Project Alpha – What Happened When Magicians Infiltrated Research Into The Paranormal?

In the late 1970s, magician and pseudoscience-buster James Randi received letters from two young magicians: Michael Edwards and Steve Shaw (who would later become the famous mentalist, Banacheck). They were offering their services if Randi ever wanted help testing the scientific rigor of the parapsychologists he was openly skeptical of. Randi, unsure what to make of it, put their letters in a file he labeled “Alpha,” but then he had an idea. The McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research had received half a million dollars in funding, and finally he had an in. He contacted the lab to share his thoughts on how to rigorously test for evidence of paranormal phenomena. At the same time, Edwards and Shaw applied to become participants in the research. They were both successful and ended up being involved in the study for three years from 1979 to 1982. It’s during that window of time that the shenanigans began. (FYI – Director of the UK’s only MAGIC Lab Dr Gustav Kuhn will be at our next CURIOUS Live on December 11 if you have any questions about how magic can be wielded as a tool for science: https://www.iflscience.com/the-science-of-magic-at-curious-live-psychologist-dr-gustav-kuhn-on-using-magic-to-study-the-human-mind-81706) Read more: https://www.iflscience.com/project-alpha-in-1979-magicians-infiltrated-a-washington-laboratory-to-test-scientific-rigor-in-parapsychology-81768 Video and image credit: JamesRandiFoundation CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en