial tone) to draw attention to itself and open up dialog on other experiments that do suggest that mind and brain might not be one in the same. In other words, I'm not trying to please everyone who hates Psi by eliminating anything public, fun or interesting in my challenge. I just want the Psi community to get a little smarter in how they present their case to the public.

If you really look at the parameters I set up, you will see that an illusionist like Darren Brown could not possibly score as well simply using cold reading techniques. In my challenge, there is no room for error in the first "identification" part. One mistake, and the reading is considered invalid.

However, I have a solution to the concern of an intuitive possibly getting their information by reading facial cues or body language. We will take Polaroids of the people's shoes. I will read their shoes. That will make the challenge even more exciting and fun. Maybe now I will have to rename the i2i challenge "Marcel Cairo's Soul of the Shoe" Challenge.

I challenge any skeptic out there to score better than me in this challenge. There's no money at stake here, just the bragging rights and the chance to bring this debate to the public in a fun and friendly way.

[Topher Cooper]

I'm sorry if you feel that I was "attacking" your protocol. I was discussing what I would consider would make it a serious attempt to demonstrate that something paranormal was going on. Note that I'm not saying that without the changes you would not be doing something paranormal -- just that someone who was not starting from the assumption that you were doing something paranormal would be likely to be convinced. That pseudo-skeptics use these conventional capabilities to inappropriately dismiss the serious work of both people like you and people like me does not mean that the human mind is not capable of such things.

Obviously, if you were to look at someone and you instantly knew that there father's name was Edward, but before you could say anything they said "By the way my father's name was Edward" then you wouldn't expect -- or particularly want -- anyone to see your knowledge after that point of their father's name as a proof of anything paranormal (notice, I said take it as proof of something paranormal -- that they might personally accept your word for it is something quite different). For them to do so would mean that their acceptance pretty meaningless -- when something so meaningless is accepted as proof means that their acceptance of that proof is meaningless.

So, if you only want to arrange a challenge that Randi's crowd can dismiss (assuming the rather unlikely event that anyone actually involved would bother participating -- from their viewpoint, this is all about publicity and playing where anyone else has control is not the publicity they want) as you being more skillful at cold reading than them, your design will do as well as any other. If you want a design that reasonable doubters can look at and say "wait a moment -- there seems to be something going on here" than you can't allow the possibility of conventional information transfer (your shoe design sounds fine for that).

As for why I haven't criticised Randi's design -- I have any time anyone has asked about it. I have not offered suggestions because I don't believe for a moment that Randi et. al. are interested in producing a fair, reasonable test. They are uninterested in the truth -- only in promoting their viewpoint. I take you as interested in accomplishing something other than self-promotion.