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:''For the military project, see Project Alpha (military).'' Project Alpha was an elaborate hoax that began in 1979 and ended with its disclosure in 1981. It was orchestrated by the stage magician and skeptic James Randi. It involved planting two fake psychics, Steve Shaw (now better known as Banachek) and Michael Edwards, into a paranormal research project. During the initial stages of the investigation, the researchers came to believe that the pair's psychic powers were real. However, more formal experiments, as well as criticism from both the parapsychology community and Randi himself, led them to dismiss their initial trust. The hoax was later revealed publicly. Following Project Alpha, Randi went on to use variations of the technique on several other occasions. Perhaps the most famous example led to the downfall of TV evangelist and faith healer Peter Popoff, when Randi had a man pose as a woman with uterine cancer, which Popoff happily "cured". In another example, Randi worked with performance artist José Alvarez, who posed as a channeller known as "Carlos", who was presented on Australian TV and soon had a wide following. After this hoax was exposed, the artist was constantly approached by people who believed him to be genuine, even if he told them directly that he was an actor. == Peter Phillips' experiments == In 1979, James S. McDonnell, board chairman of McDonnell Douglas and believer in the paranormal, awarded a 500,000 USD grant to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, for the establishment of the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research. He intended the money to be used for serious study of psychic phenomena in a controlled setting. The lab was led by physicist Peter Phillips, who decided to focus on spoon bending by children, also known as "psychokinetic metal bending", or PKMB. Before the testing had started, James Randi had written to the lab with a list of 11 "caveats" they should be wary of and his suggestions on how to avoid them.〔 〕 These included a rigid adherence to the protocol of the test, so that the subjects would not be allowed to change it in the midst of the run. This had been the modus operandi of Uri Geller while being tested at Stanford Research Institute; whenever something did not work, he simply did something else instead. The researchers then reported this as a success, when in fact the original test had failed. Other suggestions included having only one object of study at any time, permanently marking the object or objects used so they could not be switched, and having as few people in the room as possible to avoid distractions. Randi also offered his services to watch the experiments as a control, noting that a conjurer would be an excellent person to look for fakery. Phillips did not take Randi up on the offer because of the skeptic's reputation of being "a showman rather than an unprejudiced critic" and his perceived hostility towards psychic claimants. In his letters, Randi even told the researchers that the subjects were fake, but the researchers did not check out their backgrounds. Throughout the early phases of the project, many people claiming to have psychic powers presented themselves to the lab. The vast majority quickly proved to have no such ability, or, just as commonly, used sleight of hand to make their "abilities" work. Many of these were convinced what they were doing was "real". However, after a short while it became apparent that two young men, Steve Shaw and Michael Edwards, were much more successful, and the lab started to focus their energies on them. In fact, the two young men were "plants", friends of Randi whom he had met some time before as part of his magician's trade. Part of Randi's instructions to these men was to tell the truth if they were ever asked whether they were faking the results; they were never asked this question directly. The researchers assumed that the participants would have no qualms about lying in their answer to a straightforward question if they were also lying about their abilities. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Project Alpha」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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