We've got $100,000 to give away!

At the beginning of this month, we launched our $100K paranormal challenge. The idea is that if somebody can demonstrate a paranormal ability or product, they get to claim the $100,000.

Where is the money coming from? Well, NZ Skeptics have some money that we've built up over the years, currently on term deposit. We've earmarked $50K for this. As well, the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH) are coming to the party for the other $50K. Of course, we believe the likelihood of actually having to pay out the money is extremely low. And, were somebody to be able to successfully and conclusively demonstrate one of these abilities, it would be earth-shattering news!

There have been challenges in the past. Famously, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) ran their Million Dollar Challenge, which was similar in nature. With the retirement of James Randi (and, his death in 2020), that challenge ended. The Center for Inquiry (CFI) based in California, has a similar challenge where people could win $250K.

Here in Aotearoa, we've had our own psychic challenge, run by Stuart Landsborough at his Puzzling World in Wanaka, where anybody with a psychic ability to locate a pair of promissory notes, could win $100,000. Stuart recently retired, and with that, ended his challenge, after 8 people unsuccessfully attempted the challenge over the years. Recently, on our Yeah… Nah podcast, we interviewed Stuart, and heard his interesting story.

Our challenge is a little different, having learned from the experience of overseas organisations. The lure of the money appears to attract many deluded people who think they have abilities but can't actually demonstrate them. Additionally, such challenges seem to attract people who may be suffering from mental health issues. Consequently, these organisations often spend a lot of time negotiating with applications, without a test being able to be run.

In our challenge, we are publicly taking aim at prominent people making paranormal, or beyond science claims. Our criteria are such that we only challenge people who are profiting from their supposed abilities. You can read our post about the challenge here.

So, who are we challenging?

We've chosen three relatively prominent people who are profiting from these claims, and issued a personalised email document to each of them.

First up is Kirsten Taylor, a naturopath, and CEO of the Sleep Drops company. Her company sells a range of products that don't claim to be able to do anything (due to regulations in NZ) but are strongly hinted at being able to improve your sleep. Of note are that the products contain homeopathic dilutions of various herbs, and the recommendation is that one needs only a few drops of the product under the tongue for them to be effective.

Specially, we've worded our challenge to Ms Taylor as:

From reviewing statements you've made in the past, we think that the claim that low concentrations of flower essences, herbal “medicines” and homeopathic preparations, delivered by a few drops, positively affect a person's sleep, falls outside what would be considered possible according to science.

As of this writing, we've not heard back from Ms Taylor, though I suspect it won't be until business hours this week that we get a response, if any.

Next, we've selected Kelvin Cruickshank, who is a prominent psychic who featured as one of the three on the awful Sensing Murder series on TVNZ a few years back, which (unsurprisingly to skeptics) didn't actually manage to solve any cases.

Kelvin is pretty active, doing shows around the country and making money out of his supposed ability to talk to dead people.

Kelvin's pretty hard to contact - I wasn't able to find an email address for him, and his website only shows a SquareSpace placeholder site. Nevertheless, he has a chat option on his Facebook page, so I reached out via that and chatted with his assistant Gem, giving her a link to the document.

Our wording of our challenge to Mr Cruickshank is as follows:

From reviewing statements you've made in the past, we think that the ability you claim to possess: that you can hear and pass on messages from the dead, and talk to deceased people who died a violent death at the hands of another, falls outside what would be considered possible according to science.

So, Kelvin has been delivered the challenge. My bet is that we won't hear back from him, as it's unlikely he wants to be exposed as not being able to do what he claims.

Finally, we selected Ken Ring, known for his ability to sucker gullible people into believing he can make super-long-range weather forecasts and predict earthquakes. He sells his predictions through his website, and also a range of pricey almanacs.

Our wording of our challenge to Mr Ring is as follows:

From reviewing statements you've made in the past, we think that the ability you claim to possess: that you can make very specific long-range weather forecasts, predictions of earthquakes, and predict weather events with a specificity and over a time horizon that well exceeds the limits of current meteorology, falls outside what would be considered possible according to science.

I delivered the challenge to Mr Ring via the contact form on his website, and did, in fact hear back from him.

The gist of his response was a wide-ranging tirade against NZ Skeptics and science in general which included topics such as anti-vaccine, anti-climate change. He also made the accusation that our challenge wasn't real, since it was delivered on April 1st, being an April Fool's joke. I have since written back to him confirming that we are serious about the challenge. Will we hear back from him again? It will be interesting to see. Of the three people we've challenged, he does seem to be the one who's most deeply down the conspiracy rabbit hole, and keen to cherry pick data to support his predictions, and put forward fanciful ideas that fall well outside good science.

Anyway, watch this space. We'll be reporting on progress with any of these people.

Finally, we are accepting recommendations for people to challenge. If you've got an idea for someone who's making claims and profiting from them that you'd like to see us challenge, you can submit their details on our website form.

Ultimately, we see the challenge as a rhetorical device. When media organisations ask us about a particular person making outlandish claims, we can challenge them to “put up or shut up”.