Newsfront

Hunt on for lost dinosaur fossil

Author and journalist Ian Wishart claims Taranaki could be the last resting place of a giant lizard- like "dinosaur" and is issuing a challenge for it to be rediscovered (Taranaki Daily News, 10 May).

Well-known to skeptics as editor of Investigate magazine, Wishart tells the tale of the mystery fossil in his latest book, Our Stories: The New Zealand That Time Forgot.

The Taranaki Herald reported in November and December 1896 that the remains of a 12-metre-long creature with a head "like a dragon" had been discovered in the bank of a tributary of the Waitara River at Purangi. According to Wishart, a WH Skinner inspected the fossil a week later and took photographs of the skull, describing it as being almost as big as a man's body.

Puke Ariki Museum heritage manager Andrew Moffat was sceptical, however. If there really had been such a major find it should have been followed up, yet no one did, and he was unable to find any trace of the photo. But he would be delighted to be proved wrong, he said: "Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction."

Wishart wrote that although the discovery made news headlines around New Zealand at the time, government officials decided the dinosaur was too big, too remote and too expensive to move. "[T]hey left the skeleton where it lay and it was quickly forgotten,"

Given that Wishart is a creationist one has to wonder if there's an agenda behind this interest in dinosaurs, or maybe he just likes a good yarn. And given New Zealand's known fossil record, if this specimen does exist it's more likely to be a marine reptile than a dinosaur. But even that would still be really cool if it were ever found again.

Dawkins attacks fairy tales?

Richard Dawkins has been accused of launching a scathing attack on children's fairy tales (Dominion Post, 6 June).

"I think it's rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism," he was reported as saying in the Times of London. "Even fairy tales, the ones we all love, about witches and wizards or princes turning into frogs. There's a very interesting reason why a prince could not turn into a frog. It's statistically too improbable."

However Victoria University psychology school head Marc Wilson said there was no evidence showing that fairy tales caused children any damage. Fairy tales had a greater benefit, he said, as they taught children about morality issues. "We use metaphors to understand the world around us."

Dawkins has since attacked the way his comments at the Cheltenham Science Festival were reported (The Raw Story, 5 June). He said he was worried about encouraging children to believe in the supernatural. "If you did inculcate into a child's mind supernaturalism … that would be pernicious. The question is whether fairy stories actually do that and I'm now thinking they probably don't. It could even be the reverse.

"It seems that all you have to do is say that x is the case, and immediately people will jump on it and say you want fairy tales banned. Like sheep, all the other journalists jumped on the Daily Mail bandwagon…"

Spooky surprise in Dunedin skies

Dunedin student Terence Huang was surprised to see a couple of UFOs hovering over Otago Harbour when he had a closer look at two of the photos he took on recent outing (Otago Daily Times, 25 June).

He paid little attention to the sky while he snapped about 20 photos, supporting the camera on a chair, and noticed nothing unusual at the time.

The images appear to show a pair of lens-shaped yellowish objects topped by greenish blobs. In a close-up view on the ODT website the left-hand 'UFO' can be seen to have a fainter ghostly double right beside it.

NZ Skeptics media spokesperson Vicki Hyde said some people didn't tend to bother with UFOs these days, because it was too easy to fake things, and very common for digital artefacts to be misconstrued. In this case she said it was most likely the latter.

"Certainly it doesn't look very solid at all, which I think supports the reflection theory."

Homeopaths fight back over negative finding

New Zealand homeopaths are up in arms over an Australian paper stating homeopathic remedies were no more effective than placebos when used to treat 68 health conditions (NZ Herald, 19 April).

The draft paper, released by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council, assessed 57 clinical studies that tested homeopathic remedies on ailments including asthma, arthritis, sleep disturbances, cold and flu, eczema, burns and even heroin addiction.

"The available evidence is not compelling and fails to demonstrate that homeopathy is an effective treatment for any of the reported clinical conditions in humans," the report said.

Christchurch rehabilitation specialist Dr Richard Acland said the findings would be supported by most doctors here. "My reading is that [homeopathic remedies] are no better than placebos - but placebos can be very powerful. It is not unsurprising that the results have come up with that finding, but there are a lot of therapies within the health arena that are possibly no better than placebos."

NZ Homeopathic Society spokeswoman Den Illing said the paper appeared to have ignored studies that found good results. "There are screeds and screeds of clinical trials that homeopathic remedies work but this study appears to have not included any of them."

The study's authors said there were no studies that proved the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies with reliable enough methodologies to be included in the paper.

He's not dead, he's resting

The disciples of one of India's wealthiest gurus are refusing to hand over his body to his family for cremation, insisting he is still alive (NZ Herald, 29 May). His Holiness Shri Ashutosh Maharaj, the founder of the Divya Jyoti Jagrati Sansthan religious order, with a property estate worth an estimated NZ$200 million, died in January, according to his wife and son. His followers, however, who are based in the Punjab city of Jalandhar, insist he simply went into a deep Samadhi, or meditation, and they have put his body in a commercial freezer at their ashram to preserve it for when he wakes.

The guru's sect, reportedly established in 1983 to promote "self-awakening to global peace" owns dozens of properties in India, the US, South America, Australia, the Middle East and Europe.

Punjabi police initially confirmed his death, but the Punjab High Court later dismissed the police report. Local governmental officials said it was a spiritual matter and that the guru's followers could not be forced to believe he is dead.

His son Dilip Jha, 40, claims his late father's followers are refusing to release his body as a means of retaining control of his financial empire.

Vaccination alternatives for Wellington teachers

Teachers at some Wellington schools are being offered herbal medicine and vitamins as alternatives to a flu vaccination (Dominion Post, 3 April).

Administration manager Cheryl Wilson at Lower Hutt's Waterloo School investigated ways to support teachers who opposed flu vaccinations, and after her proposal was adopted by the school she was one of 10 staff to choose a two-month course of echinacea. Ten other staff picked multi-vitamins, while 16 received vaccinations, and nine staff did not want any of the options. The options were not offered to children.

Hutt Intermediate has been offering vitamins in conjunction with either echinacea or a flu vaccination for about a decade.

Otago University professor Michael Baker said scientific evidence that echinacea and vitamins kept flu at bay was lacking. "If alternatives are being promoted, there needs to be evidence.

"There are still 400 people in New Zealand dying each year from influenza … so we're not dealing with a trivial illness."