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The Prize

The Bent Spoon Has Been Awarded Every Year Since 1982

Australia's most durable sceptical tradition is not a challenge but a consolation prize — handed to whoever has most distinguished themselves in the promotion of nonsense.

Close-up of a tarnished silver spoon's bowl and part of its curved handle
The Bent Spoon has been handed out annually since 1982, with a published citation each time.Photo: Irina P / Pexels

A Trophy No One Applies For

The Bent Spoon Award was established by Australian Skeptics Inc. ↗ in 1982, the name a pointed reference to Uri Geller's signature performance and the broader culture of spoon-bending credulity the organisation was founded to scrutinise. The citation, unchanged in substance across four decades, goes to "the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal or pseudo-scientific piffle" in the preceding year. Unlike the organisation's separate $100,000 prize for demonstrated paranormal ability, the Bent Spoon requires no application and no demonstration — the recipient is chosen by the membership, and the award arrives uninvited.

Recipients over the years have included media organisations, individual practitioners, government bodies, and on more than one occasion, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Homeopathy advocates, antivaccination campaigners, and proponents of therapeutic touch have all appeared in the citation record. The award has also reached into institutional life: health bureaucracies have been recognised when they have funded or endorsed practices the organisation judges to lack evidentiary foundation, and academic departments have appeared when the membership considered their published work to have cleared a sufficiently low bar for rigour.

A hand fills out a family therapy referral form on a clipboard
The challenge is administered as paperwork: an application, an agreed protocol, and a test both parties sign off before it runs.Photo: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels
A hand signs a document with a pen above the printed word "signature"
Elsewhere in The Prize: The James Randi Educational Foundation Closed Its Challenge in 2015.Photo: Pixabay / Pexels

The award is announced annually at the Australian Skeptics National Convention, typically held in November, and the citation record published by Australian Skeptics Inc. ↗ identifies each recipient and the specific claim or action being recognised. That published record is the primary document; Australian Skeptics has been consistent in explaining its reasoning rather than simply naming names.

What makes the Bent Spoon durable as a cultural artefact is precisely its lack of prize money and its lack of ceremony on the recipient's part. James Randi's foundation offered a million dollars and required claimants to engage. The Bent Spoon asks nothing and grants nothing — which may be why it has been awarded, without interruption, for more than forty years.

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