What's a skeptic to do?
Mark Honeychurch - 17th August 2026
A few days ago Craig Shearer messaged the rest of the NZ Skeptics committee with the below photo, and asked us all “What’s a skeptic to do?”:
I guess we’ll hear when he returns from his travels whether he finally managed to capture incontrovertible evidence that Nessie is real, or if he has nothing more than a few blurry photos.
At our conference a few weeks ago we welcomed three new committee members during the AGM. Those of us who are old hands are looking forward to working with Brian, Lisa and Richard over the next year as we try to focus on doing some core skeptical work to ensure our society is doing skepticism properly.
As the Society’s “official” conference photographer, Hamish spent the conference weekend learning how to use his new camera and taking lots of pictures, which he’s slowly working through to find the best ones. For now I’ve added his pictures from the Saturday morning of the conference. We also have a conference report from new committee member Lisa, filling in those of you who didn’t make it to the event with a little of what was discussed in the weekend’s talks.
We have Bronwyn’s chair’s report from the AGM, where she’s given our skeptical “State of the Union” address, and also my write-up of our annual awards that were announced at our Saturday evening conference event.
Katrina’s written an article about the conspiracy theories that have popped up around Australia’s recent roll-out of an emergency mobile phone broadcast system. And I’ve had a busy weekend, going to see Pro Wrestling on Saturday night and Sue Nicholson the psychic on Sunday night. I’ve written up both of these events, as I think there was something interesting to consider on each night.
Tags: conference, skeptics, committee, saturday, event, night