Daniel Ryan lives in Taranaki and works as a software developer. He is a co-founder and president of Making Sense of Fluoride, a committee member for the NZ Skeptics and the current chair of the Society for Science Based Healthcare.
Goodbye Activism
4 August 2025
After 12 years of running a fortnightly Skeptical Activism group in Wellington, it's finally come to an end. We will look into the feasibility of running an online activism meeting at some point, but for now the in-person event, with a free beer for your first complaint, is no more. To give everyone a flavour of the kind of work we did at our activism meetings, we thought we could let you know what we got up to on our final night.
Bogged Down by Mistakes: Tracking two hundred years of Irish Misinformation
22 July 2024
Recently, I've been researching an area in County Limerick, Ireland, for a genealogy project, and I came across a bog burst, one of the deadliest bog disasters in Ireland. If you try to look up the Castlegarde bog disaster in Ireland that killed 21 people, you will find conflicting information. This was one of the initial articles I found:
The Case of the Spontaneous Chime: Ghosts or Glitches?
29 April 2024
I saw a Facebook post from a friend that caught my interest. A weird thing happened to him on the morning of the 17th of April; he explained it as something from a horror movie. He had a doorbell where he had never put batteries in the ringer unit, but despite the lack of batteries at 6:30 am it started to ring, and continued to ring as he picked it up and shook it to double check it didn't have batteries. Indeed, it didn't.
AI image scam
27 November 2023
Recently Facebook has been showing me AI generated fake images in posts from pages that appear to be designed to trick people into thinking the images they post are real. Since I keep interacting with these posts out of skeptical curiosity, I've found that there are now plenty of scammy AI posts in my FB feed. It's clear to me that they are AI-generated, but the worrying part is that many people are being fooled by them.
Freedom to be a shitty person
19 June 2023
A group of skeptical friends (Bronwyn Rideout, Mark Honeychurch and Tim Atkin) invited me to attend a political event, the “_Take Back Your Power Roadshow_”, last week. Freedom NZ, a new fringe political party that serves as an umbrella for five other parties, organised the event. The constituent parties are the New Nation Party, Vision New Zealand, the NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party, Yes Aotearoa, and Rock the Vote. They have been travelling around New Zealand spreading their message, asking for votes and donations.
Diving into The Little Mermaid's Online Ratings
6 June 2023
The 2023 remake of The Little Mermaid, recently released in cinemas, has sparked significant controversy and divided opinions on social media platforms. One particular point of contention revolves around the casting of Halle Bailey, a talented performer of colour, in the lead role. Some individuals have raised concerns about the legitimacy of the film's ratings on popular movie rating websites.
Eastern Lightning: Examining its Cult Characteristics
24 April 2023
I'm still a member of the Eastern Lightning, aka the Church of Almighty God religion, along with Mark Honeychurch, and it has been a fascinating experience learning how this religion ticks. We discussed the group on a recent episode of the NZ Skeptics' “Yeah…Nah!” podcast, and I mentioned that I was unsure if they're actually a cult, but I felt that they checked many of the cult checkboxes. Others agreed that they crossed the threshold, and are probably a full-blown cult. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also calls them a cult. But are they?
Therapeutic Products Bill: Oral Submissions
27 March 2023
It's only been a couple of weeks since the closing of the Health Committee accepting submissions on their Therapeutic Products Bill consultation, but the committee have already been running follow-up oral submissions. We know that there were 16,549 submissions to the bill, as with the help of a work colleague I've been able to scrape all of the submissions. This is a pretty high number for a bill, but still dwarfed by the number of submissions for the Conversion Therapy Bill a couple of years ago - over 107,000 of them! I'm currently in the middle of trying to run an analysis of all the Therapeutic Products Bill submissions, and if there's anything interesting in there I may write an article soon about what I find.
The Lightning comes from the East - to NZ
6 March 2023
In late January this year, committee member Katrina Borthwick messaged our NZ Skeptics committee chat channel about a spam message she received on Facebook inviting her to join a fellowship meeting:
The Numbers Behind Eastern Lightning's Recruitment Strategy
6 March 2023
Have you ever received spam messages from an obscure Christian church on Facebook? I did, and it led me down a rabbit hole into the mysterious world of Eastern Lightning. I started investigating Eastern Lightning, aka the Fellowship, aka The Church of the Almighty God, at the end of January. A cult-like, doomsday Christian church, I joined the religion on the 1st of February. It's been a long and gruelling month. I have lots to share, but for this week I'll try to analyse what I've managed to find out about their local membership.
The Therapeutic Products Bill: Separating the Myths from the Facts
20 February 2023
The NZ Skeptic's committee has been busy working on our submission for the new Therapeutic Products Bill introduced last year. This new bill aims to regulate therapeutic products in New Zealand, including medicines, medical devices, natural health products, and active pharmaceutical ingredients, to ensure their safety, quality, and efficacy. The Bill will replace the current Medicines Act 1981, Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985, and other minor acts like the Sunscreen Act 2022. The purpose of the Bill is to protect and improve the health of all New Zealanders by regulating therapeutic products across their lifecycle. The Bill will require therapeutic products to receive market authorisation before they can be imported, exported, or supplied in New Zealand. The Bill also regulates controlled activities related to therapeutic products, including manufacturing, supply, exporting, clinical trials, and advertising restrictions. A Therapeutic Products Regulator will be established to oversee these regulatory matters.
Shattered Expectations: My Battle with Samsung
7 February 2023
I was frustrated and disappointed last year when Samsung refused to repair my Note 20 Ultra 5G under warranty. Despite my efforts to fight for what I believed was a just cause, Samsung gave me the cold shoulder. As a long-time Samsung user (and I still own one now, even after my bad experience), I know the brand can produce great products, but I'm concerned that my recent experience with their practices could be breaching the law.
Irlen: a fake condition being promoted in NZ schools
12 September 2022
The condition Irlen Syndrome is a popular diagnosis for children with learning issues, and is described as a perceptual processing disorder rather than an optical problem. It has failed in rigorous evaluation time after time and is basically a medical zombie. It was first described by an Auckland teacher, Olive Meares, in 1980.
Hunting a Facebook Impersonator
29 August 2022
At The Society for Science Based Healthcare we believe that public health measures in New Zealand should have a clear basis in science and evidence, and we work to counter misinformation in New Zealand. Over the years, our complaints had made many a few people unhappy, especially people from alternative medicine organisations. We've had people throw insults at us, rant against us, call us racists, personally target us on social media and threaten us with a lawsuit, all because we asked: "where is the evidence?".
Acupuncturists taking advantage of ACC claims
15 August 2022
One of the more controversial treatments the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) currently pays out for is acupuncture. This is controversial partly because of the lack of clinical evidence for acupuncture's efficacy, a fact that ACC has admitted in a past meeting.
What's happening with Fluoridation in NZ?
8 August 2022
New Zealand introduced community water fluoridation (CWF) in the 1950s, expanded its coverage rapidly in the 60s, and has been relatively stable until recently.
Arnica Cream
18 July 2022
In 2016, I made an Advertising Standards Authority(ASA) complaint against Weleda Arnica Cream and other arnica products about their misleading health claims on HealthPost's website.
Fluoridation
22 March 2021
Big news this week is that the government is taking water fluoridation powers off local councils and giving it to the director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield.
Tracking a Russian hacker
1 August 2017
I had just arrived at work, and in my email inbox I saw that I had received an email from Mighty Ape (an online store) saying that I had a $100 voucher on order. That's odd, I thought. No, I'm sure that I didn't order it by mistake at 3am. I then thought it may have been a free gift. I had bought a number of gifts for Christmas from Mighty Ape, so maybe I had won something. I searched around on the net and checked to see if there were any competitions or freebies going on, but I couldn't see any hits.
Fluoridation: surfing the misinformation wave
1 May 2014
Daniel Ryan reports from the front line of the battle against the anti-fluoridationists.