| Pigasus Award | |
|---|---|
 Pigasus Award | |
| Awarded for | Paranormal fraud |
| Country | United States |
| Presented by | James Randi |
| First awarded | 1982 |
| Website | http://web.randi.org/ |
The Pigasus Award is the name of an annual tongue-in-cheek award that was presented by noted skeptic James Randi. The award seeks to expose parapsychological, paranormal or psychic frauds that Randi had noted over the previous year. [1] Randi usually made his announcements of the awards from the previous year on April 1 (April Fools' Day).
The award was originally called the Uri trophy, after Uri Geller, and was first announced in the appendix of Randi's book Flim-Flam! . The 1982 edition lists the award's "recipients" in 1979, 1980 and 1981.
In Flim-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 claimed spoon-bending abilities.
The logo of a winged pig was designed for Randi's website by German artist Jutta 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 word pig with the mythological Pegasus , a reference to the expression "when pigs fly".
Randi did not present any Uri Award for a number of years after its inception in Flim-Flam!, but 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]
The Pigasus Awards have not been presented every year. There was no mention of recipients for 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.
Flim-Flam! specifies that the winner of the Pigasus Award falls in one of four possible categories:
( Randi 1982 , p. 327)
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". [5]
 | This article needs to be updated.(April 2016) |
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James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) is an American grant-making institution founded in 1996 by magician and skeptic James Randi. As a nonprofit organization, the mission of JREF includes educating the public and the media on the dangers of accepting unproven claims, and to support research into paranormal claims in controlled scientific experimental conditions. The organization announced its change to a grant-making foundation in September 2015.
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