If you are a water dowser then a man in Florida wants to give you £1 million. He will also entertain clairvoyants, mind readers or those with extra sensory perception, but you will only get the cash if you can prove your powers. Mr James Randi, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation, has had a standing bet since 1968 with those claiming abilities related to the paranormal, occult or supernatural.
"I am not a debunker, I am an investigator," Mr Randi maintained. Nor was he a scientist "but I try my very best to act in a scientific fashion". He described 13 new applicants based in the UK who claimed a range of powers including a man who said he was magnetic.
"These are honest folks," Mr Randi believed. "Very few dishonest folks come to me." While none of the applicants have so far convinced Mr Randi of the paranormal, it was remarkable that none of them subsequently abandoned their belief in their own powers.
A recent area of study was the "therapeutic touch nonsense", Mr Randi said, in which the person claimed to be able to feel and alter the "human energy field" which supposedly surround each of us. "It is a form of magic and witchcraft," he said based on investigations so far, yet there were 80,000 approved practitioners in the US charging up to $60 per hour to have their energy fields fixed.
Mr Randi blamed the media for encouraging people in these beliefs by writing about them in an uncritical way. "They embrace these things shamelessly because editors want stories." The public was being "misled" he said. "They are being misinformed by irresponsible aspects of the media."