The following comes directely from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) website:
The Foundation is committed to providing reliable information about paranormal claims. It both supports and conducts original research into such claims.
At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant will be asked to perform a relatively simple preliminary test of the claim, which if successful, will be followed by the formal test. Preliminary tests are usually conducted by associates of the JREF at the site where the applicant lives. Upon success in the preliminary testing process, the “applicant” becomes a “claimant.”
To date, no one has ever passed the preliminary tests.
They also have a forum where they post the correspondences between the applicants and the JREF. Some are quite amusing. It’s quite disturbing to realize how many people are out that think they can do something paranormal. Of course, there are a lot of people out there who just want to get rich as well (those are the ones who actually write intelligently, the crazy ones you can barely read what they write). I suggest you check out the forum and read about the applicants, it’s been keeping me enthralled for the past couple days.
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James Randi sucks. “Paranormal” phenomena (things which are not CURRENTLY explainable by science as we currently know it) have been demonstrated and replicated in many laboratories all over the world. The problem is that Randi doesn’t have any specific statistical cutoff point…so “proof” is subjective to him. If something has been demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt, he can say it was probably fraud. If you offer to have him supervise the entire procedure to rule out fraud, he will say it’s too time-consuming and not his job. Essentially, he is so vague with his “contest” that he can wiggle out of any situation where he is about to lose his million dollars.
Not to mention the fact that this guy has intentionally sabotaged scientific laboratories just to get his point across. That’s not good science…he’ll only obscure the truth doing crap like that.
So really, I think Randi is just as whacko and biased as some of the crazy people who apply (and some are amusingly crazy).