James Randy is a stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. He is also the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation hosting the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.
To quote the history of the challenge from Wikipedia:
In 1968, James Randi was working on a radio program with his friend and parapsychologist Stanley Crypter. During one of the programs, someone challenged him to "put his money where his mouth is", and Randi offered $100 of his own money (even though he wasn't sure if he had $100 at that time) to the first person who could provide objective proof of the paranormal. Eventually this grew to $1,000 and then $10,000. Later, Lexington Broadcasting wanted him to do a show called the "$100,000 Psychic Prize", so they added $90,000 to the original $10,000 raised by Randi. Finally, years later a rich investor told Randi that he "should have more teeth" to his challenge and offered him the current $1,000,000 prize. As the prize fund grew, the rules that surround claiming the prize became more official and legal.
This challenge has withstood the test of time and so far no one has made claim to the prize money. Also a lot of myths have been busted as a result but unfortunately a lot of this information is not commonly available. Here is a list of all the Million dollar challengers.
Homeopathy has been proved to be pseudoscience and all its benefits have been attributed to the placebo effect.
BBC Horizon organized a Million dollar challenge of Homeopathy Vs James Randi. Its available in youtube as 5 episodes:
Everyone taking homeopathic treatment might want to make a fresh stand after watching these videos.
In the video below James Randi shows how to fake psychic powers.
Skeptic are you now?
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