The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/James Randi.md

created	updated	title	aliases	category	tags	summary	born	died	location	relations
2026-05-15	2026-10-05	James Randi	James Randi The Amazing Randi Amazing Randi Randy Randall James Hamilton Zwinge Randall Zwinge Zwinge Randi	Skeptics & Critics	Person Skeptic Magician CSICOP UriGeller ProjectAlpha McDonnellLaboratory MacArthurFellow Debunker	Canadian-American stage magician who campaigned against Uri Geller, co-founded CSICOP, ran Project Alpha against the McDonnell Laboratory (1979 to 1983), received a MacArthur fellowship in 1986 and left CSICOP in 1991 amid Geller's lawsuits.	1928-08-07	2020-10-20	Toronto, Ontario, Canada	type with start end role fn member_of Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal 1976-05-01 1991-05 signer of the founding call of 1976 and Executive Council member; resigned by a letter of May 11, 1991 because the committee was named in Geller's suits; wrote in 1995 that CSICOP 'essentially forced me to resign' 7 type with start end role fn investigated McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research 1979 1983-01-28 placed Steven Shaw and Michael Edwards as subjects (Project Alpha); revealed the arrangement at a press conference on January 28, 1983 8 type with reverse start role fn funded MacArthur Foundation true 1986 MacArthur fellowship of $272,000, class of 1986 10 type with start end role fn subject_of Uri Geller 1991 1995 defendant with CSICOP in suits Geller filed from 1991; the courts ruled for the skeptics and ordered Geller to pay sanctions 12

James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge in Toronto on August 7, 1928; died October 20, 2020) was a stage magician and escape artist who became known as "The Amazing Randi." At twelve he was allowed to study independently outside the classroom and watched Harry Blackstone Sr. levitate a woman in a Toronto theater; at seventeen he joined a traveling carnival, and he has said he saw little point in finishing school. In 1995 Scientific American gave his count of television appearances as "more than 30 on the Tonight Show" and his main income as lecturing.¹

Uri Geller, 1973 to 1982

Randi was present when Uri Geller performed at the New York offices of Time, a visit Time placed in the month before its issue of March 12, 1973 and New Scientist placed in March 1973. Time reported that after Geller left, Randi "duplicated each of his feats, explaining that any magician could perform them," and that the fork bending was sleight of hand.² New Scientist of October 17, 1974 recorded that Randi and the picture editor of Popular Photography, Charles Reynolds, both said they saw Geller bend a key in his hand after asking for a beer can opener to divert attention, and that Randi had said stagehands told him that Geller specified a box of ten-penny nails for the Mike Douglas show and asked them to wrap some in a bundle an hour before airtime. Geller was asked about Randi's statement on the television program Mid-Day Five on May 3, 1974.³

The Magic of Uri Geller appeared in 1975. A fact sheet in the CIA's STARGATE files, unsigned and with no author or sponsor stated, answers the book point by point. It states that Randi's letter offering his services to Stanford Research Institute was dated September 6, 1973, "months after completion of the SRI work with Geller"; that Shimshon Shtrang ("Shipi Strang" in the book) and no other potential confederate was permitted in the target area; that the SRI team included an amateur magician of over twenty years' experience and that Milbourne Christopher had been brought in to critique film and videotape; and that Randi's quotations from Edgar Mitchell concerned a period before the experiments reported in Nature.⁴ Annie Jacobsen wrote that Randi spent two years writing a 308-page exposé of Geller, quoted him as saying "Geller brings disgrace to the craft I practice... Worse than that, he warps the thinking of a young generation of forming minds. And that is unforgivable," and wrote that Randi speculated Shtrang helped Geller cheat, leading the Central Intelligence Agency to deny Shtrang access to Geller during experiments.⁵

The Army's Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee recorded in 1979 that Robert Lucky of Bell Labs "once proposed to Targ and Puthoff that they allow a 'debugger' like Randy the Magician to watch an SRI RV session. They refused on the grounds that no one believes them anyhow, and did not feel that permitting an extremely vocal critic to intrude into their lives/work would accomplish anything."⁶

CSICOP

Paul Kurtz recorded that the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal was established at a conference at the State University of New York at Buffalo on April 30 and May 1, 1976, and that the call announcing it was signed by, among others, George Abell, Isaac Asimov, Antony Flew, Martin Gardner, Sidney Hook, Philip Klass, Ernest Nagel, W. V. Quine, B. F. Skinner, Marcello Truzzi and Randi. Jacobsen wrote that Randi, Gardner and Ray Hyman helped found it.⁷⁵ In 1996 Kurtz listed Gardner and Randi among Executive Council members "fearlessly debunking the various forms of nonsense offered as gospel truth on the popular scene," and named among efforts to destroy the committee "efforts by Uri Geller, Eldon Byrd, and others to embroil CSICOP and Randi in protracted and costly legal suits."⁷

Project Alpha, 1979 to 1983

Randi's account, published in the Skeptical Inquirer in the summer and fall of 1983, is that when James S. McDonnell, board chairman of McDonnell Douglas, gave a $500,000 grant in 1979 to Washington University in St. Louis for the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research, he saw an opportunity for an experiment "contemplated for some time," coded "Project Alpha." The laboratory's director was the physicist Peter R. Phillips. Randi asked two young conjurors who had written to him, Steven Shaw ("Banachek," then 18, of Washington, Pennsylvania) and Michael Edwards (17, of Marion, Iowa), to write to the laboratory claiming psychic powers; the laboratory had considered some 300 applicants and chose only the two. Before the boys were tested he sent Phillips eleven "caveats" and offered to attend sessions at his own expense, and he continued to write offering to attend "all through the three-year period." Jacobsen counted twenty-two such letters, and wrote that Phillips dismissed the pair at one point and rehired them months later.⁸⁵

Randi wrote that he "leaked" hints of the project at a magicians' conference in Pittsburgh in July 1981, and that at the Parapsychological Association meeting in Syracuse that August Phillips showed a Randi-prepared videotape of fake metal bending alongside the laboratory's own tape of the two subjects, after Phillips had asked him for a tape; Randi supplied an analysis pointing out "positively unmistakable evidence of deception" on the laboratory's film. He wrote that he told the boys afterward that Alpha was "probably about to end," that the laboratory then tightened its protocol, and that Banachek and Edwards went on to be tested or entertained by other investigators, among them the psychiatrist Berthold Schwarz and Professor Walter Uphoff, whose meeting in Madison, Wisconsin Randi attended in disguise as "Adam Jersin" while BBC producer Tony Edwards used a Randi-designed protocol that, Randi wrote, produced "zero mental-bending."⁸

At a press conference in New York on January 28, 1983, held with Discover magazine, which published the account in its March issue, Randi announced that Shaw and Edwards were conjurors who had conspired with him, and that they had agreed to answer any direct question about trickery with "Yes, and we were sent here by James Randi," but were never asked. He warned that a "Project Beta" was underway. His television special "Magic or Mystery?" was scheduled for February 8. The Skeptical Inquirer put the project on the cover of its Summer 1983 issue, and the matter was presented at CSICOP's conference in October 1983.⁹

Marcello Truzzi recorded the replies. Washington University's spokesman said the laboratory had never endorsed the boys' abilities and cited a statement of September 1981 that nothing they had done could not be done by normal means. Phillips said there were "ethical issues involved." Truzzi wrote that Randi had given Phillips a "Straight Spoon Award" on April 1, 1982, less than a year before the announcement, for redesigning his procedures; that Randi's April 1, 1983 "Uri Award" for a fictitious "Archaeus Project" grant followed a prank notice written by Dennis Stillings, whom Truzzi named among Randi's foes; that the laboratory's funding was $500,000 over five years; and that Shaw had posed as a psychic since 1977, before meeting Randi, according to articles of 1977 and 1979. Truzzi also wrote that he learned of Alpha in late July 1981 from another conjuror, that Randi "initially flatly denied the existence of the project," and that Randi's reply to Truzzi's invitation to correct factual errors in the draft was "an angry and vituperative letter." Martin Gardner wrote of Alpha as a "landmark in the history of PK research," and, later, in Truzzi's quotation, as a case of "entrapment."⁹

Jacobsen wrote that after the hoax Randi held a press conference and that Shaw "famously" stepped up to the microphone and said "I cheat."⁵

Lawsuits, resignation and the MacArthur fellowship

The MacArthur Foundation listed Randi in its 1986 class as an educator in communications and journalism, residing in Fort Lauderdale, with the description "an investigator of the paranormal."¹⁰ A news item of 1987 gave the grant as $272,000 and quoted him that the foundation "reached very far out, perhaps dangerously so," and that he intended to add a full-time researcher and a college scholarship for training "debunkers."¹¹ Scientific American credited him with exposing the faith healer Peter Popoff in 1986 by intercepting radio transmissions from Popoff's wife, and with taking the tape to Johnny Carson, after the California Attorney General's office declined to act.¹

In a letter of May 11, 1991 to supporters, Randi wrote that Geller "has announced that he intends to sue me 'in every state and in every country,'" that Geller then had "four lawsuits against me, two of which I have won (at a cost of over $155,000 in legal fees)," and that "I have resigned from the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, since the Committee is always named in the suits, and in order that CSICOP will be spared further involvement."¹² The suit concerned remarks Randi made to a reporter that Geller "fooled some scientists" and that his tricks were of the kind printed on cereal boxes. The court first ruled in favor of CSICOP on July 27, 1993, and Geller was ordered to pay up to $120,000, a first installment of $40,000 being reported in the Skeptical Inquirer of May and June 1995.¹³ Scientific American gave the sanctions as $150,000 and said CSICOP announced a settlement in March for somewhat less than that amount.¹ In July 1995 Scientific American quoted Randi: "These lawsuits from psychics have wiped me out financially," including the $272,000 MacArthur fellowship; "They got wimpy on me," he said of CSICOP; "They essentially forced me to resign. They were afraid of my continuing to make statements about Geller." He said he was unsure whether he wanted to rejoin.¹ Jacobsen wrote that Randi's campaign against Geller ultimately cost him his position on CSICOP and that Geller's libel suits were brought against him.⁵

Later episodes

In 2011, according to Jacobsen, it was revealed that Randi's "Carlos" channeler hoax involved a young man, Jose Alvarez (Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga), who had used another man's identity on a passport application, and Jacobsen described this as a federal crime, adding that Randi continued to maintain his stance against the paranormal.⁵

Footnotes

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1. "Profile: James Randi: A Skeptically Inquiring Mind," Scientific American, July 1995, pp. 34-35, in "Stargate Misc. Doc's and Memos," CIA-RDP96-00791R000200190022-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

2. "The Magician and the Think Tank," Time, March 12, 1973, p. 112, CIA-RDP96-00787R000400100023-4. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

3. Hanlon, Joseph, "Uri Geller and science," New Scientist, vol. 64, no. 919, October 17, 1974, CIA-RDP96-00787R000700110020-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

4. "The Magic of Uri Geller by James Randi: Fact Sheet correcting errors with regard to SRI work with Geller," unsigned, undated, CIA-RDP96-00787R000500240021-0. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. ↩︎

5. Jacobsen, Annie. Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. Little, Brown and Company, 2017. ↩︎

6. Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee, December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. The name is spelled "Randy" in the report. ↩︎

7. Kurtz, Paul, "CSICOP at Twenty," Skeptical Inquirer, July/August 1996, pp. 5-8, https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1996/07/22165034/p05.pdf ↩︎

8. Randi, James, "The Project Alpha Experiment: Part 1. The First Two Years," Skeptical Inquirer, Summer 1983, and "Part 2. Beyond the Laboratory," Fall 1983, https://archive.org/details/JamesRandiTheProjectAlpha ↩︎

9. Truzzi, Marcello, "Reflections on 'Project Alpha': Scientific Experiment or Conjuror's Illusion?," Zetetic Scholar, nos. 12 and 13, August 1987, "The Revelation of Project Alpha," https://archive.org/details/alpha-project-zetetic-scholar-nos-12-13 Sections cited: "Project Alpha's success was soon questioned," "Randi's Minnows," and "Epilogue: On Alpha and Me." ↩︎

10. MacArthur Foundation, Fellows, class of 1986, James Randi, https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-1986/james-randi ↩︎

11. "Randi: amazing good fortune," New Zealand Skeptics, May 1, 1987, https://articles.skeptics.nz/1987/05/01/randi-amazing-good-fortune ↩︎

12. Randi, James, letter of May 11, 1991, "Randi Needs Help," New Zealand Skeptics, August 1, 1991, https://articles.skeptics.nz/1991/08/01/randi-needs-help ↩︎

13. McShane, Owen, "Justice Lives," New Zealand Skeptics, August 1, 1995, reporting Skeptical Inquirer, May/June 1995, https://articles.skeptics.nz/1995/08/01/justice-lives ↩︎