Daughter conned into selling her possessions

Mark Honeychurch - 6 August 2017

Lori Harris from the UK has sold all her belongings to pay for treatment for her mother, Lisa, who has stage 4 ovarian cancer. The Go Fund Me page for the fundraising effort for this treatment, which asks for £200,000, talks of needing money for immunotherapy in Germany, and links to a great article describing how this new therapy has the potential to allow us to treat some cancers in a novel way.

Haunted Doll "strikes" again

Mark Honeychurch - 6 August 2017

Debbie Merrick bought a doll for £5 and then placed the doll on eBay, after making international news by talking about the doll being haunted. Apparently the doll scratched Debbie's husband, although the doll was not seen causing the scratches - the husband simply woke up with scratches on himself. The determination that the doll caused the scratches came from a psychic friend.

Finally, a skeptical story about Lotto

Mark Honeychurch - 6 August 2017

There was a nice story about the 30th anniversary of the Lotto this week from Stuff. The article talked about how the fact some numbers come up more often than others is likely chance (Lotto take this seriously, and apparently regularly wash and weigh the balls to ensure there's no bias). The difference in frequency between the most drawn ball, number 1 (16.91%) and the least drawn ball number 34 (13.97%) is not huge, and I suspect the number frequency draws a bell curve.