2026 NZ Skeptic Awards
Mark Honeychurch - 17th August 2026
It’s been a year and a half since our last awards, so we’ve had ample time to put together this list - and still it ended up happening at the last minute!
Bravos
We have two distinct categories for our Bravos this year - our awards given to journalists and media organisations who show critical thinking in their work.
First up we have our traditional, old-school written articles - and there were a couple of articles that stood out to us.
Firstly, Nik Dirga wrote an article titled “Fake New Zealand doctors are trying to sell you GLP-1 weight loss products” for Radio NZ. This insightful article detailed some of the recent AI nonsense flooding social media, where fake doctors promise cheap weight loss drugs. Nik did some great sleuthing to show that the sites are not New Zealand based, despite claiming they are, broke down the science of GLP-1 weight loss drugs, and even had the oft-used NZ Skeptics advice of “speaking to an actual doctor in real life” rather than blindly trusting someone online for health advice.
Our second Bravo is for Zoe Madden-Smith, from 1 News, for her article titled “$200 got me a vial of peptides in minutes, AI teaches how to inject it”. In the article Zoe details how people in New Zealand are illegally buying prescription-only peptides, such as copper tripeptide, and then using AI chat bots to advise them on how to inject them. For the article Zoe purchased her own vial of peptides on the black market, and then had the vial tested to see what was in it. She then takes the common-sense approach of recommending that anyone considering injecting themselves with black market drugs gets them tested for free first.
Our second category is podcasts - and there have been some great examples of podcasts in New Zealand that have delved into skeptical topics.
Phil Vine from Radio NZ created The Lodge, a podcast about Takaro Lodge in the bottom of the south island. The venue was purchased by cult leader Aiping Wang back in the 1990s?, and she’s been living there since, selling overpriced wellness courses to unsuspecting Kiwis, and promising to teach them the secrets of spiritual healing, seeing the future and even flying.
Murray Jones from The Herald covered the Mormon church’s sexual abuse crisis phone line in Heaven’s Helpline. The podcast detailed how this phone line, rather than being there for the victims of abuse, is used by the church as a way to legally cover themselves, and is only available for church leaders to call.
Jonathan Milne from Newsroom produced Powder Keg in 2024, unpacking popular green powder supplement AG-1, which has received celebrity endorsements from titans of skepticism such as Hugh Jackman and Gweneth Paltrow. In Powder Keg, Milne expertly balances his investigation of founder Chris Ashenden’s entrepreneurial house of cards with the pseudoscience underpinning AG-1’s to-good-to-be-true claims.
Bent Spoon
We had some interesting runners up for this year’s Bent Spoon - our award given to a person or organisation in New Zealand who has shown a lack of critical thinking in the media.
Facebook was nominated for failing to deal with the increase in AI fakes on its platform, including not just fake videos of doctors, celebrities and politicians, but an entire fake news organisation, NZ News Hub, which has almost 10,000 followers and frequently posts AI generated fake news content.
Jenny Marcroft was nominated for her Definitions of Woman and Man bill - a bill that over-simplified its definitions so much that it appears that it would end up creating more confusion than it’s ever likely to clear up when it comes to legislation.
But our winner this year is Julie Christie and her production company, NHNZ Worldwide. Julie created the TV documentary series “Devotion: Obedience or Betrayal”, also known in NZ as “Devotion: The Gloriavale Story”. Although not a total whitewash of the Gloriavale cult community here on the South Island, the documentary nevertheless gave much of its air time to senior Gloriavale members, allowing them to make public claims that were left unchallenged by critics of Gloriavale. The show avoided talking about or glossed over some of the more damning issues the group has been accused of, such as exploiting child labour, shunning, and sending young women from New Zealand to India to set up a community there and marry into Indian families. Even the very last word, given to cult founder Neville Cooper’s son Phil, was disappointingly weak - “I don’t have to like your belief, I don’t have to agree with you. But am I going to stand and play God? No, otherwise I just become another version of Gloriavale”.
Skeptic of the Year
Our Skeptic of the Year award goes to the skeptic who has the most impact on skepticism in New Zealand. The award is designed to encourage our members who work on skeptical projects outside of the NZ Skeptics, including skeptical activism, the promotion of critical thinking, and challenging bad thinking. In the past winners have included Brooke Hart, Siouxsie Wiles, Daniel Ryan and David Farrier.
Tonight’s winner is Lee Traynor. After working tirelessly in academia for many years, Lee has decided on his retirement to set up a foundation whose aims include the promotion of skepticism in Australia and New Zealand. Lee’s Foundation sponsored several student scholarships for this conference, and we’re looking forward to working with the Foundation in the future when our aims align.
The SGU with our scholarship winners and Lee Traynor
Life Membership
Earlier this year we awarded Stuart Landsborough, who ran a psychic challenge in New Zealand for decades, our second ever Life Membership. Tonight we have another long-time member of the Skeptics who the committee feels has earned the right to be a life member - John Welch.
It started with a letter to the Editor of our journal way back in 1986, applauding the early work of the society and asking to join. Then in 1990, John started writing a regular column for our journal, first under the name “Medical Roundup”, before changing to the more catchy “Hokum Locum”. In all he wrote 57 articles for his column, up until 2009 - as well as, at one point, writing a satirical interview with a giraffe. Since retiring from documenting medical misdeeds and fantastical cures, he has continued to advise the NZ Skeptics committee on medical matters when consulted, and has regularly attended our conferences - usually riding across the country on his motorbike to get to them.
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