Tell me about the prize challenge
The reference library holds no material on a “prize challenge” in the sense that question might suggest — the sources retrieved do not cover that topic in a way the library can speak to directly.
What the sources do contain is material on the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) essay contest — which is a prize-based competition, and may be what you are asking about. Here is what the retrieved sources report.
The BICS Essay Contest
The Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies launched an essay contest asking entrants to make the case for survival of human consciousness beyond bodily death. The contest was structured around persuasive argument rather than experimental protocol — judges evaluated essays on the power of their reasoning and how convincingly they addressed survival [1].
Prize structure and expansion
The originally announced prizes were $500,000 for first place, $300,000 for second, and $150,000 for third, with eleven further prizes of $50,000 each [3]. The standard among submitted essays was judged to be high enough that the contest expanded: 29 essays were ultimately selected, and the total prize pool grew from $950,000 to $1,800,000 [1]. Prizes were awarded at a gala in Las Vegas on December 4, 2021 [1].
For multi-author essays, the contest rules required each co-author to individually sign the application and agree in advance to divide prize money equally [1].
What followed
According to Kelleher and Bigelow (2022), following the conclusion of the essay contest the organization was preparing for another initiative [1]. The editorial by Mayer (2021) in Zeitschrift für Anomalistik situates the contest in the broader context of private funding of parapsychological research, noting the scale of the prize sum as unusual for the field [3].
The Reincarnation Cases Research page on ESP-Nexus notes, in passing, that Ian Stevenson’s 1960 essay for the American Society for Psychical Research was prize-winning — a separate, earlier instance of prize-incentivized scholarship in this area.
If you were asking about a different prize challenge not covered here, let me know and I can clarify what the library does and does not hold on it.
More questions answered
- Pool the effect sizes across every ganzfeld study you hold and compare your number to the published Storm and Tressoldi meta-analyses—do they agree?
- Has the effect size for PK data increased in the last 50 years?
- Tell me about the clairvoyance work of the last 50 years
- What trends can you see in precognition research?
- What trends can you see in ESP research in the last 50 years?
- What are parapsychology's current arguments to justify that the phenomena are real and should be taken seriously?