David Riddell

One of the main reasons for the success Al Qaeda has had in getting bombs past checkpoints in Iraq is that the main device used to detect explosives is a uselss fake (NZ Herald, 24 July).

When creationists try to harmonise their worldview with certain inescapable facts of geology, the result is chaos.

Twelve years after it induced panic among parents world-wide, a paper linking the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism has been withdrawn (NZ Herald, 4 February).

NZ Skeptic editor David Riddell finds Kelvin Cruickshank less impressive in person than he appears on Sensing Murder_. A shorter version of this review appeared in the_ Waikato Times on 9 December 2009.

When Sensing Murder psychic Deb Webber announced on TV One's Breakfast show that missing Auckland toddler Aisling Symes was in "a ditch, hole" it raised eyebrows all over the place (NZ Herald, 9 October).

Hard on the heels of the Bent Spoon awarded to the Poisoning Paradise 'documentary', the NZ Herald has produced an appalling piece on alleged pesticide poisoning of people and wildlife in Auckland (27 September).

THOSE zany Ancient Celt people never give up, do they? Now they're campaigning to protect some boulders on a hillside at Silverdale, north of Auckland, due to be levelled as a site for a new hospital (NZ Herald, 6 May).

The flourishing pet psychic industry has received free publicity from an Australian article reprinted in the NZ Herald (23 January). I guess it was the silly season, that time of year when papers are scratching to fill their pages.

A company making pills which falsely claimed to enhance women's breast size has been fined $100,000 for breaching the Fair Trading Act (National Business Review, 16 December).

Readers of the NZ Skeptic may find this a bit hard to believe, but New Zealanders seem to be a fairly sceptical bunch overall (Sunday Star-Times, 11 September).

David Riddell revisits the 2008 NZ Skeptics conference.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has upheld a complaint from the Commerce Commission against TV3 current affairs show 60 Minutes. An item, broadcast at 7.30pm on 15 October 2007, presented the story of Ewan Campbell, who had "invented a way to make farms grow faster" but had been prosecuted by the Commerce Commission and faced a fine of "over a quarter of a million dollars for false representation" (see Newsfront, NZ Skeptic 84).

Charlene Makaza went into hospital with an acute Aids-related condition in the first week of 2007. By the time the 10-year-old Zimbabwean girl died 18 hours later, doctors had decided she'd been murdered (Sunday Star Times, 25 May).

Blind Faith, by Ben Elton. Bantam Press. Reviewed by David Riddell.

The Intelligent Design (ID) movie Expelled (Editorial, NZ Skeptic 86) has scored a spectacular public relations own-goal at a screening in Minneapolis (New York Times, 21 March). University of Minnesota developmental biologist PZ Myers, best known for his blog Pharyngula, was one of many who took up the offer to register on-line for the pre-release public screening.

A strange transformation has overtaken the murky world of the creationists. This article is based on a presentation to the 2007 NZ Skeptics Conference.

The death of Wainuiomata woman Janet Moses during an attempt to lift a Maori curse, or makutu, was very widely reported (eg NZ Herald, November 12). Now six women and three men have been charged with her manslaughter (Dominion Post, 12 December). One of the accused women and another man are also charged with cruelty to a child after a 14-year-old was injured in the same ceremony and was treated in hospital for an eye injury.

The call for UFO sightings from the Tauranga-based UFOCUS group caught the attention of the Waikato Times (July 28) which ran a two-page feature on alien visitations in this country.

After years of planning and fund-raising among the faithful, the Creation Museum has finally opened in Kentucky (Los Angeles Times, May 31).

Four Papua New Guinea women, believed by fellow villagers to have used sorcery to cause a fatal road crash, were tortured with hot metal rods to confess, then murdered and buried standing up in a pit (Stuff, 25 January).

The disappearance of UFOs and little green men has been reported on once more, this time by the Dominion Post (3 April - see NZ Skeptic 77).

Holidaymakers planning trips to the tropics have been warned to avoid homeopathic remedies that are claimed to prevent malaria after several UK travellers contracted the potentially fatal disease (NZ Herald, 14 July).

Some people are skeptical about UFOs and alien abductions-but for all the wrong reasons.

In a decision which sets an important precedent for US science education, a court has ruled against the teaching of the theory of 'Intelligent Design' alongside Darwinian evolution (BBC, 20 December). The ruling comes after a group of parents in the Pennsylvania town of Dover had taken the school board to court for demanding biology classes not teach evolution as fact.

Could it be that visitations from flying saucers, which have been so frequent over the last 60 years, are now on the wane? Or is something more sinister going on? British UFO-watching clubs, it seems, may have to close because of a lack of sightings, and dwindling interest (The Guardian, 11 August).

A spiritualist group has been given $2500 to teach people to communicate with the dead, the Herald On Sunday reports (15 May). The Foundation of Spiritualist Mediums received the Auckland ratepayer money after an application to an Auckland City Council committee. Foundation president Natalie Huggard said it was an essential service to Auckland and was in high demand.

All life has a common ancestor. Or to put it another way, every creature alive today, including ourselves, has an unbroken chain of ancestors going back almost four billion years. At certain points along the path from then to now, lineages have split, and split again, to give rise to the millions of species alive today.

The Scottish border city of Carlisle says a stone artwork commissioned to mark the millennium has brought floods, pestilence and sporting humiliation, but an unlikely white knight is riding to their rescue (Dominion Post, 10 March). The Cursing Stone is a 14-tonne granite rock inscribed with an ancient curse against robbers, but since it was put in a city museum in 2001 the region has been plagued by foot and mouth disease, a devastating flood and factory closures. Perhaps worst of all, the Carlisle United soccer team has dropped a division.

The small Pennsylvania town of Dover has become the latest battleground in the creation/evolution war. If it survives a legal test, this school district of 2800 children could become the first in the US to require that high school science teachers at least mention "intelligent design" (ID) theory (Dominion Post, 31 December). In October, the board passed this motion: "Students will be made aware of gaps and problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of Life is not taught."

A Christchurch mother who fed her five-year-old son raw beans was surprised when he fell ill. Because they had not been sprayed, she reasoned they should be a natural, healthy snack. But natural, as Jay Mann makes clear in this highly entertaining guide to the contents of your dinner plate, doesn't necessarily mean safe. Beans for example contain lectins, which have no bad taste to warn unwary consumers, but destroy the lining of your small intestine. Alfalfa contains canavanine, which disrupts DNA and RNA metabolism, though you would need to eat a lot of alfalfa to be poisoned by it. Lots of common foods are laden with poisons, all perfectly natural of course, but best consumed in small doses only.

The reading by Jeanette Wilson which featured most prominently on the 20/20 programme awarded the 2004 Bent Spoon (see page 3) was of a woman named Maria. It transpired after the reading that Maria's mother had, two years previously, haemorrhaged to death from a perforated duodenal ulcer. It was Maria who found her, and Maria interpreted Jeanette Wilson's very dramatic performance as relating to that event. But as can be seen from the following transcript, stripped of the histrionics, Wilson appeared to be talking about something quite different - the murder of two small boys.

Did the ancestors of the Celts sail to New Zealand and establish a network of megalithic survey points and astronomical sight lines? Some think so

Two fortune tellers apparently failed to foresee the end of their alleged scam in Christchurch (The Press, January 29).

Dr Neil McKenzie, better known to music lovers as Dr Jaz, died in May following a long battle against a brain tumour (Bay of Plenty Times, May 15 2003).

Breaking news as this issue goes to press (Waikato Times, April 30 and elsewhere) is the recall by Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) of 219 products manufactured by Pan Pharmaceuticals. This is the biggest recall of medical products in Australia's history; the TGA has also withdrawn Pan's licence for six months.

Zheng He is not a name that is well known in the west. However, his seven voyages from China, through the Indian Ocean to Africa between 1405 and 1435 would place him among the world's great explorers. Yet retired submarine captain Gavin Menzies is convinced Zheng He's feats were even greater. He believes a massive Chinese fleet conducted four simultaneous circumnavigations of the world between 1421 and 1423, during which they discovered the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, even Antarctica. But while they were away, the Chinese emperor turned his back on the outside world and, when the ships returned, had all mention of them erased. Why the records of Zheng He's other expeditions were kept, Menzies does not explain.

In Darwin's Shadow: The life and science of Alfred Russel Wallace, by Michael Shermer. Oxford University Press.

Sometimes the most successful prophets are the ones that don't even try

Pet psychic Carol Schultz of Chicago has been gaining a lot of international attention, with identical reports featured in June editions of the Cairns Post and Evening Post. Journalist Marilynn Marchione seems to have written the piece with eyebrows permanently raised, as Schultz talks of her ability to speak with dogs, cats and horses, even if they're dead. She even reads cats' paws! Yes, it's true! The article goes on to tell of a dog trapped in a cat's body - it didn't help that he was named Duke. Schultz also helps people get in touch with their departed loved ones - one woman who had had two dogs die recently wanted to know why they needed to leave her.

I would've thought the main hazard from mobile phones was the increased risk of accident when using one in the car. No-one seems to worry about this, however, instead many are deeply concerned that a few milliwatts of radio waves are going to fry their brains. This has opened tremendous opportunities for the enterprising.

In Mendel's Footnotes: An Introduction to the Science and Technologies of Genes and Genetics from the 19th century to the 22nd, by Colin Tudge. Jonathan Cape, $59.95.

The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals, by Simon Conway Morris. Oxford University Press.

Three sketpics go head to head with a creationist lecturer.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, by Carl Sagan. Headline, $29.95.

IN THE United States, creationists have long waged a strong political campaign to have their ideas recognised by the courts and the educational authorities. But in this part of the world, it seems, their strategy is rather different. The Creation Science Foundation, the largest Australasian creationist organisation, regards the "top down" approach of their American counterparts as unproductive: it is more effective, says CSF's Carl Wieland, to work first on developing a broad base of popular support. In an article titled "Linking and Feeding," Wieland outlines their strategy of making contact with people ("linking") through subscription to their magazine Creation, and then providing them with ongoing creationist material ("feeding"). This material is then read by the recipients' friends and family

About the time this issue makes it to the letterbox, those Americans not glued to chat-shows or the latest update on alien abductions will be treated to a documentary on recreations of ancient monuments, in which New Zealand's infamous Fridgehenge features.

Australian creationist Peter Sparrow toured New Zealand recently.

Colin Lambert is a magnetic healer from Waihi, and in this book he tells his story. Brought up as a Baptist, and a former painter and paperhanger who left school at 14, his background could not be more ordinary. Today, however, his occupation and philosophy of life are utterly remarkable.

by Whitley Strieber, Arrow Books, $12.99.

MAGNETIC HEALING AND OTHER REALITIES, by Colin Lambert (Moana Press, $24. 35), Reviewed by David Riddell.