Psychic challenge is over

I regret to inform you that the psychics have won. They've clearly demonstrated their abilities and the $100,000 challenge at Puzzling World in Wanaka is now over.

Oops… that's not quite accurate!

Our friend, Stuart Landsborough, runs the Puzzling World attraction in Wanaka (near Queenstown, for the geographically challenged). It's a place with lots of fun practical illusions, reminding us that we can all be fooled, that our brains are fallible. A good skeptical mindset is that everyone is fooled at times, including ourselves, and that our own personal experience can't be totally trusted. On a practical level it makes sense to trust our senses and our reasoning, but we need to be aware that it's easy to get the wrong end of the stick and be fooled by something.

In 1994 Stuart created an open offer for psychics and other people with magical abilities to find a hidden promissory note for $50,000 on the Puzzling World land by telling him the coordinates of where it was hidden - and if successful the guesser would win the money. That amount was eventually increased to $100,000, and despite several people trying to win the money - including psychics, diviners and spiritualists - nobody has ever guessed correctly.

This past week, Stuart announced that as he's retired, he's no longer going to be offering the prize money.

Since 1994, six attempts by mediums of every ilk, including psychics, diviners, spiritualists and the devoutly religious tried and failed to scoop the prize money offered.

In 2006 in the face of growing media interest, Stuart decided to increase the reward to $100,000, split the notes into two and decrease the search site from 200 to just 100 metres.

In March 2009, an Israeli Psychic became the first to try for the inflated prize total and declared he wouldn't need to "search" for the hidden notes because he "knew" their location. With a book full of his written "thoughts from a higher spirit" he rifled through office shelves and under sofas before admitting defeat, thus becoming the challenge's seventh failed attempt.

The website, psychicchallengenz.com, was also launched that aims to question psychic ability, offers reviews of live psychic performances (including local shows from Sensing Murder's psychics) and a full run down of the rules, past challengers, links and commentary on the dangers of this particular form of “exploitainment”.

With Stuart now fully retired he's ended the challenge.

“After all the years, I think I have proven my point!”

So, where to from here?

NZ Skeptics have never offered a prize, though we've had communications from opportunistic people assuming we do, and thinking they can con us into giving them money for unlikely demonstrations of their supposed abilities.

Other groups around the world have offered similar prizes, the most famous being the James Randi million dollar challenge. The Australian Skeptics also have a $100,000 prize. Unfortunately, most of the applicants for such prizes are people who seem to suffer from various mental health conditions. These people tend to be very convinced of their own abilities, but basically end up wasting organisers' time when trying to arrange a testing protocol, and don't ever agree to the proposed terms.

Stuart's challenge effectively side-stepped these issues by charging a $1,000 fee to any applicant who wanted to win his prize money. If people were so sure of their abilities, the $1,000 would be a small price to pay for a guaranteed $100,000 return!

NZ Skeptics, in association with the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists, have now been able to secure a $100,000 prize.

We have decided that we can side-step the issues above by making the prize on an invitation basis only. That will avoid a lot of time-wasting.

We often see people in the media in New Zealand claiming they have supernatural abilities, that they're able to defy science or access a supposed spiritual realm. Our prize, which we are hoping to make available in the next month or two, will give us the opportunity to challenge these people to “put up or shut up”. If they can prove that their ability is real, they can win a large sum of money, and humiliate skeptics! If they're not willing to be tested, people should really ask themselves why this is the case. Psychics often charge $200 or $300 an hour for their services, or $100 a ticket to their public events, so it's not like they're doing it as a public service. If it's money they want, they can have it. If they're after fame, I'm sure that winning our prize will get them in the news around the world. And if they just want to help people, they can donate the money to a worthy charity.

Of course, we fully expect that most of the people we challenge will find some excuse to wriggle out of being forced to prove their claimed abilities. As such, we think the challenge will be more of a rhetorical device than anything we're ever likely to actually need to test.

But, as is our nature, we're open to having our minds changed by good evidence.