NZ Skeptics Articles

Conference Clarity

18 August 2025

In lieu of my usual blathering, this week we have an update from our chair, Bronwyn, about our plans for our conferences this year and next:

The Telepathy Tapes Talk Tracks Two: Back for More

18 August 2025

In episode 9 of the Telepathy Tapes' extra episodes, titled the Talk Tracks, host Ky Dickens has Adam Curry on to talk about the “science”, in an episode titled “The Science of Intuition: Consciousness, Intention, and the Edge of Reality”. According to Ky, dam is apparently an inventor and “deep thinker”, although in the episode he describes himself as an “armchair scientist” and “consciousness researcher” - although all I could find of his research online was a single paper on Google Scholar, where he is listed as the third author on a paper about retrocausation. Two websites I found that have profiles on him both listed many research papers, but none of the papers had his name attached to them, despite the fact that they were listed in one case on a website he owns, which sells an app he created (Entangled), and in the other case were listed on his profile page under a picture of him. So I'm left thinking that maybe he's not so much of a researcher after all. Although even if he had been an author on those papers, looking at the quality of them and the places they've been published (and many haven't been published anywhere) makes me think that it still wouldn't be that much of a flex.

A Ray of Sunshine

4 August 2025

We received an email the other day from none other than (in)famous ex-Christchurch street preacher and evangelist Ray Comfort. Ray had found Bronwyn's article about him and emailed us, very briefly, to let her know that he liked the article:

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.

The Talk Tracks

4 August 2025

Since the explosion in popularity of the podcast The Telepathy Tapes soon after it was released, creator Ky Dickens appears to have quickly realised that her intention to have a break between seasons was not going to be in the best interests of maintaining the attention of the many listeners she had attracted in a very short amount of time. And so, at the end of Season 1 after 10 weeks of weekly releases, Ky announced that she would be releasing bi-weekly interviews, called The Telepathy Tapes Talk Tracks, to bridge the gap to Season 2.

Children of the Waning Star

21 July 2025

TikTok is an interesting social media platform. As a host of short videos that anyone can make these days pretty easily with just a mobile phone, an interface that makes it easy to scroll through hundreds of videos, and an algorithm that attempts to feed you content that will keep you engaged, many kids use Tik Tok as their main social media platform. The platform allows viewers to easily engage through not just their likes, but also through posting their own opinions in response videos.

Pioneer Ministry's Revival Night

21 July 2025

On Friday evening Bronwyn and I, rather than running our usual Skeptics in Cyberspace meeting, visited the Johnsonville Community Centre to experience the signs and wonders of a Christian Revival event, where we were promised healing, hope and miracles.

Some very new news

21 July 2025

Thank you to everyone who filled in our recent survey about the possibility of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast hosts coming over to New Zealand next year, and whether this might have an effect on our conference plans for this year and next. We've been discussing your responses as a committee, and will be able to let everyone know fairly soon what our plans are.

Grandfathered Homeopathy

7 July 2025

Nearly a decade ago, I was in a local pharmacy and noticed that they had a flyer for a Weleda product that was making some pretty strong claims.

Midwinter Musings

7 July 2025

I had a fun time this weekend with friends coming over to my house to celebrate Christmas. No, this email hasn't been delayed six months, or arrived from the future - it's July, not December. Like me, most of the friends that came over on the weekend are from the Northern hemisphere, and there's something that just feels right about having a second Christmas celebration every year when the weather's cold and miserable, just like it was in the “good old days”. We eat brussels sprouts and roast potatoes, drink mulled wine, and open presents - all while the TV plays YouTube videos with cheesy Christmas songs as the audio track and logs burning on an open fire as the video track. For one of our few Southern hemisphere guests, Aaron, not only is this mid-year “Midwinter Christmas” an alien idea, but he also never celebrated the usual December 25th Christmas when he was growing up. This is because he was brought up as a Jehovah's Witness, and they famously avoid celebrating events like Christmas, Easter and birthdays. I met Aaron through the NZ Humanists a while after he'd “faded” from the organisation, and it's been great to be there to see him find his feet and move on with his life since then.

Over-confidence and Cola

7 July 2025

The article from Aaron Davies about blind testing diet colas is a really interesting one for me. As a little background info for you, Aaron is an ex Jehovah's Witness and was a NZ Skeptics committee member a few years ago. In the article I'm the “Mark” mentioned in the testing. So, if you've read the article already, you'll know that when challenged with picking out my favoured beverage, Diet Coke, from a line-up of identical looking drinks in identical looking cups, I successfully identified the Diet Coke.

Live Long and Prosper

23 June 2025

After Bronwyn's article in the last newsletter about cryonics, Katrina and I have decided to get in on the action and write our own articles on related topics to accompany the second part of Bronwyn's series. It's been interesting to learn more about longevity and preservation - both the real science, and the pseudoscience. And thankfully there were a couple of fascinating documentaries I was able to watch to help me flesh out my article, so it wasn't all just reading for me.

Radical Life Extension

23 June 2025

Whatever the science may say, there's no lack of people who are chasing the holy grail of a longer life, often known as Extreme or Radical Life Extension, and who are keen to tell you that they've figured out the secret. Unsurprisingly, they often also have something to sell you. I decided to look into some of the more vocal and well-known of these advocates for extending our lives, to see whether their ideas stack up.

Recommended for Everyone

23 June 2025

While trawling alt-med websites for nonsense recently, I noticed a particularly egregious claim made by Ben Warren's BePure company for their multivitamin product, BePure One. The advertisement claimed that it was essential, and that people need to take it every day. Now it strikes me as surprising that any product would need to be taken by everyone, no matter their situation - especially as alternative medicines are not only unproven, but they're often also pretty expensive. BePure One, for example, is $69 for a month's supply - not nice, especially as most people who eat a balanced diet don't actually need a multivitamin, as they're getting everything they need from their food.

Seed Imprinting and Anastasia's Ringing Cedars

9 June 2025

Recently someone shared with me an article from the March 2025 issue of the “Brooklyn Tattler”, a monthly magazine for the residents of Brooklyn, Wellington. The article in question was written by someone from the Brooklyn Wellness Hub, a group of “natural” health practitioners local to the area. The obvious nonsense that I was being shown was part of a list of tips for growing vegetables and fruit in your garden, and it advised readers to:

We're still here!

9 June 2025

It's been interesting to see the world's richest man going toe to toe with the world's most powerful man. Nope, actually, interesting isn't the right word. I'm not sure what you call it when you can't tear your eyes away from two influential grown men acting like spoiled children. Maybe disappointing? Like when you tell your child you're disappointed in them. Anyway, Trump's still not pressed the big red nuclear button, and we're already nearly an eighth of the way through his presidency, so maybe we'll survive this yet.

Better a Skeptic than Two Geese

26 May 2025

A couple of weeks ago I started seeing posts about how Google's AI was bending over backwards attempting to explain idioms that didn't exist. I didn't think much of it until a few days ago, when I was searching for advice on a level in the game “Consider It” on the Switch. The level in question involved a couple walking down the pavement together towards some dog poop, and I couldn't work out how to avoid stepping in it - so I searched for “consider it poop level”. Google's AI then tried to explain the phrase I had searched for as if it was a well-known saying.

Review: Under His Command

26 May 2025

John Campbell recently released a new TV show on TVNZ where he investigates the controversial Destiny Church and its leader, “apostle” Brian Tamaki. The show is called Under His Command, and it's quite short - running to five episodes, each only around 15 minutes long.

Skeptic or Geese?

26 May 2025

In my efforts to wrestle with the push to include AI content in our newsletter, I've been chatting recently with our newest regular contributor, Patrick Medlicott, about why I prefer content that is written by humans. One new reason that popped into my head is that I know, from editing people's stories every fortnight, that each of our writers leaves their own distinct fingerprints on each and every article they write. Bronwyn, Katrina and Patrick each have their own tell-tale signs that they have written an article - certain repeated typos, punctuation choices, use (or lack of use) of commas, sentence length, repeatedly used words and phrases, etc. Each of these things has become very familiar to me, and through my editing I try to clean up each article without losing too much of these fingerprints.

How Creationism Hurts My Brain

12 May 2025

Last weekend three of us intrepid skeptics attended a creationist talk titled “How Evolution Hurts Science and People”, given by Mike Collins at the Abundant Life church in Wellington. Mike is an aircraft maintenance engineer who, since leaving his real job, has shacked up with Creation Ministries International (CMI), the evangelical Christian group who run the creation.com website and is one of their regular speakers at churches all around New Zealand.

I'd like to be... under the sea

12 May 2025

The world now has a new Pope. He's American, which seems to have pleased Donald Trump, but it seems that nobody's quite sure where he currently stands on the issue of treating gay people fairly. There have been some old comments that suggest that, a decade ago at least, Robert Francis Prevost (now known as Leo XIV) wasn't too keen on equality, but there's also hope that maybe the last pope, Francis, has softened Leo's heart in the last decade.

Catholic Conspiracies

28 April 2025

Committee member Hamish Dickson posted the above image to our committee chat the other day, along with the question:

Papal Mor(t)ality

28 April 2025

As I'm sure you're all aware, although I'd question whether it really should be international news, the Catholic Pope has died. So we're all now going to be eagerly awaiting the white smoke that tells us the Catholic cardinals have chosen their new leader. I wish this wasn't news - a small group of senior (both old and high-ranking) people choosing which of them gets to be in charge of a pre-scientific organisation with supernatural beliefs doesn't seem to be something we should have to care about. But…

SoulCore - Catholic Yoga

28 April 2025

Not all things connected to religion are bad - it's good to help the poor, feed the homeless, and strive for non-violence. But what if there's something that another religion has, but yours doesn't? Often when this happens to Christians, they'll simply label it as occult or demonic:

NZ Post Scams: A little bit of Activism

14 April 2025

Last week I received a text supposedly from NZ Post (sent from linsystefanoq@resquar.help as an iMessage, rather than an SMS message):

What's your Horsenality?

14 April 2025

In Wellington, we're hoping to take a trip to the Abundant Life church early next month. The church's pastor, Hamish Thomson, recently took over the running of the quarterly Prayers at Parliament meetings that myself and other skeptics have attended in the past, but this isn't why we'll be visiting. On May the 4th, in the evening, the church will be hosting guest speaker Mike Collins (no, not the astronaut who didn't land on the moon, this one's a speaker for Creation Ministries International (CMI)) giving a talk titled “How Evolution Hurts Science and People”. With a title like that, I think we'll be in for a real treat - a fairly major bending of the truth to fit a conservative religious narrative.

SEO Shenanigans: A story in four emails

31 March 2025

The NZ skeptics mailbox recently received a request from a company selling breathalysers in NZ. They wanted us to help them game the system when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, so that they could increase their sales. Given that I wrote about SEO just a few weeks ago, I figured the email exchange might be of interest to our readers. I think the emails tell the story quite well by themselves, so here they are in chronological order:

The Machines are Revolting

31 March 2025

After having written in the last issue about the committee's hesitance to let people submit articles for inclusion in the newsletter that include significant AI content, I wasn't totally surprised to receive an email from Peter Harrison, who we've had on our podcast before talking about AI. What did surprise me, though, was the formal tone of his letter - which at first I took to be a little passive-aggressive. However, this and the Americanized spelling still didn't tip me off as to the real author of the email:

210 - Wind Speed or IQ?

17 March 2025

An interesting point came up when preparing this week's newsletter. In Patrick's article about a couple of recent climate change papers, he's used AI (he doesn't specify which one) to summarise one of the papers for him. As soon as I saw this I had a knee-jerk reaction that writing an article for us in this way is probably not the way we want to go. I've been proud that we've managed to put together a lot of fascinating, entertaining content over the last few years, and the idea that we might offload some of that effort to an AI worries me.

Chris Langan - Smartest Man in the World?

17 March 2025

A couple of years ago, I wrote about some of the most elite “High IQ” societies, and how they mostly seemed to be nothing more than vanity projects created by self-professed polymaths who had built up cult-like followings. The supposed pinnacle of these groups was the New Zealand based Tera Society; headed up by Roddy Young, and with an entry requirement of a one-in-a-trillion IQ. In reality I suspect Roddy wouldn't even manage to pass the Mensa IQ test.

Are These Better Work Stories?

3 March 2025

It's less than a week before my skeptical road trip to try to find the Kaimanawa wall, on the way up to Auckland to visit the new Mormon temple. We're looking forward to meeting up with people for brunch on Sunday, and we're also looking to see if there's anything weird and wonderful we can do on the Sunday afternoon or evening. Maybe a visit to see Brian Tamaki spout his vitriolic hatred would be fun?

Majorana 1: A new state of matter?

3 March 2025

Microsoft released a video last week claiming they have created a new state of matter, a base building block for their efforts to make a new type of quantum computer using “topological superconductors”:

SEO Silliness

3 March 2025

Search Engine Optimisation (known as SEO) is an IT discipline in which a website owner attempts to optimise their site in a way that makes it appear high up in google's search results, ideally on the first page. The factors that Google considers when ranking pages, through an algorithm called PageRank (and more recently other technologies), are something of an open secret these days.

The health benefits of mandated leave

3 March 2025

The Christmas before last, I received a work email informing me of the holiday dates during which our office would be closed, and that for these dates I would need to book annual leave. I guess in an attempt to soften the blow of people needing to use over half of their annual leave on days outside of their choosing, management decided to let us know of the benefits of taking leave:

A day late, but still skeptical

18 February 2025

Unfortunately Mailchimp failed me last night, and refused to let me login to their website to send out the newsletter. But we're back up and running now, bringing you skeptical news from New Zealand and beyond.

Michael Connett's Wellington Talk

18 February 2025

A week ago I attended a talk given by Michael Connett, the son of long-time lawyer Paul Connett. Michael, like his father, lives in the US and has dedicated his life to fighting against the use of community water fluoridation. He's a lawyer, and specialises in civil lawsuits where there are claims of damage by toxic substances. He recently won a court case in the US where he argued that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) was not doing enough to address concerns about the risks of fluoride in drinking water.

No, This Is NOT Sand Under a Microscope

18 February 2025

The other day my eldest daughter shared an image on TikTok with me from an account called Genknowladge (@genknowledge1), claiming that sand looks like this under a microscope:

Anyone been to the Kaimanawa Wall?

3 February 2025

In just over a month's time, Bronwyn and I will be driving up to Auckland to visit New Zealand's second Mormon temple. We're also going to try to visit the Kaimanawa wall on the way, so if anyone's been there and has any advice about driving the gravel road to the nearby camp site, I would love to hear from you. While in Auckland we'll try to organise a Skeptics' get together - maybe brunch somewhere on Sunday the 9th. So, if you're in Auckland, we'd love for you to join us for a chilled out chat.

Honey: Kessler's Flying Circus on Steroids

3 February 2025

For those who have been around in skeptical circles for a while, you're probably aware not only of skeptic Brian Dunning and his Skeptoid podcast, but also of his conviction for wire fraud, in a case where he was accused of cookie stuffing. Wikipedia summarises it nicely on Brian Dunning's Wikipedia page:

Movie Review: Heretic

3 February 2025

I'm a middle-aged guy who likes to spend time talking with Mormon missionaries, and by now I probably get visited about once every month or two by any new missionaries who turn up in the Porirua area. I had two missionaries visit me at the beginning of the new year, and another two just last week. I enjoy talking with them - both hearing their perspectives on their faith and the Mormon church, and trying to give them food for thought when it comes to some of the worse parts of their church organisation.

Global Flourishing is Back

21 January 2025

Recently I was messaged by one of our “spies” - someone who was still in the Discord group for Global Flourishing, the claimed Rationalist group that looked more like a proto-cult that I'd looked into last year, based in Auckland. The spy let me know that the group's leader, Paul Bryant, was shutting it down, and had sent everyone this message:

New Year, New Nonsense

21 January 2025

It's been a productive break for our newsletter contributors, and therefore we have another record-breaking newsletter this week, with a great set of articles for you to read. Firstly one of our members, Patrick, has put his hand up and offered to write us a series of articles on climate change - as he says, it's a serious issue that we can't afford to be complacent about, let alone try to deny its very existence - as some people do (sadly even some in our skeptical community).

Aliens Special

6 January 2025

Happy New Year! We had so many articles come in for our Alien special that I had to split them up into two separate newsletter issues, and even then this issue is probably our longest newsletter yet. We'll be back to our normal programming in a couple of weeks, hopefully looking at the Honey browser extension scam, the phenomena of vocal fry and indie voice/cursive singing in modern music, the potential resurgence of an unusual group I covered last year, a review of the recent movie Heretic, and more.

Ring around Uranus: My Colonic, part 2

6 January 2025

In part 1 of this article, I explained how I ended up being compelled to book myself a totally unnecessary colonic irrigation a few weeks ago, just before Christmas. After years of procrastinating, I finally managed to book an appointment after a new clinic opened up in central Wellington in October. In the lead-up to my appointment, the day before I had swallowed a teaspoon of green food-dye in the morning, and a teaspoon of yellow food dye in the evening.

Visiting Share International

6 January 2025

Share International is an organisation that I've been interested in for quite a few years now. Whenever I see their stands at wellness events and local fairs, I make a beeline for them and have a chat about aliens, UFOs, crop circles and more. It's always seemed a little weird that their membership is predominantly retirees - I tend to associate UFO belief with younger people who have a passion for science and technology, but without the critical mindset or understanding of the complexities involved with interstellar travel to understand that their beliefs are implausible.

Ring around Uranus: My Colonic, part 1

23 December 2024

Okay, the title's a little crass, but it was suggested to me as something that would help to tie my article in with the Alien/Space theme of this week's newsletter, and I've not managed to think of anything smarter since.

Cats and other Cryptids

9 December 2024

Okay, so maybe cats aren't cryptids, but we own two of them and sometimes I wish they were mythical beings rather than very real little monsters who regularly tear holes in my furniture.

Jonathan Ayling - a wolf in sheep's clothing

9 December 2024

I'm sure many of you will have heard of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which formed in 2021 by registering as a Trade Union. They're a successor to the Free Speech Coalition, which formed in 2018 in response to problems Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux had with finding a venue in Auckland in which to spread their weird ideas on topics like immigration (I've watched a couple of Lauren's documentaries, and they're not exactly what I'd call factual).

God's Not Dead 3: A Light in Darkness

25 November 2024

I'm a fan of watching movies and documentaries that contain content that I, as a skeptic, disagree with. I like the idea of challenging myself to spend the time to give these pieces of media a fair shake, so that I can be more confident that I'm not just a skeptic because I haven't “seen the light”. Instead I like to stare directly into that light, watching anti-vaxx documentaries and trying out alternative medicine treatments.

Rationality and Skepticism, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G

25 November 2024

Last weekend we held our annual conference in Auckland - this time co-organised with the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH). We started off the weekend on Friday evening at Rationalist House, the NZARH's building on Symonds street. The first event was a Skeptical quiz, hosted by me, as usual featuring some pretty tough questions:

Ghost Hunting for Skeptics

11 November 2024

Our membership at the NZ Skeptics Society consists of an interesting mix of different kinds of people, and although we generally agree on a few core ideas about requiring evidence before making claims, there are members who hold a variety of views that other skeptics would consider fringe. One of these members, James (who has talked to us at one of our past conferences, and I'm Facebook friends with), posted on Facebook recently that he was running a paranormal investigation of one of Wellington's heritage buildings, Inverlochy House - which is currently used as an art school:

Go Green Garbage

11 November 2024

The Go Green Expo is an annual weekend-long event that has been running for just over a decade. Starting in Wellington, the organisers have since spread to other cities in New Zealand, currently running events in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and the Hawke's Bay. Although the event is slated to be a “sustainable lifestyle” expo, there's very little that's sustainable or eco-friendly being promoted at the event.

Going Green around the Gills

11 November 2024

Is Going Green like Breaking Bad, where you take a wrong turn in your life and start making dubious life choices? Because the owners of the Go Green Expo, held at different locations around the country each year, seem to have made a really bad life choice when they decided to let alt-med nonsense into their Expo right from its inception.

Anti-Ageing Straws

29 October 2024

As part of my recent delegation of the task of finding newsletter topics, where I've started asking my kids for ideas, I was given the topic of anti-ageing, or anti-wrinkle, straws. I guess with the popularity of Stanley cups and other new-fangled drinkware, it was only a matter of time before innovation came to straws.

Thoroughly DeCulted

29 October 2024

Last weekend I travelled down to Christchurch for the DeCult conference, and it was fascinating to hear so many personal stories about the many ways in which cults coerce and mistreat people, as well as some of the ideas people have about how we may be able to minimise the damage that cults are able to do. There were lots of brave people who, having gone through hell while members of these groups, still had the energy to stand up to them and fight once they realised the wrongs that had been done. I was able to say hello to quite a few survivors of different cults who I've met over my years as a skeptic in New Zealand, and also some of our NZ Skeptics members who had made the trip to the conference. And our chair, Bronwyn, gave a great talk about ISTA and Highden that I was able to hear. Although I was volunteering to help at the conference, and had been rostered to work in a different room while Bronwyn was speaking, I managed to organise someone to cover me and my daughter so that we could sit in and hear her telling everyone about just some of the weirdness around Highden and Bruce Lyon.

Aura Points

14 October 2024

After finding out a couple of weeks ago that my kids were aware of “mewing” six months before I was, I jokingly berated them and asked them to let me know of any other nonsense they might come across online. This request was instantly met with a barrage of weirdness and nonsense, although one stood out immediately - Aura Points.

No Rest for the Wicked

14 October 2024

It's going to be a busy end to this year, with two conferences coming up and a few other goings on that we're looking forward to here in Wellington. As well as the Decult and NZ Skeptics/NZARH Conferences, Bronwyn and I have a couple of smaller events on the horizon. Firstly, we're booked to go on a ghost hunt at the end of this month, and then we're also hoping to finally get to hear a talk on UFOs from Share International. We've tried twice so far, and had events cancelled on us, so hopefully the third time's a charm. Expect to hear more from us on these events in this newsletter, and maybe also an alien special issue coming soon.

Be the Early Bird

30 September 2024

Today is the last day to get early bird tickets for our annual NZ Skeptics Conference, this year in partnership with the NZARH, in Auckland from the 15th to the 17th of November. If you're keen to come and listen to some fascinating talks about skepticism, covering a diverse array of topics (and with something of a focus on religion, given this year's partnering with the Rationalists), make sure you get your tickets today to save a little money. The regular authors of this newsletter will be there, as we'll be recording a live episode of our Yeah… Nah! Podcast at the event. If you're able to make it, be sure to come over and say hi to us as it's always good to chat with people and make new connections at these events.

Mewing

30 September 2024

I was sent a link to an article in the Independent the other day, and asked if I'd heard of a new thing the kids are doing called mewing. I quizzed my children about it, as they're young and hip, and they told me that this was old news - “so 6 months ago”, apparently. But the story of mewing was more interesting that I'd first suspected it would be, and involves a good deal that's of skeptical interest.

Saeed's Millions

30 September 2024

A few days ago I was scanning my spam folder, making sure nothing important had been accidentally classified as spam, when I noticed a cryptic email:

A PEEK inside some Astrology Software

16 September 2024

When Bronwyn said she was going to look into astrology software after getting a reading at a psychic fair the other day, I figured it'd be good to have a look into the software itself and see what I could find. So, with Bronwyn's help, I identified a few popular astrology programs and got to work installing them on my PC and poking around them.

The Dawning of the Age of Equuleus

16 September 2024

A couple of weeks ago I talked with a journalist about psychics, as she was looking into a story that Kelvin Cruickshank appeared to have muscled his way into. As well as giving her some information about how psychics work, and a little about Kelvin, I had also suggested to her that she should visit a psychic to get an idea of how they operate. A day later she let me know that she was planning to visit a psychic fair that weekend, and I suggested that I could meet her there to brief her on what to expect. So, on Saturday morning two weekends ago, Bronwyn and I headed to Upper Hutt and met with Virginia.

Goodbye, Craig!

2 September 2024

We've had a bit of a changing of the guard over the last couple of weeks - Craig Shearer has decided to step back from his major responsibilities with the NZ Skeptics, as he plans to focus more on some of his other hobbies and endeavours. Craig will no longer be writing regular articles for us or hosting and editing our podcast, although he has said that he'll write something for us if and when he feels sufficiently impassioned by something annoyingly unskeptical, and he's planning to remain on the committee.

The Throckmorton Sign

2 September 2024

A couple of weeks ago I was browsing Reddit images (I guess it's my old-school version of Tik Tok), when I came across a post extolling the virtues of the Throckmorton Sign as a diagnostic tool. This tool is named after Thomas Bentley Throckmorton, an early 20th century American neurologist.

The Thrill of the Chase

2 September 2024

While looking into the prevalence of treasure seeking as a scam in the United States in the early 1800s (part of some preparation I did before talking to Mormon missionaries), I came across an update to a story that I first heard about a few years ago.

Calling all Māori Atheists

19 August 2024

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was going to attend a talk given by Sara Rahmani to the NZ Humanists in Wellington. At the talk she summarised her findings from a set of interviews she's conducted with Māori who have been happy to talk with her about their spiritual journeys with her. Although most of these journeys have been from belief to non-belief, taking a variety of different paths to get there, she has also interviewed a few people who still hold religious or spiritual beliefs.

Mobile AI, over-promising and under-delivering

19 August 2024

Recently two different mobile AI devices have been released, and given all the overhyping of AI these days they've fared about as well as you'd expect them to - which is not very well at all.

Paul Burns' 10k Challenge

5 August 2024

Paul Burns, a Catholic who sporadically emails us with inane arguments, wrote to us recently about our $100,000 challenge, in an email titled “_My own challenge_”:

The Calm after the Steorn

5 August 2024

Those of you who have been skeptically-minded for a while now may remember an Irish company called Steorn who had been promising since the early 2000s that they could make free energy. Back in 2006 they even took out a full page advert in the Economist, which used the Galileo Gambit and said:

The only good Cult is a DeCult

5 August 2024

Anke Richter, who we've talked to on our podcast in the past, has promised to write an article for our newsletter soon. In the meantime she'd like us to let you all know that, if you're in Christchurch, there are a couple of interesting events coming up.

900 ft. Jesus?

22 July 2024

In 1215 the Catholic Church's Fourth Council of the Lateran, which had been announced two years prior and so was very well attended, introduced many new rules. Many of these were focused on fighting corruption within the clergy, by limiting when and how clergy could charge fees for their work (e.g. no fees for reversing someone's excommunication, consecrating a bishop, or offering “superfluous services”), and banning certain practices like getting drunk and nepotism (specifically, priests handing their job down to their sons).

Global Skeptics in Cyberspace

22 July 2024

From 7pm on Friday night we opened the first ever 24 hour Global Skeptics in the Pub, an online event in the run-up to the SkeptiCal conference, hosted online by skeptics in Northern California. The event coincided with our usual four-weekly Skeptics in Cyberspace meeting, so it lined up nicely.

NZ Skeptics QR Codes

22 July 2024

Given that I had dusted off my copy of Stable Diffusion to generate an image of a 500m tall Jesus, I remembered that I don't think I've yet shared a project I did last year where I generated a set of QR Codes all pointing to the NZ Skeptics website. Using Stable Diffusion, Controlnet and some other software, I was able to produce some fun skeptically-themed images that all function as working QR codes - or at least, I managed to get my phone to successfully read each of them at least once. Your Mileage May Vary when trying to scan these yourself, but for what it's worth here they are.

Jim Ring, Nelson

8 July 2024

I've been in contact with a lawyer on and off over the last couple of years regarding one of our old members - old both in terms of when they joined the society, and in terms of their age. Jim Ring was a frequent contributor to our Journal, the NZ Skeptic, writing both articles on a wide range of topics and many Letters to the Editor. Sadly Jim passed away last year, and the conversations with the lawyer, who was a friend of Jim's in his later life, were about a collection of books of skeptical interest that he had collected over his lifetime and wanted to donate to the NZ Skeptics.

Les Oeufs Pochés

8 July 2024

We're currently looking at streamlining this newsletter, and one promising option we're looking at is to move its creation to Wordpress, our current website CMS (Content Management System). The only obvious difference this would make to you would be that our newsletter emails would no longer contain the full text of our articles - instead there would be an excerpt, along with a link to the full article online. I'd love to hear from anyone for whom that would be an issue, where it might make it harder for you to access our newsletter (just email me at newsletter@skeptics.nz). Ideally I may be able to figure out a way to include the full text of our articles still, but so far a workable solution has eluded me.

Souls of the dead tracking across the sky

8 July 2024

Craig wrote a couple of weeks ago about a couple of strange ideas he was introduced to at a Matariki event he attended - the idea that Matariki's brightness can predict the future, and also an idea that the earth has apparently recently shifted on its axis by 20 degrees.

YouTube Update

8 July 2024

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how we had one of our YouTube videos removed from YouTube, due to Google mistakenly deciding that it was promoting medical misinformation - a rookie mistake, given that it was critiquing medical misinformation. I expressed my doubt that an appeal would change the outcome, but I was pleasantly surprised just after we recorded our last podcast episode to receive an email from Google letting us know that they had reversed their decision:

Dubious claims and “facts”

24 June 2024

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Save Marsden Point Refinery efforts, spearheaded by conspiracy theorists who are trying to convince Channel Infrastructure, by hook or by crook, to stop the decommissioning of the refinery and restore it, while also converting it to be able to process our own crude oil. The main driver behind this effort, Karl Barkley, suffered a mishap recently when his van (which is covered in billboards for The Cause) was towed away from a loading zone by Hamilton Towing Services.

Eyelashes on an Ichthyosaur

24 June 2024

On Saturday afternoon I joined an old friend and fellow nonsense junkie, Tim Atkin, as we attended a creationist talk in Wellington, organised by Creation Ministries International (CMI - the group that run the creation.com website). Now, Tim has been spending a lot of time over the last few years learning mandarin, and this was to come in handy as the meeting was at the Wellington Chinese Methodist Church on Boulcott Street. We arrived just before the 4pm starting time, and were greeted by a large creation.com banner featuring one of CMI's favourite topics, dinosaurs (presumably this is seen as a way to capture the imagination of kids).

In the YouTube Naughty Corner

24 June 2024

In preparation for my article this week about my visit to a creationist talk, I logged into the NZ Skeptics' YouTube channel to upload some videos of the event I'd recorded. When I logged in, I was greeted with a warning about how we had violated one of YouTube's Guidelines:

A Call from the Other Side

10 June 2024

I've done a lot of book shopping recently, while working on our plagiarism project - and in this time I've found some real gems. And, by gems, I mean god-awful books. Thankfully my shopping has been done in charity shops and at book fairs, so these bad books have cost me just a dollar or two each - with the added twin bonuses that a) the money I've spent has gone to charity, and b) I've removed at least one copy of these books from circulation.

Product Review: Pearl Princess Face Mask

10 June 2024

This weekend my kids and I picked up a 5 pack of face masks from KMart - a bargain (I think) at $12. My family, who were coming on this journey of discovery with me, each picked a mask that suited their personalities, or star signs, or something - Mermaid Feels, Super Star, Magic Mask and Radiant Glow. I chose Pearl Princess; after all, who doesn't want to feel like a princess on a Sunday night.

Spiritual Shenanigans

10 June 2024

I would like to start this issue of the newsletter with an apology. In the last newsletter in my brief editorial I mistakenly attributed the proposed Bathroom Bill to David Seymour's political party, ACT, but of course it's been proposed by another coalition partner, Winston Peter's New Zealand First party. Thank you to the readers who were quick to point out my mistake!

A Visit to the School of Practical Philosophy

27 May 2024

On Saturday (the 25th of May), our chair Bronwyn, long-time skeptic Tim Atkin and myself visited Practical Philosophy and Meditation, a group running out of a very nice building at the bottom of Aro Street in Aro Valley, Wellington. We were going there because, despite outwardly looking like an educational institution (until very recently the Wellington branch had been called the School of Practical Philosophy), a little investigation shows that the group runs “schools” around the world in a curiously cult-like fashion, offering cheap philosophy courses as the hook to attract adherents who can then be convinced to pour their money, time and devotion into the group.

Jason Momoa: From Aquaman to Aquascam

27 May 2024

At the beginning of April I received a friend request from none other than Jason Momoa, star of the Aquaman movies, the Conan the Barbarian remake, and Jacques Villeneuve's recent version of Dune. Of course, this wasn't the real Jason Momoa - just another Facebook scam, something that's becoming more prevalent as Meta appears to have given up on even their half-hearted attempts to combat fraud on their platform.

The Short and Long of It

27 May 2024

I'm going to keep my intro short this week, because our articles are pretty long and I don't want to bore you all before you even get to the first one - which is an article from someone we've not heard from before, Darren Bird. Darren's written about ACT's new proposed bill attempting to legislate the use of bathrooms - and if you think it sounds suspicious, you'd be right. After Darren we have a piece from Craig, who has looked at someone who's fascinated me for a little while now, Don Murray; I've spent some time clicking through his website over the last few months, and still can't get to grips with him and what he thinks his special powers are. Thankfully Craig's done a nice job of summarising some of his nonsense.

Aurora Skepticalis

13 May 2024

This weekend those of us who weren't screwed over by cloudy evenings were treated to a rare view of the Aurora Australis. As skeptics, though, you won't be surprised to hear that there's no lack of scaremongering when it comes to the aurora. Take, for instance, this iPhone app that promises that you can “Protect your Life” from solar storms:

Marsden Pointless

13 May 2024

We saw a few weird things come out of the Parliament protests, but one of the weirdest is the attempts to “save” Marsden Point. Some of the protestors, egged on by conspiracy agitators like Brad Flutey and Damien De Ment, travelled directly from the protest at parliament in Wellington when the police shut it down, all the way up to Marsden Point, half way between Auckland at the top of the North island and site of the country's only oil refinery, which was (and is) in the process of being decommissioned.

Ghosts in the Machine

29 April 2024

As we've just had two weeks of school holidays, I've just spent a week in Australia. Sadly during that time a new set of Mormon missionaries were unable to visit me at home to try to convert me. But, don't despair, they've already messaged me again and we've arranged to meet on Saturday. At this point I'm not sure if they seriously think they have a chance to win me over, or if I'm just a sport for them - but I enjoy the conversations, so I'll continue to let them visit me at home and take a couple of hours of my time.

Trans-Tasman Troublemaking

29 April 2024

Last week I went to Australia for a holiday. Although tourist traps are not my idea of a good holiday destination, I have a family, and when you're a parent, holidays tend to be more about the kids than your own preferences. And so off we went to the Gold Coast - a place that was both warm and had lots of theme parks.

Don't worry, this newsletter isn't going off air

15 April 2024

I was planning to attend a Safe ICT event in Wellington last weekend, where I was going to be warned about the dangers of WiFi mutating my mitochondria. I've written about Safe ICT before, after I spent a while talking to them at the Go Green expo in Wellington. They're an advocacy group who appear to have irrational fears about technology, and prefer to side with individual fringe scientists who write flawed scientific papers, rather than choosing the side that has the weight of scientific evidence behind it. A large part of what they seem to push for is turning off any wireless protocols where possible, and buying expensive ethernet to USB adapters that allow you to run a wired connection from your home router to your mobile phone. Wait until they find out about everything else around them that happens to generate electromagnetic fields! Anyway, a prior event ran for longer than expected, and I missed the event, but next time they run something local I'll be sure to attend.

Time Travelling Song Lyrics

15 April 2024

The NZ Skeptics were messaged last week by someone (no name given) who thinks they've found a paranormal event - a message in a piece of music from 1995 that predicted the 7.5 earthquake on New Year's Day this year in Noto, Japan:

UFO Update

15 April 2024

For those who were paying attention when reading the newsletter from two weeks ago, when I published a plea for help from an ex-member of the NZ Skeptics regarding a photo his mother had taken in Auckland, you may have noticed something odd. Despite claiming to be a skeptic, there was a strange sentence in the middle of the email we received. It read:

Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?

2 April 2024

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_of_Jesus

Happy Skeptical Easter

2 April 2024

I hope everyone's had a good long weekend, and was able to spend it doing the things they love. I was able to spend a day hanging out with friends, put some finishing touches to a fake tourism plaque I've been making for a prank in Wellington, and spent some time sorting and photographing my vintage necktie collection. As part of doing this I learned more than I ever needed to know about the history of tie manufacturers in New Zealand, including Parisian, John Webster, Klipper, Sander and Eskay.

Sex.Life.Nonsense

2 April 2024

A few months ago Bronwyn wrote an article about Sex.Life, a New Zealand podcast by Morgan Penn, a “somatic sexologist”, and Hayley Sproull, a comedian. The first season of the podcast is of interest to skepticism, as it details Morgan's 10 day visit to Highden Temple (outside of Palmerston North), owned and run by Bruce Lyon. Bruce claims to channel the spirit of a long-dead spiritual master, and also runs Sex Magic classes - part of the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA).

UFOs in Auckland?

2 April 2024

We recently received an email from an ex-member who's now living in the UK, asking if our members might be able to help out identifying an optical anomaly in a photograph his mother took in Auckland recently:

Citizen Science Done Badly

18 March 2024

Apologies for this week's newsletter being a little late - I was planning to finish it off last night, but I was hit by some weird medical issue where I had a horrible headache and ended up sleeping from 5pm to get rid of it.

They See Me (Jade) Rollin'

18 March 2024

A couple of months ago a friend messaged me with an article from Glamour magazine that extolled the virtues of jade rollers. Although I have no idea how he ended up reading the article in the first place, I think it piqued his interest because the byline mentioned “skeptics”. Our conversation went like this:

Nonsense knows no borders

4 March 2024

Another fortnight, another newsletter. Thanks to everyone who's been ensuring that I have good skeptical content to publish. And, dear reader, if you think you have a skeptical story in you that you want to tell, I would love to hear from you. If you're not sure if you're able to write a compelling story, don't worry - I'm more than happy to help you craft something that will pass muster. And if you're concerned that you'll be too verbose, I'm happy to cut down your story to a more manageable size - or, more likely, serialise it and publish it in multiple issues. And, remember, if you write us an article and you're happy joining us on the NZ Skeptics' podcast, Yeah… Nah!, we'd love to talk with you there as well. Just reply to this email to get in contact with me, or email news@skeptics.nz, if you think you might have something that is worth sharing.

Queen Pwnzalot

4 March 2024

I'm a bit of a fan of internet drama - at least the kind where someone is accused of wrongdoing. The to and fro of accusations, rebuttals, evidence, and eventual apology video, with a backdrop of hundreds of eager new YouTubers hoping to gain followers by creating reaction videos, giving their own commentary, or even adding to the investigation, is fascinating to watch, and its online nature means that everything is easily accessible from the comfort of my living room. I can watch half a dozen videos, then go searching for background information, piecing together my own picture of who the main players are, how they're perceived within the online community, and just how screwed their internet “careers” are.

Cranks and Con-artists

19 February 2024

Our ongoing plagiarism project is going well - thanks to the people who reached out and offered to help with running the text we have through TurnItIn. We're now receiving reports from two different academics who are putting the documents through two different plagiarism detectors. Our evidence, and the website we're building to showcase it, is coming together well. It's been a lot of work so far, but there's a lot still to do, so we'll keep working until we've built the most thorough case we're able to put together - we really want to make sure we do this well, as it involves serious accusations.

Movie Review: The Mandela Effect

19 February 2024

Those who know me well know that I have a thing for painful, uncomfortable experiences - I'm finally planning to redeem my colonic irrigation voucher in the next few weeks, I've enjoyed stabbing myself with acupuncture needles and joining interminably boring cult meetings. So for some it's no surprise that I'm a big fan of bad movies - some of my favourites are Twisted Pair (or anything really) by Neil Breen, Champagne and Bullets, Jurassic Shark, Dangerous Men, Dolemite, Tammy and the T-Rex, and Birdemic. Yep, these movies are so bad that The Room doesn't even make the list.

Response to a member's concern

19 February 2024

We recently had a member decide not to renew their membership, because of concerns about our submission to the Therapeutic Products Bill. They told us:

Skepticism away from the Coal Face

5 February 2024

A lot of skepticism these days involves battling against wrong-heading beliefs related to topics that are important to us, and to our world: whether an all-powerful God created us, and wants us to follow his strict, perversely specific and often nonsensical rules about how to live our lives; if climate change is real, and how much of a risk it is to our continued existence on this planet; the merits (or lack thereof) of alternative medicine, and the dangers they can pose to a misinformed public.

Watch this Space

5 February 2024

After many months of radio silence, the odd Global Flourishing group that I wrote about last year briefly stirred before going quiet again. Rest assured, if anything comes of this, I'll be watching it closely and writing about it. Here are the messages that appeared on the group's Discord channel last week:

A Sovereign Citizen walks into a bar

23 January 2024

Thames-Coromandel mayor Len Salt

Circle-jerk-ing

23 January 2024

A few days ago the NZARH, an organisation based in Auckland that I help out with, received an email from someone looking to forge connections:

You can't beat good on a Wellington Day

23 January 2024

It was Wellington Day yesterday, so this newsletter is a day later than usual. It's been a very warm weekend here in Wellington, but I've spent most of the weekend inside, with the air conditioning on, working on our plagiarism project (no, we're not planning to plagiarise from elsewhere to fill our newsletter!). Between Dan Ryan and myself, we have enough coding skills to be able to write software tools that are making our job of detecting and displaying cases of plagiarism much quicker - so I've been spending the weekend writing software.

Pick a bogus treatment

8 January 2024

At the Society for Science Based Healthcare, we spend a lot of time looking at dodgy therapeutic claims. Most of these claims are made by practitioners of alternative therapies. A few months ago Mark Hanna, a colleague of mine at SBH, messaged me with a curious thought:

Some predatory journals have no sense

8 January 2024

Several years ago I poked my head above the parapet by writing a letter to the NZ Medical Journal about crank medical treatments that they were happy to publish (see the bottom of this newsletter for a copy of the letter). Since then my details have obviously found my way onto some dubious contact lists, and as such I've been receiving the occasional request to review scientific papers. It's obvious these requests are for predatory journals, given that they usually flatter me by mis-labelling me as Dr Honeychurch, talking about my “expertise”, and asking me to review a paper that is obviously nothing to do with my day job and actual expertise.

The Year Ahead

8 January 2024

Happy New Year, and welcome to our first newsletter of 2024. I've had a nice couple of weeks off work so far, and weirdly I've spent a few days this week staying at a religious retreat in the middle of nowhere! (For context, it was the best deal I could find on Airbnb, and I only found out the details of what the place was used for after I'd booked to stay there).

Merry Christ/Newtonmas

25 December 2023

Although we've reduced our newsletter output to biweekly, that doesn't stop us from releasing an issue on Christmas day! Wherever you are, and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating, I hope you have an awesome day.

My Friend Damien

25 December 2023

Although most of my friends on Facebook are either skeptically-minded or at the very least have a respect for science and evidence, I do have some outliers. In the past I've sent or accepted friend requests from visiting Mormons, conspiracy theorists and others who are comfortable engaging with me. Additionally, a significant proportion of the time I spend on Facebook is spent browsing the facebook feeds of people who have a very different world view to mine.

Santa Sighted over Christchurch, says NZ Herald

25 December 2023

I'm lying, they didn't actually say that - but they might as well have done. What they did do was run with a headline of “'Doughnut-shaped disc': Is this a UFO over Christchurch?”. As far as I'm concerned, if they'd seriously suggested that Father Christmas may have flown over Christchurch in a sleigh pulled by magical reindeer it would have been no less ridiculous than what they actually did, which was suggest that aliens decided to expend huge amounts of energy, effort and time crossing light years of space in order to very visibly visit New Zealand's South Island. This kind of credulous reporting is not the kind of content that serious news outlets should be generating!

15 Minute Cities

11 December 2023

Many of you, as skeptics, will have heard mention of 15 minute cities and, in our case, because New Zealand likes to be different, 20 minute cities. The 15 Minute City idea has joined Agenda 21, Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset in the pantheon of recent Big Ideas that actually exist, but have been converted by conspiracy theorists into grotesque versions of themselves where governments are supposedly trying to take away our rights and enslave us all. But, what is the idea of a 15/20 minute city, and how have the conspiracy theorists misrepresented the idea?

Twisting the truth

11 December 2023

It's weird not having had a newsletter out last week. Hopefully you didn't miss us too much! As our sole editor I'll be keeping to a biweekly schedule for now - although if we get more content coming our way from readers and committee members, who knows, I may be able to return to producing the newsletter on a weekly basis. For now, you can expect to read something from myself, Bronwyn and Craig every fortnight, and then we'll be recording our podcast in the days following the newsletter's release, and chatting about either our articles or something else that tickles our fancy. If you feel moved to write an article for us, just send your article to news@skeptics.nz and we'll let you know if we plan to publish it, which is very likely to be the case as we love reading all your thoughts on skeptical topics, and I'm sure our audience does too. And, once your article's been published, we'll probably want you to join us on the podcast to talk about it as well - but only if you're comfortable with doing that.

Another Year, Another Conference

27 November 2023

Apologies for the slightly late delivery of this issue of our newsletter - I'm currently tapping away on my keyboard on the ferry at Picton, waiting to start the final leg of our journey back home to Wellington from the conference.

Skeptic Quiz

27 November 2023

This weekend I hosted a Skeptical quiz at our annual conference in Dunedin. For those of you who missed out on the conference, here are my quiz questions so that you can play along at home. Feel free to look these things up if you can't figure out the answers but are curious to know. I'll be publishing the answers in my next newsletter.

The conference is night, streaming docs and twin flames, Dunedin Skeptical History

20 November 2023

This past couple of weeks has been pretty busy for me. We're now very close to our NZ Skeptics Conference in Dunedin this coming weekend - 24th - 26th November. It's going to be an amazing weekend of talks and entertainment and fun.

Live Long and Prosper

13 November 2023

In the last two weeks, since my last newsletter, I've been re-visited by Mormon sisters - who stayed to talk with me for an epic three hours, and have promised to come back again with more congregation members. I've also managed to catch COVID for a second time. Thankfully the second time round, although just as painful for the first few days, doesn't seem to have had the long-lasting after-effects (tiredness, lack of taste) that it did the first time.

Running out of Steam: The fake Judy scam, part 2

13 November 2023

This is the second part of an article detailing an online scam, which started when I accidentally accepted a friend request from a cloned Facebook account. This led to me talking to a second Facebook account named “Agent Patrick Smith”, and being offered up to $100,000 by Publisher's Clearing House in the US. At the end of part one, I showed off my 9 year old daughter's amazing forgery skills when I asked her to recreate my driver's licence so that I could send it to the scammers as proof of my identity:

Sisters are doing it for… a creepy old man

30 October 2023

A couple of years ago, I was visited by a pair of kind, young Mormon missionaries. We spent a good hour or more chatting about their faith. Of course, being in the middle of a pandemic, missionaries had been unable to do their usual overseas stint, so the lads I had been visited by had come from Hamilton - not the most exciting.

Spooky Special

30 October 2023

I'm happy to let everyone know that the result of the recent Jehovah's Witness court case has been released. This was the High Court case I visited on my lunch break a couple of weeks ago, where the JWs were trying to argue that they shouldn't be investigated as part of the government's current Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry. Thankfully the church has lost its case, and its argument that it doesn't “care” for its members was not enough to allow them to escape scrutiny. The Commission put out a short press statement after the decision was made public:

Would the real Judy Eliassen please stand up

30 October 2023

I recently received a friend request from Judy Eliassan, the office admin for the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists - an Auckland-based organisation I'm involved with that fights for secularisation of our country. This friend request was odd, as I was a little surprised that I wasn't already friends with her. But at first glance the account looked legitimate, as we already had a mutual friend. So, not thinking too much of it, I clicked the Accept button. A couple of hours later I realised that, no, I was already Facebook friends with the real Judy, and the account I had just friended was a cloned account (the cloned account is on the right below):

CleverTap Scam: Can I Scam the Scammers?

16 October 2023

Last week I wrote about how I had been texted asking if I would like a job earning US$6,100 (around NZ$10,000) per month for simply clicking on a few buttons every day in a mobile app that was apparently testing other mobile apps. Of course, no testing was actually going on, and the process I was walked through by Anna, my scammer, was just a way to hook me in and gain my confidence, before the scammers attempted to extract cash from me.

General (Ms.) Information

16 October 2023

For those who didn't manage to catch the Ms. Information movie about skeptic and scientist Siouxsie Wiles back when it was doing the Film Festival circuit a couple of months ago, the good news is that it's due for general release in cinemas from the 26th of October. Siouxsie has let me know that there's also a pre-release screening happening next week (on the 17th) at the Rialto cinema in Newmarket - you can book tickets for that showing at the cinema's website.

The Biggest Loser: Election Special

16 October 2023

By now most of us will know that we're facing a change in government in the near future, given that the National Party has likely secured enough seats with the help of ACT in order to form a majority. But, how close did we come to having our country run by conspiracy theorists who would have removed us from the UN and made other daft-sounding decisions that Al Blenney documented for us in the newsletter a few weeks ago?

The More Things Change

16 October 2023

I popped into the High Court last week to sit in on a court case where the Jehovah's Witnesses are attempting to argue that they should be exempt from the current Royal Commission enquiry in Abuse in Care. Sara Passmore and I (we're both NZ Skeptics committee members) visited for an hour, and we seem to have accidentally sat on the “wrong” side of the courtroom. Having sat down, we looked around and realised that our side of the room was mostly men in suits (including, I think, Alfred Ngaro - more on him in the article below), whereas the other side of the room was mainly women, including one with bright pink hair.

CleverTap: a Work From Home scam

9 October 2023

While shopping in KMart a few weeks ago, on Saturday afternoon, I received an unsolicited text message. This isn't unusual, as I take the bold move when it comes to privacy of not trying to hide my contact details at all. I'm a believer in the philosophy of almost inviting spam, and then dealing with it as it arrives by setting up spam filters and mailbox rules. A benefit of doing this, for me as a skeptic, is that I get to see all the weird and wonderful nonsense that spammers attempt to bombard people with. And so it was with this text message:

Tim, Tim and BronTim?

2 October 2023

I was going to publish an article this week about another of my scam adventures - this time, a “job” I accepted where I was supposedly testing mobile apps and getting paid lots of money to do it. But, with contributions from occasional contributor Tim Atkin, new contributor Tim Price (who is a work colleague of mine, and a new member of our Society), and Bronwyn, I don't dare make this week's issue any longer than it already is! Rest assured, though, that you'll be able to read about my scam soon (as well as another scam I took part in last week, where I was promised a payment of $100,000, and all I needed to do was pay them $1,000 first), and you can probably hear about it on our podcast as well.

A Second Helping of Catfish Noodles

18 September 2023

In the first part of this story from a couple of weeks ago, I described how I had accidentally made friends with a Chinese scammer on WeChat, the Chinese all-in-one social media app, before I was invited to move our conversation to Telegram, a secure encrypted chat app. In Telegram I was courted by a young Chinese “woman” (the quote marks are because I have a strong suspicion I was being catfished and was actually talking to a man most of the time) who proceeded to tell me about how rich she was, and how she could also make me rich by helping me to invest my money in crypto and precious metals. Her aunt had the inside scoop on when to buy and sell, and so long as we followed her instructions, we were guaranteed to make money. Under the guidance of my new friend, I made a practice transaction of “0.01” with fake money, just before the app crashed and we said good night.

Consumer Report: Snoring Strap

18 September 2023

For Father's Day, my ever-loving family purchased me some interesting devices from Temu, including an anti-snoring chin strap. The strap is made from neoprene, and has velcro straps on the top and back, along with a harness that goes around your chin. The chin harness is meant to keep your mouth closed as you sleep, which apparently will stop you snoring.

Number 5 is Alive

18 September 2023

For the last few months, we've been asking if anyone has a copy of our missing NZ Skeptics Journal issues, and with the help of long-time member John Welch we were able to fill most of our gaps, with the exception of issue 5. Since then we've been wondering if maybe issue 5 didn't exist, that maybe the elusive number 5 was skipped as a joke to wind up future archivists - an urban legend, the mysterious issue that nobody could find.

Avi Loeb is at it again

4 September 2023

Abi Loeb, who went against the tide of the scientific community back when the asteroid Oumuamua passed earth, and claimed it was an alien artefact, has struck again. This time, YouTube alerted me (presumably because I've been watching the UAP nonsense unfold on credulous American news channel News Nation) to the existence of a News Nation interview with Avi about his recent discovery of small spherules of alien origin dredged up from the seabed.

Catfish Noodles

4 September 2023

It all started with noodles. During a work call with a Chinese colleague of mine, Evelyn, I was asked what I would be having for lunch. I told her that I would be having instant noodles and she berated me, saying that I should make noodles from a Chinese recipe instead. A couple of minutes later, several links to YouTube videos appeared via SMS, all showing similar recipes being made, with English subtitles to accompany the Mandarin instructions.

Exponential Growth

4 September 2023

For this week's newsletter, I bumped into a news story about Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist who seems to be making a career out of making unfounded claims of having discovered aliens. On the back of the recent David Grusch shenanigans in the US, it's not surprising that the public are hungry for alien stories, and Avi has a great one for them to feast on - it's just sad that it's likely going to end up being found to be nothing more than sloppy science and wild conjecture.

Lying for Jesus: Nic Blackie Edition

4 September 2023

In the last two months, two of the non-religious organisations I volunteer for, the Humanists and the NZARH, have both been contacted by a young street preacher called Nic Blackie. Nic is looking for someone to interview on his Christian apologist podcast, called The Garrison. In order to figure out whether it's a good idea to have someone talk with Nic, I've spent several hours listening to most episodes of his podcast. I suffer, so you don't have to!

Liz Gunn vs the Fabians

21 August 2023

Since the recent launch of Liz Gunn's new political party, NZ Loyal, I've been loyally watching all of her new party political videos, where she's been laying out her ideas for how she will run the country when she comes to power. They're extensive and disruptive, and although I'm not an expert I'd wager that they're totally unworkable. Her most recent video was the second of a two part series, where she talked about her idea of a 1% transaction tax that would allow the party to close down the Inland Revenue department. Although this video was full of ideas that deserve skeptical scrutiny, I want to have a brief look at the previous video, part 1 of Liz's economic vision for New Zealand, and a particular idea she has about a supposedly secret group who are, in tandem with others, running the world - the Fabian Society.

Safe ICT responds

21 August 2023

Back in November last year, I wrote a critique of a Safe ICT questionnaire I picked up at the Go Green expo. We recently received a copy of Safe ICT's most recent newsletter where they responded to my criticisms. I'm not going to rebut their rebuttal, as this kind of to and fro rarely ends up being productive, but suffice it to say that Safe ICT's overly cautious advice for people using technology is not in alignment with our understanding of the science, and is not based on any scientific evidence of harm.

Secrets and Lies

21 August 2023

Over the last week or so I've been approached online by two scammers and, I guess because of the amount of free time I have now that I'm not attending Eastern Lightning fellowship meetings, I decided to play ball with both of them and see where the scam leads. Neither has reached the point yet where I've been asked to give them my money, but in both cases it didn't take long to see where the con would eventually come. Once we get to that point, which is likely to be in the next day or two for both, I will have a couple of fun articles to write - I've already been meticulously copy/pasting all of my chat sessions with the scammers in documents, so that I have a record of everything that goes on. As a taster, here's a fun preview of one of the incidental conversations I had with a “Customer Care” representative for a company I'm now apparently working for:

The ∑± Meetings

14 August 2023

I've already discussed in my previous articles about the Global Flourishing, or GloFlo/∑±, movement. A few months ago I joined this group, which was claiming to be rationalist and have the answers the world needs to survive. I had my doubts, and was there because of my concerns that the group was looking less like a social movement for positive change, and more like a cult. The group was run by Paul, who had changed his name online to Ui and then again to ∑±78c7e.

District of Freedom, #8573311~!#

7 August 2023

Okay, this one has me stumped, so I'm looking for some help. Robin Capper, from the Auckland Skeptics in the Pub group, messaged us recently to ask about a weird thing he'd seen on Google maps recently:

Miss Conduct

7 August 2023

Speaking of misinformation, myself and some other skeptics in Wellington went to watch Ms. Information last night, as part of the NZ International Film Festival. As Craig said last week, Ms. Information is a documentary about Siouxsie Wiles, created by Gwen Isaac and her crew who followed Siouxsie on and off for around two years, starting at the beginning of the pandemic. The documentary focused less on the content of the misinformation that Siouxsie and others tackled during the early days of the pandemic, and more on the abuse that was hurled at her - up to and including quite a few death threats. Not only has Siouxsie been a long-time skeptic, speaking at several of our conferences and helping to run the Auckland Skeptics in the Pub group for many years, but her husband Steven, also featured in the documentary, was a committee member of the Skeptics for several years.

The Inner Sanctum of the GloFlo movement

7 August 2023

As a reminder of what we covered in my last article on the Global Flourishing movement, also called ∑±, it's a new group setup in Auckland recently by a member of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists. The group claims to be aligned with skepticism, humanism and rationalism, but appears to have some concerning characteristics that make it look less like a group of skeptically-minded people, and more like a cult - at least to me.

Going Undercover is Fun!

24 July 2023

Last Monday night I attended a local talk given by National Party leader Chris Luxon, along with Tim and Alexander, who have written articles for this week's newsletter. This meeting wasn't the main attraction, it was just a prelude to the big event of the week on Tuesday.

The Lightning has Died, at least for me

24 July 2023

When I last wrote about Eastern Lightning, the strange Chinese cult I joined at the beginning of this year, I celebrated the fact that I had managed to get my hands on a couple of copies of one of their books. Little did I know how much trouble this would get me in!

Groundswell pushing climate swill

10 July 2023

Max, one of our regular podcast listeners, messaged us to let us know that Groundswell NZ has recently sponsored a visit by climate denier Dr Tom Sheahen.

I'm running out of cults to join

10 July 2023

We have some fun articles coming up in the next few weeks. Firstly, my time in the Church of Almighty God (Eastern Lightning) has come to an end, and not through my choosing. I'll be writing one final article about the group, as well as publishing a piece from Wellington Skeptics in the Pub member Tim Atkin about how the church managed to spread so widely under strict communist rule in China. Dan Ryan talked with me the other day about some spammy Facebook ads he's been getting recently for a hair analysis service, and as we looked into it at our regular Skeptical Activism meeting, we realised that not only could we have a little fun with this (I have a friend who works for Auckland Zoo who's on board for some interesting testing), but also digging deeper we realised some interesting information about the people running the scam. More on that soon, hopefully!

Reason & Passion: From Curiosity to Culty

10 July 2023

Back in early 2021, Paul (I won't give his last name), a member of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists in Auckland - known as the NZARH, or just the Rationalists - was entrusted with managing a Facebook group of around 500 members that was originally used for a University of Auckland group called the Reason and Science society. The group was renamed to SHARP - Student Humanists Agnostics Rationalists and Philosophers, and appears to have been re-purposed for students at Auckland University.

YAPP - Yet Another Political Party

10 July 2023

Dan Ryan wrote an article a few weeks ago about our visit to a Freedoms NZ event, where Brian and Hannah Tamaki, Sue Grey and others extolled the virtues of their new umbrella political party. Currently Freedoms NZ consists of the member parties Vision NZ (Destiny Church's political wing), Rock the Vote, New Nation, Yes Aotearoa and almost the Outdoors and Freedoms Party (Sue just hasn't signed on the dotted line yet).

Backmasking

3 July 2023

When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time hanging around at my best friend's house. His family were committed Christians, and I was a young atheist. This was a time before I converted to Christianity, as a 17 year old, and I enjoyed arguing with Christians about the age of the earth, the fossil record, etc. It's weird that so many evangelical Christians hang their hat on the idea that the earth is only 6,000 years old, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary that was so easy to grasp that even a clueless 15 year old like me could figure it out. Anyway, I digress…

Binaural Beats

3 July 2023

About 10 years ago a friend asked me about binaural beats. I had to admit at the time that I was oblivious, and had never heard of them. He proceeded to describe a fun audio effect, one that only works through a pair of headphones. If you play an audio tone (frequency) in each ear, and make the tone in each ear a little different, the difference between the frequencies of these two tones - their interference pattern - can be heard as a third audio tone that sounds like it's originating from somewhere between your ears. So, if you play a 550Hz tone in your left ear, and a 500Hz tone in your right ear, you will also “hear” a 50Hz tone between your ears: 550 - 500 = 50.

Does Vinyl Sound Better?

3 July 2023

I was in JB HiFi the other day and noticed that vinyl records have made a comeback. There were rows and rows of new releases on vinyl LP, selling for between $50 and $60 a piece. It reminded me of an incident a few years ago, when a friend of mine moved from the US to New Zealand.

Our Very Own Musical Skeptacular

3 July 2023

There's a trend among some of the longer-running US TV shows of, after a few seasons, releasing a musical special. I guess once a show's creators know they're on safe ground, and that their show isn't going to be cancelled in the near future, they can take the risk of making a themed episode - and music seems to be a common theme. Shows that have had their cast break out into song for an episode include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Community, Psych and Scrubs. And, although I'm not a fan of musicals, this issue of our newsletter will be focusing on music and audio.

The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet

3 July 2023

As a skeptic I love a good mystery - the kind of puzzle that Arthur C Clarke would write a book or make a TV show about. A couple of weeks ago I found a set of YouTube videos about a contrived mystery - one that's been deliberately created, rather than many of life's “mysteries” that come about because of misunderstanding and a lack of scientific understanding - or real mysteries where there's nothing otherworldly, but just a lack of information that would explain the backstory to a situation.

David Grusch and his UFO claims

19 June 2023

I received a text from radio host Graeme Hill the other day, alerting me to a Newshub Nation piece on UAPs (Unidentified Aerial/Anomalous Phenomena) - the new, more “serious” name for UFOs. In the 10 minute video report, Rebecca Wright and Simon Shepherd interviewed Australian investigative reporter Ross Coulthart about his investigation into David Grusch. If Ross is to be believed, David Grusch is the most important whistleblower ever in the history of UFO/UAP revelations.

Nonsense: In the air, in our brains, in politics and down in Christchurch

19 June 2023

Craig is away in the US for the next four weeks, so I'm going to try to hold the fort until he gets back. Thankfully I have articles from some of our reliable contributors this week, and I'm hopeful that I'll be able to convince one or more of them to take over for an issue or two in the coming weeks.

Thank Almighty God Above

6 June 2023

This weekend I think I may have finally managed to reach the end goal of my time in the Eastern Lightning (Church of Almighty God) group in New Zealand. Having been asking for months now if I could get my hands on one of the many books that the church prints, I finally have a copy.

Beware the Technologically Advanced Mermaids

22 May 2023

Having published Al Blenney's article a few weeks ago about a local “School of Prophets”, and then talking with him on our podcast about how there are several groups in New Zealand that promote Christian prophecy and run annual conferences, I wasn't too surprised to read last week about “ReAwaken America”, a Christian event held in Miami at the Trump National Doral hotel. The story that caught my eye was about a “prophet” called Amanda Grace who warned the assembled crowd about mermaids. Specifically, she said:

Does anyone like Scrapbooking?

22 May 2023

This week I've looked at what might be behind a funny story about combat-ready mermaids, and found out that it's not the answer I thought I was going to find. I also did a silly thing, and joined a Multi Level Marketing scheme - but don't worry, it's all above board. Just email me if you'd like to join my downline or buy some of my scrapbooking products, and I can give you my affiliate link.

I joined an MLM!

22 May 2023

I was so pleased to hear on your latest podcast that you are interested in becoming a scrapbooker and/or card maker! It's a great way to preserve your memories rather than have them languish on your phone, to be lost at Google or Apple's whim.

New Freeland, Revisited

8 May 2023

I wrote an article a couple of years ago about a new group based on the Sovereign Citizen (or SovCit) movement. The group was planning to take ownership of Abel Tasman national park, using the Allodial Title legal “trick” that ex-lawyer Liz Lambert had been telling anyone who would listen, and create a new country called "New Freeland". Liz shared her trick far and wide; she's written in Facebook groups, told Kelvyn Alp of Counterspin Media on his online news channel, Counterspin, and talked on podcasts, etc. Here are some stills from Liz talking with Kelvyn on Counterspin, including a couple of pages detailing her deep understanding of the law.

Crypto Mining bad, Data Mining worse

1 May 2023

Aleh Tsyvinski is a professor of economics at Yale who has been researching Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies over the last few years, in a bid to understand where the currencies sit within an economy, and figure out how to use them to make money.

Silenced?

24 April 2023

A New Zealand focused anti-vaccine “documentary” has recently been released, called Silenced. It focuses on broadcaster Peter Williams, as well as ex-GP Anne O'Reilly and sociologist Jodie Bruning, with much of the talk centering around COVID vaccination, the mainstream media and alternative treatments such as ivermectin. It also talks quite a bit about Dr Simon Thornley, past winner of our Bent Spoon award, although the footage the documentary makers shot of Thornley is not used in the documentary beyond a couple of silent clips, as apparently his lawyers recommended after filming that he shouldn't be a part of it.

South Island UFO

24 April 2023

Jonny Grady, a long-time committee member, sent an image he'd taken of a “UFO” to the committee last week:

You get a cult... you get a cult... everybody gets a cult

24 April 2023

The NZ Skeptics held an SGM (Special General Meeting) on the weekend to go over our proposed new constitution and vote on its adoption. We're doing this because there's an upcoming change in the law that will require Societies' constitutions to be aligned with the new law's requirements. Thankfully we have an active committee, and several members were willing to give up several hours in their weekends to go through the new constitution recommended by Companies Office (who administer Societies) and integrate the key parts of our old constitution with the new one. We also injected a few skeptically-themed easter eggs into our new constitution, so that it's not an entirely boring read. Thanks to everyone who turned up to our SGM and voted to accept our new constitution, and to those who suggested changes.

Buddha Stones and the Wishing Machine

11 April 2023

Despite my regular attempts to unsubscribe from some of the more egregious nonsense I receive in my email, spam still gets through - at this point it seems there's a mailing list that I signed up to that is able to subscribe me to new lists quicker than I can unsubscribe from existing ones. And, to be honest, I don't mind that much. My spam filter is able to deal with most of the fluff, and the stuff that does get through is often great fodder for this newsletter. To that end, I recently received an email titled “The BUDDHA STONE Money Magnet Kit!” which intrigued me:

Eastern Lightning: Lies, damn lies and Religion

11 April 2023

In my previous articles about Eastern Lightning, the Chinese cult group that I've joined to get an insight into how they operate, I've talked about:

Everyone's lying to us

11 April 2023

In this week's newsletter I've taken a deep dive into a spam email trying to flog me snake oil, and found a funny coincidence at the end of the rainbow. I've also written about some of the more sneaky tactics I've seen the church of the Eastern Lightning use to try to attract new members, and keep them in the church. And finally Bronwyn has returned to Multi Level Marketing schemes (MLMs), detailing Prüvit and their health food products - I'm very tempted to make a joke about the food pyramid!

Eastern Lightning: Step by Step Instructions

27 March 2023

In my last two articles about Eastern Lightning, I've documented both the central tenets of the religion that they have been trying to teach New Zealanders over the last few months in their Level 1 and 2 fellowship groups, and some of the tactics, such as love bombing, that they've been using outside of the fellowship time to keep members invested in attending the group. Immediately after finishing in the Level 2 group, I was moved to a new Facebook chat group called “_NZ gathering in Almighty God-(10pm Mon/ Wed/ Fri)_”. As you can see from the title there was some blessed relief here, with a reduction from nightly meetings to just three a week. Thank God!

Science > God

27 March 2023

In this week's newsletter, I've published the text from a couple of oral submissions the NZ Skeptics and the Society for Science Based Healthcare (SBH) recently presented to MPs. One interesting part of this was a question asked of SBH, which allowed Daniel Ryan to detail some of the harms that Natural Health Products have caused in New Zealand. I've included Dan's email, and the short but promising response he received. I've also written about my time after graduation from the Eastern Lightning online fellowship meetings and my entry into the Level 3 group, as well as my brief foray into its leadership.

Almighty God: The Big Reveal

20 March 2023

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my experience of joining the Eastern Lightning group, a Chinese Christian sect that is currently trying to expand through spamming New Zealanders on Facebook, and running online fellowships to introduce new adherents to the religion. I detailed my first few days in the group, working through their “Level 1” lessons, and some of the conversations I had during the love bombing I received on the first few days from multiple church members.

23 Minutes to regain focus

6 March 2023

I received a company wide email at work recently from a colleague, where they were recommending an app to help people concentrate during work hours by minimising distractions. What caught my eye, though, was a justification given for the need for this app. Apparently if you've been distracted at work, it takes people on average 23 minutes - or, to be precise, 23 minutes and 15 seconds - to fully regain your focus and get back to your work properly. Now, as a skeptic, the specificity of that number alerted me that this was probably nonsense. On top of the unlikely nature of that number, I wondered what relevance “fully” regaining your focus is. If your focus (however that may be measured) is 95% recovered in the first 60 seconds after a disruption, and the rest of the time is a slow crawl to 100%, I imagine that's not so bad. If it's a linear recovery, then it's not so great.

Is this the longest issue yet?

6 March 2023

It's a bumper issue today, but I make no apologies for bringing you a ridiculously long email! If you're using a web based client like GMail, you may need to click the “View entire message” link or similar to read the whole newsletter this week, or click the “Read this in your browser” button at the top of the email to open the newsletter as a web page in your browser.

<Insert call to action here>

20 February 2023

This week's newsletter starts off (relatively) lightly, with an article from Katrina about p-hacking. Katrina's been writing some great articles for us recently, and it was a pleasure to have her on our podcast a couple of weeks ago. We're hoping to have her join us again to talk about her new article this week, and if you're both a listener and a reader you can get a sneak preview of what she'll be talking about.

It's all about the NHPs

20 February 2023

The proposed Therapeutic Products Bill is currently at the Select Committee stage in parliament, and the committee is looking for feedback via its submissions process. For the first time maybe since the repealed Quackery Prevention Act of 1908, this legislation will attempt to police “alternative medicine”. Almost everything about regulating Natural Health Products (abbreviated to NHPs in this legislation) is new territory. The main issue with this bill, at least from our reading of it, seems to be that the government considers evidence of historical use of an NHP treatment for a condition to be “substantiation” of any health claims about it. So, basically, if a natural health product has been used in the past for treating a medical condition, whether it actually helps or not, the government will just assume that it is effective. This, to my mind, is reckless and dangerous.

Truly I am Blessed

7 February 2023

This week's newsletter will feature no articles from me - and this makes me very happy. Why have I not written anything, you may ask, and why am I happy about it. Well, because I'm blessed - and not just once, but twice. Let me explain…

Nessie, Bigfoot, Biden

24 January 2023

An article in Stuff yesterday, reprinted from the Telegraph, showcased the efforts of a scientist to bring statistics to bear on the problem of cryptids. Floe Foxen has supposedly written a couple of papers, yet to be peer reviewed, that look at the “probability” of Bigfoot and Loch Ness monster sightings being something more mundane than a hominid and plesiosaur respectively.

Nobody's Perfect

24 January 2023

I was listening to Steve Hassan speaking on a podcast recently, A Little Bit Culty - hosted by ex NXIVM cult members Sarah Edmondson and her husband Anthony Ames. Steve is well known by now for his BITE model of control in cults, and I've written about this model and its usefulness before.

Out with the old, in with the new

24 January 2023

I guess the biggest news this week is that our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is resigning, and that she will be replaced by Minister Chris Hipkins. However, I'm not sure there's much of skeptical interest that I can say about this news. I think Ardern did a good job steering us through tough times, and obviously I'm dismayed about the vitriol she's had hurled at her from the conspiracy cheap seats. I don't know too much about Hipkins, but again he seems competent, and he's been working to remove Religious Instruction from schools - which I see as a positive step for an increasingly irreligious and secular country like ours.

Happy New Year!

9 January 2023

I hope you all had a good Christmas, and that if you had a break that it was an enjoyable one. I was lucky enough to be greeted by the following passive aggressive email on Christmas Eve by a Catholic man who emails me occasionally to challenge my lack of belief in the Christian god:

Is ChatGPT an AGI? Is it alive?

9 January 2023

To restate the question in a way that may make more sense to some, does the new conversational Artificial Intelligence chat bot from OpenAI qualify as an Artificial General Intelligence, able to perform a wide range of tasks as well as a human can - and could it even be self aware, or sentient?

Boiling Batteries

12 December 2022

I have a friend who I've written about before who, although she's always had pseudoscientific ideas (like giving her children homeopathic remedies), since the pandemic has fallen down the rabbit hole and is currently at the bottom of said hole, picking up more and more daft ideas as she sits there, wallowing. I haven't seen her in a while now - not since I bumped into her at the parliament protest in February - but I do hear about her recent high jinks, and I see her Facebook posts which suggest that she's given up any effort to think critically.

T-Cells, AA Cells, Leaf Cells

12 December 2022

In this week's newsletter I look at a video I watched recently on Facebook, promising a life hack for getting more bang for your buck when it comes to disposable batteries. Although, from what I can tell, the only bang you're likely to get with this hack is exploding batteries.

Fake Norton Email Scam

5 December 2022

Recently I received an email that purported to be from the anti-virus company Norton that was blatantly a scam, but I decided to follow through as much as I could to see what the scammers were trying to do. There's often a side effect of doing this, which is that I can waste the time of the scammers - the more time they're on the phone to me, the less time they'll have for scamming people who are at risk of falling for the scam. Plus maybe, just maybe, the scammers will start to question their career choice if many of their potential marks end up making their life a frustrating misery. Below is a series of events that, all in, might have taken about an hour from start to end.

Don't forget to buy your conference ticket!

21 November 2022

Our annual conference starts on Friday, and for those of you who plan to come but haven't bought a ticket yet, you'd better be quick. I spent yesterday afternoon with Bronwyn and Daniel, running through a sound check at the venue, testing that the technology works as expected, finalising our catering and trying out our Friday night "entertainment” (we also had enough time to grab a quick beer at the Welsh Dragon bar, our venue for Friday evening's event).

Lying for Jesus: Franklin Graham Edition

21 November 2022

On Wednesday evening I attended the Wellington leg of Franklin Graham's God Loves You tour at the TSB Arena. If the name sounds familiar, it's probably because Franklin is the son of Billy Graham, who was quite possibly the most famous Christian evangelical preacher of the 20th century. Billy Graham was well known for his large revival rallies (known as Crusades), with claims of bringing millions of people to the religion. Bronwyn has previously written for us about one of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's projects, the Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes.

Safe ICT NZ

21 November 2022

Craig wrote last week about his experience at the Auckland Go Green Expo, and I also mentioned that myself and Bronwyn, along with Daniel Ryan, attended the Wellington Go Green Expo a couple of weeks ago. As I mentioned briefly on last week's podcast episode, apart from the frustration of the fact that the vast majority of stalls have nothing to do with going green, one particular stall annoyed me more than any other.

Excuse me, sir…

7 November 2022

Yesterday I visited the Go Green Expo, along with Bronwyn, and Daniel and Lisa Ryan. Every year I go, and every year I despair at the almost total lack of environmentally friendly products and services on display. In its place there are alternative therapies and lots and lots of “health” foods promising they'll cure you of your ills.

I am a Starseed

7 November 2022

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Upper Hutt “Mind, Body, Spirit” Fair with Bronwyn, as well as Skeptics in the Pub regulars Alexander and Tim. We were there to gawk at the weird and wonderful stalls, and all that they offered.

Weird and Wonderful Communications

7 November 2022

Skeptic Steven Novella recently published an interesting open letter to cranks. In it he speaks in a very forthright, honest way about people who email him and pronounce that they have figured out something that overturns science, or have single-handedly solved one of science's many unsolved puzzles. Steven explains in the letter about the importance of peer review, and talks of the arrogance of those who think they're smarter than the combined wisdom of the world's experts. He makes a really good point that the proper route to making your claims public, and ensuring they are properly vetted and tested, is a lot of hard work - and it's this hard work that cranks are keen to bypass, often preferring to instead jump straight to making claims without designing experiments, and publishing books rather than writing scholarly articles.

Who wrote Anne Frank's diary?

7 November 2022

It seems like the answer should be pretty simple - Anne Frank, of course. But sadly not everyone seems to accept this. After a brief hiatus, I've returned to watching the god-awful series Europa, a pro-nazi “documentary” series about World War 2. Last time I wrote about a claim that the voice actor for Winnie the Pooh had secretly recorded most of Churchill's wartime speeches because he was too drunk to do it himself. This time the claim is that Anne Frank couldn't have written the diaries attributed to her because, among other things, much of it is written in ballpoint pen, and that type of pen wasn't invented until the 1950s. I've transcribed what the documentary had to say:

Blue Pill, Red Pill or... Black Pill?

25 October 2022

In just a few days a curious annual internet event will begin: No Nut November (NNN). For those not in the know, nutting is a colloquial term for a man ejaculating - and No Nut November is the idea that it's good for people to take time off from ejaculating during November. At places like Reddit's “NoFap” group (fapping is a slang word for masturbating), people talk through November about how well they're doing with the challenge, which has somehow morphed from being an internet joke to something that many young men are taking seriously.

Just Say No to NNN

25 October 2022

November is fast approaching, which means that our annual conference is not far away - just 5 weeks to go! We're currently gathering the bios and talk abstracts of our speakers for this year, so check out the website if you're tempted to join us for the weekend. Early bird prices finish at the end of October, so book soon if you want to save a few dollars!

Shincheonji on the prowl

25 October 2022

A notorious religious group from South Korea called Shincheonji (also known as Mount Zion) has apparently been actively recruiting in Auckland recently. Shincheonji has a long history in New Zealand, with underhanded recruiting techniques used to pull people into the cult group. Many years ago, the church in Wellington was using university students to lure people in. I also found a warning from a popular evangelical church here in Wellington from last year, letting people know that a group member had been attending church services and attempting to convince people to jump ship and join Shincheonji. Apparently this process can start as “an invite for coffee” followed by an invite to a Bible Study, from where attempts are made to convince the mark that Shincheonji is the one true religion.

Elections, Court Decision and Soap

10 October 2022

With local council elections closing this week, there was concern that Voices for Freedom's efforts to have their members run for office without disclosing their affiliation would result in councils being stuffed with conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. Thankfully that appears to not be the case, as a Stuff article claims that fewer than a dozen VfF aligned candidates were voted in.

Justice for Peter Ellis - better late than never

10 October 2022

This week brings a welcome decision from the Supreme Court, in a case that the NZ Skeptics have been

The 27 Club

10 October 2022

In preparation for our next podcast episode, where we plan to talk about Bronwyn's articles on Dr Bronner, I watched a documentary the other day called Dr Bronner's Magic Soapbox. The documentary used footage from another, much older documentary called Rainbow Bridge - a weird piece of experimental film about a hippie community in Hawaii. The end of the documentary contains footage of a live gig Jimi Hendrix performed in Hawaii soon before his death.

A Mixed Bag of Interesting Articles

27 September 2022

As Craig talked about last week, we had a really good time meeting up in Hamilton to visit the Mormon temple, and also enjoyed meeting fellow skeptics at the first Auckland Skeptics in the Pub meeting in a while. Speaking of which, the plan is to keep these meetings going - if you're in Auckland, and wanting to chat with like-minded skeptics, please consider going along to one of these meetings. I'm sure Craig will make you feel very welcome. And, if you can't make our in person meetings, there's always Skeptics in Cyberspace!

Sexy Cheating at Chess

27 September 2022

In this day and age, with the internet as a handy tool, it doesn't take long for an offhand comment on Twitter or Facebook to become a rumour, and from there to mutate into a conspiracy. Sadly, much of the time these rumours are both extremely unlikely and very boring. However, the recent story about a stoush between veteran chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and teenage newcomer Hans Niemann had me laughing when it was relayed to me at a recent Skeptics in the Pub event, so I figured I'd glance my skeptical eye over it. And now you all get to read my musings.

Auras are (not) real

12 September 2022

For anyone who wants to groan about how bad our local press can be, there's an article from the Telegraph, reprinted by the Herald and titled "Scientists discover humans produce invisible aura of air-cleansing molecules", that talks about the idea of the existence of an “aura” around our bodies. The article uses a recent study that looks into a small amount of “free radicals” that are generated by our skin to argue that, technically, these chemicals could be considered to be an aura.

King Charles III

12 September 2022

I'm English by birth, and in my youth had something of an unusual connection to the British royal family because of where I grew up, the Isles of Scilly. The islands are owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, which means they're the property of the Prince of Wales. As such, as a teenager I was not so much used to seeing Charles, Diana or the Queen (although they did visit the islands regularly) as I was used to seeing paparazzi photographers turning up with their ridiculously long telephoto lens to get that exclusive photo of Charles and Diana relaxing on holiday.

Pick a God, any God

12 September 2022

In the latest of my weird and wonderful ideas for websites that are fun and a little quirky, I've recently put together a page that has one simple purpose - to help you choose which god you should pray to when you next need something to turn out in your favour:

Road Trip!

12 September 2022

This Friday, Bronwyn and I will be setting off on a road trip to Hamilton to visit the Mormon temple there, as it's recently been renovated and is currently open to visitors for the first time in 64 years. I'm really looking forward to getting to see the lavish interior before it's “dedicated” and becomes inaccessible to us heathens again. Given that we'll be near Auckland, Craig has organised a Skeptics in the Pub event for this Friday night. Details are below, and we'd love to see you there!

Skeptics in the Pub Auckland

12 September 2022

It's been a while since the Auckland skeptics met for an evening of socialising, but at long last there's an event happening this Friday. As Bronwyn and myself are hoping to be in Auckland on Friday after our visit, with Craig, to the Mormon temple in Hamilton, we figured it'd be good to meet in a pub afterwards and decompress over a beer or two.

The Winds of Change?

29 August 2022

It's been an action-packed week this week, with lots of interesting things happening in conspiracy circles, both here and overseas. And a lot of it seems to be in the right direction, with prominent anti-vaxxers and conspiracy mongers like Robert Kennedy Jr and Chantelle Baker having their social media accounts removed, the parliament protest something of a fizzle, the operators of Counterspin being arrested, and Billy TK and Vinny Eastwood having their day in court.

Yet another “FREEDOM” protest

29 August 2022

On Tuesday, Freedoms and Rights Coalition members converged on Wellington for another protest about our “freedoms”, and of course I was there to see what was going on.

I highly recommend Gloriavale

15 August 2022

By which I mean I recommend watching a new documentary called “Gloriavale”, which focuses on the infamous religious group. I most definitely don't recommend converting to their religion and moving to the Gloriavale compound on the South Island. I went to a Film Festival viewing of the documentary yesterday, before general release to cinemas next week, and there was also a fascinating Question and Answer session afterwards with some of the filmmakers and subjects of the documentary. Here's the trailer:

Misfire and Fury?

15 August 2022

It's me again, Mark, for a third week running - as Craig is unavailable to do the newsletter again. This time it's COVID, and I can't blame him at all for not wanting to write a newsletter while getting over it.

NASA to investigate UAPs - what are they, and are they real?

15 August 2022

NASA recently held a press teleconference where they announced that they will be investigating UAPs - Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. This is a new term being used instead of UFOs, given that UFO suffers from both not being very descriptive (Unidentified things people see in the sky might not be Flying, and they might not be Objects - planets, clouds and aurora are often mistakenly thought to be mysterious objects, but none of them are flying; and the Northern and Southern aurora aren't objects, just cool light shows caused by solar particles), and having a lot of baggage attached to it - when people read UFO, they instantly think aliens. Here's NASA announcing their project:

Alex Jones liable for $50 million, but is it enough?

8 August 2022

Alex Jones has been sued by parents for his claims on his TV show that the Sandy Hook school massacre was faked by the government as a way to take away people's gun rights. These parents are suing because, as a result of Jones' rhetoric, they have spent years dealing with abuse up to and including death threats - and this is after they lost their children in a massacre that Jones has been telling people never happened.

H3O2 - it's one better all round

8 August 2022

It's nice to occasionally be able to talk about nonsense outside of New Zealand. In this case, the Sydney Morning Herald recently printed - and then retracted - an article about a supposed new form of water called hexagonal water, made up of H3O2 molecules.

Nonsense to the left of me, nonsense to the right

8 August 2022

There's usually no lack of content for our newsletter, and this week is no exception - which is great, as I'm on the newsletter for a second week in a row while Craig's unavailable. The Alex Jones court case has made the news this week, and it's good to see the mainstream media focusing on this particular charlatan. When I started reading up on the court proceedings, every article I read seemed to have some new tidbit of information, and it can be a little depressing hearing just how awful Alex Jones is, and how much money he can make in a day. As I say in my article on him below, he's one man I'd love to see in jail, but sadly I'm not sure that'll ever happen.

A Theory of Very Little Substance

1 August 2022

Over the last couple of weeks I've been watching a documentary series called Europa: The Last Battle. It covers the history of Jewish communities around the world, and of the rise of Hitler. It's described on IMDB as “Historical Truth Setting”, with quite a high average rating of 7.3 out of 10 and some positive reviews, saying things such as:

Beyond Mensa - High IQ Societies

1 August 2022

I've always been interested in IQ tests and how they work. There's an interesting, and deep, conversation to be had about the issues with IQ tests. Without going into too much detail, although IQ tests appear to have some utility, there are problems for example when it comes to cultural differences among the people being tested. If an IQ test has been written from a single cultural perspective, and makes assumptions based on that culture, people who haven't been brought up in that culture can do badly on tests because of their differences in understanding of the questions being asked.

People say nothing is impossible

1 August 2022

Several years ago at a Skeptics in the Pub meeting, maybe back in 2014 or 2015, we got onto the topic of the popularity of baby names. At the time, someone predicted that there were likely to be sudden increases in usage for names that had become well known through popular media, especially names that are either rarely used or fictional. Their examples to illustrate the idea were Luke and Leia, from Star Wars, with the prediction that these names would spike at some point after 1977, the release year of the first Star Wars movie.

Scammers being scammed

1 August 2022

Online news outlet Vice reported recently about a growing problem of witches, psychics and tarot card readers having their online profiles copied as a way to steal their business. I also found an episode of the “Your Magic” podcast where host Michelle Tea talks with Sarah Potter, Sabrina Scott and others about the problem:

A little help from my friends

18 July 2022

I have a good friend who often helps me out by sending me articles that might be of interest to Skeptics - and they sometimes come in handy both for this newsletter, and for my regular weekend radio chats with Graeme Hill on Today FM. He's is one of quite a few skeptically minded friends I have who have no interest in the organised skeptical movement in New Zealand - he just lives his life being wary of the nonsense that surrounds us.

High Vibration Moon Crystal Healing Bracelet

18 July 2022

There's something about bracelets that seems to attract pseudoscience.

Three Waters Misinformation

18 July 2022

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I went to parliament to pray with a group of Christians recently. Simeon Brown was the only MP at this event, and he asked us to pray for Three Waters. He said that although he would not say what his stance was on Three Waters, as the prayer event is meant to be non-partisan, he has a very strong stance (to be clear, Simeon isn't a fan of Three Waters - and the National Party has pledged to repeal it when they are next elected).

Bones, URLs and other dubious links

4 July 2022

Just over a week ago Bronwyn and I, along with another couple of skeptics, visited parliament for the quarterly Prayers at Parliament event - the fourth now that I've attended. I swear that these events are becoming more partisan over time. Despite the organisers' claims that the meetings are cross-party, it seems that not only are the MPs who attend mostly National MPs (at this event it was just Simeon Brown), but the topics we're being asked to pray about are more overtly political, and there's a strong sense of what you should be praying for for each topic - unsurprisingly it aligns pretty well with the National party platform.

Q: When is a charity not a charity?

4 July 2022

One of the ways that I monitor unskeptical groups is by signing up for their newsletters - at the moment I receive regular emails from Voices for Freedom, Scientology, Eckankar, Freedom Village, Transformation Into The New Paradigm and more. The titles of some of the recent emails I've received include such gems as:

You are the weak(est).link

4 July 2022

Last week Craig mentioned a website I've built recently - weak.link. I figured I should probably talk a little about what the site is, why we think it's needed, and how to use it. I'll also geek out a little about how it's built, for those who may be interested.

What the heck is the Tartarian Empire

27 June 2022

I like to keep an eye on some of the more weird and wacky conspiracy theorists in New Zealand, as well as some of the more dangerous ones - I'm not sure why, but it feels like a disproportionate number of them come from overseas. Whether it be Lee Williams from the UK, who is ironically worried about immigrants coming to this country and the UN's secret agenda, or Damien De Ment from America, who thinks we should overthrow the government, these are some of the most vocal “alternative” voices in New Zealand.

Deep Fake Elon Musk Cryptocurrency Scam

20 June 2022

The title of this one's a mouthful, and it's an interesting one to pick apart - it includes some of my favourite technologies, one that I think is going to be an important part of our future and the other which I think is a storm in a teacup, and unlikely to disrupt anything of note.

Google engineer thinks he's discovered sentient AI

20 June 2022

One of the types of AI that is progressing at speed at the moment, in places like Google's AI labs and at a company called OpenAI, is Natural Language Processing algorithms. These deep learning algorithms are pieces of software that are “trained” by getting them to process (read) lots and lots of human written text, and try to infer a set of rules for how to create new text like it's been reading. This source text is usually documents from the internet (using software that crawls through websites, linking to new sites and saving all the text it finds). Once the AI has been trained, when given a new piece of text, like a sentence, it will try to guess which word is most likely to come next. When it does this repeatedly, it can form entire sentences and paragraphs, guessing as it goes - and because its learning algorithm has figured out not only the rules of grammar but also the ways in which humans usually communicate (which words are relevant to a topic, etc), the most recent NLP algorithms do a really good job of coming across as human. They can also use this same technique to draw pictures - Dall-E 2 is amazing at creating unique images given a prompt like “a cat dressed as Napoleon holding cheese” - with the phrase “a propaganda poster depicting a cat dressed as french emperor napoleon holding a piece of cheese” giving this result:

The Easiest Person to Fool

20 June 2022

I once met Katherine Smith, the Editor of the New Zealand Journal of Natural Medicine (not a magazine I'd recommend reading - it'll make you angry!). We had an enjoyable chat, and as we were at a wellness and spiritual festival, WellFest, she had no idea I was a skeptic. She showed me her folder of photos and cuttings about the “synchronicity” she'd experienced in her life - a series of spirals, stretching from a spiral painting she made as a young child, through to photos she'd taken in the '80s with faint spirals in the background, and a recent picture of a weird glowing spiral in the sky she'd cut out from a newspaper. I told her that I recognised the sky spiral, that it was a picture from Norway of a Russian rocket booster. Of course she was having none of it - the spiral in the sky was a sign for her, part of a message the universe was sending her through a series of events too unlikely to be coincidence. And of course she wasn't interested in reading into this phenomenon any further - she'd decided what it was, and what it meant to her, and that was enough.

What a difference a word makes

20 June 2022

On Friday night just over a week ago I went to a Save Our Children meeting. Now, most people will read that and think I've been a civic-minded citizen, going along to a charity meeting. Save Our Children is a good thing, right? To which the answer is no, because Save OUR Children is not the same thing as the established charity “Save THE Children”.

Counterspin can't stand “Cancel Culture”

7 June 2022

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my visit to Counterspin's travelling roadshow (maybe circus is a better term?), but I figured that everyone might want some background - and an update on how their tour's going.

Sometimes these titles are the hardest thing to write

7 June 2022

I apologise for my lack of inspiration in the title, but at least we have some interesting articles for you:

The Evolution of Spam

7 June 2022

I received an email last week with a stern warning:

A-C-E is not A-OK

23 May 2022

Accelerated Christian Education (known as A-C-E or ACE) is in the news, and for all the wrong reasons. ACE is a homeschooling curriculum from the US (Texas) which is accredited in New Zealand, and covers children from age 5 through to college level. Here's Duane Howard, Vice President of ACE, talking about what he thinks education should be for (check out some particularly icky stuff he says around 32 minutes in):

Anatomy of an Indian Phone Scam

23 May 2022

I watched a great video on YouTube the other day, the latest in a series of videos by Mark Rober where he uses glitter bombs to surprise scammers. His project started off using a device that targets people who steal packages from people's porches. A fake package was built that would activate when opened, with a glitter throwing disc, a mechanism to press down on a fart spray nozzle, and cameras to record and upload thieves' reactions when they opened the packages in their homes or cars.

Countersunk?

23 May 2022

Yesterday evening I attended an interesting Counterspin Media event in Wellington. Counterspin, for those not in the know, is an “alternative” media organisation in NZ run by Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer. They have a small studio from which they create long videos about conspiracy ideas, and post these videos to places like Rumble, Telegram and GTV (because they keep getting banned from more moderate platforms such as YouTube and Facebook).

Everyone is out to scam you

23 May 2022

Just over a year ago I wrote a newsletter issue titled “_Beware of Scientologists Bearing Gifts_”, where I talked about an interesting ruse in Auckland. Someone from the Auckland Scientology office had been creating lots of fake MeetUp groups as a way to trick people into visiting their building - with event names such as “Success through Communication”, “How to get RID of STRESS!”, “English Study Group”, “Rubik's Cube Master Class” and “FREE movie night Auckland”.

I wish Remote Rife Therapy really did work

9 May 2022

For those of you who listen to our fortnightly NZ Skeptics podcast, Yeah… Nah! (which is based on this newsletter), you'll be aware that I tested positive for COVID recently. It's been a week now since my first day of symptoms, and I'm feeling a lot better than I did a week ago. Craig was kind enough to cover for me on the radio talking with Graeme Hill last week, but thankfully I was feeling good enough to get back in the saddle yesterday afternoon. For those of you who listen to the radio, I highly recommend listening to Graeme's “Hill's Weekend” show on Sunday afternoons - Graeme always manages to line up a set of fascinating people to talk to, and I'm always grateful to be able to talk with him about skepticism and some of the nonsense we find out there in the world.

Ken Ring is getting worse

9 May 2022

Most of us will know Ken Ring both for his claim that he can predict the weather by looking at the moon, and his supposed ability to predict earthquakes. Here's Ken talking about how you can supposedly also use rainbows to predict the weather:

Royal Raymond Rife Remotely

9 May 2022

I received an email the other day from Joanne O'Brien, who according to her website is a Professional Organiser, Image Consultant and Health Coach. Now, I'm not going to deny that I am probably in need of all three of these services, but despite that I have no idea why I received this email from her (although I accept that I may well have signed up for a newsletter at some point). The email was advertising the health aspect of Joanne's repertoire, promoting an “amazing treatment” called Rife Therapy. It said:

A well-rounded diet

25 April 2022

This week's newsletter feels nicely well-rounded, like we've managed to cover several of the core areas that skeptics are interested in. I start with a topical story about a new psychogenic illness that appears to be affecting teens around the world, including here in New Zealand. Bronwyn then delves into the background of one of my most hated MLMs, dōTERRA. (I've talked to company reps for dōTERRA at several events over the years, and each time I've been told some of the most outrageous claims about the medical benefits of their essential oils. I even left one event smelling like a breath mint, after telling someone I had a headache and being treated with a liberal amount of concentrated peppermint oil smeared onto my forehead.) I was contacted on the weekend about a new scam I'd not heard of before, that appears to be an evolution of the classic Nigerian 419 scams, so you get to hear all about that. And finally I talk about a new branch of Satanism - and this one seems to believe in pretty much any nonsense you can think of, as well as being horribly anti-Semitic.

International Grants online

25 April 2022

A friend (Gaylene Middleton from the New Zealand Humanists) contacted me on the weekend as she had been messaged by one of her Facebook friends about a Government Grants assistance program she is apparently eligible to receive funds from. She immediately looked up the name of the program - Federal Grant For Family Home And Care Support (FGHS) - and found an article warning that it was a scam, and then she messaged me to double check and because she thought I may be interested in it. Here are the messages she received from her FB friend, which she passed on to me (apologies for the really bad grammar):

Teenage Tics

25 April 2022

I heard something interesting from my teenage daughter the other day, a story about some of her friends who have suddenly picked up a tic - a type of involuntary physical movement. I'd heard about this before, a couple of years ago, so I went looking online for any articles to confirm what I'd remembered from before; the idea that this is a mass psychogenic illness.

The Joy of Satan?

25 April 2022

I've written before about how impressed I've been with the good work The Satanic Temple has been doing in the US and other countries, using the irrational fear of Satanism many Christians hold as a tool to push for secularism, and showing that the ability to do good things is not something that is exclusive to Christianity. Sometimes Christians in the US ignore the idea of the separation of church and state, and start up after-school Christian clubs or offer prayers at the opening of legislative sessions. The Satanic Temple will often counter these breaches by demanding the right to equal treatment - asking to open local government meetings with a Satanist prayer, or applying to run an after school Satanic club for kids.

A Skeptical Year

11 April 2022

We're currently putting together a calendar of historical skeptical events relevant to New Zealand - and we're aiming to have at least one event for every day of the year. It's been a lot of fun so far, and we've found a lot of fascinating stories about New Zealand that I'd never heard before, like:

An evening with the OTO

11 April 2022

This evening I attended a meditation session with the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis - an occult group made famous by Aleister Crowley). I'm not sure what I expected, but the session was advertised as a welcoming environment where it was okay to attend but not participate. This sentiment was echoed by the host when myself, Bronwyn Rideout and others arrived at the event. We were walked through several meditation techniques, starting with singing a song accompanied by a live guitar - Kiss the Earth by Ajeet Kaur (you can have a listen at the top of this article).

Arise Church Prospering at interns' expense

11 April 2022

Arise church is near to my heart - when I first arrived in New Zealand back in 2005, my wife joined the church while it was still small, and before it was even called Arise. Since then it has grown to be a behemoth - every so often I check on Arise's annual returns, and it seemed that each year they would expand enough to make about $1 million more than the previous year. At the moment that number stands at $13 million in income for the last year. They also own several properties worth a combined $21 million, including a church building in Wellington worth $10 million or more.

Cleaning out my mailbox

11 April 2022

I recently had a clear out of my email inbox, as I'd reached about 20,000 unread emails. As a part of this onerous task, I unsubscribed from a large number of mailing lists. Many of them were from online stores where I'd never agreed to be emailed in the first place, but a bunch of them were from conspiracy groups where I'd signed up for more information, or filled in a form to get access to a series of nonsense videos (like “_The Truth About Cancer_” and “_GMOs Revealed_”, two truly awful video series). It was obvious that several of these mailing lists I hadn't even signed up for, so I assume there's some crossover and sharing of mailing lists between these groups. There are also some groups that I've decided to still receive emails from, such as Family First and Voices for Freedom, because I think it's important to keep an eye on them.

Convoy, part 2

11 April 2022

There's a new convoy driving through the country at the moment, and this time it's heading not for parliament, but to Marsden Point. Yep, a bunch of cars (and, from what I can tell, no actual trucks) are heading to Marsden Point for Operation Gaslight. The last report in their Facebook group stated that they've amassed 16 cars, two horse floats and a motorbike.

Oh god, not another Convoy

11 April 2022

Today's newsletter includes a fun evening myself and some other skeptics spent meditating, a rant about my junk email, and the daft convoy that's on its way to Marsden Point. I take a deep dive into Arise church, looking at their preaching of horrible prosperity gospel nonsense, and the horrific way they treat their interns. Also Bronwyn Rideout has written about a UK charity promoting the discredited CEASE therapy for “treating” autistic people, and finally I ask you all for help with finding skeptical dates in New Zealand history.

BITE, NESARA, MLM - an acronym special

28 March 2022

This week's newsletter seems to have ended up being mostly about acronyms. I've written about how to determine what is and isn't a cult, using the BITE model, drawing from a recent visit I received from a pair of Sister Missionaries. I also try to get to the nugget of truth at the centre of the NESARA conspiracy. Bronwyn takes a look at one of my favourite skeptical topics, MLMs - the scam I love to hate. She's even promising to write more about some of the MLMs we see in New Zealand, which I'm really looking forward to. Finally Bronwyn wonders whether Finland exists.

NESARA and GESARA

28 March 2022

I've recently been seeing mentions of NESARA and GESARA online, in conspiracy groups, and also on a badly painted sign at at least one local protest. So I did a little bit of reading to find out what it's all about. So, if you've seen these terms being used and, like me, have no idea what they mean, here's a quick description of their real world meaning and what the conspiracy theorists wrongly think they're all about.

Taking a BITE out of Mormonism

28 March 2022

Last week I had a couple of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) Missionaries visit me. They called me a few days in advance to ask if it was okay to come round, and then I totally forgot about our meeting until I received a call saying they were having problems finding my house on the street.

Clarke Gayford jailed for drug trafficking?

14 March 2022

Over the last few months or so, while I've been perusing the crazier corners of the internet, I've seen occasional mentions of a really interesting conspiracy theory - in Facebook feeds of COVID deniers, screenshots from private conspiracy Telegram groups, and videos from various protests and marches. The rumour that Jacinda Ardern's partner, Clarke Gayford, is secretly either under arrest, released on bail or imprisoned, and that this is for a drug related offence.

Pixelmon: A home-grown NFT scandal

14 March 2022

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a video from a YouTube channel I keep an eye on for its coverage of cryptocurrency scams that looked interesting - the tale of Pixelmon, an NFT project that had recently sold over 7,000 NFTs for a grand total of around NZ$100 million. By the end of the week, Stuff and 1News had covered the story. Why did this project make the news here in NZ? Because the NFTs had been unveiled, and they were abysmal. And why did this story pique my interest? Because the person in charge of the project had been “doxxed” (had their identity revealed), and a screenshot of their LinkedIn profile in the video I watched showed that he had recently graduated from the University of Waikato - so it appeared he was one of our own, a Kiwi.

We are not Alone

14 March 2022

It's nice to be reminded sometimes that the number of skeptics in society is likely to exceed the number of Skeptics in our Society by several orders of magnitude. I was reminded of this recently after seeing a couple of interactions on social media, one where a friend tackled misinformation, and another where it was the friend that was spreading misinformation. In both interactions, the misinformation was quickly and easily debunked, with references given to sources. The first one was about Ukraine's president Zelenskyy being a Nazi, as “proven” by a picture of him holding up a football (I'm from England, so for all you kiwis I mean soccer here) shirt with his name and a swastika on it. The second is about the recent parliament protest, with an image of a child who had supposedly been pepper sprayed by the Police.

Nuremberg Nonsense

28 February 2022

Although Bronwyn's put together this week's newsletter, I couldn't help myself and wrote a small piece about the protesters' obsession with Nuremberg.

Convoy 2022

14 February 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.

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

14 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 ;)

NZDSOS Stars

14 February 2022

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

14 February 2022

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.

A computer hard drive that makes your music sound better?

31 January 2022

I'm sitting here writing this week's newsletter with music playing in the background - I've just listened to tracks by (and I'm name-dropping here) Malcolm Middleton, the Flashbulb, Madvillain, PJ Harvey, Mogwai and 65daysofstatic. I'm enjoying this music being played from Plex on my Chromecast, through my TV, via a Sony home theatre amp, to my in-wall 7.1 surround sound speakers. The entire setup might have cost me $1,200, if we exclude the cost of the TV (another $1,500). But could I be enjoying my music more if I'd spent more money buying reference equipment from high-end specialist companies?

An Audio Spectacular

31 January 2022

This week's newsletter is all about those sweet, sweet sounds. There's a story about Spotify, starring Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Joe Rogan. And one about expensive audiophile-level computer hardware. On top of this, some of you might be interested to hear that we're going to try something new with the newsletter soon, something audio related...

Moving away from Spotify

31 January 2022

I'm not normally one for jumping on bandwagons, but when I saw friends posting on Facebook over the last few days that they were cancelling their Spotify subscriptions, I figured this was one cause I could get behind.

Baba Vanga predicts the future

17 January 2022

Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova, more commonly known as Baba Vanga, was a Bulgarian psychic. Although she died back in 1996, she was kind enough to leave behind some predictions that may or may not actually be about potential future events. Honestly, the Wikipedia Page for Baba Vanga leaves me suspicious about how much of what is attributed to her she actually said, and how much is just being made up by others (and it's also one of the worst Wikipedia pages I've ever seen grammatically - presumably it's mainly been written by people for whom English is not a fluent language).

Cryptoland

17 January 2022

I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, the original and most "successful" of them, has not followed its creator's vision of being a decentralised currency that allows people to make payments to each other without having to go through traditional banking systems. Rather, instead of Bitcoin being used as a digital currency for purchasing online, people are using it as an investment, speculating on its price and hoping for “massive gains”. This is evidenced by both its high price per coin and its volatility. Hardly any Bitcoin transactions are actually involved in buying or selling goods, and the high price of Bitcoin these days means that the Proof of Work idea for securing the Blockchain (the shared list of transactions that records all transfers of Bitcoin) ends up using over 1,000kwh of electricity for each transaction. The promised decentralisation of Bitcoin is also mostly a myth these days. What Bitcoin has become is a way for greedy people to make money from other greedy people. Its creator, the enigmatic “Satoshi”, is probably despairing of what happened to his creation - if he's still alive.

What's in my Inbox?

17 January 2022

I was scrolling through my emails today, looking to see if I had received any Why Are You A Skeptic responses from any of you. Sadly there was nothing I'd missed; no stories of how you'd found skepticism after an all-night bender where you'd snorted ketamine and met God, or how you've always been skeptical since the age of two.

An unusual vaccine endorsement

3 January 2022

A surprising endorsement of COVID vaccines came out recently - from none other than Donald Trump. Trump has a spotty history when it comes to supporting good science, and he's well known to skeptics for touting several unproven cures (including that particularly confusing press conference where he talked about bleach and an internal UV light).

Happy New Year!

3 January 2022

Happy New Year to you all, and thank you for your support over the last year. We had a very successful conference late last year, and our membership has been slowly increasing, which is great! If you're a paid-up member, thank you for your financial support and you should be receiving a reminder to pay your (very reasonable) subscription soon. And if you're not currently a member, you can always rectify that situation by joining us.

Lotus-Heart fined for “taking a stand”

3 January 2022

The Lotus-Heart restaurant in Christchurch has chosen to take a stand against vaccine mandates, by refusing to let customers know if they require a vaccine pass, not promoting use of their COVID Tracer QR Code, and not having any system in place to check vaccine passes. As a result they have been fined $20,000 dollars by WorkSafe.

Nuclear Gandhi

3 January 2022

As a programmer, I love a good story about buggy software. Maybe it makes me feel better about my own mistakes! So when I recently heard about a fun bug in the strategy game Civilisation, from way back in 1991, I was intrigued. Apparently the fallout from this particular code error (no pun intended) was that the peaceful world leader Mahatma Gandhi would suddenly become very fond of amassing and using nuclear weapons - a quirk that has been named Nuclear Gandhi.

Black Oxygen Organics - a new panacea

20 December 2021

But what is it, who's behind it, and does it work? Well, it turns out the answers to the first two questions will help us to figure out the third one.

Brian Tamaki is God

20 December 2021

A couple of weeks ago I attended an online sermon from Destiny Church with a few friends. The sermon started off fairly tame, with Brian joking about viewers eating popcorn - so I went and grabbed a bag of popcorn for us to eat while we watched. I figured it was the least a group of heathens could do.

Sneaky Scientology

20 December 2021

Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital made the news last week, with an 89 year old man being charged for his part in the abuse of children who were under the hospital's care in the 1970s. Dr Selwyn Leeks, who was the lead psychiatrist at the centre, has been charged with “wilful ill treatment of a child”, but due to his ill health will not be prosecuted.

The Tiger King Psychic

20 December 2021

I'm sure most people know the story of the Tiger King, a documentary series which became required viewing last year around the world when many countries went into lockdown. The series followed Joe Exotic, a flamboyant character who ran a big cat attraction and ended up behind bars for some of his questionable life decisions.

Why I am a Skeptic

20 December 2021

Last week Craig introduced a new section to our newsletter, which he's named Why Are You A Skeptic. We're keen to hear from each of you about why you're a skeptic, and to publish your stories in the newsletter. If you're up for it, please send your story to newsletter@skeptics.nz. For now, here's my story of how I came to skepticism, and why I'm involved with the NZ Skeptics:

The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project

15 December 2021

The Australian Skeptics have spent the last few years working hard on an amazing project, led by Richard Saunders, to find and analyse as many psychic predictions as they could find.

Is Celine Dion suffering from vaccine injury?

6 December 2021

I was talking to a friend last weekend who works as a tradesman. He asked me, as a skeptic, what I thought of the coronavirus vaccine - did I think it was dangerous? And was COVID real? He's pretty sure the scientists aren't lying to him, but he's talked with a lot of colleagues who aren't so sure. Most of my friends are fairly skeptical, and a lot of the time I breathe the rarefied air of skepticism, so it was interesting to hear a perspective that I don't really come in contact with in my daily life - a friend who's intelligent, but has heard enough misinformation from the anti-vaccine crowd that he's becoming a little unsure.

The sad death of Rex Warwood

6 December 2021

Rex Warwood sadly died late last week. He was a long time reporter, and later editor, for the Franklin County News, and was apparently well liked. However in recent years he appears to have succumbed to conspiratorial thinking, and he became a vocal critic of vaccination against COVID, saying things online such as:

Tin Foil Silliness

6 December 2021

In this week's newsletter I spend far too much time debunking a baseless vaccine injury claim about Celine Dion, convince my wife to use tin foil to treat what ails her, and talk about a tragic, and avoidable, death in New Zealand from COVID. And, after all of that, committee member Bronwyn has returned with another great article, this time looking with a critical eye at some claims that have been made about the damage fireworks can cause.

Tin Foil Treatments

6 December 2021

I was sent a funny article the other day about the benefits of aluminium foil on a website called Tips and Tricks. The website appears to be a prolific source of clickbait - articles with catchy titles that are designed to suck you in and get you to click the link to read more. This is because the company wants to take you away from social media sites and onto their website, to show you adverts and make money from them.

Look who got themselves arrested

24 November 2021

So I want to talk about an interesting arrest that happened yesterday, but not the arrest of Brian and Hannah Tamaki.

Wanaka Health Bridge

24 November 2021

Last night at about 1am a friend of mine sent me a link to a brand new COVID website called Wanaka Health Bridge. I clicked on the link, and saw that the site talks about the risks resulting from Wanaka being three and half hours from a major hospital, and what that means for COVID-19 treatment. The website says:

2021 Conference: It's a Wrap

22 November 2021

This weekend was our joint Australian and New Zealand conference, Skepticon 2021. Thank you so much to those of you who joined us, it was an amazing weekend with fascinating talks and I hope you enjoyed it all as much as I did.

Amy Benjamin “Resigns” from AUT

22 November 2021

Hot off the press, International Law lecturer Amy Benjamin has resigned from Auckland University of Technology this week. I wrote about Amy back in August, at the beginning of our second national lockdown, when she started up her YouTube channel called “American Spirit” where she posted videos about COVID and lockdowns. Her opinions seemed somewhat fringe, and she talked about how the threat to people's mental health in lockdown was worse than that of COVID, that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine could treat COVID, and that the government had criminalised peaceful protest.

Jacinda Ardern is not selling cryptocurrency

22 November 2021

For those who use Facebook - you may have seen a video advert recently using Jacinda Ardern as a way to promote a cryptocurrency. Obviously this is fake - Jacinda does not want you to “invest” your money in any crypto currency, and it's very likely that there's not even a real crypto currency or crypto company - just a website that will get you to transfer your hard earned money to scammers. Even if there was a real cryptocurrency involved, you would likely lose most or all of the money you risked. I saw people talking about this scam on Facebook, but I have enough layers of ad blocking at home that it proved too hard to get Facebook to show me any adverts at all, so I don't have a copy of the video.

Were Satanists involved in the Travis Scott tragedy?

22 November 2021

Astroworld is an annual music festival run by rapper Travis Scott in Texas. There was a tragedy at this year's festival, a few weeks ago, when a crowd surge caused a crush and resulted in the deaths of 10 people - the latest being a 9 year old boy who died a few days ago from his injuries.

Givealittle being used to fund bogus treatments

15 November 2021

About a year ago Daniel Ryan and I wrote to Givealittle, an organisation in NZ that runs an online platform which allows people to fundraise for needy causes. We expressed our concerns about misuse of the platform:

How do you measure a haunting?

15 November 2021

The BBC (in its travel section) has an interesting article on the Skirvin hotel in Oklahoma, supposedly the most haunted hotel in the US. The article talks a little about the hotel and the ghosts that supposedly haunt it, and then details how the journalist paid for a ghost hunting couple to come and see if the hotel was really haunted. Things have changed in the ghost hunting world - where historically ghost hunters have used physical devices to record “anomalies” such as temperature changes, Electromagnetic Frequency (EMF) fluctuations and the like, these modern day ghost hunters have an app for that - or rather several apps, of which they mention the names of two of them in the article. So I figured that, as a skeptic, I really should take them for a test drive and see what they can do.

JFK Jr is a no-show

15 November 2021

QAnon is the recent conspiracy theory in the US that refuses to go away. Someone has been using the name QAnon, short for an Anonymous person with Q Level Security Clearance, since 2017 to post cryptic messages to the internet, pretending to be a government insider leaking secrets.

No, Italian Soldiers are not roaming the streets of NZ

15 November 2021

There's a rumour going around in conspiracy circles that the UN, and/or Italian soldiers, are due to come to New Zealand at the end of November, or that they might already be here.

Skeptics Conference

15 November 2021

21th-21st November, Online

Things are a little crazy right now

15 November 2021

I'm sure everyone is aware of the protests that happened last week. I watched them from the comfort of my home, and didn't feel the need to visit the march on Parliament on Tuesday or experience the “gridlock” in Wellington central on Saturday. There was one thing at Tuesday's protests that really struck me. The protesters, under the banner of the Freedoms and Rights Coalition (created by “Apostle” Brian Tamaki), have been asking for our best protections against people dying of COVID to be removed - lockdowns, vaccine mandates, MIQ, and all other restrictions. A frequent message throughout the day was about the government needing to listen to the public - the speakers outside parliament talked about how a government should heed the people.

Things are a little crazy right now

10 November 2021

I'm sure everyone is aware of the protests that happened yesterday. I watched them from the comfort of my home, and didn't feel the need to visit this particular march on Parliament. There was one thing at yesterday's protests that really struck me. The protesters, under the banner of the Freedoms and Rights Coalition created by "Apostle" Brian Tamaki, have been asking for our best protections against people dying of COVID to be removed - lockdowns, vaccine mandates, MIQ, and all other restrictions. A frequent message throughout the day was about the government needing to listen to the public - the speakers outside parliament talked about how a government should heed the people.

Are boats the answer to our rising sea level?

1 November 2021

One of the many effects of climate change is that the oceans are rising. This is going to be an increasing problem for coastal settlements and island nations. But one American political candidate who has worked for Trump in the past, Scott Pio, thinks he's figured out an answer to the problem, and posted his idea on Twitter:

NZ Doctors Still Speaking Out with Science

1 November 2021

Last week Craig told you all about a parody website I'd built, NZD-SOS, which copied the look and feel of an anti-vaccine site called New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science but changed the wording to point out that there are more doctors called Sarah (or David, Sue, Kate, Michael or Catherine) in NZ who support vaccination than all the doctors who have spoken out publicly about being distrustful of the Pfizer COVID vaccine.

Skeptics Conference

1 November 2021

21th-21st November, Online

What do Witches, Shoe Boxes and Trees have in common?

1 November 2021

Nothing - apart from that they're all featured in this week's newsletter.

NZ Doctors Called Sarah Speaking Out with Science

27 October 2021

Last week we talked about how the Doctors Stand Up For Vaccination group had released its list of names of six and a half thousand doctors who have signed a letter in support of COVID vaccination. This letter was in response to a declaration created by Voices for Freedom, casting doubt on vaccination, that was signed by 56 doctors.

NZD-SOS

26 October 2021

Late last week NZ Skeptics published a spoof website built (NZ Skeptics Secretary and past Chair, and alternating newsletter author).

Mike Adams behind mass misinformation campaign

20 October 2021

Mike Adams is well known to skeptics. For many years he's run the Natural News website, which started out as a source of medical misinformation paired with a shop selling expensive, useless supplements. Some of his sillier posts included using a microscope to take zoomed-in photos of McDonald's chicken nuggets as a way to make them look unappealing.

When Doctors go wrong

20 October 2021

One of the signatories to the NZD SOS declaration, Dr Matt Shelton, is an interesting case - he made the news a few weeks ago when he sent a text message to his patients saying:

Psychic sued for false claims

18 October 2021

It seems ridiculous, but a man in the US is suing a psychic he asked for life advice. The psychic, Sophia Adams, told customer Mauro Restrepo that his marriage was at risk because of a “mala suerte” (bad luck) curse placed on him by an ex-girlfriend. For only US$5,000, she was willing to lift the curse and save his marriage.

Skeptics in Space!

18 October 2021

On Friday evening we had a national online Skeptics in the Pub meeting (Skeptics in Cyberspace), which going forward will be happening every four weeks. If you're interested in joining us, check your local Skeptics in the Pub's MeetUp group, or the Wellington group if you don't live somewhere with an active Skeptics in the Pub group. Although we usually talk about a lot of skeptical topics, because of our shared interest in science and skepticism we often end up recommending TV shows and movies to each other as well. We're not 100% agreed on what's good and what's not, but there's definitely a lot of cross-over. Documentaries and science fiction are both frequently recommended.

The big Vaccine Push

18 October 2021

The government is really pushing the COVID vaccine at the moment, including with this weekend's Super Saturday - where around 130,000 vaccines were administered in a single day.

The thin end of the QAnon Wedge

18 October 2021

I naively thought that the whole QAnon movement would fall apart after Trump lost his bid for re-election. For those who have somehow not heard about QAnon before, it's a conspiracy that started in the US a few years ago, and is supposed to be the writings of a high-level government insider who leaks secrets via hidden meaning and codes in his messages. However, it's been obvious since the start that QAnon is not an insider, but just a made up persona used to promote right wing ideas and Donald Trump in particular. As Wikipedia says:

Will the US mint a trillion dollar coin?

18 October 2021

Rumours have been circulating in the US that President Biden plans to fix the debt ceiling issue by minting a one trillion dollar coin. Although this sounds patently absurd, there's some logic behind this.

An evening of I Ching

6 October 2021

Last week I attended an I Ching meeting online, where I learned how to use the I Ching to help me to make life decisions. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is a book of 64 different sayings which are meant to be used for divination.

Alex Jones loses in court, again

4 October 2021

I'm sure Alex Jones is no stranger to most skeptics. The Info Wars host has an illustrious history of pushing nonsense ideas about the US - from the ridiculous (chemicals in the water supply are turning the frogs gay) to the downright dangerous (restriction of gun rights will cause a second revolution in the US). And somewhere in the midst of all that nonsense, Alex Jones decided to start pushing the ridiculous theory that the Sandy Hook massacre of school children in the US was a false flag operation, secretly organised by the government as a way to push for tighter gun controls.

Are you Skeptic A or Skeptic B?

4 October 2021

When talking with people about skepticism, I've often used a convenient classification to separate what I see as two main camps of skeptics. In my oversimplified model there are a) those who are skeptical because they consider themselves to have read enough to be experts themselves on a wide range of topics, and b) those who defer to people who are the experts on any given topic - people who have relevant qualifications, decades of experience, and the respect of their peers and the wider academic community.

Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by an Asteroid?

4 October 2021

Thankfully there have been some who have been willing to critique this paper and its conclusions. Mark Boslough, who wrote a paper on asteroid air bursts that this Sodom paper references, had a lot to say about the legitimacy of this paper, especially as it's been published in a journal owned by the prestigious Nature.

Why does Destiny Church have a tax free status?

4 October 2021

The church was irresponsible with their recent protest, held during a level 3 lockdown in Auckland. The majority of those attending were without masks, and were not following physical distancing guidelines. When the media pointed out that most people were not wearing masks, the church's leader, Brian Tamaki, said: "I saw everyone wearing masks."

Wellness Influencers

27 September 2021

Dr Samantha Murton, president of the Royal NZ College of GPs, has spoken out about the problems of social media "influencers" who spread wellness misinformation online. Although many influential people on social media are followed because they have celebrity status - sports stats, TV celebrities, etc - many influencers have built their following purely based on their social media work, posting on topics that people want to read about, and pushing for people to "like and subscribe" using a variety of often dubious tactics.

Conversion Conversation

20 September 2021

Following on from our submission to the Justice Select Committee a couple of weeks ago on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill (outlawing conversion therapy), myself and Bronwyn Rideout from the NZ Skeptics committee gave an oral submission to some of the Justice Select Committee last week. I was surprised that oral submissions started so quickly after the deadline for written submissions, but thankfully in very little time we were able to put together an oral submission that was complementary to our written one, but different enough that we weren't just boring the MPs with the same information they'd already read from us.

No, Steve from Blue's Clues did not leave to join the Army

20 September 2021

I have three school age kids, and so I'm no stranger to Blue's Clues. I've watched many episodes with both Steve (Steve Burns) and Joe (Donovan Patton) hosting the show alongside the animated dog Blue, following the clues each week. Steve left the show back in 2002, but he made the news recently when he released a feel-good video:

You can do anything that you wanna do

20 September 2021

Thanks to everyone who joined our online Skeptics in the Pub meetings over the last two weeks. We've had such a good time chatting with skeptics who we usually only see once or twice a year that we've decided to make our national online meetings a regular event.

Don't take Horse Dewormer

6 September 2021

Obviously as skeptics we're pretty clued up on the idea of not using unproven therapies, especially when there's positive evidence that they don't work. It's been apparent for a while now that the evidence for Ivermectin as a COVID treatment or preventative is not very good, and it's been sad to see how many people don't seem to care about the lack of evidence and are taking it anyway.

Newton's Flaming Laser Sword

6 September 2021

During lockdown, the Wellington Skeptics in the Pub group have been meeting online every week. It's been great to be able to continue our social meetings, but I also think it's a good way to keep us all sane! That connection of being able to chat and have a fun social time with others seems to be really good at helping with the feelings of isolation and worry that lockdown can bring to some of us.

NZ Skeptics Awards

6 September 2021

We're currently looking for nominations for our annual awards. Specifically, we have a Bent Spoon award for whoever has “has shown the most egregious gullibility or lack of critical thinking” over the last year, Bravo awards for journalists who have done good skeptical work, and a Skeptic of the Year award for someone in New Zealand who's been active in skepticism and fighting the good fight against nonsense.

The Satanists are doing god's work

6 September 2021

Texas has recently introduced a draconian new abortion law, one that feels not only perverse (in that it allows for civil lawsuits where anyone can sue those who are involved in providing abortion services), but also seems to be yet another attempt to test the Supreme Court's willingness to overturn Roe v Wade (the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion that has allowed for legal abortions in the US for many years). And, so far, it seems that the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, is willing to court this kind of testing of the waters.

An alternative legal opinion

23 August 2021

Of all the people who spoke publicly about this week's arrest, Amy Benjamin, a senior lecturer of international law at AUT, was the most surprising to me.

(Another) Psychic Failure

23 August 2021

This one's a little light hearted, and not overly surprising - Kelvin Cruickshank, one of our most famous local psychics, appears to have failed to have been warned by the spirits about the impending lockdown. Kelvyn had booked a live event for Thursday in New Plymouth, in what turned out to be the second day of our national lockdown. David Chisholm, a member of our Facebook group, managed to take a great screenshot of the event being advertised under a large banner warning of event date changes due to our COVID lockdown.

Careful Now

23 August 2021

It feels like it was inevitable that some of the conspiracy theorists, or “freedom fighters” as they call themselves, would end up protesting our latest level 4 lockdown. I'm not surprised that their shared delusion that lockdown is just a ploy by the government to permanently remove our freedoms would cause them to risk the health of all of us. But it has been disappointing to see a few hundred people around the country gathering to protest at a time when we've all been told to stay at home to limit the spread of a deadly disease.

Lockdown Bingo

23 August 2021

The not totally surprising result of these protests is that the police have been arresting protestors. However, they've not tried to arrest everyone, or to pick up just those who are the loudest or the most aggressive. Instead they have been carting away key members of the conspiracy/fringe movement.

Any other ideas?

9 August 2021

One idea I've been given is to find a large set of Deepak Chopra quotes, and use that to train an algorithm to create nonsense quotes talking about quantum realities and the collapse of the wave function. All I need to do now is find a bunch of quotes in a format I can feed to the algorithm.

Hate Speech Submission

9 August 2021

A couple of weeks ago I talked about the NZ Skeptics putting together a submission for the Ministry of Justice in response to their new Hate Speech proposals. You can read our submission on our website, but I thought it would be fun to use EleutherAI's free online GPT-J-6G deep learning model to write a submission for us. I gave the software the first few paragraphs of our real submission, and then clicked the button to guess the next hundred or so words. I then fed the result back into the algorithm so that it could create the next block of text, and so on.

QAnonsense

9 August 2021

Using an older algorithm, GPT-2, with a fairly small data set that it had been pre-trained on, I fine tuned this particular piece of software on the entire back catalogue of QAnon posts. Below are 6 QAnon posts - three are the genuine article, and three are fakes created by GPT-2. Can you figure out which is which?

The Other NLP

9 August 2021

Recently I've been playing with some deep learning software - OpenAI's GPT-2 and GPT-3, and EleutherAI's GPT-J-6G. These are NLP algorithms. No, not that discredited garbage Neuro-Linguistic Programming - in this case NLP stands for Natural Language Processing.

Trying to create a new Religion

9 August 2021

This one surprised me a little. I fed GPT-2 about a dozen holy texts, with the intention of generating some text that was their distilled, combined wisdom. Instead, what I received each time I ran the generator was an attempt to recreate text from just one of the books I'd trained it on. The results are impressive - although the text generated by deep learning doesn't always make a huge amount of sense, I think it could be reasonably argued that the same is the case for genuine holy texts!

Can anyone pronounce NXIVM?

26 July 2021

Okay, so I'm joking here - I actually know how to pronounce the name (it's said "Nexium"). But it's obviously a pretentious looking name, chosen for a pretentious, and dangerous, cult. One that thankfully has now been (mostly) shut down. I have a fascination with cults, as they are a particularly dangerous form of erroneous thinking. People can lose their money, friends and even their lives at the hands of an unscrupulous guru or spiritual master. It's important that the NZ Skeptics, and others, speak out when we see groups taking advantage of individuals in this way.

Famous actress jailed for her role in NXIVM

26 July 2021

Allison Mack was once famous for her role in the TV show Smallville, a spin-off show about Superman. However, a few years ago she joined a group called NXIVM who promised to help her on the path to enlightenment and happiness. The group pulled in more famous people, including other TV celebrities, the director of What the Bleep Do We Know, and the Bronfman sisters, heirs to the Seagram fortune.

Psychic Kelvin is on tour

26 July 2021

Sensing Murder psychic Kelvin Cruickshank is currently touring the country. He's been down in the South Island recently, visiting Christchurch and a lot of smaller towns, and selling tickets at $65 a pop. Next month he'll be touring the North Island.

When scientists go wrong

26 July 2021

Mahin Khatami looks at first blush to be a respectable scientist - she has a long history as a scientist spanning decades, she used to work for the NIH (National Institutes for Health) in the US as a program director, and has not only been published in respectable peer reviewed journals, but has also been a journal editor.

Conspiracy Farmers

21 July 2021

There is an increasingly vocal sub-set of farmers around the country who are buying into conspiracy theories. A group called the Agricultural Action Group - AAG - have been touring the country in recent months warning people about what they consider to be the real issues facing not just farmers but all citizens of our country:

Birds aren't real

12 July 2021

I recently learned about the absolutely fun conspiracy that is “birds aren't real”. According to the theory, the CIA in the 1950s were trying to solve two hard problems. Firstly, they wanted to be able to secretly spy on the entire population of the United States. Secondly, they needed to stop birds pooping on their cars in the CIA headquarters car park. These two seemingly disconnected problems gave birth to the genius idea to replace all the birds in America with flying camera drones that look just like birds. As the Birds Aren't Real twitter account states:

Earth 2

12 July 2021

I enjoy playing computer games, and own both a gaming PC (RTX 3060 Ti, i5-10400) and a VR headset (Quest). So when I heard about an ambitious new game for PCs, VR and phones, it piqued my interest. The game is called Earth2, and is pipped to be a 1:1 copy of earth, with a faithful reproduction of the entire planet in software. Their website makes comparisons to the movies The Matrix and Ready Player One, both of which feature VR environments that are indistinguishable from reality. This sounds pretty ambitious... maybe too ambitious.

Fun With Numbers

12 July 2021

While trawling conspiracy websites and videos, as I tend to do for fun, I stumbled across a recommendation for a local kiwi numerologist. But the recommendation said that, unlike the usual mystical nonsense, this particular numerologist uses science and maths to find real patterns that are actually useful.

Live from the Christchurch Home Show

12 July 2021

There's some classic skepticism in this week's newsletter - numerology, an American conspiracy theory and a scam that looks, walks and quacks like a Ponzi Scheme. And, as well as my usual ranting, we have a report from Barry Lennox. Barry was a committee member a few years ago, and he recently visited the Christchurch Home Show. You probably won't be surprised to hear that Barry found several stalls pushing unproven nonsense in amongst the spa pools and heat pumps.

Lady Crown

30 June 2021

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about lawyer Liz Lambert's effort to claim a small part of New Zealand - the Abel Tasman National Park - as her own property, which she's called New Freeland. Well, it turns out that she's worried about an organisation who have not just claimed Allodial Title over a piece of land, but have claimed sovereignty over the entirety of New Zealand. Liz has been warning anyone who will listen that this rival group, the Crown of the Mauri Nation, have secretly entered into an agreement with the government to hand over the keys to our country.

German psychic claims to have solved yet another case

28 June 2021

(In)famous German psychic Michael Schneider made the news recently when he claimed to know the exact coordinates of Madeleine McCann's body. Madeleine, aged 3, went missing in 2007 while she was on holiday in Spain with her family. Despite several leads over the years (and many psychics making predictions), there's been no definitive answer so far as to what happened to Madeleine - although there is one likely suspect.

How not to handle a COVID outbreak

28 June 2021

Obviously India has been through the wringer recently with a huge increase in the number of COVID cases, and deaths, in the country. Thankfully the number of active cases is dropping, but at its peak around four and a half thousand people were dying per day, and there have been almost four hundred thousand reported deaths so far - although many experts fear the real total is likely to be much higher.

New Freeland

28 June 2021

There's a lawyer in New Zealand called Liz Lambert who thinks she has hit upon a legal loophole that allows people to claim any piece of land as their own. As background, there are two main forms of land ownership in many countries - Fee Simple and Allodial. Fee simple is the type of land ownership you or I have access to. As archaic legal terms, Fee in this case means ownership, and Simple means without any kind of time limit (freehold rather than leasehold). Governments, on the other hand, usually have Allodial ownership of land, which is more of an absolute ownership without a requirement to pay anyone rates, etc (although in some cases there may be private allodial ownership, such as church land in some european countries). So, in New Zealand's case, the Crown has Allodial Title over New Zealand, and we citizens can then purchase a Fee Simple Title to part of that land. It still belongs to the Crown under their allodial title, but we've purchased a right to live on it forever (barring certain circumstances like compulsory acquisition).

No Druids, New Freeland

28 June 2021

Sadly the Druids cancelled on us last week due to the bad weather here in Wellington, so I was unable to attend their winter solstice event. However we (a small group of Skeptics in the Pub regulars) have been invited to the spring equinox event instead, so expect an update in 3 months.

Petition for a Military Coup in NZ

23 June 2021

Someone called Daryl Trask has recently placed a petition on change.org asking people to sign their support for an overthrow of our government. The petition says:

Proof of UFOs is "just around the corner"...

23 June 2021

Now that I've found out about Rebel Wisdom, I'm hooked. I usually have to go hunting for my nonsense, but the Rebel Wisdom website has everything in one place: Rupert Sheldrake (who has silly ideas about supernatural mental powers), Alan Watts (who has silly ideas about religion and philosophy) and Jordan Peterson (who has silly ideas about all sorts of things) are all featured.

US Senator has novel plan to combat climate change

23 June 2021

US Senator Louie Gohmert, from Texas, has recently asked the country's Forestry Service if they can look into a thought he's had about how to combat climate change:

Does the COVID vaccine contain a microchip?

14 June 2021

I've watched a few videos online from a recent panic where people show themselves sticking a magnet to their arm at the injection site of their COVID vaccine. The same magnet pushed against other parts of the arm will fall off and not stick. Could this be proof that there's a metallic microchip in the vaccine?

There is no religion higher than Truth

14 June 2021

As promised, myself and another couple of skeptics recently visited the Theosophical Society's building in Wellington to hear their National President, John Vorstermans, give a talk titled “_The Ageless Wisdom_”. The Society has a great little building on Marion Street, with a comfortable library of esoteric mystical books at the front, and a large main room with lots of wood and painted mystical symbols. It has a particularly Masonic feel to it.

Voltex can save 90% on your power bill

14 June 2021

I've seen adverts pop up recently on news sites, such as NewsHub and YouTube, that are selling a device which claims to be able to cut your power bill by 90%. Now, wouldn't that be nice - if it were true!

Christian Science: Neither Christian nor Scientific

31 May 2021

For a long time now I've been promising to take a friend of mine to a Christian Science church service. He's been interested in doing this because he was brought up in the church in America, but hasn't been back since he was a child. Finally, last weekend, the stars aligned and we managed to arrange a visit.

Does the COVID vaccine contain a microchip?

31 May 2021

I've watched a few videos from a recent panic where people show themselves sticking a magnet to their arm at the injection site of their COVID vaccine. The same magnet pushed against other parts of the arm will fall off and not stick. Could this be proof that there's a metallic microchip in the vaccine?

Non-Overlapping Magisteria?

31 May 2021

Over the next couple of months I'm hoping to visit a few interesting religious groups, to get a feel for them - what they believe, how they act, who attends their events. So, all being well, after this week's report into Christian Science you can expect to hear about the Theosophical Society, Druids, and maybe more!

UFO in Hawkes Bay

31 May 2021

Apparently a UFO was seen in Hawkes Bay late last week. Several people reported seeing a large rectangular shaped object in the sky at dusk, with green and red lights, moving strangely.

Herbs for weight loss don't work

19 May 2021

A recent major report into herbs and supplements for weight loss has concluded that they don't work, and that not enough is known about their safety. Erica Bessell, the lead author from the University of Sydney, points out that in many countries no evidence is needed that these products actually work, and of course many companies are happy to exploit that failing and sell a wide variety of unproven products to buyers who hope for a simple solution to the hard problem of controlling their weight.

Sue Grey may have had a valid point

19 May 2021

Sue Grey, Nelson lawyer and co-leader of The Outdoors Party (an anti-vax, anti-5g, anti-1080 political party), had her day in court last week, taking the government to court over their COVID vaccine rollout. Although I was not able to spare the time to spend the day in court, I did manage to briefly visit the outside of the High Court in the morning, and when I got there Billy TK, who had decided to join the circus, was arguing outside with security guards. It turns out he had been kicked out of the court foyer for filming in a prohibited area, and of course his being removed was just proof that the system is corrupt. Go Billy!

WTF is Vortex Water?

19 May 2021

There's a website in New Zealand promoting "Vortex Water". The front page of the site starts by saying:

Buy your own Get Out of Jail Free card for only $50

17 May 2021

The website of an organisation called the Maori Ranger Security Division is currently selling ID cards that they claim can help you avoid being arrested by police, protect you from Child Services, make you exempt from fisheries quotas, and may even let you travel without a passport - and all for the low, low price of $50.

Cons, Cults and Crypto

17 May 2021

Last week was a busy one. On Monday I visited parliament for a church service called The Power of One, along with another couple of skeptics. The event was organised by a group called Jesus for NZ (who formed back in 2017 when Jesus was taken out of the parliamentary prayer), hosted by Alfred Ngaro and facilitated by Simon Bridges. There was a lot of talk about Jesus re-taking the nation until everyone in this country is a believer, and restoring NZ to its “former glory”. Personally I'm much happier with NZ being a rational, secular democracy than a theocracy, but it turns out that not everyone wants a fair society and equality for all.

EvoRich will make you Poorer

17 May 2021

A week ago I opened the LinkedIn app on my phone, and noticed a comment on a post that was made by someone in NZ who was an “EvoRich Consultant”. His profile didn't seem to match what I'd expect from a corporate consultant, so I quickly searched Google for EvoRich to see what it was all about - with the suspicion that it might be some kind of Multi Level Marketing scheme.

The fastest hands in Russia?

17 May 2021

A video from “LADbible” has been doing the rounds recently, showing members of a Russian fitness group performing feats of amazing speed. The video shows several clips of them punching something or someone so quickly that you barely see any movement, punching in circles in front of their body with a speed that makes their arms blur, and repeatedly punching something in front of them at an unbelievable rate.

Simon Bridges for Jesus for NZ

12 May 2021

On Monday night I visited parliament, where a group called Jesus for NZ had been invited by National MP Simon Bridges to hold a church service called the Power of One.

Lies, Damned Lies and shonky Statistics

5 May 2021

A recent article from Radio NZ did a great job of pointing out just how useless online polls are, and raising concerns about how often New Zealand media outlets, including Newshub, the AM Show and the Herald, rely on them as source material for news articles.

Accelerated Nonsense

3 May 2021

A.C.E., or Accelerated Christian Education, is a Christian based curriculum used in New Zealand - both in some Christian schools, and by parents who homeschool their children. The curriculum boasts that it covers from kindergarten to year 13, and that it is recognised by New Zealand universities.

Christchurch health clinic bans vaccinated customers

3 May 2021

An “alternative” health clinic in Christchurch, which specialises in colonic irrigation and coffee enemas, has announced online that it will not treat anyone who has been vaccinated within the last 30 days.

Going Underground

3 May 2021

I've noticed an interesting, and worrying, shift with some of the more extreme online communities recently. On the one hand it's great to finally, and belatedly, see social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google hold people and organisations to account when they spread nonsense such as COVID vaccine misinformation. For example, just this week Advance NZ's Facebook page has been temporarily removed. Local conspiracy theorists such as Damien DeMent, Lee Williams, Vinny Eastwood and Karen Brewer are currently concerned over suspension of their social media profiles, because they are perpetuating dangerous untruths.

Influential Biologist in New Zealand

3 May 2021

Normally I would be excited to hear that a prominent biologist is in New Zealand, but in this case the biologist in question is Dr Bruce Lipton - a figure who is well known to skeptics.

Essential Oils may not be so essential after all

28 April 2021

Essential oils are concentrated extracted plant chemicals that have a strong smell of the plant they were extracted from - their "essence". These oils are often heated in a diffuser, or evaporated via a wick, in order to spread their smell. Of course, if nice smells were all these oils were about, there wouldn't be much for me to be skeptical about.

Miami School quarantines vaccinated staff members

28 April 2021

The Centner Academy in Miami, Florida has barred its teachers from being able to see students if they've been given the COVID vaccine, and will not be employing new teachers who have already been vaccinated. They argue that because the vaccines have not yet been fully tested, there is a risk that they could have unknown issues that may affect other people.

TV Psychic didn't see it coming

28 April 2021

TV psychic Maurice Amdur, in the UK, has a video featured on his public Facebook page - Maurice's Psychic World - where he performs a psychic reading of a car salesman while he's picking up a brand new Jaguar XKS convertible, worth eighty thousand pounds:

Another credulous alt-med article from a Stuff journalist

21 April 2021

An article was published by Stuff the other day about cosmetic acupuncture - a discredited idea that sticking needles in your face can be an alternative to paying for a face lift. Half way through reading the article it started to feel really familiar, like I'd already read it but on the topic of a different unproven therapy. Sure enough, a quick search for the reporter's previous work turned up a recent article in stuff about reiki - a "therapy" where someone heals you by holding their hands near you.

Are Christian men worried about their penis size?

21 April 2021

A friend sent me an article about a paper published recently in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called:

Are thousands dying from COVID vaccines?

21 April 2021

There's been a lot of talk recently in "alternative" circles about vaccine deaths. This has been prompted by the massive global rollout of several different types of COVID vaccines - mRNA (Pfizer, Moderna), Viral Vector (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson), Inactivated (CoronaVac, Covaxin), and others.

The Exclusive Brethren are spying on ex members

21 April 2021

The Exclusive Brethren is a "high control" church run from Sydney by Bruce Hales, the "Elect Vessel". "High control" is a term used to describe groups where the leadership exert a high degree of control over members' private lives, including their finances, friendships and sex lives.

Homeopathic Hippo Sweat Sunscreen

19 April 2021

Honestly, I don't think I could make up something this daft if I tried. Thanks to an astute member of our NZ Skeptics Facebook group, I now know about a New Zealand company - Hippo Health - who are marketing a fascinating sun block for animals.

The Pope is a hologram

19 April 2021

I'm a bit late to the party with this one, but there is footage on YouTube from last year where the pope gives a blessing from an upper floor window. After the blessing the pope turns around and starts walking away from the window. After a couple of steps, he suddenly just pops out of existence - disappears into thin air. Some people have taken this as evidence that the pope was never actually physically at the window, but instead had been replaced with a hologram - and that this hologram had been turned off prematurely, before it had moved out of sight. Maybe a decision was taken not to risk the pope's health during a pandemic. Maybe the pope is a lie? It does look pretty weird.

Watch out for this new COVID pamphlet

19 April 2021

Thankfully the claims in this pamphlet are pretty easy to debunk:

How to help those who have lost their way

14 April 2021

A work colleague reached out to me the other day with an interesting question. One of his close family members has fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole, and now spends a lot of time talking about QAnon, the "Deep State", etc. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with these kinds of rabbit holes, it's not entirely benign - the family member has now branched into COVID vaccine denial, which has a real chance of negatively impacting on their health.

Sue Grey update

14 April 2021

After talking about Sue Grey's threat to sue the government last week, I found out that Sue was planning to give a talk on the steps of parliament the next day. So during my lunch break last Thursday I wandered up to the Beehive, to see more about why Sue thinks the government's rollout of the COVID vaccine needs to be stopped.

The Prince Philip Movement

14 April 2021

On the news of Prince Philip's death, my thoughts go out not just to the British Royal Family, but also to the members of the Prince Philip Movement in Vanuatu. This movement, a very small religious group, believe that Prince Philip is the son of a local mountain god who traveled overseas and married a powerful woman. The group has been described as a cargo cult, and there's even a suggestion that Philip was John Frum's brother - John Frum is a mythical American military man, around which a cargo cult religion started in the late 1930s.

UFOs over Melbourne?

14 April 2021

Disappointingly, despite the excitement, I'm sure many listeners will already have figured out what the rational explanation for this string of lights in the sky over Melbourne was: Elon Musk's Starlink, a company that is providing satellite based internet - with a few tens of thousands of satellites planned to be deployed over the next few years. There are valid questions about whether these devices are damaging to astronomy, and have the potential to clutter earth's orbit, but they're definitely not visiting aliens. If you are able to get out and see these satellites as they maneuver themselves into their operational orbits, I'd definitely recommend it. I saw them late last year, and it was an impressive sight - a real testament to modern technology.

A timely reminder for schools

7 April 2021

The Secular Education Network, a group of parents and others who are passionate about ensuring the Education Act's promise of secular education in schools is realised, have just released a document reminding schools of their new obligations after the law was changed last year:

Evergreen's sins go beyond blocking the Suez Canal

7 April 2021

The Outdoors Party's health spokesperson recently shared a video clip from the TV show Dexter, showing a scene where the serial killer protagonist of the show remembers being rescued as a child from a shipping container - and, as you might have guessed, the container has EVERGREEN written down the side. Coincidence? Apparently not, if you're one of the many people who believe that the Ever Given, which was recently freed from the Suez Canal, was transporting children as part of a child sex trade run by Hillary Clinton.

An Open Letter to Plan B

5 April 2021

A new group called FACT (Fight Against Conspiracy Theories) has published an open letter to Plan B about their connection with Voices for Freedom. The letter calls on Plan B to distance themselves from Voices for Freedom and the group's anti-science stance on COVID related issues.

Beware of Scientologists Bearing Gifts

5 April 2021

I recently heard about someone who signed up on the MeetUp website for a conversational English course in Auckland, and when they arrived they found out that the course was being run by Scientologists. This type of bait and switch sneakiness is about what we'd expect from Scientology, so I decided to search google and find the course in question.

Should we worry about LED bulbs?

5 April 2021

Stuff published an article recently about the dangers of LED light bulbs, arguing that the blue light from LED bulbs disturbs our circadian rhythm and disrupts our sleep, with wide ranging knock-on effects to our health. My skeptical radar beeped at reading this, as I've looked into this issue in the past and found much speculation and very little actual science.

Football Index is nothing more than a Ponzi Scheme

24 March 2021

A UK company, Football Index, has financially collapsed over the last as its users have realised that the entire thing is nothing more than a pack of cards.

Freedom Rally

24 March 2021

On Saturday I attended one of several Freedom Rallies around the country. In Wellington, the rally was set for midday at the train station. It was a fairly low key affair, with flyers being handed out saying that masks and the vaccine are both ineffective.

Oumuamua probably isn't aliens

24 March 2021

A new astronomy paper suggests that the strange object named Oumuamua that passed through our solar system a couple of years ago was probably a thin disc of planetary matter, and not a piece of alien technology.

Prayers @ Parliament

24 March 2021

On Thursday evening last week I visited Parliament to pray for the future of our country. Now I'm not a Christian, so I'm pretty sure my prayers aren't going to make a difference, but it's interesting to see what influential Christians think about what is wrong with our country and how it should be fixed.

Christchurch massacre conspiracy theories

17 March 2021

We've just had the second anniversary of the horrific Christchurch massacre, and as skeptics it's sad to have seen over the last two years those in our country who have posted content denying that the attack was real, or claiming that it was a "false flag" operation. It's been hard enough over the last 20 years watching high profile conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, engage in denial in the US for events such as the Sandy Hook massacre and the 9/11 attacks. But to see this kind of wrong headed thinking at home somehow feels worse. I guess we've been able to rest on our laurels watching America suffer from a spread of the conspiracy mindset, and at least for me it seemed implausible that the problem would ever reach our fair shores. I guess I was just too naive.

QAnon 2.0?

17 March 2021

A group who monitor extreme Right Wing groups, Hope Not Hate, have published an article detailing a weird attempt to hijack the QAnon conspiracy. The new conspiracy theory, called Sabmyk, has been creating new channels on Telegram, Gab and BitChute in an attempt to entice those who have become disillusioned with QAnon since Trump left office and the promises of QAnon fell through. Why not Facebook and Twitter? Probably because many right wing activists have been driven off of those platforms in the last few months as admins have removed thousands of accounts for posting hate and misinformation. Telegram offers a modicum of anonymity, and Gab and Bitchute are a social network and video hosting site respectively that are less regulated and more welcoming to extreme views than the mainstream social media sites, claiming that they're pro free speech.

Should we be worried about blood clots?

17 March 2021

The AstraZeneca vaccine has made the news recently, as several European countries have halted its rollout temporarily due to reports of blood clots. These issues are real, but it's important to look at how many incidences of this issue there are, and how that compares to other vaccines. It turns out that not only is the incidence of reported clotting similar to that seen with other COVID vaccines, but it's also similar to what you'd expect from a population that haven't received any medical interventions. Both deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism levels for the millions of people who have taken the vaccine are about what would be expected of a random selection of people in their day to day lives. Sadly some people just get blood clots at times, and people can have exacerbating medical conditions that mean they're more susceptible to this issue.

BOTA FTW

15 March 2021

Today I finally made it to the Builders Of The Adytum, a strange group whose beliefs combine Kabbalah and Tarot into an unusual, but enjoyable, philosophy.

Cat Buttons

15 March 2021

Graeme Hill, longtime broadcaster and a good friend of science, skepticism and common sense thinking, now has an evening slot on MagicTalk radio. As part of his show, Graeme usually interviews knowledgeable people about a wide range of fascinating topics. A few years ago I was lucky enough to have been invited to join Siouxsie Wiles as a regular guest to talk about skeptical issues, and I'm now privileged to have been asked back to talk on Graeme's new show as he hosts Magic Nights.

More Tamakis, Vaccines and Earthquakes

15 March 2021

Following on from last week's stories about the Tamakis saying they won't be getting vaccinated, and Ken Ring saying he predicted our recent earthquake, there have been a couple of interesting developments.

The Luck of the Cantabrians

15 March 2021

Rebecca Booth, from Fairlie in the South Island, recently found a seven leaf clover. The Stuff article about this find mentioned that this is not the first clover-related find Rebecca has had. Apparently earlier this year, in January, she found both four and five leaf clovers.

Two years

15 March 2021

Today is the second anniversary of the horrific Christchurch massacre, and as skeptics it's sad to have seen over the last two years those in our country who have posted content denying that the attack was real, or claiming that it was a “false flag” operation. It's been hard enough over the last 20 years watching high profile conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, engage in denial in the US for events such as the Sandy Hook massacre and the 9/11 attacks. But to see this kind of wrong headed thinking at home somehow feels worse. I guess we've been able to rest on our laurels watching America suffer from a spread of the conspiracy mindset, and at least for me it seemed implausible that the problem would ever reach our fair shores. I guess I was just too naïve.

4 Simultaneous Days Rotate In Same 24 Hours Of Earth

8 March 2021

We've just come out of another short spell spent at level 3 lockdown for Auckland, and level 2 for the rest of us. Well done to all of you who managed to follow the rules and help keep us all safe, and a boo to everyone who thought that protesting in large groups and not wearing a mask is an acceptable response.

An unexpected endorsement for the COVID vaccine

8 March 2021

I've recently read calls for high profile figures in New Zealand to endorse the new COVID vaccines, as a way to reassure the portion of the public who currently feel unsure about the vaccines' safety. It's been suggested that public figures such as Jacinda Ardern, Ashley Bloomfield and others might want to allow the media to record them being immunised against COVID. Personally I think that, at least for those who are conspiracy minded, watching those who are supposedly a part of the conspiracy be injected is probably not going to be very convincing.

Skeptics 0, Ken Ring 1

8 March 2021

After last week's nocturnal earthquake, Ken Ring has been on Facebook proving how right he is. He's pointed out that he predicted the earthquake in his 2021 almanac:

Worried about 5G? There's a pill for that!

8 March 2021

I'm guessing that Jami-Lee Ross, head of the failed conspiracy themed political party Advance NZ, has run out of money. Why else would he be planning to flog useless anti-5G pills to us?

A local Psychic has Guessed Wrong

22 February 2021

Lockdown timing predictions from a Hamilton based psychic, Sarah King, have been unearthed and posted to our Facebook group this week:

Billy Te Kahika has Quit

22 February 2021

Or, at the very least he's apparently quit politics. This one was a bit of a surprise to me, as the conspiracy minded Billy had only just announced that he was re-naming his Public Party to the Freedom Party. Maybe he quit because he realised that there had already been a Freedom Party in NZ, and that all of the most obvious domain names had already been taken? Alternatively, it might be that recent accusations of financial mis-management and fraud are making life in the limelight a little too uncomfortable for Billy at the moment.

Conspiracy Spam

22 February 2021

A member emailed us this week to share an unaddressed letter she received in her mailbox. Thankfully the anonymous author of the document has put in the hard work of joining all the unconnected dots of some of the conspiracies I've mentioned above, and more, and has figured out that the overall aim of the New Zealand government is transhumanism - apparently we're going to be converted to Human 2.0 via the COVID vaccine. As a technology enthusiast I'm having a hard time seeing the downside to being upgraded, although I have to admit to being worried that, given Bill Gates' involvement, my new nanobots may be running a Windows based OS. Hopefully I'll be able to flash them to a more stable BSD or Linux OS, just as soon as I figure out where my serial port is.

Grant Robertson has Had Enough

22 February 2021

MP Grant Robertson was on Peter Williams' Magic Talk radio show this week when he was asked about the “Great Reset”. His immediate reaction was to quit the interview early, and he's subsequently let Magic Talk know that he won't be returning for his regular weekly slot with Williams. So, what's going on in this drama that's of interest to skeptics?

Rush Limbaugh has Died

22 February 2021

The controversial conservative US radio host Rush Limbaugh died this week. Although this isn't something that the NZ Skeptics feel is okay to celebrate, we do acknowledge that Limbaugh was responsible for the spreading of many damaging and harmful conspiracy theories, and was very mean spirited to people he saw as the enemies of the US, including those who were black, gay, liberal, female and/or atheist. Unsurprisingly, the work Rush Limbaugh undertook spreading his divisive message was recently rewarded with America's Medal of Freedom. Rather than going into more details of Limbaugh's life, I will leave it to the (hopefully impartial) BBC's obituary if you would like to know more.

Your Skeptics Society Needs You

22 February 2021

For those of you who like the work we do enough that you want to support us financially, it's that time of the year when membership subscriptions are due. Membership is only $40, or $20 if you're unwaged, and the money we receive will be spent on worthy causes, allowing us to help make New Zealand a more skeptical place.

Goodbye Ngaire McCarthy

1 February 2021

Last week I attended, online, the funeral of Ngaire McCarthy, who died just over a week ago from cancer. Ngaire was an outspoken Māori atheist, humanist and rationalist who spoke to the NZ Skeptics at our 2014 conference in Auckland. She told us about how the census shows comparable rates of dis-belief amongst Māori and Pākehā in New Zealand, and how Christianity had imposed itself on Māori culture, merging in a way that makes it hard to pick them apart today.

Jewish space laser

1 February 2021

I wish I was making this news story up - partially because it's getting a little bit tiresome writing about US politics. However, the recently elected Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who likes to ride on the QAnon conspiracy carriage of the Trump Train, has been put through the wringer in the last week. Journalists have been poring over her social media history and documenting her words, shares and likes - some of which are so weird and wonderful it doesn't take much to debunk them.

Reiki is here to save us all

1 February 2021

Or at least that's what NewsHub would have us believe, with an article published on Tuesday about the benefits of Reiki, an energy healing technique that involves the practitioner manipulating your “energy field” by waving their hands around your body.

A Faraday Cage to protect you from WiFi

11 January 2021

On the popular tech news YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips, Linus has evaluated a couple of small faraday cages that are sold in the US as a way to protect home users from the harmful radiation coming from their WiFi base stations. At around NZ$120 a piece I'm not sure which of the findings I think is the funnier - that they do a really bad job of blocking WiFi, or that they turn out to just be repurposed wire paper trays with a couple of modifications to allow wires to be inserted, and that they cost less than NZ$10 each to buy from China.

Auckland Lockdown Protest

11 January 2021

Billy TK held an anti-lockdown rally in Auckland on Saturday. The rally was accompanied by a variety of interesting flags, signs and chants:

Beware of JP Sears

11 January 2021

I'm sure many skeptics have enjoyed JP Sears' parody videos of the wellness industry, such as How to Become Gluten Intolerant and How to be Ultra Spiritual. It was a surprise to me, just before Christmas, to read that despite poking fun, JP Sears has for a long time been a seller of nonsense. An article from the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Canada details JP Sears' history of selling unregulated therapy sessions and useless supplements, and sadly also his recent descent into COVID-19 science denial.

Musical Vaccine

11 January 2021

An image that has been making its way round the internet recently purports to be a circuit diagram for a 5G chip which is inside COVID vaccines. However, those who are technically musical minded have pointed out that the image is actually that of a guitar effects pedal called Metal Zone from company Boss.

Protesting for Dummies

11 January 2021

I can't help but wonder what 2021 is going to bring us, given that we've already started the year with the US Capitol being invaded by right wing extremists and QAnon conspiracy theorists. Closer to home, Billy TK's Public Party appears to be coming apart at the seams, with staff members taking over the party's website to detail Billy's financial mis-management.

Crystal Healing that works?

21 December 2020

In one of our Facebook groups this week there was a recent discussion started by Donald Pettitt about his visit to a “crystal healer” to help with issues he's been having with his balance:

Crystals, Black Holes and Dark DNA

21 December 2020

I told you all three weeks ago that I was going to visit the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosicrucians, and I can report that I survived the meeting intact. My friend Tim and I had a great chat with three of the group's members about their beliefs, and about the history of the organisation. Much of what we heard sounded very familiar, with an organisational structure that reminded me of Scientology (making your way up the “Bridge”) and a belief in visualisation that was akin to Rhonda Byrne's “The Secret”, where if you imagine something enough it will come true for you.

Does anyone know what Dark DNA is?

21 December 2020

Retraction Watch have written a nice summary of the year in retractions for The Scientist magazine. Unsurprisingly many of the scientific articles that have been retracted this year are on the topic of COVID-19, but there was one that caught my eye from the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences titled:

Glittery Just Desserts

21 December 2020

As Skeptics we're not very fond of scammers, and we often try to protect the public from those who would rip them off with dodgy devices and ineffective products. The video below documents a feat of engineering, a device that targets the problem in the US of people who steal people's parcels - and it targets them in a pretty funny way. Although theft is not really a scam, it's still enjoyable to see unethical people get their comeuppance - and it's mentioned later on in the video that this device has also recently been used against scammers. And to be honest, I needed a good excuse to share this video!

We have our own Monolith

21 December 2020

In the news this morning, it's been reported that our very own New Zealand monolith has appeared at Adventure Park in Christchurch. I'd love to think that this monolith could stay until I get a chance to visit it, but given that the original monolith mysteriously disappeared, and that a bunch of young Christians destroyed a similar monolith in California and replaced it with a cross, I worry that our version may not last long.

2020: A Desert Odyssey

30 November 2020

I'm sure most people saw the intriguing news that a tall prism shaped metal structure, now known as the Utah Monolith, had been found by conservationists in the desert in the US, sticking out from the rock floor of a canyon. It's been great to see sleuths figure out where the monolith is located, using flight plans and google maps satellite view (in a slot canyon in Lockhart Basin in San Juan County, Utah), approximately when it was placed, using historical satellite photos (between August 2015 and October 2016) and how it was made, with several people visiting the site (it's hollow and made from riveted stainless steel sheets). However, the mystery of who put it there has still not been solved.

Billy TK's Religious Influences

30 November 2020

There's an interesting article published by Dr Deane Galbraithe this week about Billy Te Kakiha's evangelical influence, and how this may explain his adoption of so many conspiracy theories in his talks. For those who don't remember, Billy TK started a political party earlier this year, the Public Party, with a platform based on conspiracies and other unscientific nonsense. Deane has been talking in our Facebook group about his article, and, although it's not mentioned in the article itself, on Facebook he's talked about someone who has messaged him to let him know that Billy TK has a history with the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement.

Colour Therapy

30 November 2020

For those who followed Craig's link last week to a colour therapy site, you may have thought that some of the claims on the site were pretty egregious - including such gems as “incurable means curable from within” and “synthetic fibres have a frequency that is detrimental to our health and well being”.

Cults, Colours, Conspiracies

30 November 2020

Tonight I'm off to a meeting of AMORC - the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosae Crucis. It occurred to me the other day that there's an old idea which might be appropriate here. I'm sure many of you have heard of the guideline that the more a country's name stresses that it is democratic, the less likely it is to actually resemble a democracy. Take the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) or the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Laos) as examples. I wonder whether the same rule might hold for cult groups. For example, the Order of Oriental Templars (OTO) is not related to either the Orient or Templars (it was invented in the 20th century by German occultists), The Church of Scientology is not really a church (it's just a tax dodge) and the Unification Church (Moonies) didn't unify the Christian church. So I have a sneaking suspicion that the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosae Crucis is probably going to turn out to be neither Ancient nor Mystical.

Guerrilla Skeptics strike again

30 November 2020

The amazing members of the GSoW (Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia) group have struck again. In recent years the group have done some amazing work creating new Wikipedia articles and rewriting existing ones on topics of importance to skepticism, including quite a few that are related to New Zealand - including pages for skeptic Siouxsie Wiles, psychic Jeanette Wilson and even our organisation, the NZ Skeptics. We've also had Susan Gerbic, head of the project, come to New Zealand twice in the last few years to talk to us at our conferences about both the GSoW project and her work using sting operations to bust psychics.

Randi Video: No Longer Missing

30 November 2020

Thank you Mark Fletcher for letting us know that you had a copy of the video of James Randi's 1993 Christchurch talk. He'd even transcoded the video from VHS to DVD several years ago, which made it a lot easier for me to get it onto YouTube. Thanks Mark, I owe you a beer!

Can a jade amulet protect against COVID?

9 November 2020

The above title is my paraphrasing of a recent paper published in an Elsevier-owned scientific journal, Science of The Total Environment. The paper's actual title is:

Elections, ghosts and cranks

9 November 2020

Another newsletter, another election. This time the US appears to have, narrowly, come to its senses and chosen to vote out their current science-denying leader - and my guess is that most skeptics are breathing a sigh of relief. Those of us at Wellington Skeptics in the Pub on Friday certainly did a thorough job of dissecting the election, along with its many rules, regulations, polls, predictions and polemics.

Haunted NZ

9 November 2020

Last week Craig promised that we would give you a link to a video Haunted NZ were producing about their recent investigation at a house in Pukekohe. We have now been sent a copy of the video that you can watch on YouTube. Craig also gave a good account to the NZ Herald of why the video, although slickly put together, contains no substantive evidence backing up Haunted NZ's claims that the house was ever haunted. Good work Craig!

Not everyone loved Randi

9 November 2020

If the US election hasn't caused you enough stress, you could read a recent “take down” of James Randi titled The man who destroyed skepticism, published soon after his death on the popular Boing Boing blog, that is sure to make your blood boil. I for one was very surprised and disappointed to see the Boing Boing website, which normally has a reputation for good quality reporting, hosting this hit piece written by Mitch Horowitz. Mitch is a believer in the spiritual realm, and his own website describes him as “a historian of alternative spirituality and one of today's most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult”. The article includes such gems as:

NZ's Luminate Festival is moving away from reality

9 November 2020

The Luminate festival, held each year outside of Nelson, has always been a little out of touch with science. But, as David Farrier shows, things appear to be getting worse. The festival has been flirting with conspiracy theories and woo peddlers, in a list they published on the Luminate website called the “13 Crystal Seeds of Positive Change”. The list included the names of people who have inspired the festival's organisers. You get one point for each of the following names you recognise:

WWG1WGA

9 November 2020

I'm sure most skeptics will have heard of QAnon by now - the anonymously named Q who posts online about shadowy organisations, and talks about how president Trump is fighting dark forces in the US. QAnon tends to use lots of code names and obscure references, including the oft used acronym used as the title of this section - it means Where We Go 1, We Go All. Here are a couple of examples of QAnon messages:

Election Special

19 October 2020

I've been keeping a close eye on some of the more fringe political parties in New Zealand's election, and it's been great to see that not many kiwis have been swayed by their radical ideas. In case you were too focused on whether the Greens were going to get a seat at the table, or if this is the last we'll see of Winston Peters, here's a summary of three of the more extreme parties, all of whom appear to have little respect for evidence:

Medical Myths

18 August 2020

Here are some common medical myths that are easy to dispel:

Mark Honeychurch meets Ex Jehovah's Witnesses

1 February 2019

Yesterday afternoon I met with a group of ex Jehovah's Witnesses.

Another Te Kiri Gold celebrity endorsement

16 December 2018

Cocksy, a celebrity builder on New Zealand TV, has cancer and is currently on an experimental new treatment.

Blasphemy Law repeal passes second reading

16 December 2018

The Crimes Amendment Bill passed its second reading in parliament this week, and it now looks likely that our blasphemy law will be repealed in the near future. This is great news, and is being mirrored in other countries.

SleepDrops in Trouble

16 December 2018

SleepDrops is a New Zealand based company offering herbal/homeopathic products that are supposed to help you to sleep, although there's absolutely no evidence that they work.

Ark Man

2 December 2018

On Wednesday a group of us skeptics visited the Ark Man, Rod Walsh, who has been over in New Zealand from Australia on tour. Rod's schtick is that god told him in the '90s to build a scale model of Noah's Ark from Genesis. Apparently the day after he was told this by god, he turned on the radio and two people were having a conversation about the ark - which proved to him that god's voice had been real. Rod has now built 6 scale replicas of Noah's Ark over the last 20 years, and has been touring the world with his scale models since the '90s.

Go Green Expo full of woo yet again

2 December 2018

A few weeks ago the Wellington Skeptics made their annual pilgrimage to the Go Green Expo. Billed as a Green Living and Sustainable Lifestyle Show, in reality the majority of stands push nonsense alternative therapies, making illegal medical claims about cherry juice, magnetic bracelets and turmeric shakes and scaring people about the dangers of dirty electricity, blue light, toxins and chemicals. There are also talks with titles such as:

MoE Religious Instruction Guidelines Consultation

2 December 2018

The Ministry of Education are finally getting close to publishing guidelines for schools about allowing Religious Instruction classes.

Asia Bibi is Acquitted

4 November 2018

Asia Bibi, who has been on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy for nearly 10 years, has been acquitted this week. Unsurprisingly, this is far from the end of her troubles.

Jesus for NZ

4 November 2018

There were hundreds of Christians at Parliament on Tuesday calling for the reinstatement of the name of Jesus in parliament's prayer. There were people wearing Make America Great Again hats, bikers in leathers proclaiming the lord, and some pretty horrendous banners - including one calling Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard a "dishonourable Judas".

OBDII Fuel Saver

4 November 2018

A friend sent me a video the other day about a fuel saving device for your car. The video was quite well done, and like so many videos on FB had no voice over - instead having a soundtrack, along with large subtitles telling the story:

SleepDrops is fundraising

4 November 2018

SleepDrops is a New Zealand company which sells small vials of liquid drops which are supposed to help you get to sleep and stay asleep. Their ingredients are a mixture of small doses of herbs and very small (homeopathic) doses of herbs. A look at the Scientific Research page on their website shows that there's a dearth of research for any of the ingredients in the SleepDrops products, and absolutely no research on the SleepDrops formulation.

Blasphemy law likely to be removed in Ireland

28 October 2018

Ireland has had a bit of a rocky history with its blasphemy law, with a complaint made against a local comedian for calling the Catholic communion wafer "haunted bread", and Stephen Fry being threatened with legal action for an interview he gave on Irish TV a few years ago.

Can natural health products be bad for you?

28 October 2018

Herbal remedies are very popular these days, with many pharmacies in New Zealand happy to promote products that don't work as treatments for medical conditions, or even just as a preventative measure - a way of keeping healthy.

HRV fined for false claims

28 October 2018

HRV has had to pay out $400k for bad claims it made about its water filters. The interesting thing about this case, in my opinion, is that the fine was given because it was shown that HRV didn't have the evidence for its claims when it made them.

Australian Bent Spoon winner

14 October 2018

The Aussies have just had their skeptics conference, and have given out a Bent Spoon award to Sarah Stevenson, for her Sarah's Day brand of nonsense.

Have I been hacked?

14 October 2018

The other day I received an ominous email telling me that I have malware installed on my PC as a result of visiting porn sites, and that I need to cough up £850 so that my sordid life isn't made public:

I tried Kangen Water

14 October 2018

Last week a friend let me know that someone in my area was giving away kangen water for free - presumably in an effort to get people to sign up to buy a water filter.

Pakistanis trying to influence justice

14 October 2018

Pakistanis are threatening to strike nationwide if leniency is shown to Asia Bibi [Ah-seea Beebee], a woman who has been sentenced to death for a blasphemy charge. The charge was related to the fact that she is Christian, and in 2009 she drank water with the same cup some Muslims at her workplace had been drinking with, and then made comments defending her religious belief when challenged about her actions and told that she was unclean.

A meeting with ex Jehovah's Witnesses

30 September 2018

Yesterday afternoon I met with a group of ex Jehovah's Witnesses.

Backward step at the World Health Organisation

30 September 2018

In a frankly scary move, the WHO are legitimising unproven medical therapies by including them in the new edition of its "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems" - ICD11.

I went back to the OTO

30 September 2018

At the end of last year I went along to an occult ceremony, the OTO's Gnostic Mass. I tried to return in June for the Winter Solstice, but the venue was changed on me at the last minute - apparently they had an issue with the normal venue.

Alex Jones is losing his grip

16 September 2018

Alex Jones, who runs the website InfoWars, seems to be coming apart at the seams.

Church Visits

16 September 2018

This morning I went along to two church services with a visiting academic, Hamed, who is over in New Zealand from Iran. He had never seen a Christian service before, and had been told to ask me about taking him along to a service. I decided to show him two extremes of what church can be. We started at the Cathedral of St Paul, and then went to Arise evangelical church.

Hikoi of a Poisoned Nation

16 September 2018

In my time I've heard a few arguments against use of the poison, and there doesn't seem to be any new claims this time round. The kind of arguments I've seen in the media are that it:

Indian Scammers

16 September 2018

I had a phone call this week from "Spark". I spoke to a couple of Indian gentlemen who explained that my private IP address had been made public, and that this meant that my internet connection was compromised.

Catholic Church Abuse

2 September 2018

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a report last week, detailing credible accusations of child abuse against over 300 priests in the state, with over 1,000 victims. Shapiro doesn't think they found all instances of abuse.

Jehovah's Witnesses recommend staying with an abusive partner

2 September 2018

An upcoming edition of the Watchtower from the Jehovah's Witnesses is recommending that church members should consider staying with an abusive partner, even if they feel their life is in danger. Of course, this flies in the face of recommendations from professional organisations the world over who deal with victims of spousal abuse.

Khandallah School allowing evangelism

2 September 2018

On Friday afternoon I headed out to Khandallah School in Wellington as part of the Secular Education Network. SEN believes that schools should be secular, and that there is no place in our school system for Religious Instruction.

Wellington's "Allergy" Expo

2 September 2018

Yesterday I went to an "Allergy Free and Healthy Living Show" in Porirua. Sadly there were very few stands at the expo that were about allergies - there was Allergy NZ and Coeliac New Zealand. Most of the stands were selling fake cures for big bucks.

My JW weekend

19 August 2018

I've spent this weekend at the Jehovah's Witnesses convention, titled "Be Courageous", in Porirua. There were estimated to be 2,000 attendees. I ended up going this year because a couple of local Jehovah's Witnesses, both of which have come to my door over the last few years, made a point of visiting me earlier this week to invite me.

Humanist Conference

5 August 2018

This weekend was the Humanist Conference in Auckland, with some great international and local speakers.

QAnon

5 August 2018

BBC

Alternative cancer therapies linked to earlier death

22 July 2018

Sellers of alternative therapies usually say publicly that they always recommend their patients continue normal therapy while they also use acupuncture, herbal remedies, etc for their medical conditions. This is especially important in the case of people who have life threatening medical conditions that can be successfully treated with conventional medicine, such as cancer. However, there are many stories in the news of people who have enough faith in their choice of alternative medicine that they decide not to use conventional therapy, or turn down some proven conventional therapies on offer - and in the worst cases, the alternative therapy practitioners actively dissuade their patients from using modern medicine.

Massive payout for talc "victims"

22 July 2018

We talked about a court case a while ago involving Johnson & Johnson, and a claim that asbestos in their talcum powder has been giving people cancer. A new decision in the US has seen a court award damages of nearly NZ$7 billion to 22 people who claim to have been affected by this issue.

Prophet Arrested for Attempted Resurrection

22 July 2018

BBC

Visa issues for International Humanists

22 July 2018

Stuff wrote an article today about the issues the Humanist Society have been having with international conference delegates and speakers visiting New Zealand next month.

Bullet repelling magic in Nigeria

8 July 2018

A seller of magic charms in Nigeria has been killed this week while demonstrating a bullet repelling charm. The sale of charms and potions is commonplace in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, and the charms are very popular.

Chiropractors finding it hard to be ethical

8 July 2018

Mark Hanna has written a great blog post detailing the issues the Chiropractic Board has had getting their members to abide by their codes and New Zealand law. While I'm not surprised to hear about Chiropractors' efforts to circumvent laws designed to protect patients, it is disappointing to hear. The Chair of the board wrote in their newsletter about a worrying experience she had:

HRV admits they deceived customers

8 July 2018

HRV have plead guilty to 11 counts of misleading customers about their water filters. They were charged with making untrue claims about the levels of chemicals in New Zealand tap water, as well as their filter's ability to soften the water and help with eczema and dermatitis.

New HIV vaccine, but is it a made up disease?

8 July 2018

There have been promising results from a recent trial of an HIV vaccine. An effective vaccine would be a useful part of our fight against AIDS related deaths. The new vaccine needs further trials, but in the study showed an 80% immune response, which is much better than previous attempts to create a vaccine. In brief, as I'm sure everyone knows, the HIV virus causes AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - and it's this compromised immune system that can be fatal.

Cannabis Oil for cancer, again...

24 June 2018

The NZ Herald has published a story about a woman whose terminal cancer was cured after she took cannabis oil. Of course, there's more to this story - isn't there always. In this case, the woman used both cannabis oil and chemotherapy to fight her cancer - no prizes for guessing which of those two will have helped her more. It also turns out that cancer was only "terminal" if the woman had not received any treatment. This is not what is normally considered to be a diagnosis of terminal cancer - terminal usually means that the cancer is not treatable with medicine, not that the cancer is not treatable without medicine.

Government hoping to scrap blasphemy law

24 June 2018

You may ask what blasphemy has to do with skepticism - often I've talked with people about the intersection of skepticism and religious belief. I feel that religion should never be above skeptical scrutiny. A common question asked of the Skeptics Society is whether someone can be both an atheist and a skeptic - I always say that yes, someone can be both, but that I believe it requires the person to avoid shining a skeptical light on their belief. Skeptics usually stand by the idea that nothing is above questioning, and so a skeptic who isn't willing to scrutinise their religious beliefs seems to be a strange case to me. We should have no sacred cows.

Is hot dog water good for you?

24 June 2018

In Canada, a man has been selling bottles of medicinal hot dog water for $38. The organic beef hot dogs were boiled before being added to unfiltered water and poured into a vial shaped like a test tube. The seller, Douglas Bevans, said that the water would:

LED lights are apparently not safe for us

24 June 2018

It seems that every new advance in technology is accompanied by people who are willing to warn the world of made up dangers. Anti-vaccine advocates have been around since the beginning of vaccine use over a hundred years ago. People have warned others about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, GM foods and the LHC - all of which have a very low risk profile, and confer major benefits to society.

Dr Oz promoting Astrology

10 June 2018

Dr Oz is up to his usual nonsense, promoting an author who claims that astrology can predict your health. Rebecca Gordon believes that the Vitruvian Man may hold the key to how the signs of the zodiac map to parts of our body and indicate health issues, and has a new book: "Your Body and the Stars: The Zodiac As Your Wellness Guide".

NHS defends its decision to dump homeopathy

10 June 2018

The NHS recently decided to stop funding homeopathy. Until recently, taxpayers' money was used in the UK to fund homeopathic hospitals (in London, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and Tunbridge Wells) and prescriptions for homeopathy. In part of a suite of changes in an effort to avoid paying for ineffective treatments (including herbal remedies and fish oil), the NHS decided to stop paying money for these pseudoscientific medicines that don't work.

NZ Doctor complains to ASA about weet-bix

10 June 2018

It's always good to see people who aren't known to me in the skeptical community making complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. Dr Holmes complained to the ASA recently about a Sanitarium Weet-Bix advert for their new gluten free product. In the advert a woman says:

Shakti Mat

10 June 2018

Breakfast on 1 recently hosted a physiotherapist advertising the Shakti Mat - a yoga mat covered in plastic circles, with each circle consisting of 20 or more sharp spikes. The mat is supposed to work like a bed of nails, activating acupressure points. I've seen the mat sold at shows such as the Go Green Expo, and have stood on one - the points are really sharp, and without socks it was especially painful.

Dr Oz to join Trump's health focused Presidential Council

27 May 2018

President Trump will be promoting Dr Mehmet Oz to the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition, which is a little worrying. Trump's no stranger to making what look like very bad staffing decisions, and this one is no exception. Dr Oz is well known in the US, having risen from the Oprah show to having his own show. On his show, the Dr Oz Show, he's promoted so many nonsense treatments that he's been told off by the FTC and summoned to talk in front of a senate sub-committee.

First NZ Flat Earth Conference

27 May 2018

New Zealand's first flat earth conference has just been hosted, last Saturday in Auckland. Around 30 "flat mates" crowded into the Backyard Bar's function room to listen to conversations about how the earth is flat, including live streaming of speakers from overseas.

Kangen Water has made the news again :(

27 May 2018

As we talked about at the end of last year, there's been a real push to sell Kangen Water devices in NZ recently. An article in the Herald recently has detailed Ainsley Brunton's efforts to sell the water in Whanganui to unsuspecting customers. Her water devices are selling for $4,000, with promises that the water can help with cancer, diabetes and other serious diseases. Enagic in Australia is selling the machines to New Zealanders who are passing them on, and Enagic's prices for a machine that does nothing useful to water vary between $2,300 and $6,500.

New search for Loch Ness Monster

27 May 2018

In the past, searches have been conducted for Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, using technologies ranging from men with binoculars to underwater video cameras and sonar.

Spirit Whisperer guilty of indecent assault

27 May 2018

A Napier based psychic has been convicted of indecent assault. Craig Wright, called the Spirit Whisperer, has been offering his services in NZ for several years, and has even worked on a pilot for a TV show with Sue Nicholson. Now he's been found guilty of indecent assault of a teenager after performing a "ritual cleansing". Craig's defence was that he puts his finger in someone's belly button to find out if they are possessed by an entity. When he asserted that the victim had this problem, he took him to another room to rid him of the spiritual attachment and that is when the assault took place.

Dawkins has been to visit NZ

13 May 2018

Dawkins has been talking to audiences in NZ, and a local pastor took to Stuff to complain about him in an article. Now, I'm not saying that Dawkins is without flaws - it's common knowledge that he often opens his mouth on Twitter before thinking about what he's saying, and he's no stranger to controversy. But pastor Geoff Robson seems to have gone overboard in trying to protect his belief.

Does your star sign dictate how you drive?

13 May 2018

Healing Crystals

13 May 2018

Healing crystals have become very popular recently, with people buying many different crystals to either wear or place in their homes and help with physical and mental health issues, monetary problems and any other problem you could imagine. There are even water bottles with crystals in that are supposed to somehow "energise" the water you drink.

Personalised Vitamins

13 May 2018

Stuff had an article this week about personalised vitamins. Companies who require you to talk to a dietician before being recommended vitamins have been around in NZ for a while, but two companies have started up in New Zealand recently that recommend which of their vitamins you should take based on online questionnaires.

Dr Google

29 April 2018

There's been some interesting local research on people with health conditions doing their own research. The Southern Cross Health Society has looked into whether people look up their symptoms on google before visiting their GP. They talked to GPs about their patients, and found out that an increasing number of them are coming into their practices with knowledge taken from the internet of what is wrong with them.

Homeopaths trying to "cure" Autism

29 April 2018

An organised group of homeopaths offering bogus treatments for autism has been written about in the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The article talks about how more than 120 homeopaths in the UK are part of this group, called CEASE (Complete Elimination of Autistic Spectrum Expression), and the therapies they are offering are supposed to remove "toxins" that are apparently causing autism in children, and many of these toxins are meant to have come from vaccines.

Ken Ring is predicting earthquakes again

29 April 2018

I was contacted by a journalist for the Sunday Star times a few days ago with some questions about Ken Ring. He's predicting an earthquake for June or July the 13th to 15th.

V2K - what is it?

29 April 2018

I've found another fun conspiracy theory - V2K. Weirdly, it stands for "Voice to Skull" and is a technology where voices can be beamed directly to your head. This is another conspiracy theory that until recently was new to me. The idea is based on the fact that microwaves can be used to create a clicking noise inside someone's head. This is known as the microwave auditory effect, and was discovered in World War Two by people who worked near radar devices. The likely mechanism for the clicking is that parts of the inner ear are being rapidly heated up by the radio waves. The microwaves can be varied to create what sounds like a human voice inside someone's head, which is pretty cool.

Did NASA Astronauts see aliens?

15 April 2018

The NZ Herald seems to think so, republishing a Daily Mail article this week about a lie detector test that Buzz Aldrin apparently took recently to prove that he believes he saw an alien craft on his way to the moon in 1969.

The Keeper of the Secrets

15 April 2018

A while ago I was contacted by an older gentleman, Cedric, who told me over the phone that he'd heard me on the show and wanted to know if I was interested in a theory he has about the origins of the Māori race. Of course I was, I said, and after a while I received a self-published 32 page book about the theory.

The US is losing the war on ignorance

15 April 2018

A recent poll in the US showed an alarming amount of disbelief about whether our world is round. The survey of 8,000 Americans showed that whereas the vast majority of over 55s are happy accepting that we live on a round planet, like all the other planets we see, only two thirds of eighteen to twenty four year olds are sure. The others either don't know either way, are not totally sure or believe in a flat earth.

Therapeutic Mushroom Coffee

15 April 2018

There's a new fad to put mushroom in your coffee. Claims are being made that these powdered mushrooms can help your health and wellbeing.

Call for government funding of natural therapies

8 April 2018

Tanya Filia​, who has beaten the odds and outlived doctors' estimates of her life expectancy, is now pushing for the government to subsidise natural treatments.

Does god hate vaccines?

8 April 2018

Brittany Kara, from the US, is apparently a Christian author, NLP practitioner, hypnotherapist and nutrition coach. She's also an anti-vaxxer, and records herself speaking for a YouTube channel where she talks about her views.

New NZ Diet aid Calocurb launched

8 April 2018

A new locally made diet pill has gone on sale in NZ, and will soon be available in the US as well. Its makers are promoting the product at the moment

Who cons the conmen?

8 April 2018

A fraudster has conned a clairvoyant, Maureen Smith, in the UK by pretending to be her on Facebook and charging people money for online readings. The scammer sent messages to all of Maureen's friends through an account that was a copy of the real Maureen's account. Things were going well for the scammer until they sent an invite to Maureen's husband.

Auckland woman builds fence to keep radiation out

18 March 2018

7 Sharp have interviewed Marta Fisch on Waiheke Island, who has built an ugly looking metal box - three side walls - in her garden, to keep out "radiation". Radiation in this sense is the kind of electromagnetic energy that is used to send TV signals and offer WiFi, and also background radiation from nature.

Is Dunedin's Regent Theatre Haunted?

18 March 2018

The Regent Theatre in Dunedin is in the news again, as it's been flooded. This is unfortunate, as it appears that someone accidentally left a tap on that has caused damage to carpets and the ceiling. However, the staff at the theatre believe that this wasn't negligence, it was a ghost!

Local psychic plays the odds, gets lucky

18 March 2018

Kelvin Cruickshank, one of our famous local psychics who has appeared on Sensing Murder, has "helped" a family to locate the body of "Curly" - an elderly gentleman called Raymond Stirling who went missing in Hamilton in January. A police search had been halted after 11 days with no luck, and then Curly's daughter in law ended up at one of Kelvin's paid shows (at $65 a ticket).

Quack "doctor" opens up clinic in Auckland

18 March 2018

A quack Chinese doctor from Australia has opened up a clinic in Auckland, to better serve his kiwi patients. Shuquan Liu will likely be selling his weight loss herbal diet in NZ, which consists of getting people to consume nothing but Chinese herbs for two weeks. The diet is an extreme calorie restriction diet (< 200 calories a day), which is likely to be dangerous to those who follow it.

Is the US ignoring UFOs?

11 March 2018

In an article on the NZ Herald, reprinted from the Washington Post, Christopher Mellon argues that there is solid evidence for UFOs, and that the US are not doing enough to investigate.

New Zealand's own Fantastical AI

11 March 2018

The field of Artificial Intelligence is blooming at the moment, with companies like Google and Alexa delivering small, inexpensive devices to your living room for $75 that can listen to you talk and tell you the weather, order pizza and turn your TV on.

Reiki Meeting in New Plymouth

11 March 2018

A Reiki meeting has been deemed newsworthy by the Taranaki Daily News.

Attack Survivor has to defend himself

25 February 2018

The conspiracy theorists are out in force already after the recent school shooting tragedy. One of the survivors, 17 year old David Hogg, has gone on national TV in the US to publicly state that he's not a "crisis actor".

Memorising a big number will create a black hole?

25 February 2018

The UK Mirror recently carried a weird story claiming that there are numbers so big that they would create a black hole in your brain if you could memorise them. The title of the article is:

NZ Herald Promoting Animal Quackery

25 February 2018

Liza Schneider has written an article for the BoP Times, printed online in the Herald, which promotes nonsense therapies for animals.

Pastafarianism Knocked Back

25 February 2018

The teen, from Pakuranga College, wanted to wear the colander as he claimed it was his right, as it's religious headgear. This follows from the religion receiving recognition in NZ through people having driving licenses wearing a colander, wearing a colander during a citizenship ceremony, someone registering as an FSM marriage celebrant and a pastafarian wedding.

Teen Lays Eggs

25 February 2018

An Indonesian teenager has apparently "baffled" doctors by laying eggs. He's laid about 20 eggs over the last 2 years, and x-ray images show an egg inside him before he lays it. The x-ray image makes it unlikely that sleight of hand is involved - he's probably not pretending to produce an egg from internally, but actually just making it appear in his hand at the right time.

Can Cannabis Cure Cancer?

11 February 2018

An Australian woman, Shona Leigh, has publicly spoken about how she supposedly cured herself of cervical cancer with cannabis oil. This story seems to be popular in NZ because of the new Labour government's recent efforts to relax our laws on medicinal cannabis use.

Elon Musk proves the earth is round - or does he?

11 February 2018

Elon Musk's company SpaceX successfully launched their first Falcon Heavy rocket this week, after a recent successful launch in New Zealand by RocketLab. It's been a good time for private space companies.

Homeopathy Course Cancelled at Canadian College

11 February 2018

Georgian College in Toronto has cancelled a course in homeopathy, due to negative feedback.

Raw Water is Daft

11 February 2018

Companies in the US are selling "raw" water, which means the water has been untreated. At $50 for 9 litres, it seems pretty expensive for something that's likely to leave you sick.

The ASA has written some new guidelines… and they're crap!

11 February 2018

The ASA have had issues recently with the amount of complaints us skeptics have been submitting to them for dodgy medical claims. It appears that as a result of a particular complaint about an acupuncturist they've decided to write a guideline for healthcare related complaints.

Another quake prediction

28 January 2018

Frank Hoogerbeets from the Netherlands has predicted a major earthquake of 8 or 9 in the first week of March. His predictions says that "electromagnetic amplifications caused by planetary alignments" will increase seismic activity, and that this will be caused by the alignment of 6 planets.

Peppering of Rabbits?

28 January 2018

This story starts back in 2002. The winner of the NZ Skeptics' Bent Spoon award that year was Green MP Jeanette Fitzsimons. She won the award for supporting the idea of using Possum Peppering to rid NZ of possums.

Scientology in Disguise

28 January 2018

Scientology has been trying to get the public to buy into its anti-psychiatry ideas in NZ recently. The religion's branch called the Citizens' Commission for Human Rights has been visiting shopping malls around Auckland and setting up displays that seek to teach people that psychiatry is evil.

Treating Bears with Acupuncture

28 January 2018

"The results argue for more trials of the fish skins for burns", the vets said.

Unvaccinated Pets

28 January 2018

As if people not vaccinating their kids isn't enough nonsense to deal with, there's an increasing trend for pet owners to not vaccinate their pets as well. This appears to be due to silly concerns such as that their pets might suffer from autism, despite the fact that autism hasn't been observed in animals.

Ex naturopath being sued

21 January 2018

Britt Hermes used to be a naturopath. She graduated and treated patients in the US, before realising that naturopathy was all bluster and no substance, and she wasn't helping anyone with their medical issues.

Grounding

21 January 2018

I'm in Nelson on holiday at the moment, and at a market today I saw a lot of nonsense - many bad medical claims being made about honey, jewellery, etc.

Homeopathic treatment for Autism?

21 January 2018

One of the issues with fundraising sites like IndieGogo and Kickstarter is that there's a lack of adequate oversight to ensure that the products being offered are actually plausible. Sometimes things end up on my radar that look too good to be true, and at other times they're just plain ridiculous.

First Pastafarian Citizenship in NZ

17 December 2017

Adding legitimacy to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the first citizenship has just taken place with a new citizen wearing a colander on his head. Bjorn Oback, from Germany, wore a colander in Hamilton recently.

My visit to the OTO

17 December 2017

A friend recently contacted the OTO to ask about us attending one of their services, and last night we went to their Gnostic Mass in Wellington.

Nonsense Pharmacy to open in Wellington

17 December 2017

A new pharmacy called Wellworks, focussing on natural health products, is due to open in Wellington in January.

Spontaneous Human Combustion in London

17 December 2017

In September, a 70 year old man apparently burst into flames in London. It's a sad event, and a horrible way to die. The press have started calling it a case of Spontaneous Human Combustion - the idea that people sometimes just randomly burn.

UK has scrapped useless treatments

17 December 2017

18 classes of health product are being de-funded by the NHS in the UK, including 7 that are blacklisted:

Acupuncture websites are misleading

3 December 2017

Daniel Ryan from the Society for Science Based Healthcare wrote a study looking at acupuncture advertising in NZ. He ran a targeted search for New Zealand websites making claims about being able to treat a list of conditions for which advertising claims are restricted by the Medicines Act.

Gluckman talks about science denialism

3 December 2017

Sir Peter Gluckman, the PM's Science Advisor, says that NZ has a science denial problem, but that it's no worse than the rest of the world. Peter thinks that social media bubbles are contributing to this issue, by allowing people to get their news only from places that agree with their existing views on topics. He points out that traditional media is becoming more likely to be polarised as well, which is not good.

Holes in popular conspiracy theories

3 December 2017

In a recent article Cracked dot com has pointed out flaws in several popular conspiracy theories.

Most UK Water Boards use dowsing

3 December 2017

The NZ Skeptics conference was a great success, with a quiz on the Friday night and a weekend of fascinating talks. We gave all the attendees a bag of alternative medicine nonsense.

Dr Libby Weaver hits the news - twice

12 November 2017

Dr Libby is a nutritional biochemist, not a medical doctor, who regularly posts alternative medicine articles in Stuff. She sells books, goes on speaking tours, has promoted a Multi Level Marketing scheme - USANA over-priced vitamins - and now sells her own alt-med products

Ghost in TradeMe mirror

12 November 2017

After a ghost was spotted in a picture of a mirror being sold in a TradeMe auction, Wendy McCawe from Wellington Photographic Supplies quickly spotted that the "ghost" in question was actually a picture of the lead character from TV show Outlander. I'm impressed that she spotted it - I put the image through online forensic image tool Forensically, and couldn't see anything.

Go Green Expo still full of woo

12 November 2017

There's lots of nonsense at this year's Go Green expo, and I'll be there today sampling the weird and wonderful.

Sexual Harassment of kids is okay, because of Joseph and Mary?

12 November 2017

Republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore has been accused of sexually assaulting a 14 girl when he was 14. He has a worrying track record - as well as other accusations of sexual harassment of young girls, he's twice been promoted to the Supreme Court and then removed because of his refusal to follow church/state separation laws. He was suspended for trying to stop legal gay marriages from being performed.

Auckland thinking of dropping Glyphosate

5 November 2017

Auckland council are "revisiting" their decision to use popular weedkiller glyphosate, more commonly known as RoundUp. Auckland councillor Wayne Walker seems to be pushing a move to stop using the weedkiller, despite the fact that Federated Farmers and New Zealand's EPA say that it is safe.

Children handed religious tracts at Halloween

5 November 2017

My kids went out trick or treating the other day for halloween, and came back with more than just chocolate and lollies. Religious pamphlets were being handed out at some of the local houses, and my 10 year old daughter knew that I'd be interested to see them.

NZ Skeptics conference in Wellington

5 November 2017

This year's NZ Skeptics conference is in Wellington in 3 weeks. We have speakers such as Cara Santa Maria from the USA, and an ex naturopath, Britt Marie Hermes. We're hoping to officially announce our $100,000 prize for evidence of the supernatural, and it will be interesting to see what kinds of applicants we see over the next few months.

Women Stranded at Sea for 5 months

5 November 2017

Two women in a yacht were rescued this week, adrift a long way off the coast of Japan. Their story is that they left Honolulu for Tahiti, and immediately hit a storm which damaged their boat. After drifting for 6 months at sea, and being attacked by sharks, they were eventually rescued by the US Navy.

Breast Milk Soap

15 October 2017

A company is making claims about their soap made out of breast milk.

Christchurch private detective offering lie detector test which is unlikely to work

15 October 2017

The prevailing scientific opinion on lie detector tests is that they don't work well enough to be relied on in courts as evidence - in fact, they're probably not even a good way of discerning the truth. Unfortunately a Christchurch based private detective is selling tests to couples as a way of finding out whether a partner has cheated.

Doterra selling cancer cure in NZ

15 October 2017

Doterra is a successful multinational company which sells innovative medical treatments - or at least that's what they'd have you believe. In reality, it appears to be a Multi Level Marketing scheme, based on Essential Oils, which preys on vulnerable people and makes dangerous untrue claims about their products.

Conspiracy Theorists waste no time after Las Vegas shooting

8 October 2017

These days, with modern technology, it only takes a matter of days after most tragic events before conspiracy theorists have converged on an "alternative narrative". For the Sandy Hook massacre, there are people who claim it was a "false flag" operation where no children were actually killed. For missing flight MH370, the aeroplane was apparently re-routed to a secret military base.

New healing device about to go on sale in NZ

8 October 2017

A couple of years ago I went along to a talk in Wellington about a new device called the QTB (Quantum TrailBlazer), now rebranded as a QSB - Quantum Scalar Box. Back then the device was made from a piece of sewage pipe spray painted black, with several blue LEDs around the top. We were told to believe that the device was emitting "scalar waves" (a pseudo-scientific idea) on the Solfeggio frequencies. I sat there for half an hour while the device went through a range of these frequencies, supposedly healing areas of my life.

Sun protection pill goes on sale in NZ

8 October 2017

NZ now has its second ingested product for sun protection being sold. The first hit the market a few years ago, and is from a company called Osmosis Skincare. Their product contains "harmonised" water, which is described as:

Some great common sense advice from Rob Stock at Stuff

1 October 2017

The Pharmacy Council recently ran a consultation about a new proposed Code of Ethics, after they tried to weaken their code a couple of years ago to remove the requirement that pharmacists could only sell alternative medicines where there was evidence that they work.

The Apocalypse has been moved

1 October 2017

David Meade, who I spoke about last month as predicting the end of the world around the 20th of September, has given us all a reprieve. Obviously the world didn't end, but he now says that October the 21st is the real end of the world.

The FreeMan movement/Sovereign Citizens

1 October 2017

I recently found out that a movement which is popular in America has reached our shores. The Freeman movement, otherwise known as Sovereign Citizens, consists of people who believe that it is possible to declare yourself no longer beholden to the laws of your country, and not liable to pay taxes. Normally the process involves filling in obscure government forms, opting out of government forms of ID such as driving licenses and passports and writing signed declarations using lots of very big legal sounding words.

Iraq was Invaded because they had a stargate

3 September 2017

Another crazy conspiracy theory I'd never heard of - that Saddam Hussein owned a Stargate, and that the US had to invade to take it from him.

Newshub thought a picture of someone holding something rectangular was newsworthy

3 September 2017

Newshub published an article about an 80 year old picture showing a native american man holding something rectangular with flat edges. Although it conceivably looks like an iPhone 5, as the article concedes it's much more likely to be a mirror or blade.

Nonsense book gets free media coverage

3 September 2017

The Herald published an article about someone's prediction that the world will end in a few weeks. David Meade, described as a Christian numerologist, claims that on or just after September the 20th (my birthday!), the world will meet a fiery end.

One-sided article updated after complaint

3 September 2017

Last week an article was published on Stuff talking about how a young New Zealand woman who has had cancer (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) since she was 14 is going to spend $20,000 on an alternative treatment for her cancer - Ozone Therapy. The clinic says about this therapy:

Naturopath Implicated in Cancer Deaths

27 August 2017

Stuff has a great article about a Naturopath who has been involved in treating the cancer of two patients who have died recently. The patients have both spoken out about how they think they made a mistake in trusting the naturopath.

Satanic Panic

27 August 2017

It looks like the book has finally been closed on one of the most famous Satanic Panic cases in the US - that of the Kellers.

Daughter conned into selling her possessions

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.

Finally, a skeptical story about Lotto

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.

Haunted Doll "strikes" again

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.

Jacinta Ardern Conspiracy!

6 August 2017

Vinny Eastwood has suggested that the new head of the Labour Party is in league with the Freemasons:

Rural US Doctor may have to leave NZ

30 July 2017

There's a lack of rural doctors in NZ, and one doctor has spoken on Radio NZ this week about the trials and tribulations he's suffered trying to renew his visa to stay in the country. Dr Feller is a GP at Mountainview Medical Centre in Hawera, and the medical centre is badly in need of the service he provides. Losing him would not be good for the local community.

Sensing Murder hasn't helped NZ Police

30 July 2017

Emails have been released about the show Sensing Murder from OIA requests, and have brought to light (unsurprisingly) that the show has not materially helped the Police, and in some circumstances is considered to be a potential problem for ongoing cases.

There a major conspiracy theory I've never heard of!

30 July 2017

Last week I learned about a new conspiracy theory from Weather Wars International, a Facebook group dedicated to spreading nonsense about government control of the weather. A video posted to the group shows a field and trees, along with a light halo and what appears to be a rotating planet in the background.

Gifting Circles now illegal

16 July 2017

Women's gifting circles have made the news again this week as they are now officially considered a pyramid scheme by the Commerce Commission.

GMO Bananas may save lives

16 July 2017

I'm hoping that the anti-GMO crowd don't sink the new GMO banana before it has a chance to be properly tested. The banana has had genes inserted that allow it to create alpha and beta carotenes, which allow our bodies to create vitamin A, which should help some of the quarter of a million children who die every year due to a lack of the vitamin.

Siggi Henry profiled in the Spinoff

16 July 2017

The Spinoff did a great job of looking into Hamilton Councillor Siggi Henry's views on a variety of topics. It turns out that she's anti fluoride, anti-fat (she recently said that obesity was a risk to others as fat people could fall on you and hurt you) and anti-vaccine.

Vaxxed is still a nuisance in NZ

16 July 2017

The group responsible for bringing Vaxxed, an anti-vaccine movie, to Australia and New Zealand is still causing issues in our country. There are more screenings of Vaxxed coming up, including one in Wellington that I will try to attend:

Baby kept sick by mother's bad decision

2 July 2017

A mother in the US was found by doctors to be causing her child to fall ill because she was taking pills made from her own placenta. A company in the US makes the pills from dried placenta, and you supply them with your placenta after your child's birth.

I went to a Scientology Event

2 July 2017

Since I attended the opening of the new Scientology building in January, I have been called occasionally by a church member called Will who has been inviting me to Auckland Scientology events. However, I'm in Wellington and so I've been waiting patiently for a local event to be announced.

InfoWars promotes theory that NASA keeps slave kids on Mars

2 July 2017

Alex Jones, anchor man of the news outlet InfoWars in the US, hosted Robert David Steele on his show this week, and talked about Robert's theory that NASA are holding slave children on Mars. This has led to NASA officially denying the accusation, along with another recent claim that there are no active rovers on Mars.

Auckland Church Promoting Magical Oil

18 June 2017

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God has been handing out cross shaped vials of a "holy oil" which it says have been blessed in Jerusalem and can "activate people's faith" in order to treat medical conditions such as depression, addiction, heart problems and chronic pain.

Breatharians make Dangerous Claims

18 June 2017

A breatharian couple, Camila Castello and Akahi Ricardo, have publicly claimed that they live on "cosmic nourishment" from the "energy that exists in the universe and in themselves". They claim that they didn't eat at all for a period of 3 years, and that they hardly ever eat. When they do eat, it's a piece of fruit or some broth.

I was visited by Jehovah's Witnesses

18 June 2017

The Jehovah's Witnesses came around for an hour or more yesterday, having previously chatted with me last week.

Probable nonsense promoted at Hamilton Fieldays

18 June 2017

An article in the Herald this week talked about several innovations that were showcased at the Hamilton Fieldays event. Unfortunately, one of the products, DermaShield, appears to be very much pseudo-scientific.

Apparently I need a colonic

11 June 2017

Nigel Antony Gray is a Scientologist who believes he can predict earthquakes and that the weather is controlled by the government - and recently that fidget spinners send out harmful "frequencies". Nigel has decided that he will allow skeptics to join his secretive Facebook group - Spiritual Awareness New Zealand - as long as they follow his instructions.

Aussie shows how lax sham journals can be

11 June 2017

Since a letter of mine was published in the New Zealand Medical Journal recently, I've started receiving occasional emails inviting me to send in a paper to a new journal for publication. It's immediately obvious that these are sham journals, as they call me Dr Honeychurch and are for topics that are unrelated to my area of interest (and not even expertise!), alternative medicine:

Credulous alt-med article on Radio NZ

11 June 2017

Radio NZ published an article this week that seemed to accept, without evidence, claims that traditional Maori medicine can help with medical conditions including cancer.

Don't put ground up wasp's nest in your vagina

4 June 2017

A new alternative therapy has become popular recently - grinding up oak galls and putting the paste in your vagina. Oak galls are woody balls created when a wasp larva grows inside an oak tree's leaf bud. It is being claimed by sellers of this remedy that it can tighten and clean your vagina and improve your sex life.

Nice article about Dave Hansford and 1080

4 June 2017

Dave Hansford from Nelson has written a book - called "Protecting Paradise: 1080 and the Fight to Save New Zealand's Wildlife" - about New Zealand's use of the poison 1080. The name appears to be a play on the Graf Boys' documentary Poisoning Paradise, which tried to paint a picture that 1080 is not as safe as the government says it is.

Robert Bigelow believes aliens are on earth

4 June 2017

Robert Bigelow is convinced that aliens are not only real, but they have visited earth and are living on our planet. He believes that his grandparents were visited by an alien craft, and says that he has spent millions gathering evidence that aliens are among us. People have pointed out that his company Bigelow Aerospace's logo looks a lot like the head of a "gray" - the most popular depiction of an alien, with big almond shaped eyes and a teardrop face.

USA "pulls out" of the Paris Climate Accord

4 June 2017

Although there is a history in skepticism of people being "skeptical" of climate change, modern skepticism understands that there is a broad consensus amongst scientists that climate change is both real and caused by humans.

Blasphemy Law may finally be repealed

21 May 2017

After incidents with Stephen Fry and Jakarta's mayor, blasphemy made the news and there has finally been a push in government to repeal our archaic blasphemy law. Bill English expressed his surprise that we have a blasphemy law (which is funny, given that he's Catholic and the Catholic church have unsuccessfully tried to use the law in this country in the past), and David Seymour attempted to introduce a private member's bill to parliament to repeal the law (section 123 of the Crimes Act).

Proof of a flat earth

21 May 2017

Someone in the US recently flew on a plane with a spirit level to prove that the earth is flat. Instead he demonstrated a misunderstanding of physics.

Proof that people were in NZ before Maori?

21 May 2017

A claim has been made by Noel Hilliam that European settlers beat Maori to settling NZ, and that reconstruction of skulls from a woman and man have shown that they originated in Wales and the Mediterranean, respectively. The woman had blue eyes and blonde hair, and the

Nigel Antony Gray Still Crazy

7 May 2017

Nigel Antony Gray, who shot to infamy last November when he "predicted" an earthquake, gave a talk in Petone last night.

Te Kiri Gold makers forced to release a statement

7 May 2017

On April 11th I submitted a complaint to Medsafe about Te Kiri Gold, a bleach made by farmer Vernon Coxhead which he is selling as a cancer cure.

Arise Church

23 April 2017

Last Sunday I went to church - not once, but twice. Arise is a large evangelical church that started in Wellington about 15 years ago, and has grown and spread to several other cities.

Kelvin Cruickshank talks to Jonah Lomu

23 April 2017

Kelvin Cruickshank has made the news because he's promoting a new book - "Surrounded by Spirit". In the book he claims he talked with the spirit of Jonah Lomu at a show last year, apparently unaware that Jonah's brother John was in the audience:

Otago Uni Screened Vaxxed

9 April 2017

Otago University have defended their decision to allow a screening of Vaxxed, citing free speech and a need to controversial topics to be discussed.

Te Kiri Gold Cancer "Treatment" on sale

9 April 2017

We talked about Te Kiri Gold last year, when Sir Colin Meads was in the news endorsing it as a treatment for cancer. Although it wasn't on sale back then, and Vernon had been promising to run proper scientific trials of the product before putting it on the market, this seems to have now been forgotten.

Citizen Science and Planet 9

2 April 2017

I received an email earlier this week about a new Citizen Science Project called Planet 9.

NASA spends over $1 million on theology

2 April 2017

formulating a "Christian response" to scientific studies on morality

Vaxxed Premiered at Reading Cinemas LynnMall

2 April 2017

Census adds new non-religious categories

26 March 2017

The NZ Census asks a question of respondents about Religious Affiliation. Historically, the only response available for non-believers has been "No Religion". NZ Stats have now added several categories in time for the next Census in 2018.

I wrote a letter to the NZ Medical Journal

26 March 2017

Mark Hanna of the Society for Science Based Healthcare and I had an exchange over IM a few months ago, where we realised that there are so many bad claims being made for alternative therapies that if you picked a random combination of condition and treatment, chances are high that someone in NZ is making illegal claims that the treatment can successfully treat the condition.

Shaquille O'Neal believes in a flat earth?

26 March 2017

Shaquille O'Neal gave his support to the flat earth conspiracy movement on a podcast recently. However, although many websites were quick to jump on this, it turns out that Shaq was just joking:

Australian who faked cancer diagnosis and cure found guilty

19 March 2017

Back in 2009 Belle Gibson claimed she had cancer, and that she was treating it with "natural" remedies. She released a cookbook and iPhone app (called The Whole Pantry) helping others to use diet to treat medical conditions.

Interview with Sensing Murder producers

19 March 2017

"I have no evidence of whether it is real or not real"

My Visit to faith healer Father John Rea

5 March 2017

Six of us skeptics went along to Father John Rea's healing event on Tuesday in Tawa, Wellington. John is a well known healer in New Zealand, and he's appeared on my skeptical radar in the past for making claims about being able to treat cancer.

Homeopathic Teething Tablets linked to US deaths for sale in NZ

19 February 2017

Homeopathic products are made by diluting a substance that causes similar symptoms to the condition they're meant to treat. In the case of Hyland's Teething Tablets, that substance is belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade. Wikipedia says that it's "one of the most toxic plants found in the Eastern Hemisphere".

Strange lottery "tactic" - buying multiple tickets with the same numbers

19 February 2017

A man from Nelson won $100,000 recently when his numbers came up in the lottery, and he'd purchased 12 tickets with the same numbers. Although this is touted as a lottery tactic, in the long run, on average, people using this method to play the lottery will win less than others, as any wins they have will result in a lower payout per ticket.

Vaxxed movie showing in Auckland in April

19 February 2017

Anti-vaccination advocates in New Zealand have raised enough money to bring a screening of Vaxxed, a movie created by disgraced ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield and promoted by Robert de Niro, to New Zealand. The movie is an attempt to sow doubt about vaccines, and makes extensive use of secret audio recordings of CDC employee and "whistleblower" William Thompson.

Whales were stranded by "weather modification" technology

19 February 2017

Ex fraudster released early trying alternative cancer treatment

5 February 2017

Vicki Latele, who was jailed for mortgage fraud, has had a tough time. She has cancer, and has had her stomach removed. It appears that the standard treatments, such as chemotherapy, have not helped her, and she's been released from prison on compassionate grounds.

Ricky Gervais talks about science vs belief

5 February 2017

This is an argument I've never heard before against an idea I occasionally hear - that belief in science is just like religion, because it requires faith. In fact, I last heard this argument only a couple of weeks ago.

Scientology out on the streets in Grafton

5 February 2017

I was messaged this week by someone who works near the new Scientology centre in Auckland. They told me that there are lots of Scientologists out on the streets at the moment, including outside the nearby hospital, trying to bring people into the church. The way they do this is quite disingenuous, normally starting with offering a free personality test - the Oxford Capacity Analysis test (nothing to do with Oxford University)

Kiwi Creationism

29 January 2017

Robert Hunt spoke on behalf of Creation Ministries International this morning at Upper Hutt Baptist Church.

Scientology "Ideal Org" Grand Opening

22 January 2017

Scientology are pushing to open new "Ideal Orgs" around the world, and Auckland's old Whitecliffe Art school building has been converted to a new Org. It was purchased in 2007 with a $10 million loan from Scientology central, but recently local Scientologists borrowed a further $6 million to restore and modernise the building.

Applied Kinesiology

18 December 2016

The Society for Science Based Healthcare were asked about Applied Kinesiology this week and I helped to write this response to questions:

Colin Meads using "magic water" for his cancer

18 December 2016

I was contacted by a journalist about a local cancer "cure", Te Kiri Gold, and sent a response (with a little help from ex-chair of the NZ Skeptics, Vicki Hyde):

Earthquake "predictor" shows his true colours

18 December 2016

Nigel Antony Gray, who "predicted" last month's earthquake on Facebook, has recently shown just how daft, and dangerous, he is.

Fiji Government conned by scam artist

18 December 2016

Fijian government representatives, including leader Frank Bainimarama, were at a lavish launch event a couple of weeks ago to announce the launch of a new app which is set to revolutionise our mobile phone use.

MMM Scam hits Nigeria

18 December 2016

In the scheme invested money receives a return of 30% profit after a month. It works as a classic Ponzi scheme, where the incoming money from new members is used to pay members whose investment is withdrawn. These schemes work while they gain in popularity, but stop working as soon as they stop growing. The most famous example of this is the Bernie Madoff fraud, where it's estimated that $65 billion was lost.

NZ Skeptics Conference

4 December 2016

Here are my notes from this year's NZ Skeptics conference:

Bioptron call me

27 November 2016

After last Sunday's show, when I talked about Bioptron at the Go Green Expo, a Bioptron rep called up RadioLive and asked for me to contact them. I called, and was then contacted the next day by a Division Manager for Bioptron - David.

Lots of earthquake nonsense

27 November 2016

There have been a few stories in the news recently about earthquakes that have left me feeling skeptical:

Skeptics Conference

27 November 2016

We have some great speakers for this year's Skeptics Conference, including Susan Gerbic who runs the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project. Her team put a lot of work into adding a skeptical angle to Wikipedia pages and fleshing out pages of interest to skeptics, such as those of famous scientists.

Go Green Expo full of woo

13 November 2016

I went to the Go Green Expo yesterday, along with other skeptics. The expo is meant to showcase green products and services, but many of the stalls promote alternative health.

The Vice President-Elect is crazy!

13 November 2016

Obviously people around the world are painfully aware of the many crazy beliefs held by president-elect Donald Trump. However, what's less well known is the range of nonsense that Mike Pence, America's future Vice President, believes.

Chinese Man telling women's futures by touching their breasts!

21 October 2016

A Chinese man appears to have invented a novel way to tell the future. He puts his hand down a woman's top, feels her breast, and presumably uses the information he gleans to work out what is in store for the woman. Of course, by using cold reading a fortune teller

Indonesian "Bigfoot" caught on camera

21 October 2016

As usual, it's blurry footage from far away that is most likely a human. It appears to be a tall figure, dark, with a big stride and holding something white swinging in its hand. The white object could be a carrier bag. Of course, as the footage is taken from far away so our brains end up doing a lot of guesswork to try to make sense of what we're seeing.

MedSafe has registered over a thousand unproven homeopathic health products as medicines

21 October 2016

Here's a press release that was sent out recently about a complaint I'd made to the ASA. As a result of the complaint, we uncovered the fact that Medsafe "grandfathered" in over a thousand of Weleda's homeopathic products. Medsafe registered these products as medicines without checking if there was evidence that they work, and despite a general understanding within science that homeopathy is ineffective. All they checked for is that there were no records of the products being unsafe, and given that homeopathy is normally nothing more than sugar pills or sugar water there were unlikely to have been any safety issues.

Rival "health" bracelet sellers in NZ end up in punch-up

21 October 2016

An incident at the Hawke's Bay Better Home and Living Show has made the news because it made the courtroom. There were sellers of two different brands of health bracelet at the show, Shuzi and Zenteq.

Anti Fluoride Group to promote DHB Candidates

25 September 2016

There is currently a bill working its way through parliament which proposes moving the decision to fluoridate water supplies away from local councils and into the hands of DHBs. This appears to be a very good move, as fluoridation is a health issue and DHBs are much better suited to weighing up the pros and cons than local councils are. Councils in NZ have historically been bamboozled by Fluoride Free NZ, our local anti fluoride group, and have in some cases made decisions to remove fluoride.

Dodgy Thai cancer clinic criticised

25 September 2016

The infamous Brio clinic in Thailand has sucked in unsuspecting kiwis, promising to treat them with unconventional therapies for cancer. One unfortunate victim, Holly Devine, died after raising $55,000 on Givealittle for treatment at the clinic, but before attending the clinic.

Homeopathy Column removed from local paper

25 September 2016

Mark Hanna at the Society for Science Based Healthcare has complained recently about the Napier Courier's column written by a local homeopathy business, called "Homeopathy Hub". the weekly column made many daft claims about the effectiveness of homeopathy, such as:

New Sensing Murder Episode being recorded

25 September 2016

Despite much criticism of both the original broadcasts and the recent reruns, it appears that TVNZ are recording a new episode of Sensing Murder. The episode focuses on a murder in Napier in 2008.

Atheist documentary maker comes to NZ

18 September 2016

Chris Johnson created a coffee table book a few years ago, quoting atheists talking about their life without god. The book was titled A Better Life, and the strap line explains exactly what the book is about - "100 Atheists Speak Out on Joy & Meaning in a World Without God".

Free Effective Altruism book

18 September 2016

The Effective Altruism movement is becoming popular in New Zealand. The basic idea is that logic and critical thinking can be applied to charity giving, and that charities range from being great at helping people to being as good as useless, or even detrimental.

Homeopathy Column being removed from local paper

18 September 2016

Mark Hanna at the Society for Science Based Healthcare has complained recently about the Napier Courier's column written by a local homeopathy business, called "Homeopathy Hub". the weekly column made many daft claims about the effectiveness of homeopathy, such as:

Stuff uncritically publishes more medical nonsense

18 September 2016

Stuff have reprinted another article from Juice Daily, which claims that garlic, pineapple, a salt water gargle and chicken soup can help with allergies. Of course, this is all unproven tosh and certainly not good medical advice. Thomas Lumley at Stats Chat does a good job of deconstructing the article, going through all the links in the article and checking out the evidence for the claims. Unsurprisingly, the given evidence is very thin:

Trump gets medical opinion from Oz

18 September 2016

As part of the US presidential election circus, and given that both candidates are two of the oldest candidates ever, health records have become a part of the debate.

Are processed foods causing mental illness?

28 August 2016

Julia Rucklidge from Canterbury University has suggested that processed food may be a cause of a mental illness epidemic.

Chiropractic for Pregnancy Issues?

28 August 2016

A woman has made the news today because she has been denied treatment for a medical condition, symphysis pubis dysfunction, related to her pregnancy. Southern Cross Insurance have said that the reason for not paying for treatment is that pregnant women in New Zealand are eligible for free healthcare, and so their policies don't cover pregnancy.

SBH press complaints

28 August 2016

The Society for Science Based Healthcare has recently submitted complaints about articles in two newspapers.

We should all drink alcohol for our health

28 August 2016

The NZ Herald reports that "a leading scientist" (Dr Poikolainen) has said a bottle of wine a day would do no harm to your health, and that drinking more than the current recommended daily amount of alcohol is more beneficial than not drinking at all. Dr Poikolainen has also written a book on the subject - "Perfect Drinking and its Enemies":

Brian Cox argues with Australian senator about climate change

21 August 2016

Brian Cox argued with Australian senator Malcolm Roberts on TV show Q&A about climate change, accusing NASA and other organisations of "corrupting" temperature data.

Naturopathic Murder

21 August 2016

I totally agree that people should not be allowed to talk about treating health conditions if they have not received approval, and hopefully the upcoming Natural Health Products bill will be a step in the right direction in New Zealand for ensuring claims can't be made without good evidence.

Not all water in NZ is chlorinated

21 August 2016

After a recent second campylobacter issue in Havelock North, it turns out that the Hastings water supply is not treated with chlorine to kill bacteria.

Stuff article on superfoods actually talks sense!

21 August 2016

Superfoods are foods that are touted as having high levels of one or more nutrients, with claims made that these nutrients can heal the body. These superfoods, such as kale, goji berries and chia seeds, are often sold at very high prices.

Witch Doctor in Wellington

21 August 2016

There were several witch doctors in Auckland last year, and they eventually left the country after efforts were made to clamp down on them, including some successful ASA complaints.

David Icke Auckland Talk

7 August 2016

Here are my bullet points and photos from David Icke's recent 12 hour talk given in Auckland:

FYI needs help categorising OIA requests

17 July 2016

FYI is a great website for making Official Information Act requests. You can submit a request to a government department through the site and all correspondence is made public on the site.

Muslim call "For Public Purity", asking for people to hide dogs, appears to be a hoax

17 July 2016

A leaflet has been shared in several british towns purporting to be from an unknown Muslim organisation, "For Public Purity", asking for locals to refrain from taking their dogs out in public as it is an affront to Islam. However, Muslim groups deny that there is any effort on their part to ban dogs and that the leaflets are likely a hoax designed to foment unrest in England.

Sad news for Pastafarianism

17 July 2016

A couple of weeks ago Rachel Hoover from Illinois was allowed to use a photo with her wearing a colander for her driver's license, as it is the usual headgear for pastafarians. This week she has been asked by the Secretary of State, John Kerry, to submit a new driver's license photo without the colander.

The NZ Herald does it again with "natural" remedies for glandular fever

17 July 2016

Somebody asked Sandra Clair from Artemis, who writes for the Herald and sells natural remedies:

US Pastor says that Pokemon are "digital demons"

17 July 2016

Pokemon Go is a new game where people have to use their phones and walk around their neighbourhood catching Pokemon (little animals) and visiting pokestops. Many churches are pokestops, as places of worship have been registered.

Bee Venom is supposedly an effective cosmetic

10 July 2016

Yet another infomercial style article has been published on the NZ Herald, this time talking about the benefits of bee venom. Abeeco are a major seller of bee products in New Zealand, and they have several successful ASA complaints against them. Abeeco talks in the article about their products, but all they are able to produce in support of them is anecdotes - no proper data. The article even has an 0800 number at the bottom, and although it just says to call the number for "more information", nowhere does it state that the number is Abeeco's sales line!

Noah's Ark "replica" opens in Kentucky, US

10 July 2016

Australian Ken Ham's Creation "Museum" has opened its newest attraction, the Ark Encounter, on Thursday.

Sensing murder episodes are being rerun on TVNZ

10 July 2016

I was asked for my thoughts about the most recent Sensing Murder re-run last week, and an article was published on Monday talking about the program. I talked with journalist Carly Gooch about how there are only around 60 unsolved murders from the last 100 years, and that it wouldn't take much for a "psychic" to memorise some of the details of each of these cases. I also managed to find an article online from 5 years before the program was filmed which detailed most or all of the facts that the psychics were able to produce.

US man thinks he knows "the secret" to winning the lottery

10 July 2016

This weekend's lottery Powerball jackpot was worth $40 million, with 3 winners. The NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB reported on Richard Lustig, a US man who has won several prizes and written a book explaining how to win the lottery.

110 Nobel laureates tell Greenpeace they are wrong about GMOs

3 July 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/

Christchurch City Council to reduce use of weedkiller

3 July 2016

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/81470129/Christchurch-City-Council-to-reduce-use-of-potentially-dangerous-weedkiller

Jail time for dad who treated son's meningitis with alternative treatments

3 July 2016

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/health/judge-to-sentence-parents-whose-little-boy-died-of-bacterial-meningitis-384237241.html

Ken Ring tells people not to trust anything

3 July 2016

A recent article on Ken Ring's Predict Weather website, presumably written by Ken, has told people not to trust anything they read in the media. In a particularly conspiratorial tone, the article says that you should not trust politicians and you should consider not taking a cancer treatment that the medical profession recommends to you.

1,000 UK Vets say homeopathy should be banned

26 June 2016

A petition on change.org has been signed by 1,000 vets asking for the UK to blacklist homeopathy as a treatment that vets can prescribe for animals. Over 2,500 people have signed it in all.

Blink-182 Guitarist denies he's left band to chase UFOs

26 June 2016

Tom DeLonge, the guitarist of a rock band in the US which was popular in the early 2000s has denied rumours that he's quit the band to focus on research into UFOs and aliens.

NZ Herald prints article saying that taking selfies can damage your skin

26 June 2016

A dermatologist at a recent anti-ageing conference has said that regularly exposing the face to the light and electromagnetic radiation from smartphones can speed up ageing and wrinkles. Doctors even claim they can tell which hand a person holds their phone in just by looking at which side of the face is most damaged.

Stuff removes article on Colloidal Silver

26 June 2016

Stuff published an advertorial article last week claiming that colloidal silver - small particles of silver in a cream or spray - could treat a variety of medical conditions. The article was written by a sales representative from Skybright Natural Health, a company which sells colloidal silver products. She said:

Tony Robbins followers injured walking on hot coals

26 June 2016

Tony Robbins is a very popular motivational speaker, and charges US$1,000 or more for a high energy day of talks. Events have names such as "Date with Destiny", "Life and Wealth Mastery" and "Unleash the Power Within". Tony's website has testimonials from famous celebrities, such as Hugh Jackman, Bill Clinton and Serena Williams. Video of Tony Robbins events look a lot like evangelical christian sunday services - lots of music, jumping around and highly emotional sermons.

Beauty Clinics are treating people instead of referring them

19 June 2016

Consumer NZ used secret shoppers to visit 46 NZ beauty clinics with a raised skin spot. The issue was such that the undercover person should have been referred to a GP, but 7 of the 46 clinics said that they were able to treat the problem themselves, with lasers, electrocution, needling or cutting.

Bilderberg Group meeting in Watford, England

19 June 2016

The Bilderberg Group met last week, and there were protests by the usual conspiracy crowd.

CYF can't say if they pay for alternative treatments

19 June 2016

Chris Hyde from the Timaru Herald received a response to an OIA request to CYF this week. There was a recent case where a man was convicted for child abuse of CYF kids in Timaru, and he was used by CYF as an EFT practitioner.

Dr Shaun Holt warns about cancer cures

19 June 2016

A young woman died this week, while she was trying to raise $70k to fund and alternative cancer treatment at the Brio Clinic in Thailand. Amanda Ferreira also died last month from cancer. She had been to the Brio clinic once, and had been raising money to have further treatment there. Common treatments are heat therapy, ultrasound and pH transformation (probably alkaline).

UFO Spotted in Christchurch

19 June 2016

There have been multiple sightings of UFOs in Christchurch this week, prompted by footage recorded by Oisin Lavelle. The footage shows a coloured blob moving erratically.

Alt Med peddler Chris Savage stopped at Auckland airport

12 June 2016

Chris Savage, an ex police officer from Australia, has a long history of being outright dangerous. He's anti-vaccine, and claims to be able to treat autism and cancer with magnesium (chloride) and DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) infusions. He's currently in New Zealand, and has been treating people while claiming he's a doctor.

Climate change deniers added to Christchurch coastal erosion panel

12 June 2016

There is now a second panel that has been convened to review Christchurch Council's "Tonkin Taylor" coastal erosion report. The panel has been instructed to:

Dodgy claims made about sawdust therapy in Auckland

12 June 2016

The most plausible benefits probably occur from the mixture fermenting, producing heat. It's pretty unlikely that anything else in the spa is helping your body.

National MP Maureen Pugh 'doesn't believe in pharmaceutical drugs'

12 June 2016

Maureen is the newest member of parliament, a National Party MP who seems to have a few pseudoscientific beliefs.

Singer Bobby Brown claims he had sex with a ghost

12 June 2016

Bobby brown has spoken out about having sex with a ghost!

1080 blamed for kiwi bird deaths

5 June 2016

An image of dozens of dead kiwis was recently used by an anti 1080 Facebook activist group, New Zealand's Not Clean Green, to show that the poison is harming local wildlife.

Family First research 'high school level' statistics

5 June 2016

Family first have confused correlation and causation in a recent report, and stated that unmarried couples are a major cause of child poverty.

Osteopath admits performing acupuncture without qualifications

5 June 2016

Valerie Todd, an osteopath, has been found guilty by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal of performing acupuncture on three patients in Nelson in 2014 without the required qualifications, and will likely be fined $1,500 and a portion of the trial costs.

Rush Limbaugh weighs in on Harambe the gorilla

5 June 2016

Rush Limbaugh, US radio talk show host, has used a conversation about Harambe the gorilla to argue that evolution does not work.

Claims chiropractors can treat ADHD, allergies 'misleading' customers

17 April 2016

Mark Hanna and I wrote a letter to the New Zealand Medical Journal about research we had completed showing that the majority of chiropractors break the Chiropractic Board policy on advertising. The policy states:

Family First vows to fight move to de-register it as charity

17 April 2016

Family First may be de-registered as a charity soon. They have been sent a notice of de-registration from Charities Services, but plan to fight it in court. They have previously defended against an attempt to be de-registered last year.

Former anti-vaxxer's emotional plea following newborn daughter contracting whooping cough

17 April 2016

An Australian woman with a newborn has passed whooping cough onto her daughter, and now wishes she'd taken the vaccine she was offered:

Luckiest Lotto stores revealed

17 April 2016

The NZ Herald published a list of the top 5 luckiest stores, and went so far as to claim that your chances of winning the lottery would increase if you visit one of these stores!

Skeptics' visit to the Mind Body Spirit Fair

17 April 2016

A group of 9 skeptics visited the Mind Body Spirit fair in Taita, Wellington yesterday. We had a good time, and saw lots of weird and wonderful things on offer.

Water fluoridation - DHBs to take control from councils under Govt proposal

17 April 2016

The Health Minister (Jonathan Coleman) and Associate Health Minister (Peter Dunne) are proposing to move the decision about water fluoridation out of the hands of local councils, and giving the responsibility to DHBs.

Adult Coloring Books and Mandalas, A Warning For Christians

13 March 2016

A Christian blogger has warned that mandalas in adult colouring in books could be dangerous. She suggests that the magical new age claims made about mandalas are true, that they have the ability to heal if you meditate on them and that a good way to do this is to colour them in. Of course, as these magical claims are not Christian, they must be bad and Christians should stay away from them.

Call for council to make Christchurch parks spray-free

13 March 2016

Christchurch council has voted 12-1 to look into ceasing use of glyphosate to kill weeds. The decision seems to have been made based on a recent International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report which labels glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic". Many other products come under a similar classification, such as coffee, alcohol and bacon. The important question isn't "is it carcinogenic?", but "how carcinogenic is it?". (Paracelsus)

Ten of the healthiest herbs and spices to keep you fighting fit

13 March 2016

An article on Stuff makes a lot of claims about these herbs and spices, but makes sure to qualify their claims with phrases such as:

The Mandela Effect

13 March 2016

The Mandela Effect is where people have false memories of past events, and decide that there's been a jump to an alternative universe where history is different.

Acupuncture Works! (Not really)

28 February 2016

On Thursday I went to Cafe Scientifique, a regular meeting in Wellington where talks are given about a scientific topic.

Johnson & Johnson ordered to pay more than AU$100 million in suit linking talcum powder to ovarian cancer

28 February 2016

Jacqueline Fox, who died last year, had used Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder for 35 years on her genitals.

NZ gets its first Flying Spaghetti Monster marriage celebrant

28 February 2016

After the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster successfully applied for the ability to register marriage celebrants last year, their first celebrant has now been approved. Karen Martyn is willing to travel to anywhere in the country to perform a pastafarian wedding ceremony.

NZ Natural Health Products Bill

28 February 2016

Submissions are closing next week for the Natural Health and Supplementary Products bill, which seeks to regulate alternative medicine. Although there are several issues, such as the use of "historical evidence" being allowed, the bill in general is positive. People are encouraged to read the bill and make a submission.

Sydney IV.ME clinic closed after client hospitalised

28 February 2016

A new trend started recently, when IV "hydration" clinics opened in Australia late last year, called iv.me and the Hangover Clinic. The clinics offer customers a range of treatments, consisting of IV drips with various mixes of saline, vitamins, painkillers and oxygen.

Homeopathy effective for 0 out of 68 illnesses, study finds

21 February 2016

Last year professor Paul Glasziou from Bond University in Australia headed up a team that wrote a systematic review of systematic reviews on homeopathy as part of a report for Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Justice Scalia murder conspiracy

21 February 2016

Antonin Scalia, a conservative Supreme Court judge in the US, died this week at age 79. Scalia took some strange legal views in his time, such as this one on evolution:

Sea monster washes up in Australia

21 February 2016

Yet another sea monster has been found, this time in Swansea, NSW, Australia. Ethan Tipper posted the photo on Facebook, asking "What the f*** is this?".

Shane Warne believes alien experiments turned monkeys into humans

21 February 2016

Shane Warne is currently appearing on Australia's version of I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!. He announced on the show that he thinks aliens created the pyramids in Egypt, and that they also engineered humans:

Texas Board of Education hopeful believes Obama was a homosexual prostitute

21 February 2016

In the United States, the Texas board of education is very important because the state is so large. This means that the board has a large sway over which textbooks are used nationwide in schools. Historically Texas has been a battleground for creationism, with efforts to get as many fundamentalist Christians onto the board of education as possible.

Bags with coins in spotted at Muriwai Cafe

14 February 2016

Hang bags of water around to keep flies away. Coins or bits of tin foil can be used inside the bags.

David Icke Coming to New Zealand

14 February 2016

David Icke was last in NZ in 2011. He'll talk in Auckland about his new book (surprise, surprise!), lizards, the illuminati and many other nonsense subjects.

Fast food Fakery

14 February 2016

A couple of stories about fast food that set off my skeptical alarm bells this week.

New video of 'Yeti' at ski resort sparks Internet debate

14 February 2016

There is a one second shaky video of a Yeti, along with a higher resolution picture.

Whakatane flip-flops on fluoride

14 February 2016

The Whakatane council voted to remove fluoride from its water supply a couple of weeks ago, and reversed the decision this week.

Are antioxidant-rich products good for us?

7 February 2016

Research is coming to light that antioxidants in food and drinks are not useful to aid health, and may actually be damaging to us.

Donald Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

7 February 2016

Someone has put Mr Trump forward for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Supporters said in the submission that Mr. Trump deserved the prize for:

Jonathan Sarfati's New Zealand Visit

7 February 2016

I went to see Creation Ministries International speaker Jonathan Sarfati give a couple of talks in Wellington last week. Jonathan was brought up in New Zealand, and was once the national chess champion.

KFC wins payout over China mutant chicken rumours

7 February 2016

(Although we all know that fast food is not generally a great nutritional choice, there's a lot of nonsense out there about how bad fast food is. The most pernicious is about how fast food doesn't rot, and people have shown this by keeping McDonalds burgers for years, with only minimal breakdown of the food. Of course, it's been shown that in the same conditions where McDonalds burgers don't rot, organic home-made burgers don't rot either)

Sandy Hook truther to face jury

7 February 2016

Matthew Mills believes that the Sandy Hook school massacre in the US didn't happen. Unfortunately he's taken his belief to an extreme, publicly harassing the sister of one of the victims, a school teacher called Victoria Soto. Victoria has been hailed as a hero for her efforts to protect the children under her care, and lost her life in the process. Matthew believes that Victoria never existed, and has been harassing her sister in an effort to get her to admit this.

Split verdict for 'pH Miracle' author

7 February 2016

"The prime origin and cause of cancerous tissue is the over-acidification of the tissues then the blood due to lifestyle and dietary choices. A cancerous tissue begins with our choices of what we eat, what we drink, what we think and how we live. Cancer is a liquid and this liquid is a toxic acidic waste product of metabolism or energy consumption."

Anti-vaxxer's baby hospitalised with whooping cough

13 December 2015

Australian Anti-vaccination activist's 11 week old daughter hospitalised for whooping cough, which kills 1 in 200 children who pick up the infection.

Bronx priest stole more than $1M from two NYC churches

13 December 2015

A Bronx priest stole more than $1M from two NYC churches, and used the cash on a wild S&M romance with his beefy boyfriend

Disciplined osteopath George McKenzie yet to apologise

13 December 2015

An osteopath in Christchurch has been disciplined for treating a patient's toothache by touching her breast.

Eighty children get chickenpox at school that calls for 'tolerance' of vaccine dodgers

13 December 2015

Up to 80 kids - 1 in 4 - at Brunswick North West Primary School in Melbourne have contracted chicken pox. The school is tolerant or even welcoming of parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids. Newsletters have reiterated this view:

Faith healer Rod Parsley seeks conventional treatment for throat cancer

13 December 2015

Rod Parsley of the World Harvest church isn't relying on his healing abilities to treat his throat cancer but is seeking actual medical treatments.

Marlborough clairvoyant steals $250,000 from couple in rest home

13 December 2015

Former accountant turned psychic took $250 thousand from an elderly couple in a rest home who had been friends with him for 30 years. The money was taken over a period of 12 years.

Save the Wellington Astrology Centre

13 December 2015

The Wellington Astrology centre, a drop-in office in central Wellington, is struggling to make ends meet and has turned to Pledge Me to raise funds. It's been running since 2011, but now needs $3,000 to cover the next 3 months of bills.

End of the World Predictions

15 November 2015

There has been a major end of the world prediction about every 100 years or so from 66AD onwards. Then from 1500AD (16th Century) every 10 years, then by the 1970s pretty much every year.

Submission to the Pharmacy Council

1 November 2015

In early October the NZ Skeptics submitted a response to the Pharmacy Council's consultation on a proposed change to their Code of Ethics. It had recently been pointed out to the Pharmacy Council (by the Society for Science Based Healthcare) that many pharmacies sell unproven health products, in breach of their current Code of Ethics. The Pharmacy Council's proposed solution is to alter their code to remove the part of the clause that is being breached.

MagneSleep lost an ASA complaint

11 October 2015

MagneSleep lost an ASA complaint about a magnetic bracelet they sell, and they don't like me

NHS wants to employ a Spiritual Healer

11 October 2015

The NHS are advertising for a spiritual healer.

Online real estate agency offers ghost-free home certification

11 October 2015

Houses can sell for up to 20% less than market value, and twice as hard to sell, if they're thought to be haunted. I wonder how much less it can be when they're not haunted?

Perth Electrical Engineer finds errors in climate models

11 October 2015

He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate's sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.

The world ends... again

11 October 2015

During the recent visit of Pope Francis to the United States, in every city he visited, (Washington DC, New York City and Philadelphia,) there were people at the fringes of the largest crowds wearing bright yellow shirts, often carrying large yellow signs, handing out literature proclaiming the end of the world for October 7, 2015 from eBible Fellowship, led by Chris McCann.

Zimbabwe prophet's attempt to prove he can walk on air' falls flat

11 October 2015

Shepherd Bushiri has claimed in a video that he is walking on air.

Clairvoyant solves phantom freaking out Dunedin

4 October 2015

A crew member felt their trousers being tugged, the bottom of someone's seat was kicked, a chandelier prop worked intermittently, and a hat was knocked off

Doctors and pharmacists clash over complementary medicines

4 October 2015

The Pharmacy Council is trying to change part of its Code of Ethics: Here is the old code:

Haka gives ABs more than a psychological lift

4 October 2015

A silly article on Stuff recently talked about the benefits of a haka before playing rugby:

More sex for a healthy prostate - report

4 October 2015

One in 13 men will develop prostate cancer before the age of 75.

NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today's Mars

4 October 2015

seasonal hydrated salts detected when above -23c, would lower the freezing point of a liquid brine

Blood Moon on September 28 will bring huge earth-destroying earthquakes

27 September 2015

A blood moon is a new name for a lunar eclipse, where the earth travels between the sun and the moon. The full moon turns red.

California's Drought Is A Government Conspiracy

27 September 2015

Dane Wigington, lead researcher for GeoEngineering Watch says:

Dalai Lama Says a Female Successor Should Be Very Attractive

27 September 2015

The Dalai Lama has spoken about his successor, and suggested that if it's a woman, they would have to be attractive.

Jesus brain scan a miracle

27 September 2015

Stuff published an article last week about Tamaha McDonald, from Blenheim, who is currently living in Mexico. Tamaha's wife, Jennifer, suffers from a lung condition which means that she needs a double lung transplant. They are currently raising money to help with this.

Kiwi traveller in Peru dies after Amazon drug ritual

27 September 2015

Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, from Auckland was in Peru and took part in a cleansing ceremony.

Appetite for diet supplements benefits few, experts say

20 September 2015

A Southern Cross survey suggested some 1.56m New Zealanders regularly took the products. About 750,000 had done so for at least five years.

GOP Candidates and Vaccines

20 September 2015

There was a Republican candidate debate on Wednesday, and I thought it would be good to look at the wrong-headed thinking of some of the candidates regarding vaccines.

IgNobel Prizes

20 September 2015

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people laugh, and then think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

Advertising Standards Authority Complaints

16 August 2015

Bravo Award

16 August 2015

A bravo was awarded at last year's conference to Graeme Hill for his ongoing promotion of science and challenging of pseudoscience on Radio Live.

Dr Jim Mason - Creationist

16 August 2015

He is a nuclear physicist, whose PhD focussed on nuclear decay. He worked in electronics for the military for nearly 40 years, and argues that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

Martin Harris is Supreme Winner at the Pharmacy Awards

16 August 2015

Martin Harris is a previous winner of Best Complementary Healthcare Campaign, in 2012:

Resene Promotes Colour Therapy

16 August 2015

Most of the serious claims have already been removed, after I talked to them on the phone, but Resene still talk about crystal energy and other nonsense concepts.

Waisake Naholo's miracle healing

16 August 2015

Waisake Naholo's miracle healing

Interview with the entity

1 November 2014

This year the NZ Skeptics Annual General Meeting was held separately from the conference, on 7 September in Wellington. Among the business attended to was the election of a new chair-entity, Mark Honeychurch, replacing Gold who takes on the new role of Head Geek, responsible for technological support. The_ NZ Skeptic _took the opportunity to ask Mark a few questions about himself, and his vision for skepticism in New Zealand.