Happy Valentine's Day. Yeah... Nah!

14th February 2022

I hope everyone is having a great Valentine’s day, and that none of you are stuck in a muddy field somewhere dealing with sanitation issues ;)

Before we get into our stories for this week, I’m happy to let you all know that Craig, Bronwyn and I have managed to record and release the first episode of our new podcast, which we’ve decided to call “Yeah… Nah!”. The podcast will be biweekly, and we’ll be mostly be covering the items we write about in our newsletter. The website for the podcast is podcast.skeptics.nz, although you’ll probably find the easiest way to listen is just to open the podcast app on your phone and search for “Yeah Nah” - our podcast is listed in most of the major apps (including Apple, Google, PodChaser, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and even Spotify!), although if we’ve missed any please let us know.

It was a lot of fun recording the first episode, and we’re looking forward to using the podcast as a way to let more people access local skeptical news. For those who take the time to read our weekly newsletter, you might want to give the podcast a go as well - we won’t just be reading out our news stories from here, but instead we’ll be chatting about our stories, sometimes going into more depth, sometimes going on tangents, and occasionally straying into new stories that haven’t been featured here.

Anyway, let’s get on with the newsletter and find out how those soggy protesters are doing.

Mark Honeychurch

Convoy 2022

Mark Honeychurch - 14 February 2022

Convoy 2022

I'm sure everyone is aware of the convoy that headed to Wellington on Tuesday. This collection of cars, campervans and the occasional truck has descended on our capital, supposedly as a protest against the vaccine mandates that our government has put into place over the last few months. On my way into work in Wellington on Tuesday I hit the motorway a little before the first of the groups of vehicles did, and was greeted with the depressing sight of a hundred or more supporters on the bridges between Porirua and Wellington, many of them holding signs created by Voices for Freedom.

NZDSOS Stars

Mark Honeychurch - 14 February 2022

NZDSOS Stars

The other day I noticed that the medical misinformation site NZDSOS - where a few anti-vaccine doctors promote their “alternative” COVID ideas - had changed its look. This is an issue for me, as a few months ago I created a spoof site called NZD-SOS which I made to look like the original site. My site pointed out that there are more doctors called Sarah, Michael or Kate, for example, that have signed an open letter in support of COVID vaccination, than there are doctors who have signed the NZDSOS open letter warning against vaccination.

The Brothers Bogdanoff and the Jadczyks

Mark Honeychurch - 14 February 2022

The Brothers Bogdanoff and the Jadczyks

It's funny how things come around. Last week I watched a fascinating documentary on the Bogdanoff brothers. For those not in the know, the Bogdanoffs are a fascinating case study - two brothers who became celebrities via a TV show promoting science, and then somehow bluffed their way into receiving PhDs in physics despite their theses being nonsensical in places. Many of you might recognise the brothers from their later years, where they used extreme plastic surgery to radically alter their look.