Owen McShane

The battle between the Enlightenment and Romantic traditions is far from over, though it has taken on new forms. This article is abridged from a presentation to the NZ Skeptics Conference, 2004. P J ... (3412 words)

Owen McShane examines last year's Great Soya Sauce Scare There's a lot of Budget Science going on. Budget Science is not low cost science. It's certainly not amateur science driven solely by the ... (786 words)

Dr Mann's essay in this issue will annoy some readers, but it belongs here because it deals with one of the key debates of our time. A recent edition of the Times Literary Supplement carried essays ... (851 words)

At the Skeptics' conference we were treated to one official's view of the status of scientific medicine relative to alternative treatment systems and beliefs. This presentation reinforced many of our ... (872 words)

Surely the Kaimanawa Wall story was one of the great beat-ups of all time. Here was a natural rock outcrop, which experts immediately told us was of a kind common in the area, raised to status of ... (791 words)

When Brian Edwards interviewed Uri Geller some years ago, Dr David Marks of Otago University used the printed transcript to demonstrate that Brian had been the victim of highly skilled "cold ... (767 words)

One of the arguments presented in favour of this year's Bent Spoon award was that the NZ Skeptics increasingly provide an early warning system against strange notions from abroad. For example, ... (981 words)

Back in March, when the police seemed to be making no progress in hunting down South Auckland's serial rapist, a community newspaper ran a story effectively chiding the police in general and ... (380 words)

The Skeptics began in simpler times. Some of us recall when the burning issues of Skeptical enquiry were whether Uri Geller bent spoons, whether Russians were using telepaths to communicate with ... (893 words)

Postmodern thinkers claim to have broken the fetters of logic that have characterised rational discourse since the enlightenment. They claim to have ushered in a new age of freedom of communication, ... (804 words)

The Geller case has ended -- the "psychic" is to begin a court-ordered payment of up to $120,000 to CSICOP USA. Skeptics will be pleased to know that Uri Geller has paid the Committee for the ... (311 words)

For a host of reasons which the NZ Skeptic will examine further in a later issue, the so-called "natural health" industry is enjoying a remarkable resurgence. One cannot refute the argument that we ... (1618 words)

Guidelines For Testing Psychic Claimants by Richard Wiseman and Robert L. Morris, 1995, 72pp., University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield, UK, (pound)7.00. Reviewed by Bernard Howard When author ... (659 words)

We need to immunise ourselves against this virus too. Abridged by Owen McShane from Creationism: Why the Controversy by Brian Henderson "Scientific" creationism claims to have every bit as much ... (671 words)

One of the fictions of the "naive-greens" and other "irrationalists" is that "chemicals" are bad while natural products (non-chemicals?) are good. When asked if water is a chemical, and hence evil, ... (537 words)

Tertiary institutes around the country are beginning to offer courses, and even entire degrees, in subjects that are pure pseudoscience. The Aoraki Polytechnic has applied to the New Zealand ... (1859 words)

Karekare beach is surrounded by high cliffs which shield my house from television transmissions so that I gain most of my media information from radio and print. Hence it was some time before I saw ... (608 words)

Picking Winners? When the short list for the Booker prize was announced there was much chortling about the fact that Jill Paton Walsh had been unable to find a publisher in Britain for Knowledge of ... (1351 words)

At the last conference I was elected editor of the New Zealand Skeptic. Some of you will have read my pieces in Metro magazine or in NBR over the years, or heard my "Soapboxes" on World Service ... (504 words)

The New Zealand Herald of 5 September carried the headline "Ozone gap to lift skin cancer 7 per cent". Then followed a report from Dr Richard McKenzie of the National Institute of Water and ... (522 words)

A recent best-seller illustrates the history of the triumph of intellectual theory over ignorant pragmatism or reactionary ideology. I was at a dinner-party recently where a guest was enthusing over ... (2012 words)