The 2009 Pigasus Awards have been announced
The Pigasus Awards, the Nobel Prizes of irrationality, are given out every year by the James Randi Educational Foundation to honour people and organisations that have distinguished themselves in their efforts to promote irrationality.
The Annual Pigasus Award
The Pigasus Awards are awarded by the James Randi Educational Foundation every year on April 1st in five categories:
- the Scientist who did the most to promote woowoo in he preceding year
- the Funding Organization that wasted the most money on pseudoscience
- the Media outlet that reported as fact the most outrageous paranormal claim(s)
- the Psychic who fools the greatest number of people with the least effort
- For the group that most ardently refuses to face reality.
This year’s award for category 1 goes to Dr. Mehmet Oz. He is a Harvard educated cardiac physician who got help from Oprah Winfrey to start his own highly successful TV show in which he provides some basic medical wisdom along with a lot of quackery such as Reiki (his wife is a practitioner), energy “medicine” and other magic. Reiki has been shown to have no beneficial effects for any condition except for fattening the wallets of the practitioners.
The category 2 award goes to Iraq’s interior ministry for spending 83 million dollars by the end of 2009 on the ADE 651 dowsing rod that supposedly detect car bombs, but has been shown not to work.The award for category 3 goes to Oprah Winfrey, a smart, but also very silly lady who made her platform available to Suzanne Somers, Jenny McCarthy, Dr. Oz, and Michael Beckwith, the founder of the New Thought Church.
Even though many television shows dabble in silliness once in a while, Oprah Winfrey has a special responsibility since countless millions believe that if she likes it, it must be true.
The award for category 4 goes to Chip Coffey, a man who claims he is a clairvoyant, clairaudient, and clearsentient as well as a “fully conscious medium”.
The category 5 award goes to Scientology because their OT levels IX, X and XI do not exist and because of the unsavoury stories that have come up lately about them, such as stories of alleged penal colonies, covered-up rapes, coerced abortions, slave labor, and savage abuse at the hands of David Miscavige.
The awards are announced via telepathy, winners are allowed to predict their victories, and the Flying Pig trophies are sent via psychokinesis. The James Randi Educational Foundation sends the awards; if the recipients don’t receive them, that’s probably due to their lack of paranormal talent.
