Psychic medium creates a challenge to skeptics

[mind-energy]

Marcel Cairo, a psychic medium with his own podcast, has yesterday issued a challenge of his own to counter James Randi's Million Dollar challenge.

His main challenge premise is:
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 complete text of the challenge plus some first reaction can be read on:
Marcel Cairo's i2i Challenge on parapsychology forums.

Erin, or other mediums, if present on this board, what are your thoughts on this challenge. Would it be something you'd be willing to take?

[Brutha]

First of all that challenge doesn't prove that their is anything to psychic phenomens it just shows that one person has more cold reading skills than the other.
Most psychics have a lot more experience doing readings than the average sceptic so you would except that they are in average better than the sceptics.
Then there are people like Derren Brown who are really good at doing cold readings.
A duell between Derren and some psychic would be fun to watch.
But since Derren has something to lose, it would require some famous psychic that has also something to lose on the other site.

[mind-energy]

Yes, cold reading can be a problem in the challenge design, that's why other participants of that forum suggest eliminating this possibility in the experiment's design.

Of course, this is only a starting point for the challenge, and, hopefully, Marcel would address design concerns and finds a way to conduct this experiment in a well-controlled manner.

[mcairo]

Originally Posted by Brutha

First of all that challenge doesn't prove that their is anything to psychic phenomens it just shows that one person has more cold reading skills than the other.

With all due respect Brutha, I don't think you fully understood the challenge. In it, I set forth very specific rules about the type and order of the information that must be delivered in order to have the reading count. For instance, both the intuitive and the inquirer must first correctly identify the spiritual source (without a single mistake) from whom the information is being delivered. That identification must possess at least 2 genealogical identifiers (i.e. not acceptable="Uncle" Acceptable="Your Mother's older brother").

Keep in mind that all verbal and visual communication between the intuitive/inquirer and the subject is strictly forbidden. The only exception to this is that the intuitive/inquirer can look at a Polaroid picture of the subject's shoes.

There are also other parameters in place that prevent cold reading to be presented as a reason for the higher success rate of the intuitive over the inquirer. So many in fact, that I am 100% confident that a mentalist like Darren Brown can not score better than me in the i2i challenge.

Please explain to me how you can dismiss this challenge as proving cold reading, or not at least raising the question, how does the intuitive receive their information.

Thank you.

[Brutha]

I haven't read the your thread but mind-energy's descprition of the experiment.

From a sceptics perspective the chances of both persons should be 50:50, when both of you have no skill in getting information.
You shouldn't be able to win it by chance. The results of chance guess work shouldn't bring you to a more than 1:1000 chance of winning. 1:100 might also be okay but no sceptic would accept a 50:50 chance to lose in facing a psychic.

Polaroid picture

Is their a diffence between a polaroid picture and a digital picture?

[kickmoko]

Originally Posted by mind-energy

Marcel Cairo, a psychic medium with his own podcast, has yesterday issued a challenge of his own to counter James Randi's Million Dollar challenge.

His main challenge premise is:
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 complete text of the challenge plus some first reaction can be read on:
Marcel Cairo's i2i Challenge on parapsychology forums.

Erin, or other mediums, if present on this board, what are your thoughts on this challenge. Would it be something you'd be willing to take?

Aw..It depends on the psychic, for me i will take the challenge coz i trust myself!

[Angela]

Originally Posted by mind-energy

Yes, cold reading can be a problem in the challenge design, that's why other participants of that forum suggest eliminating this possibility in the experiment's design.

Looks like you may have overlooked the years of extensive effort to design a challenge that eliminates the possibility of cold-reading or other natural world phenomena, that both sides would agree is fair.

Randi's challenge has reached the point in a few cases where the psychic agrees, in writing, that the challenge is fair and acceptable, and then when (s)he fails, declares that it wasn't fair and acceptable after all.

The test suggested here is far less stringent in its protocol than what's been negotiated in the Randy challenge.

But it would be fun to watch Derren Brown do it -- I'm quite sure he would far outstrip anyone's results!

As Brutha suggested, the results should be better than even odds, so why not just go out and do the test sans skeptics? Just go out and see how many you get right, have as impartial a witness as you can find present, and document the results? If you get better results than would be expected by chance, and your protocols can stand up to scrutiny, then why would you need it to be a competition?