Greetings, dear readers of Simple Justice! Today, I want to delve into a fascinating story of a hoax that rocked the world of parapsychology and exposed the charlatans who peddled their wares as psychic phenomena. I am, of course, talking about the con game called “Project Alpha,” run by three magicians that exposed just how little rigor scientists apply to their methods when they want to believe something is true.

For the uninitiated, James Randi was a magician and skeptic who devoted his life to debunking claims of paranormal and supernatural abilities. He founded the James Randi Educational Foundation, which offered a million-dollar prize to anyone who could demonstrate their paranormal powers under scientific scrutiny. Though Randi has left this world, the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) still stands, and that million dollar prize has never been collected.

In the 1970s, word got out about a lab in St. Louis called the “McMillan Lab” or “MacLab” for short. A benefactor gave the lab a half million dollars to study psychic phenomena and parapsychology. This got the attention of two young men who were amateur magicians, Steve Shaw and Mike Edwards.

Shaw and Edwards got in touch with Randi and told him of their intentions to infiltrate the MacLab and expose the researchers for their shoddy methodology in their research. The idea both young men pitched to Randi was magicians posing as psychics and using sleight of hand and other deceptive techniques to mimic powers. Randi came up with the idea to pair the two and “Project Alpha” was born.

In order for you to grasp how hard this con was to pull off, consider the following: Shaw and Edwards went out to St. Louis every other weekend with no idea of what sort of challenges the MacLab researchers had in mind. They would get to the lab, learn the feats they were expected to reproduce, and had to do what they could to improvise with the materials on hand to make those “psychic phenomena” happen.

Last year Shaw (who now goes by the name Banachek and performs on the Vegas strip) and Edwards were interviewed about Project Alpha. I’m not revealing any methods here, but the duo said the most they were able to sneak into the MacLab as far as props were concerned were magnets and some invisible thread. From my own experience as a magician, I can tell you pulling off tricks that appear like psychic powers with so little material is nothing short of master level chicanery.

Every week, the duo called Randi and let him know about what they’d done. Sometimes Shaw and Edwards would call Randi on the home phones of the researchers who were studying them. That’s how ballsy all of this was, and how fearless Shaw and Edwards were.

Randi ate all of this up. He even sent the MacLab researchers detailed notes on what they should and shouldn’t do to guarantee scientifically sound results in their tests. Randi laid out specific tricks to watch out for and even suggested a professional magician be on hand for the tests at the MacLab. If you read my work regularly, you’ve probably already deduced no one at the MacLab paid attention to a word Randi wrote.

Shaw and Edwards were quite thrilled at their con game and rode it to a level of notoriety few can achieve. Master spoon bender Uri Geller even lauded praise on Shaw and Edwards at one convention for parapsychology, claiming “These two can do things I never will.” And Randi chuckled at every call and letter the boys sent him, marveling at what the old magician already knew: if people want to believe, they’ll take any line of bullshit you throw at them.

But Shaw and Edwards were starting to feel bad after a couple of years. They began to really know and like the research team studying them and started to feel like they were getting away with something tantamount to murder in the parapsychological research community.

So the boys approached Randi and said they wanted a conclusion to the whole con. Randi decided on a conference in 1983 to make the big reveal. Ever the showman, Randi even leaked to the press weeks before the conference that all the MacLab experiments might have been tainted by frauds, and that he even might have planted the frauds himself!

At the 1983 conference, camera crews were rolling for a news story on Shaw and Edwards. Their antics had made national press and people wanted to know how the boys were able to do what they did.

You can probably imagine it didn’t go well when the boys said on camera to a television audience, “Well, we cheated.”

The fallout from Project Alpha was significant. Some parapsychologists continued to believe in psychic abilities, but many were forced to confront the reality of their flawed research methods. The scientific community at large was also affected, as it highlighted the need for rigorous scientific scrutiny and skepticism in all fields of research.

What really makes this whole story even more amazing was that shortly after the fallout of Project Alpha, the U.S. Government got involved in trying to suss out psychic phenomena as real or fraudulent. That government project’s results would later become a very popular film called “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”

Edwards would go into the private sector later in life, only reviving his psychic “powers” for occasional college lectures. Shaw, as I previously mentioned, now goes by Banachek and has a residency in Vegas.

And all of this could’ve been avoided if the researchers just asked the boys, “Is what you’re doing magic?” Because, dear readers, if that question had been asked, the boys pledged to drop the act immediately and spill the beans on everything they’d done.

But that question was never asked.

That’s all for this week, folks! Happy Friday, and remember, no matter how bad your week’s been, at least you didn’t waste a half a million dollars on bullshit!

We’ll see you next week, everyone!