Interview with the entity

This year the NZ Skeptics Annual General Meeting was held separately from the conference, on 7 September in Wellington. Among the business attended to was the election of a new chair-entity, Mark Honeychurch, replacing Gold who takes on the new role of Head Geek, responsible for technological support. The NZ Skeptic took the opportunity to ask Mark a few questions about himself, and his vision for skepticism in New Zealand.

I can tell from your accent you're not from around here; can you tell us where you're from?

I'm from the Isles of Scilly, which is a small group of islands off the south-west coast of mainland England. They're still part of England, but it's pretty remote there and the population is only around 2000. After leaving the Scillies, at 16, I spent two years at military college (Welbeck), followed by four years at Bristol University, where I was bored to death by a Mechanical Engineering degree and quit the army. Since then I've lived and worked in both Sydney and London, as well as travelling a fair amount.

And what brought you to New Zealand?

My wife and I were on one of our long travelling jaunts, and New Zealand was our next stop after spending just under a year in the Middle East (where we visited countries including Iran, Azerbaijan, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan). New Zealand was meant to have been a year long stop on the way to South America, but nine years later we seem to still be here - with citizenship, three Kiwi kids and a mortgage!

What, for that matter, brought you to skepticism?

I guess I've always been enquiring and had a love for science. Back in secondary school, when I was about 13 or 14, one of the local churches organised for some evangelical youth leaders to come over to the islands and talk to us at school about Jesus and Creation. I was very surprised that they were trying to tell me that the Earth was very young and that God made everything. Despite the lack of knowledge I had in this area at the time, I tried my hardest to argue with them about issues they brought up such as Piltdown Man and carbon dating.

Were you involved with the skeptical movement back in England?

I was more a member of the geek community in England, although there's a lot of crossover between the two. I was skeptical and enquiring about things as they crossed my path, but I didn't actively go out looking for nonsense.

How long have you been part of the NZ Skeptics and what issues have you been involved with?

I joined the organised skeptical movement about three years ago, and was introduced to the Skeptics Society via the Wellington Skeptics in the Pub meetings. From there I went on to help organise last year's Skeptics Conference, and it was during this time that Gold suggested I should pay my dues and join the Skeptics Society. At the AGM last year I put my hand up to join the committee, and found myself taking over the video librarian role. As a committee member I've taken stock of how the society is run, and have tried to suggest changes where they seem sensible.

What issues do you see as being the primary focus for the NZ Skeptics in the short to medium term?

In the immediate term, I think there are several internal areas of the society that we need to focus on. Firstly, the website is starting to look old hasn't been loved for quite a while now. Gold is doing a fantastic job of preparing a new website, which we hope to have up and running in the near future.

Related to the website, there are several areas such as membership and the journal that we are hoping to make simpler and more accessible by using both the website and other online tools available to us.

With regards to looking outwards from the society to what is happening in New Zealand, the committee has a few plans for how we can make a positive difference.

Robert Woolf is looking into setting up a more formalised structure for the society to be able to offer skeptical speakers to local groups.

Lisa Taylor has joined the committee and has taken on an outreach role. As part of this new role, we hope to make sure we are sufficiently inclusive of members and non-members who aren't bearded white males (who I have nothing against, as I count myself amongst their ranks).

I hope to foster greater ties with other skeptically aligned organisations in New Zealand and overseas, such as the NZARH and the Australian Skeptics. We also have Skeptics Society committee members who are central members of the Humanist Society, the Society for Science Based Healthcare and Making Sense of Fluoride, as well as the founder of the NZ Skeptics in the Pub movement. I hope that this will help us to work together where possible on some of the more pernicious problems we face.

In the longer term, there are many charlatans out there whose claims need to be challenged. The Skeptics Society is ideally placed, with Vicki and Michael as media spokespeople, to be a respected doubting voice whenever woo makes the news. It was great to hear Stephen Price (Nicky Hager's lawyer) talk at this year's SkeptiCamp in Wellington, with his advice on how best to avoid being sued for defamation. I'm now keen to see the society carefully pick the most egregious examples in NZ of people and organisations making a fast buck off the unsuspecting public, and mount organised campaigns against them.

It's obvious from your contributions on the committee that you have a strong technical background; how do you see the society making use of the technological tools that are becoming available?

You're right about my background - I work in IT, and am currently employed as a hardware engineer. I think there are a lot of good tools that are freely available online, and the Society has already started adopting them. We use Google Hangouts for our monthly committee meetings, Google Drive for collaboratively working online and Trello for organising events such as the conference. Beyond this, there are other tools we are checking out, such as Slack and Loomio, that may help us to communicate better on a day-to-day basis, and Matt Beavan, our treasurer, is currently evaluating online financial packages (Wave and Xero) to manage our accounts.

What do you do when you're not at work or being skeptical?

Apart from the time I spend with my family, I'm a member of the Humanist Society council and I'm helping them to adopt online tools to improve management of their website, newsletter, membership and other day-to-day tasks. I'm also one of the founders of CoderDojo ( coderdojo.org.nz), which is a club where we teach kids how to code for free. We only have one club up and running so far, in Porirua, but we're gaining momentum (we're currently oversubscribed by around 100 percent for each session) and are hoping to expand in the near future.

What is your star sign?

I'm going to have to add a shameless plug here. On Skepticism Today (skepticism.today), which is a podcast I'm a member of, we have a competition where we are given several astrological predictions for the previous day. Without being told which star sign each horoscope is for, we have to guess which one we think best fits our day. Tune in to find out my star sign!