This article is about the satirical award that seeks to expose parapsychological frauds. For the yearly award which honors filk music, seePegasus Award. For the French awards for video games, seePégases.
The award was originally called theUri trophy, afterUri Geller, and was first announced in the appendix of Randi's bookFlim-Flam!. The 1982 edition lists the award's "recipients" in 1979, 1980 and 1981.
InFlim-Flam!, Randi states:
The trophy consists of a stainless-steel spoon bent in a pleasing curve (paranormally, of course) and supported by a base of plastic. Please note that the base is flimsy and quite transparent. I am personally responsible for the nomination of the candidates. The sealed envelopes are read by me, while blindfolded, at the official announcement ceremony on April 1. Any baseless claims are rationalized in approved parapsychological fashion, and the results will be published immediately without being checked in any way. Winners are notified telepathically and are allowed to predict their victory in advance.
The bent spoon trophy is a reference to Geller's claimedspoon-bending abilities.
The logo of a winged pig was designed for Randi's website by German artistJutta Degener in 1996.[2] The name "Pigasus" was chosen by Randi from suggestions e-mailed to him.[3] The term is a portmanteau pun combining the wordpig with the mythologicalPegasus, a reference to the expression "when pigs fly".
Randi did not present any Uri Award for a number of years after its inception inFlim-Flam! In 1997, it was revived and the name was changed to "Pigasus" after the winged pig. Randi announced the recipients through his e-newsletter,SWIFT!, in which he said "The awards are announced via telepathy, the winners are allowed to predict their winning, and the Flying Pig trophies are sent via psychokinesis. We send; if they don't receive, that's probably due to their lack of paranormal talent."[4]
There were no Pigasus Awards for 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.
Flim-Flam! specifies that the winner of the Pigasus Award falls in one of four possible categories:
The scientist who said or did the silliest thing relating to parapsychology in the preceding twelve months.
The funding organization that supports the most useless parapsychological study during the year.
The media outlet that reported as fact the most outrageous paranormal claim.
The "psychic" performer who fools the greatest number of people with the least effort in that twelve-month period.[5]
The 2003 Pigasus Awards featured only categories 1 and 4.[4] The 2005 awards added a fifth category "for the most persistent refusal to face reality".[6]
1979 –William A. Tiller, who said that although the evidence for psychic events was very shaky and originates with persons of doubtful credibility, it should be taken seriouslybecause there is so much of it.
2004 – Rogerio Lobo, professor/chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University who co-signed a paper titledDoes Prayer Influence the Success of in Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer?[8]
2005 – Brenda Dunne,Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab manager, for thedoublespeak of promoting studies whose "experimental results display increases in information content that can only be attributed to the influence of the consciousness of the human operator", while simultaneously insisting that PEAR is "not in the business of demonstrating 'paranormal' abilities".
2006 – BiologistRupert Sheldrake for research funded byTrinity College, Cambridge on his theory of "telephone telepathy", supposed precognition experienced by the recipients of telephone calls and e-mails,[9] (i.e. knowing who is calling before picking up the phone or viewing the caller ID.)
2009 –Mehmet Oz, for his promotion of energy therapies such asReiki.
2010 – NASA engineerRichard B. Hoover and theJournal of Cosmology; Hoover for claiming unfounded evidence for microscopic life found on meteorites and theJournal of Cosmology for publishing articles advancing the scientifically unsupported idea that life began before the first stars formed and was spread throughout the early universe on meteors.[11][12][13]
2013 –Stanislaw Burzynski, for "[selling] expensive cancer cures by administering ‘antineoplastons’, costing his customers tens of thousands of dollars, and which have never been shown to be efficacious in controlled trials."[15]
1980 – The Millennium Foundation[citation needed] for giving $1 million to parapsychological research. (The award was withdrawn in 1982 when the foundation decided, instead, to invest the million dollars in a "psychically discovered" oil site, which turned out to be dry.[citation needed])
1981 –The Pentagon for spending $6 million to determine whether or not burning a photograph of a Soviet missile would destroy the missile. (Randi 1982, pp. 327–329)
2004 – TheUnited States Air Force Research Laboratory, who paid $25,000 to Eric W. Davis at a Las Vegas company called Warp Drive Metrics to study the "conveyance of persons by psychic means" and "transport through extra space dimensions or parallel universes."[16]
2005 – City Council ofAuckland,New Zealand, for a NZ$2,500 (US$1,800) grant to the Foundation For Spiritualist Mediums "to teach people to communicate with the dead".[17]
2006 –Templeton Foundation for spending US$2.4 million and ten years research on a study researching the effectiveness of prayer.[9]
2012 – Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center, for their funding and promotion of the spurious "contemporary healing modality which evolved from the process of laying-on of hands" calledTherapeutic Touch.[15]
1980 – The reality television seriesThat's Incredible!, for declaring a simple magic trick to be genuine. (The performer,James Hydrick, later admitted it to be false.)
1981 – TV stationKNBC of Los Angeles, for accepting theTamara Rand hoax as real without checking into it.
1996 – Awarded collectively to a number of media outlets for perpetuating theRoswell UFO incident.[7]
1999 – Television hostBill Maher for endorsing a series of psychics.
1979 – Philip Jordan, who was hired byTioga County, New York, Public Defender R. L. Miller to assist in choosing jurors by their "auras".
1980 –Dorothy Allison, a psychic housewife who was called upon to solve a series of murders inAtlanta, Georgia. She failed to do anything but give the police42 different names for the murderer.
1981 –Tamara Rand, professional psychic, who claimed she had predicted an assassination attempt onRonald Reagan months before the incident when she actually did it a dayafter the event.
1996 –Sheldan Nidle, who predicted the end of the world on December 17, 1996, then explained that it came, but we were all unaware of it.[7]
2005 –Journal of Reproductive Medicine, for refusal to denounce the now-discredited Cha/Wirth paper,Does Prayer Influence the Success of in Vitro Fertilization-Embryo Transfer, thatJRM published. (Paper co-signer Rogerio Lobo won the 2004 Pigasus Scientist award.)
2010 –Andrew Wakefield, the researcher who launched the modern anti-vaccine panic with unfounded statements linking the MMR vaccine with autism that were not borne out by any research.[11][12][13][18][19]
2011 –James Van Praagh, who pushes theories about ghosts despite being debunked by Randi several times.[14]
2012 –Mehmet Oz, for his continued promotion of quack medical practices, paranormal belief, and pseudoscience.[15]
^Davis, Eric (2003-11-25)."Teleportation Physics Study"(PDF).fas.org.Federation of American Scientists.Archived(PDF) from the original on 2022-06-28. Retrieved2022-09-19.This study was tasked with the purpose of collecting information describing the teleportation of material objects, providing a description of teleportation as it occurs in physics, its theoretical and experimental status, and a projection of potential applications.
