1 May 2020
In the last couple of days I've seen a lot of individuals and pages share links to a trailer for “Plandemic”. And I've had friends ask me what I think of it. They've commented that it looks and sounds pretty 'sciencey' but wanted another opinion. So, I had a look, and here goes.
1 May 2020
What an amazing last few months it's been for the world. The world, of course, is in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. How individual nations have responded to the pandemic has been quite diverse. We are extremely fortunate that the NZ response has been along the lines of listening to experts and locking down the country to halt the spread of the virus.
1 May 2020
Take this questionnaire if you enjoy critical thinking and have a high tolerance for nonsense.
1 May 2020
Interview with Dr Jane Millichamp, Registered Psychologist and Professional Practice Fellow at the Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago
1 May 2020
Skeptic summary: Christchurch mayor Lianne Dalziel says people with an Asian background are staying at home to avoid racist comments from people assuming they might be carrying coronavirus (Covid-19). This is the harm of misinformation, and a reminder again that we can't be smug and think New Zealand don't have a racisim problem. It does.
1 May 2020
Back in March through April, a petition was raised by naturopath Autumn Falk at change.org to: “Ask the NZ Government to include Natural Health as an essential service during Covid-19”
1 May 2020
Lockdown made me think of what it would be like to travel to Mars. Stuck in familiar confines, the same people around every day. The same food. A slowly diminishing blue marble the only vibrant object in a black sky hung with tiny white stars.
1 May 2020
Alpha was hunting. He was rushing through his jungle at break neck speed, close behind the giant grazer. He realised there was a massive series of meals in the beast. As he dashed, he worked on his poem to celebrate the hunt. Already it was several hundred stanzas long, with descriptions of many other hunts, and it was polishing up to be a masterpiece. When he passed it on, to others of his kind, it would make him famous.
1 May 2020
1 May 2020
This is an opinion piece. That is, it is my opinion. Some of you may feel that I am wrong. If so, you are welcome to disagree. Please feel free to express your own views in the next issue of this magazine.
1 February 2020
For the New Zealand organisation which has shown the most egregious gullibility or lack of critical thinking in public coverage of, or commentary on, a science-related issue
1 February 2020
As a secondary school history teacher, I'm about to embark on the altogether outrageous exercise of asserting that science education in New Zealand needs a fundamental rethink. That the blatant misuse and mistrust of science evidenced across society must be dealt with by a more dynamic and comprehensive approach to science in the classroom.
1 February 2020
As a society, we generally recognise science as the best source of information about the world we live in and the choices we must make as individuals and societies. And yet, we also find ourselves in a time where, for certain specific claims, scientific evidence is routinely ignored and rejected by certain groups.
1 February 2020
At the 2019 NZ Skeptics conference I had the pleasure of meeting a student of Applied Mathematics and Statistics and SGU fan, Melissa Bather. I was impressed by her fan art of the SGU which she presented to them at the Gala Dinner. Luckily, we were dining at the same table in the Great hall, (along with two speakers – Jacinta Cording and Cara Santa Maria!) and Melissa and I got to talking.
1 February 2020
Skeptic summary: The kiwis who are taking a stand against vaccination misinformation. We salute you.
1 February 2020
The SGU at Riccarton House—the private recording
1 February 2020
1 February 2020
As I looked out at the Australian smoke filling our normally blue New Zealand skies, it made me angry. Angry to think that where there is smoke, there is fake news holding us back from taking action on the climate crisis. There are still many who don't think we need to change from our current course, and others who think our contribution wouldn't make a difference anyway. Still too often I hear arguments which are nothing more than false balance, the scientific consensus put aside because of some meme picked up on social media. I believe we can't afford to ignore the science and we must act. It's the right thing to do. We need to set an example, even if our contribution is small by individual or national standards.
1 February 2020
Enrico Fermi was a genius, and his mind worked lightning fast. When his co-workers were audibly speculating on how many alien civilisations might live in our galaxy, he simply looked up and asked: “Where are they?”
1 November 2019
In a preface to the 2019 conference, and with the opening event being held at Riccarton House, a supposed haunted house, we thought we'd have a quick look at some of the reputed most-haunted houses in New Zealand, and check out some of the reasons why people think the places really are haunted.
1 November 2019
As one of the tweeters for NZ Skeptics, I've helped accumulate a diverse collection of followers, who inspire and educate me. However, lately, people with very different, and, frankly, misogynistic viewpoints have jumped into my bubble. This has also been an interesting and educating experience, because there is nothing like having your ideas challenged to get you to examine them critically. I've also impressed myself at my ability to live by the mantra “don't feed the trolls”.
1 November 2019
A quick word to let you all know that our project to promote herd immunity through vaccination is still in the fund-raising stage. We have been working behind the scenes to secure funding from a large donor, but still need your help.
1 November 2019
How to be a Global Warming Skeptic
1 November 2019
By Chester Borrows, former Chair of Te Uepū Hāpai i te Ora - the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group, which recently completed its work to inform the Government on reform for New Zealand's justice system. He is a former Minister of Courts
1 November 2019
Skeptic summary: A brilliant piece on CEASE therapy, the bogus autism 'cure' made from watered down vaccines. CEASE stands for the Complete Elimination of Autisim Spectrum Expression, and was invented by a homeopath, Tinus Smits, who followed the basic (false) principal of homeopathy that like cures like. So assuming that vaccines and toxins cause autisim (which they don't—the cause is still unknown, and there is no link between vaccines and autism), it was thought that diluting vaccines and toxins (which ones?) would cure autism.
1 November 2019
1 November 2019
Recently I came across the claim that cystic fibrosis (CF) can be cured by diet.
1 November 2019
This is a part of a talk Craig presented at the No Barriers Conference at Great Barrier Island in September 2019
1 August 2019
A story about essential oils being used in classrooms https://tinyurl.com/y5vs9pvo hit the headlines on 30th March.
1 August 2019
I'm Sheree McNatty, Secretary of NZ Skeptics. I've just been asked by a teen about how Skeptics disprove psychics, paranormal activity and the afterlife. When I was a teen I was interested in finding proof of paranormal and the afterlife. I told enquiring Aunts that I wanted to be a Parapsychologist when I left school. I found the thought of people I had known who have died being somewhere else comforting and I wanted to experience it and prove it. Friends and I had seances, I did Tarot and tea leaf reading and tried mind reading. There had to be something after this left and I wanted it to be real. However, it led me to become a Skeptic as no matter what we tried it wasn't convincing. I also found out there was no point being a Parapsychologist as nobody is going to fund repeated experiments that have failed every time.
1 August 2019
The claims made about the benefits of using a salt lamp are many. They range from reducing the need for an inhaler, to promoting happiness and wellbeing. Most of them seem to revolve around the idea that they purify the air.
1 August 2019
Growing old is a bummer. At age 70, I am supposed to have gained more wisdom, but I really cannot say I have noticed. But there are certain physical attributes that are definitely not as good as when I was 20. Among them is healing. Once, cuts and abrasions would be gone in a week. No more. Sometimes it takes a month or more. Bummer!
1 August 2019
With that odd title out of the way, I want to get to the heart of what our role should be as skeptics, and how to properly do scientific scepticism.
1 August 2019
I am a long time member of the NZ Skeptics. I wish to respectfully raise a point of concern that I have regarding the direction that the NZ Skeptics appear to be going. Over two decades ago I walked away from Greenpeace when I realized that they had become political activists and had abandoned rational scientific debate. In recent editions of the NZ Skeptic magazine I have been seeing similar warning signs.
1 August 2019
Skeptic summary: Students took a test to measure their belief in pseudo-scientific ideas before and after a course in critical thinking and a control course. The good news is, the course in critical thinking dramatically reduced participant's belief in pseudoscience! The not so good news is, this course is not currently rolled out at every school in the world, and belief in pseudoscientific ideas seem to be on the rise.
1 August 2019
You may remember an article we published about unreasonable fears around nuclear power. It argued that the price of energy in human lives has been much higher in other forms of energy, with coal as the clear leader in causing harm.
1 August 2019
1 August 2019
Britt Hermes is a former naturopath who left her profession, and now works actively with the science community to educate the public on the realities and failings of naturopathy. She earned her naturopathy 'degree' at Bastyr University in 2011 and went on to complete a one-year naturopathic “residency” at a private clinic in Seattle. After a few years of practising naturopathy in Arizona and around the US, she writes that she retired from her profession with a bang, and now lives in Germany, where she is currently a doctoral student at Kiel University.
1 May 2019
In late March, representatives from NZ Skeptics attended an evening session of 'Psychic Healing' in Christchurch, as performed by so-called 'psychic-healer', Jeanette Wilson. NZ Skeptics Society was formed in part to examine and counter this sort of ridiculous woo, so we felt it was important to investigate and report on the sort of depths to which woo-sters will go.
1 May 2019
Recently, I was in conversation with a couple of people here in Tutukaka. The topic was the local tourist map which I produce and pay for with a series of small advertisements. I was asking them to advertise their business. One of them said she was not happy to do so since the tourist map was not environmentally friendly. My eyebrows went up, and I pointed out that the map was on card board, which was biodegradable. She agreed, but said her problem was the ink which was full of chemicals. Again, my eyebrows went up, and I suggested that everything was full of chemicals, including the human body. She disagreed vociferously. Only synthetic evil products contained chemicals.
1 May 2019
Once upon a time, when I was twelve, my father (a man of science) gave me a blob of quicksilver which I put in a pretty pink glass dish beside my bed.
1 May 2019
Skeptic summary: Despicable. When people are in a vulnerable situation, it is harder for them to be sceptical. We need to support our family and friends to avoid these tragedy vampires.
1 May 2019
One of the myths (and there are a lot of them) continually pushed by those opposed to vaccination, is that “the MMR vaccine causes autism” – often coupled with claims that “there are no studies comparing the health of vaccinated & unvaccinated children”. (That's another myth, by the way.)
1 May 2019
In early January 2019, NZ Skeptics were alerted by an eagle-eyed supporter in Wellington to the almost unbelievable sight of a city-infrastructure employee apparently dowsing for water pipes on Willis Street! The employee was clearly wearing a 'Downer NZ' hi-vis jacket. Downer is an infrastructure company contracted by Wellington Water, the arm of the Wellington City Council which is responsible for maintaining the city's water system as a whole. Initially, we contacted the Wellington City Council, and were told they knew nothing about the dowsing. Our phone number was passed onto Downer, who contacted us, and seemed pleased to field enquiries which appeared to be other than complaints about noise. Downer eventually confirmed that the person really was an employee, and that they were indeed 'dowsing' for water pipes!
1 May 2019
1 May 2019
Wellington ratepayers foot bill for pseudoscience
1 May 2019
We've all heard and seen the marketing hype of supplements and alternative medicine in various media. They promise so much, how could anyone survive without them? The global supplement market alone is was worth USD $96 Billion in 2017 according to Research and Markets July 2018 report. The global Complementary and Alternative Medicine Market is estimated to be worth $196.9 Billion by 2025 by Grand View Research in their November 2018 report. In the same report they claim nearly two thirds of the developed and developing world have used one form or another of complimentary or alternative medicine.
1 May 2019
The morning of the 15th of March I woke up ready for a positive day with my son at Cathedral square, to attend the school strike for climate.
1 May 2019
The Force Field Film Challenge, aimed at helping kids to learn about the importance of vaccines, is an innovative competition being spearheaded by the New Zealand Skeptics.
1 February 2019
The 'free speech' debate is not a new one for NZ. But the past couple of years have certainly brought it into the spotlight. The screening of the anti-vaxxer film Vaxxed, the racist cartoons of Al Nisbet, the visits of the controversial Canadians Southern and Molyneux – the contentious case studies seem just to keep on coming. Magnified through the lens of social media, these have broadened the discussion about important matters, but have also risked polarisation and at times confusion, as half-truths and memes have sometimes replaced informed discussion.
1 February 2019
For the New Zealand organisation which has shown the most egregious gullibility or lack of critical thinking in public coverage of, or commentary on, a science-related issue
1 February 2019
Yesterday afternoon I met with a group of ex Jehovah's Witnesses.
1 February 2019
Skeptic summary: Good work all those who complained. Fluoride is not a "Neurotoxin" and claims it is spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. Complaints said it was "scaremongering" and "misleading".
1 February 2019
How to be a pseudoscience investigator
1 February 2019
I was very honoured at this year's conference to be awarded the NZ Skeptic of the Year. That honour has made me reflect on what it means to me to be a skeptic and why I decided to jump into the role of tweeter as well as editor.
1 February 2019
1 February 2019
We are proud to mention the honour our regular contributor Siouxsie Wiles received this year.
1 February 2019
From psychics to naturopaths, NZ Skeptics has been retweeting news from NZ and overseas that highlights the real harm that pseudoscience can do.
1 February 2019
On the 12th May, 2009, so-called psychic Kelvin Cruickshank of 'Sensing Murder' fame came to Wanaka to wow the locals with a one night show in the local town hall. It sounded like an interesting educational night out for my wife - Coleen and me, so we booked a couple of tickets.
1 November 2018
Highlights and reflections on Mark Fletcher's Survey: “The Critical Thinking Skills of Curriculum Level 8 Students” By Editor
1 November 2018
In 2005 The Kansas State Board decided to permit the teaching of Intelligent Design (a form of Creationism) as an alternative to evolution.
1 November 2018
New Zealand has a nuclear free policy. In relation to weapons, I totally agree with that. A nuclear bomb is an obscene and horrible device and the sooner the world can see its way to eliminating all of them, the better. But what of nuclear energy? Should that share the same horror? Lots of people think it does, but why?
1 November 2018
Skeptic summary: Kimberley Collins went to the anti-1080 protest in Timaru, but not to join the side of the protesters. She was there to provide a scientific point of view, and to talk to the reporters and make sure they had a quote about how 1080 is saving our native wildlife. Among other things, she is a science communicator and Forest and Bird South Canterbury committee member. On twitter she has been active in holding the press to account, calling out @NewsroomNZ for not including enough quotes from scientists on this debate.
1 November 2018
As a metaphor for anxieties, stories of the paranormal provide a great release. For those of us up at night worrying about bills to pay, health issues, children or even climate change, shows about good guys surviving an onslaught of zombies, demons and so on, can provide a welcome catharsis.
1 November 2018
1 November 2018
There's a lot of rhetoric these days around educating students 'for the 21st century', and the need for '21st century skills', while (not always but often) disparaging what is currently taught & how it's delivered. Catherine Kelsey has a good op-ed. on this https://educationcentral.co.nz/response-catherine-kelsey-21st-century-skills-debate-unhelpful/ on the Education Central site, https://educationcentral.co.nz/ in which she comments on two other opinion pieces that I - like her - had found somewhat polarising in their approaches (see here https://educationcentral.co.nz/opinion-briar-lipson-could-the-route-to-skills-be-counterintuitive/ and here https://educationcentral.co.nz/response-steve-morris-in-defence-of-21st-century-skills-hogwash/), and says:
1 November 2018
Air New Zealand has just announced The Impossible Burger is now available to a minuscule number of their customers, a move described as an “existential threat” by New Zealand First's Mark Patterson. So what is all the fuss is about?
1 August 2018
I've been following Astro Katie on twitter for a while, as I enjoy it when she replies to people who seem to display a lack of understanding of astrophysics, which allows me to enjoy how amazing she is at describing astrophysics.
1 August 2018
In the last issue of this publication it was mentioned some skeptics were pulling out of this talk due to the nature of the allegations against Lawrence Krauss. He was accused of sexually assaulting a number of women. That case continues, and his name persists in the link to the show at the Isaac Theatre Royal.
1 August 2018
I was having a flu jab the other day (because I believe in the amazing power of vaccines to prevent illness and protect vulnerable people in our community from infection) and told the nurse I was the editor of the NZ Skeptics (I know what a bragger!), and guess what, she assumed I didn't believe in vaccines. I soon cleared things up and she seemed genuinely relieved and shook my hand. It made me wonder what type of negative experiences she's had with people when they found out what her job is, and also if the idea of skepticism perhaps needs a bit of positive P.R.
1 August 2018
Who: Unknown When: 05/04/2018
1 August 2018
Can an online quiz give good recommendations for taking supplements? Stuff today published an article about two New Zealand companies that launched recently, Vitally and Wondermins, which each use online quizzes to sell “personalised vitamins”.
1 August 2018
1 August 2018
John was Interviewed by CUSP regular and Skeptic Chair Craig Shearer
1 August 2018
I've written about MMS - the "Miracle Mineral Supplement" - several times beforeA (here and here, for example). I guess it's a useful thing to hold up to show how something can clearly be woo - eg claims that it kills/cures practically everythingB under the sun - and yet people still buy the stuff. Buy it, and potentially do real harm using it. Because MMS is essentially bleach: 28% sodium chlorite in distilled water. Those using it typically 'activate' it by mixing it with lemon or orange juice, which gives the strong bleach, chlorine dioxide. And then they drink it, or - even worse - feed it to their children...
1 August 2018
Unorthodox claims about the origin of the Māori go way back. Co-founder of the Polynesian Society and erratic polymath Edward Tregear claimed in 1885 they were “Aryan”, based on such unlikely things as the similarity between waiū (milk: from wai, water and ū, the breast) and whey (Old English hwǣg). What follows is even less persuasive.
1 May 2018
How much fake news is in your Coffee News?
1 May 2018
How to get your kids thinking critically… it's something I've thought about a lot.
1 May 2018
His research interests include genetics and evolution, including the effects of stress (particularly induced by antibiotics and agrochemicals), risk assessment and the influence of language on science and eugenics.
1 May 2018
The Pharmacy Council has (finally) published their new Code of Ethics 2018.
1 May 2018
Skeptic summary: A facebook page protesting against the poison 1080 (which has been proven to help bring back native bird numbers by reducing predator numbers) received more than 1000 posts before a misleading photo was removed.
1 May 2018
I have wanted to get my grubby hands on one of these for some time, so on New Years day I went to Bunnings and deliberately wasted $30 (sale price) on a device that I didn't think would work as advertised. The product website sells it for $90.
1 May 2018
1 May 2018
How to be a positively skeptically active person, some suggestions
1 May 2018
In case you've missed it there is an awful lot going on in the Skeptical world all the time, right here in New Zealand.
1 May 2018
On 23rd February 2018 Buzzfeed.com broke the news that the prominent atheist and skeptic Lawrence Krauss had been accused of sexual assault. Later we learned that this news had a New Zealand connection as Professor Krauss was not going to be attending the show in Christchurch with Richard Dawkins. Looking at Skeptics in the pub message boards I can see attendance may be affected by people's feelings toward the remaining speaker's attitudes to women.
1 February 2018
It is hard to avoid hearing about Bitcoin and other so-called cryptocurrencies these days. Almost every issue of every newspaper has an article about some aspect of Bitcoin. As a researcher in cryptography I have been interested in Bitcoin since around 2013 (though I confess to have never "mined" a block or invested in Bitcoin). The purpose of this article is not to explain the technology of Bitcoin or to give a detailed overview of it. And I am definitely not giving investment advice! Instead I want to highlight a few aspects of the Bitcoin story that I think are of particular interest to skeptics.
1 February 2018
It has felt this summer like we are on a highway to hell. The roads themselves have been literally melting, and we had better get used to it. We are heading to a new climate reality, with more and more records being broken around rising temperatures, fires, droughts and other extreme weather events.
1 February 2018
For the article “Don't waste money on superfoods and supplements” published in Stuff, 29th Sept 2017.
1 February 2018
I am almost certain, that despite the fact the conference was held in a Wellington nunnery, none of the attendees converted to the cloth, and none became extras in the next Peter Jackson dwarf-based epic (please email me if I am wrong: editor@skeptics.nz).
1 February 2018
Do you skip words or lines while reading?
1 February 2018
Skeptic summary: Happy day! Climate change denier quits radio
1 February 2018
Raw water - the latest foolish fad to hit people's screens, pockets, and in some instances I'd guess their toilet paper expenditure as well.
1 November 2017
Reviewed by Jessica Macfarlane, Editor
1 November 2017
As a parent, I know what it's like to worry about whether you are doing the right thing for your child. When my daughter was born, I couldn't quite believe that after just a few days in hospital we'd be going home in sole charge of a small infant. Didn't they realise we were unqualified?!
1 November 2017
1 November 2017
On 27th August the Sunday Star Times published an article by Simon Maude on an unnamed naturopath whose inept attempts at cancer treatment led to the death of an Auckland woman last year: Naturopathy under microscope after cancer sufferers speak from under shadow of death
1 November 2017
Skeptic summary: Congregation sides with God who apparently prefers gay couples to live in sin rather than be married in his church.
1 November 2017
I rather like our local supermarket. Lovely staff, generally excellent products, and close to home as well.
1 November 2017
I enjoy a good coffee, a bit of light astrophysics chat with Neil de Grasse Tyson, and spring with its blossoms and daffodils.
1 November 2017
I decided to dip my spoon further into the benefits (or not) of turmeric after reading this issue's bio-blog by Alison Campbell and ended up learning about how food safety methods are being dropped due to consumer pressure based on unscientific thinking.
1 August 2017
Dr Siouxsie Wiles, recipient of the NZ Skeptics Denis Dutton Award
1 August 2017
An exploration of joy and meaning in a world without God
1 August 2017
iSynchrony has put together a plausible-sounding bit of bafflegab to justify what it sells. The reality of neurology is against their claims.
1 August 2017
The International Humanist and Ethnical Union will hold a general assembly in New Zealand, 3—6th August 2018.
1 August 2017
As I sit here with my laptop in my home office reflecting on the past few months and the time that has passed since my last editorial I am stunned at how much time has flown over the past year! I am happy to announce that I have now completed my undergraduate studies at Victoria University, with my Bachelor of Arts with a double major in English Literature and Religious Studies. Does that make me a theologian as well as ESOL (English speakers of other languages) teacher and theatre practitioner?
1 August 2017
The conference will be held in Wellington on the weekend of November 24th—26th, at the Sisters of Mercy Convent.
1 August 2017
1 August 2017
The NZ Scientology Headquarters opened to much fanfare in Auckland. Three local skeptics go along for the experience.
1 August 2017
Steffan Browning will leave his role as an MP next year, which is a great opportunity for the Green Party to ditch their anti-science baggage.
1 August 2017
I had just arrived at work, and in my email inbox I saw that I had received an email from Mighty Ape (an online store) saying that I had a $100 voucher on order. That's odd, I thought. No, I'm sure that I didn't order it by mistake at 3am. I then thought it may have been a free gift. I had bought a number of gifts for Christmas from Mighty Ape, so maybe I had won something. I searched around on the net and checked to see if there were any competitions or freebies going on, but I couldn't see any hits.
1 August 2017
A series of reports in the New Zealand Herald in late 2016 and early 2017 covered the domestic violence offending of Pakistan-born Mr. Yasir Mohib and the sequence of Mr Mohib's court appearances. As a Humanist marriage celebrant, my interest in the case, and perhaps that of some other Humanists, lies in Mr Mohib's marital arrangements. He has a family consisting of five children born in New Zealand to their two New Zealand-born mothers, who are referred to in the newspaper articles as his “wives”. I wondered how such a situation could have arisen as the procedure for obtaining a marriage licence for the second marriage would have required Mr Mohib or his “wife-to-be” to have made a false statutory declaration about Mr Mohib's marital status when applying for the license. Had a license been issued in such circumstances and the marriage taken place, Mr Mohib would have committed bigamy, a criminal offence. In an interview conducted by TV 3 (1) it was made clear that while his first wife was married to Mr Mohib according to Australian and therefore also NZ law, the second “wife” was not. Only a religious ceremony has taken place (2). She calls Mr Mohib her husband but admits that she is not married to him according to NZ law.
1 February 2016
Retraction Watch is a great website. As the name implies, it focuses on a key aspect of quality control in science: the retraction of scientific papers that have already passed peer-review and were published when serious concerns about those papers come to light.
1 February 2016
1 February 2016
The Christchurch Skeptics in the Pub, (or Skeptics Lite, as I like to call it) has had a very good year being skeptical, currently having 285 members, and around 50 active ones.
1 February 2016
I love the summer because it means road trips. And road trips mean podcasts and audiobooks. And podcasts and audiobooks usually mean an hour or so of debate and discussion with whoever is unfortunate enough to be stuck in the car with me. Usually it's over something frivolous, like how an audiobook episode of Doctor Who couldn't possibly work because, you know, time travel. Other times it's something more serious, and then fun time is over.
1 February 2016
The alternative to the New Zealand flag is “bad feng shui” and could bring bad luck, instability and even a stock market crash, a New Zealand feng shui consultant says.
1 February 2016
How the standards of skeptical thinking can be used to reject ineffective charities in favour of effective charities.
1 February 2016
A friend recently pointed me at a post on healthnutnews (which reads a bit like an offshoot of mercola.com – this, it turns out, is hardly surprising). It's been a while since I've read anything so full of total nonsense – well, a few days, anyway!
1 November 2015
In December 1952, letters appeared in the Otago Daily Times reporting sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects across the length of New Zealand. The story was apparently quite convincing, as the correspondents were relatively respectable people scattered widely around the country.
1 November 2015
From the NZ Skeptics Conference November 2015...
1 November 2015
1 November 2015
This issue we have a Guest Editorial piece by Lisa Taylor. Lisa is a proofreader and writer for NZ Skeptic, and is an active member of Wellington's Science-Based Healthcare Activism and the NZ Skeptics Committee.
1 November 2015
At first I thought this was a windup (my emphasis) – then I realised it was for real! (and happening in Auckland in September):
1 November 2015
A new systematic review published in the International Journal of Obesity looks at the totality of evidence investigating whether consuming low energy sweeteners (LES), such as aspartame, sucralose, or stevia, is a net benefit or detriment for weight control.
1 November 2015
The Government is hoping to attract more private money into science and improve how public science grants are spent. Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce released the Government's National Statement of Science Investment, its first national science strategy, in Wellington on Monday.
1 November 2015
The internet is a seething pool of 'stuff ', and one of the challenges faced by those using it is to distinguish useful information from foolish fantasy. And there surely is a lot of the latter! Thus we find that...
1 November 2015
With its scenic miniature railway, the National Rugby Museum and the country's second-largest ball of string, Palmerston North is often wrongly described as “the Armpit of New Zealand”.
1 November 2015
HOW TO FIND THE APOLLO LANDING SITES
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.
1 November 2015
The anti-fluoride circus made a new home this spring in the Coromandel locality of Thames (population 6,700). This circus did not feature any elephants though, or monkeys, or even humans performing under duress, neither were there any dramatic highwire acts or somersaults, unless you were to count the verbal gymnastics of those seeking to remove artificial fluoridation from the town's supply. In the hours before the referendum results were released, the Advertising Standards Authority found that Fluoride Free New Zealand (FFNZ) and their supporters had made a series of misleading claims during the campaign.
1 August 2015
1 August 2015
Every second Thursday in Wellington a group of eager skeptics meet in a local pub and work on Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) complaints and other skeptical activism topics.
1 August 2015
Pheromones. I'll admit that when I hear the word, I immediately think of sex. That's probably because the first pheromone ever discovered, in 1959, was the chemical that female silkworm moths use to attract a mate. Since then, sex pheromones have been identified in many species, from insects to fungi to birds.
1 August 2015
Issue 115, 2015 | I have just read your editorial and really enjoyed it. You make a lot of very good points and, as a teacher myself, I can relate to some of the experiences that you have described.
1 August 2015
In 2014, NZ Skeptics had the pleasure of hosting the rogues of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast at the NZ Skeptics Conference. As they say on their show, here's a quickie with Bob.
1 August 2015
Living with a ghost hellbent on messing with neatly hung pictures has become a daily chore for the Stony River Hotel proprietors.
1 August 2015
Noel Townsley shares what he learnt at UFOs and their Spiritual Mission, a conference held by Share International NZ at Mt Eden Village Centre, Auckland.
1 August 2015
In recognition of the Apocalyptic theme of the upcoming Skeptics Conference, Vicki Hyde looks back in the vault to 2012 to see what doomsday predictions we managed to survive.
1 August 2015
Truly understanding placebo effects (note the plural) is critical to science-based medicine.
1 August 2015
One of my favourite podcasts is this seasonal offering from British skeptical activists and science communicators Brian Cox and Robin Ince. This is a BBC Radio 4 production – oooh get me! – but the podcast version is 10 minutes longer. As Robin says, “this show contains extra material which wasn't considered good enough for the radio.” In exactly that sort of way, Robin provides the banter and is the gleeful layman. Brian, on the other hand, brings it all back to reality, reining-in tangents and correcting any guest who dares oversimplify a bit of physics.
1 August 2015
I've heard it said more than once that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) 'does no harm'. I suppose that could be true of a healthy person using something like homeopathy, where the only harm is likely to be to their wallet. But time and again, forms of CAM have been shown to do harm, and now we hear of another tragic, and fatal, case.
1 August 2015
Ahh, winter. The season when I stare forlornly out the window, looking at the rain and wind, my pockets filled to the brim with tissues, wondering how it can be that there are so many brainy people in the world and we still haven't found a cure for the common cold.
1 August 2015
Researchers from Switzerland and Germany have just published a paper in which they describe using brain imaging and a cool way of looking at sound, called the modulation power spectrum (MPS) to understand just why screams are so alarming. Rather than looking at the amplitude and frequency of sounds over time, the MPS plots the modulation frequency against the number of cycles per octave, shown as a kind of heat map. On this kind of spectrum, there is a clear zone that gives clues to the gender of the speaker, and another distinct zone that gives information about meaning. But there is also a zone that until now hadn't been associated with any function. In fact, it has been thought to be irrelevant to human communication. This region corresponds to a perception of sound called roughness, which is thought to be unpleasant.
1 May 2015
As a teacher, it's unsurprising that I often come face to face with issues to do with children. I don't pretend to be an expert on children, and neither am I a parent, pediatrician or psychologist. However, while the government is making their laws, and social media is debating the ins and outs, and parents are wailing about their parenting rights, I have been there with the kid who has nothing for breakfast, the kid who thinks hitting is a way to solve problems, and the kid who thinks a certain way because that's what his mum and dad think.
1 May 2015
Midsummer New Zealand. Driving to Jen and Camilo's house I pass two missionaries. On a hot and humid February afternoon in Palmerston North, the two handsome young Mormons dressed in immaculate white shirts breeze along on bikes. Their flawless presentation and purposeful demeanour is a contrast to the dusty, lethargic city around them. Pondering them as I drive by, I formulate another question for the people I am going to meet.
1 May 2015
Anti-fluoride activists often claim community water fluoridation (CWF) depresses IQ. So does fluoride depress IQ? Or is it just another myth?
1 May 2015
1 May 2015
The Dominion Post recently ran an article about “Glowing GE bacteria” which were “produced illegally in New Zealand using mail-order kits from America”. Perhaps unsurprisingly given that the phrase 'genetically engineered' was mentioned, Green MP Stefan Browning and GE Free New Zealand spokesperson Jon Carapiet chimed in to share their dismay that people/kids were fiddling with complex natural systems and things that posed a threat to our GE-free status (which we aren't). I'm paraphrasing here, but I think that was the sum of it. The usual GE = evil sort of stuff. Let's look at what happened and if it posed any risk to anyone.
1 May 2015
For some time, those of us studying the problem of misinformation in US politics – and especially scientific misinformation – have wondered whether Google could come along and solve the problem in one fell swoop. After all, if Web content were rated such that it came up in searches based on its actual accuracy – rather than based on its link-based popularity – then quite a lot of misleading stuff might get buried. And maybe, just maybe, fewer parents would stumble on dangerous anti-vaccine misinformation (to list one highly pertinent example).
1 May 2015
Hosted by Fraser Cain of AstronomyCast, this hour long magazine-style show takes listeners through the previous week's space news. Each episode has an assortment of guests who take it in turns to present, each with their own topic, and with Fraser asking the questions and expanding the stories. Each week a cast of regular voices tend to appear, and there's a wider community of more infrequent guests.
1 May 2015
Sunday 26 April's Life/Style section in the NZ Herald (see Newsfront p6) brings us the latest 'beauty trend' to hit our shores: the snail facial.
1 May 2015
Why do individuals who read the same information react differently? To some extent, beliefs affect individuals' reactions. While this is normal, it can be problematic if beliefs interfere with objective reasoning.
1 February 2015
Warwick Don will be sorely missed by New Zealand's skeptical community. He was the last of the active founding members of the New Zealand Skeptics, and took pride in recent years to be the only one to have attended all our conferences. He served as Chair from the founding to 1992, and continued to show an interest in things scientific and skeptical well after having handed the torch on.
1 February 2015
How much does the ACC spend on acupuncture? Mark Hanna investigates.
1 February 2015
1 February 2015
Dr. Steven Novella breaks down the latest environmental factor that apparently causes autism.
1 February 2015
The Humanist Society of New Zealand will be publishing a regular column called The Humanist, named after the magazine they used to produce. Below is a statement released by the Society in response to the recent Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
1 February 2015
First, please don't panic! This article is about pseudoscience and those who practice it, and does not require knowledge of mathematics.
1 February 2015
In November Wellington's Dominion Post newspaper ran a piece (in my opinion...) of misleading propaganda they passed off as a cartoon which can be summed up as naturopathy vs science.
1 February 2015
Recently released United States Air Force files have confirmed that a suspected UFO photographed in the skies above Auckland more than 60 years ago was actually just a cloud.
1 February 2015
Apparently 80% of people in the USA think so, according to a Washington Post article that's been all over Facebook in the last few days. That is, 80% of those polled in the regular Food Demand Survey (by Oklahoma State University's Department of Agricultural Economics) agreed with the proposition that all food containing DNA should be labelled. (To put this in context, there is currently a heated debate in the US – driven by those opposing the incorporation of material from genetically-modified organisms into the food chain – over whether such foods should be labelled as such.)
1 February 2015
Where popular culture is given a skeptical mark
1 February 2015
Luke Oldfield discusses the art of engaging with a 'Non-Opinion'
1 February 2015
A very important process is currently flying below the public radar and I think it requires urgent scrutiny. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a regional trade treaty under negotiation between twelve diverse low, middle and high income countries of the Pacific Rim: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States of America, and Vietnam. Formal negotiations have been underway since 2008, since which time new negotiating countries have come onboard. Once signed, the TPP will be a legally binding agreement that regulates trade – and by extension practices – between these nations indefinitely. Although amendment and new members will be possible, the TPP is intended to be a “landmark, 21st-century trade agreement”, establishing new norms for global trade.
1 February 2015
I found out what a skeptic is when I was living in London. My husband Mark listened to a weekly podcast called The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe hosted by a bunch of brothers and their friends. After Mark finally persuaded me to arrive at the 21st century and purchase myself an iPod, the first thing he did was subscribe me to the podcast.
1 February 2015
Researchers in Germany and the USA have just published a paper in the journal Nature describing a new antibiotic they have called Teixobactin. This study is good news: the World Health Organization warned last year that cancer chemotherapy and routine surgery will soon become life-threateningly risky because of the worldwide rise in antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
1 November 2014
The spread of new technologies has caused an upheaval in the world of the media, but gives skeptics many causes for optimism. This article is based on a presentation to the 2013 NZ Skeptics Conference in Wellington.
1 November 2014
I note the raft of letters in the last magazine on anthropogenic climate change (ACC). While I, on the committee, am perfectly happy with the position statement and scientific consensus. (ie, Mankind is generating large quantities of CO2, - this entraps solar radiation and causes temperature to increase) I don't understand the massive spread and uncertantity of this increase: 1 to 5 degrees. Hundreds of percent? In fact you can easily find other scientists that say 0.7 to 8 degrees, and even a couple more that claim these figures are half what they should be! They all claim they have good data. Who to believe? Can't climate science please do a little better?
1 November 2014
A new group set up to counter ritual abuse and satanic worship has applied for almost $40,000 from the Government and the Lottery Grants Board to set up an office and send members to a conference in the United States.
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.
1 November 2014
Herald on Sunday (17 August) reporter Russell Blackstock has been along to check out Avatar - not the movie, but a self-improvement course founded by an ex-Scientologist.
1 November 2014
The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy, by James & Lance Morcan. US$5.62 (Kindle Edition), Amazon. Reviewed by David Riddell.
1 November 2014
A new group advocating a strong basis in rigorous science for the provision of safe and effective healthcare has been established in New Zealand. Mark Hanna explains.
1 November 2014
The discovery of how the stomach bacterium_ Helicobacter pylori _was found to be responsible for gastric ulcers is a classic tale of revolution in scientific understanding. But the full story is far more complex - and only part of an emerging appreciation of the role played by our microbial fellow-travellers. Alison Campbell explains.
1 November 2014
It's about 25 years since I joined the NZ Skeptics, and eight years since I took on the editorship of this magazine. It's been fun, but it's time I handed the NZ Skeptic on to other hands, so this will be my last issue as editor. Thank-you to all who have contributed over the years; together we've covered a lot of ground. I thought I'd indulge myself a little here by looking back over past issues and some of the material in them.
1 November 2014
Siouxsie Wiles doesn't find too much humour in a supposedly satirical paper.
1 August 2014
Mark Hanna reports on how to use the Advertising Standards Authority to fight back against the promotion of questionable therapies.
1 August 2014
So after a break of almost 13 months, fluoride is now back in Hamilton's water supply. It was 5 June last year that the council, after three months of public consultations, submissions and hearings, decided to cease fluoridation, despite clear support for the practice from the Hamilton populace and the medical profession. In doing so they bowed to pressure from a well-organised and well-funded lobbying campaign, and ignored scientific evidence, which they said they lacked the expertise to assess (for background on the funding of the anti-fluoride lobby, see Ken Perrott's excellent analysis at openparachute.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/who-is-funding-anti-fluoridation-high-court-action(.
1 August 2014
In the Autumn 2014 NZ Skeptic, Martin Manning stated:
1 August 2014
"… she successfully resisted the forces pitted against her, giving an astounding manifestation of some power other than that making up the ordinary phenomena of nature." So wrote the_ Feilding Star _on 25 October 1899, reporting on an early incarnation of the supernatural showpeople that still tour the world today. But other newspapers took a sceptical line that media today could learn from.
1 August 2014
The proposed Hastings District Plan (November, 2013) includes references to 'matakite walkover', the use of Maori clairvoyant powers as a means of determining an area's cultural or spiritual significance. Vicki Hyde, on behalf of the NZ Skeptics, made the following submission on the proposed plan.
1 August 2014
Matthew Willey has a series of discussions about big questions.
1 August 2014
Author and journalist Ian Wishart claims Taranaki could be the last resting place of a giant lizard- like "dinosaur" and is issuing a challenge for it to be rediscovered (Taranaki Daily News, 10 May).
1 August 2014
Late in his life, in answer to a question, Freud compared the human condition approximately to the contents of a baby's nappy. When I first heard this story, it seemed to mark a bitter old man. That was when I was in high school in the late 1950s. Higher education was spreading in the world's democracies. Ignorance and superstition, the plague of the human species since the caves, were on the way out. Reason, knowledge and tolerance would rule the future of the world. Or so it seemed. Does it look like that today, even to high school students? A few news items:
1 August 2014
Pills & Potions at the Cotter Medical History Trust, by Claire le Couteur. Otago University Press, 2014. RRP $25. Reviewed by Vicki Hyde.
1 August 2014
At the 2013 NZ Skeptic Conference Vicki Hyde presented a series of soundbites and talking points skeptics can use in discussions with others. Here are some of them, presented as a smorgasbord of ideas to be dipped into.
1 May 2014
At TAM 2013 the last talk was by Peter Boghossian and it was on Authenticity. One of the take-away messages I got from that talk was that you should stand by your words and if someone is offended by them let them know that you're sorry that they were offended. But stand by what you said, if you really trust in it.
1 May 2014
The game is … on. I've recently rewatched the new Sherlock and my partner always reacts to that misquote.
1 May 2014
Human carbon emissions have been described as a planet-wide experiment with a sample size of one. Are there ways for science to accept uncertainties and just point at what could happen, while not testing the theory? This article is adapted from a talk at the NZ Skeptics Conference, in Wellington, 7 September 2013.
1 May 2014
Daniel Ryan reports from the front line of the battle against the anti-fluoridationists.
1 May 2014
It is difficult to know where to begin in response to Jim Ring's letter (NZ Skeptic 110), but somewhat reluctantly, here goes.
1 May 2014
1 May 2014
Two psychic mediums have been credited with helping to find the body of a Stratford man who drowned in the Patea River last September (Taranaki Daily News, 1 April).
1 May 2014
Alison Campbell looks at the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum.
1 May 2014
Martin Bridgstock worries about a new trend which might, in the long run, threaten both science and skepticism.
1 May 2014
Matthew Willey finds Skeptics in the Pub hasn't been as much fun lately
1 February 2014
Siouxsie Wiles takes a look at a new medical journal - available at all good supermarkets.
1 February 2014
"Alkaline and hydrogen-rich" water is being touted as the latest cure-all.
1 February 2014
Matthew Willey finds it difficult to get into the spirit of the holiday season.
1 February 2014
Janelle Wallace reviews_ Salt Sugar Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us, _by Michael Moss. Random House Publishing, 2013.
1 February 2014
Keith Muir (NZ Skeptic 109) ends "I rest my case." But he never makes a case; he only quotes opinion. This is unacceptable in Law or Science.
1 February 2014
And so another year begins, and as I write this on New Year's Day 2014 there is the opportunity, as with every new year, to reflect on past years and consider the prospects for the future. 2014 will no doubt be an especially busy year for recollections and commemorations, marking as it does the centenary of the start of World War I. Few could have had any idea, on that New Year's Day of a century ago, of what the next few years would bring.
1 February 2014
Most people are very bad at distinguishing genuine patterns from random noise, but fortunately there are statistical methods that can help. This article is adapted from a talk at the NZ Skeptics Conference, in Wellington, 7 September 2013.
1 February 2014
Alison Campbell learns some interesting facts about water chemistry
1 February 2014
Online claims that magnetic wrist and ankle bands have therapeutic benefits have had to be removed following a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (NZ Herald, 24 December).
1 February 2014
Completely Unnecessary? Hardly. New Zealand's own Completely Unnecessary Skeptical Podcast is celebrating its fourth birthday and has established a niche for itself in the country's digital airwaves.
1 February 2014
Reports of the 'rediscovery' of the Pink and White Terraces may be premature, writes Bill Keir.
1 November 2013
In spite of the quality international line-up of scientists and science communicators at September's annual NZ Skeptics Conference in Wellington, it's probably not surprising that most of the media attention on the event focused on the presence of medium Sue Nicholson (see NZ Skeptic 93). Many in the audience seemed bemused to see her there, and Nicholson, for her part, didn't seem to have much idea of what the Skeptics were about. "My Dad was as sceptical as anybody," she said. "He had no time for black people."
1 November 2013
Each year the New Zealand Skeptics bestows the Bent Spoon Award for the New Zealand organisation which has shown the most egregious lack of critical thinking in public coverage of, or commentary on, a science-related issue.
1 November 2013
Alison Campbell reviews_ Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam, _by Pope Brock. Three Rivers Press, New York.
1 November 2013
Keith Garratt finds the NZ Homeopathic Society is capable of change.
1 November 2013
A Te Horo iridologist breached the code of human rights and failed, as a healthcare provider, to give a Feilding grandmother proper care, the Human Rights Comission has said (Dominion Post, 27 August).
1 November 2013
A 'Wellness Festival' provides a couple of hours' entertainment, if not much more
1 November 2013
A best-selling book claiming to present evidence of life after death may not be all it's cracked up to be.
1 November 2013
Keith Muir responds to Barry Brill's article, A Climate of Hope, in NZ Skeptic 108.
1 November 2013
Matthew Willey recalls the days before the internet, and an old friend
1 November 2013
A lot of effort goes into science communication, but the effectiveness of much of it is debatable. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics Conference in Wellington, 7 September 2013.
1 August 2013
If climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, climate sensitivity would be on negative watch, says a recent article in the_ Economist. _Barry Brill looks at recent climate sensitivity estimates and considers the possibility of a downgrade.
1 August 2013
Michael Edmonds reports on his successful complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority over the dubious science used to promote BioMag underlays. For more on BioMag see NZ Skeptic 91.
1 August 2013
The widespread use of what are basically dowsing rods to detect bombs in Iraq and other trouble spots is a striking example of how a lack of critical thinking can lead to all manner of death and mayhem.
1 August 2013
I agree with Vincent Gray (NZ Skeptic 107), it is not possible to determine an average temperature for the Earth. However it is important to note that even the alarmists agree that the Earth is not warming and has not done so for about 17 years. The British Met Office even predicts it is not going to do so in the near future.
1 August 2013
Martin Bridgstock considers a major work, which gives us all some astonishingly good news
1 August 2013
Hormone supplements derived from plants are widely promoted as more 'natural' than hormones from horses, but they carry the same risks - and some more of their own.
1 August 2013
Alison Campbell thinks there are better ways to lose weight than one recently touted option.
1 August 2013
The dramatic rescue of three women kept prisoner for 10 years in a house in Cleveland, Ohio, came too late for the mother of one of them (NZ Herald, 9 May).
1 August 2013
In the first of a new series of columns, Matthew Willey catches up with what celebrity medium Kelvin Cruickshank is up to these days.
1 August 2013
What is a miracle? In the vernacular we speak of "miraculous" escapes and the like, to characterise events which are extremely unlikely - at odds with the normal course of experience. A miracle in this weak sense just means a very improbable event.
1 August 2013
It took Hamilton City Councillors about one hour to banish fluoride from the city's water supply on 5 June, a move Waikato Medical Officer of Health Dr Felicity Dumble said discounted the mainstream opinion of the vast majority of dentists and doctors in Hamilton and in New Zealand.
1 August 2013
Stuart Landsborough conducts a small experiment which may land him in big trouble.
1 May 2013
In Issue 100 of the NZ Skeptic I commented on how issues of concern to this society never seem to go away. A classic example of the moment is the case of Neon Roberts, the seven-year-old English boy whose New Zealand-born mother took him into hiding rather than have him subjected to radiotherapy along with chemotherapy to treat his aggressive brain tumour, and fought in the courts for her right to use alternative therapies instead.
1 May 2013
Real science operates by collecting data, inventing theories, developing models and making predictions that can be tested. If predictions fail, theories must be modified or discarded.
1 May 2013
Some Skeptics have been surprised that our organisation has been so restrained in its response to the purported moa sighting near Cragieburn. As we see it, the whole issue is fraught with difficulty.
1 May 2013
Vitamin C is essential to human health, but our understanding of its role has been perverted by practitioners of 'alternative' medicine.
1 May 2013
A homeopathic preparation of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is gaining popularity in New Zealand (NZ Herald, 2 March), despite costing upwards of $3000 per litre.
1 May 2013
Alison Campbell has been spending time on Facebook recently.
1 May 2013
The history of a word which is very familiar to skeptics carries some important lessons.
1 May 2013
Is wellbeing a subject that can be approached scientifically? The following article is a based on a presentation to the 2012 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 February 2013
The Advertising Standards Authority provides an accessible platform for members of the public to take on the merchants of woo. This article is based on a presentation to the 2012 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 February 2013
Do you believe in climate change? Based on my past readings of NZ Skeptic of course not. After all this is the skeptic's magazine.
1 February 2013
Two of this issue's articles have a lot in common. Keith Garratt (p 7( and Michael Edmonds (p 13( both illustrate how individuals can make a difference through active skepticism, whether it be making a submission to a parliamentary select committee, or taking a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority. And Darcy Cowan, who writes the Scepticon blog, has scored a major coup by setting in motion a process which led to the Immunisation Awareness Society losing its charitable status (Newsfront, p 11).
1 February 2013
This could be the shining hour
1 February 2013
So the world didn't end on December 21. While the supposed Mayan Apocalypse attracted considerable media attention most of it, before and after, was light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek. The NZ Herald (20 December) marked the occasion by asking NZ Skeptics media contact Vicki Hyde 12 questions - part of a series involving "well-known faces".
1 February 2013
Making a submission to a parliamentary committee proved to be a worthwhile exercise.
1 November 2012
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. - Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).
1 November 2012
Michael Edmonds reflects on the 2012 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 November 2012
By CORINNE AMBLER Police Reporter
1 November 2012
Vicki Hyde announces the Bent Spoon and Bravo Awards for 2012.
1 November 2012
Either this water is alive, or it contains carbon. Either way I'm not drinking it.
1 November 2012
… then there's little hope for the world, says Alison Campbell, who attends far too many meetings. Fortunately however, that may not be the case.
1 November 2012
Government plans to establish charter schools look like providing a way for creationists to get their teachings into New Zealand's classrooms (Dominion Post, 19 August).
1 November 2012
The Scope of Skepticism: Interviews, Essays and Observations from the Token Skeptic Podcast, by Kylie Sturgess. Podblack Books, 2012. 151pp. About $NZ18, or NZ$6.40 for Kindle. Visit tokenskeptic.org and click on 'Merchandise' for links. Reviewed by Martin Bridgstock.
1 November 2012
A fiasco over a 'Natural Therapy Clinic' at Wanganui Hospital was finally resolved satisfactorily - but for the wrong reasons.
1 November 2012
NZ Skeptic Chair-entity Gold stopped by the NZ Skeptic offices recently on his way from Bluff to Cape Reinga. Looking rather hairier than when he started, and having "worn out a foot" in Palmerston North, he is now travelling by cycle. The original plan was to follow Te Araroa, the walkway that runs the length of the country, but since swapping feet for wheels he has detoured through Napier and Rotorua. The journey is raising money for the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal, Women's Refuge and, of course, the NZ Skeptics, as well as giving the web programmer a chance to recover from the OOS that was threatening his career. He'll be settling in Wellington at the completion of the ride.
1 November 2012
If the beliefs of a sizeable number of people turn out to be correct, this will be the final issue of the NZ Skeptic. According to a survey of 16,262 people in 21 countries conducted by market research company Ipsos for Reuters News, two percent of respondents strongly agree, and eight percent somewhat agree, with the proposition that 21 December 2012, the end of the current cycle of the Mayan Long Count calendar, marks the end of the world. Perhaps surprisingly agreement is highest in China (20 percent), while the Germans and Indonesians (four percent) are relatively dubious. One could perhaps question the representativeness of the sample (comprised of people who have agreed to take part in online surveys), but there must be a lot of people out there who are really worried about this.
1 August 2012
Darcy Cowan takes another look at a subject that just won't go away.
1 August 2012
A new alternative treatment for Alzheimer's doing the rounds seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the underlying science.
1 August 2012
Renee Maunder (Forum, NZ Skeptic 103) laments that I failed to supply a detailed list of references in my article on ACC and sexual abuse claims (NZ Skeptic 102). In my copy, I saw the Health Practitioners Competency Assurance Act 2003, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ACC legislation, public utterances by the NZ Association of Counsellors and similar organisations, ACC Press Releases, ACC's Best Practice Guidelines, the pseudo-research by Massey University (paid for by ACC) and the Crimes Act. She mocks my comments about syndromes.
1 August 2012
All children are psychic, according to one of the stranger items to appear in the NZ Herald (30 May) for a while.
1 August 2012
Police are checking for any link between gunman Brian Schlaepfer's "slightly eccentric" behaviour of meditating in a pyramid and his role in the Paerata massacre.
1 August 2012
The discovery of a long-missing body offers a rare chance to put the psychic stars of Sensing Murder to the test.
1 August 2012
George Gwaze was first cleared of the murder of his adopted daughter Charlene Makaza on 21 May 2008. At the time I wrote in NZ Skeptic 88's Newsfront that it had taken since the first week of 2007 for him to be acquitted of a non-existent crime: Charlene had died from a massive Aids:related infection. Little did I realise the Crown would retry the case - the only time a Not Guilty verdict has been overturned in a New Zealand court - and Gwaze would have to face another four years to clear his name.
1 August 2012
Annette Taylor has personal experience of a phenomenon that lies behind many tales of ghosts, demonic possession, and alien abduction.
1 August 2012
There may indeed be a place for creationism in the science classroom, but not the way the creationists want. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 May 2012
How should a skeptic relate to those who have other belief systems?
1 May 2012
Pictures don't lie, right? Of course they do. And they were deceiving us long before Photoshop made the manipulation of images almost child's play.
1 May 2012
I've just been reading my Summer 2012 edition of New Zealand Skeptic, but I think there is a piece missing from my version.
1 May 2012
Alison Campbell considers the current state of tertiary education.
1 May 2012
A heartstring-tugging appeal in the_ NZ Herald _doesn't tell the full story.
1 May 2012
A drug awareness programme run by the Church of Scientology has received government funding to spread its views through schools and community groups (Sunday Star Times, 19 February(.
1 May 2012
Adam van Langenberg gives practical suggestions on how to run a high school skeptical society, based on his own successful experience.
1 May 2012
Ethics and morality are often regarded as beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. But certain values appear to be shared by all humans as species-typical adaptations. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ Skeptics conference in Christchurch.
1 May 2012
On a recent visit to New Plymouth I was rather taken aback to see a billboard outside a central city church posing the question: "Evolution? How come we still have apes?" It wasn't so much surprise that someone could know so little about evolutionary theory that they would think this was a persuasive argument - versions of this are often to be seen in the less sophisticated creationist publications - it was more that they should feel the urge to display their ignorance on a busy street corner.
1 February 2012
Some time back I noticed that I was getting the first signs of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). I'm a web developer and spend way too much time in front of a keyboard and mouse. It's a common enough thing among people in my industry. From what I can tell one of the best 'treatments' for it is to just stop for a bit. So I am.
1 February 2012
The Believing Brain: how we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths by Michael Shermer. Times books, New York. 386pp. ISBN 978-0-8050-9125-0. Reviewed by Martin Wallace.
1 February 2012
Gold takes local action against PowerBalance, with encouraging results.
1 February 2012
ACC's best-practice guidelines for identifying cases of sexual abuse are not credible.
1 February 2012
Michael Edmonds' article in the latest issue (NZ Skeptic 101) was very interesting, especially laying out the groundwork for non-chemists. If I still had science classes, I would have them all read it and may pass it on to some friends to use.
1 February 2012
Alison Campbell learns how to fine-tune the universe with a didgeridoo.
1 February 2012
The NZ Herald (10-14 January) must have been having trouble filling its pages during the silly season, looking at its recent series on alternative therapies.
1 February 2012
Spoiler alert: Don't read if you haven't seen the film_ Contagion _(which I highly recommend) but want to.
1 February 2012
Sodium monofluoroacetate (1080) is a proven tool in the New Zealand pest control arsenal, but significant opposition to its use continues, much of it irrational. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 February 2012
A recent UMR Research poll has provided a snapshot of what New Zealanders believe about a range of paranormal subjects. More than half accept that some people have psychic powers; on the other hand, only 24 percent think astrology can be used to predict people's futures and two thirds do not believe aliens have visited the Earth.
1 February 2012
Massive changes are transforming the skeptical movement.
1 November 2011
The Bosnian Pyramids: The Biggest Hoax in History? Directed by Jurgen Deleye. VOF de Grenswetenschap. Watch online (www.thebiggesthoaxinhistory.com): €5.95. DVD: €19.95 (excl. shipping). Reviewed by David Riddell.
1 November 2011
Having a basic knowledge of the principles of chemistry can help one evade the pitfalls of many pseudosciences - but it's not infallible. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 November 2011
Alison Campbell investigates alarming reports on what is living in our dishwashers.
1 November 2011
Earth scientists can forecast the size and frequency of the aftershocks following Canterbury's September 2010 earthquake. But this is very different from earthquake prediction. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 November 2011
The NZ Skeptics cast the net wide for the 2011 Bent Spoon.
1 November 2011
As someone currently enduring a bout of shingles I have a few comments to make on the excellent article on the bad science behind the vaccine scare (NZ Skeptic 100). Further to benefits of vaccination mentioned in the article I think the point should be made that viruses can actually be eradicated from humanity which is ironic since they cannot, unlike bacteria, be killed as they are not living entities. Bacteriological diseases on the other hand are treatable and curable but the infectious agents cannot be eradicated.
1 November 2011
After almost 15 years of intermittently tagging along with her parents, Iris Riddell reports on her first official attendance at a NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 November 2011
The Natural Health Products Bill passed its first reading in Parliament in September. It appears to have wide support across most political parties, and those who follow such things expect it to pass into law next year without significant amendment (www.lawfuel.co.nz/releases/release.asp?NewsID=2763).
1 November 2011
Prominent physicist and science commentator Sir Paul Callaghan is resorting to vitamin C megadoses and Chinese medicine to treat his terminal cancer (Dominion Post, 22 September).
1 November 2011
Proponents of alternative therapies often throw around charges of vested interest when challenged. But often their own interests don't bear scrutiny.
1 August 2011
1 August 2011
A 'natural' way to manage teething pain has no plausible mechanism.
1 August 2011
Alison Campbell looks at a new 'resource' for New Zealand schools, helpfully provided by the creationist movement.
1 August 2011
The website www.endohealth.co.nz is selling such items as homeopathic immunisation and travel kits. On offer are such remedies as Natrium Muriaticum 200C which, it is claimed, will protect against all types of Malaria and Haemophilus 200 for protection against H I B (this abbreviation is for Haemophilus influenzae type B which causes severe pneumonia and meningitis in infants).
1 August 2011
The paranormal field contains both con artists and the well-intentioned. It's often impossible to tell one from the other, but in the end it makes little difference. This article is based on a presentation to the University of the Third Age.
1 August 2011
The following changes to the constitution of the NZ Skeptics have been proposed and will be considered at the Annual General Meeting in Christchurch on Sunday, 28 August 2011. This notice is published in accordance with the society"s rules which require 21 days" written notice of any such change.
1 August 2011
The world-wide panic over the MMR vaccine was sparked by the actions of one doctor who breached several standards of scientific practice. This article is based on a presentation to the 2010 NZ Skeptics conference.
1 May 2011
It's not a hopeless cause to engage with proponents of the irrational - but some ways of doing this are more effective than others. This article is based on a presentation to the 2010 NZ Skeptics conference.
1 May 2011
Englishwoman Doris Stokes was a medium - by which I don't mean her dress size was between small and large. She claimed she spoke to people "on the other side," to use the euphemistic jargon of the darkened drawing room. She was a sort of cosmic Telecom operator, only I suspect her charges were a good deal higher than 99c a minute plus GST.
1 May 2011
There are times when the world seems to run along quietly from day to day, with very little happening. Then there are times like these. There are the ongoing aftershocks in Christchurch, many of them big enough in their own right to qualify as major quakes at any other time. There was the far larger earthquake in Japan, with its ensuing slow-motion nuclear disaster. There are wars and revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa which seem set to transform the politics of those regions. Millennial anxieties are on the rise once more.
1 May 2011
In the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, Ken Ring's predictions were widely, though often inaccurately, reported. David Riddell looks at Ring's writings, and compares them with actual events.
1 May 2011
A learning difficulties programme that claims to re-train the cerebellum makes some impressive claims which don't stand close scrutiny.
1 May 2011
NZ Skeptic issues 96, 97 and 98 contained articles presenting different viewpoints on the 'Unfortunate Experiment' at National Women's Hospital and its aftermath. Wellington registered nurse and NZ Skeptics treasurer Michelle Coffey continues the discussion in this web-only special.
1 May 2011
Alison Campbell reviews a study of why so many struggle with scientific concepts.
1 May 2011
1 May 2011
The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values. Sam Harris. 2010. Free Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-4391-7121-9 Reviewed by Martin Wallace.
1 February 2011
I'm a men's health promoter working out of Christchurch and have some reflections after reading the discussions about the Cartwright report.
1 February 2011
Creationism is not a new problem in New Zealand schools, as this article excerpt from_ NZ Skeptic 18 _(December 1990) illustrates.
1 February 2011
We've lost another light against the darkness, with the death of Denis Dutton. Carl Sagan, in The Demon-Haunted World, gave us the image of the guttering candle, but I think Denis would be the first to cite another comment from that work: "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."
1 February 2011
Chiropractic has had a colourful history since its invention in the 19th Century.
1 February 2011
A Christchurch para-normal investigator says Canterbury's September 4 earthquake has more than doubled the number of reported supernatural events in the province (The Press, 8 November).
1 February 2011
Linda Bryder responds to an article in our last issue.
1 February 2011
Alison Campbell finds the creationists are still trying to get into our schools.
1 February 2011
Research at Victoria University of Wellington is shedding light on the often irrational processes by which people assess new information. This article is based on presentations to the 2010 NZ Skeptics conference.
1 November 2010
His name is Gold, he describes himself as a post- goth Discordian web developer, and one day soon he hopes to be homeless. He' s also the new chair entity of NZ Skeptics. Annette Taylor finds out more.
1 November 2010
Concerns over animal welfare issues on farms have seen Rural Women New Zealand and Fonterra rapped with the Bent Spoon, the annual recognition of gullibility and a lack of critical thinking awarded by the NZ Skeptics.
1 November 2010
Many people lost a lot of money investing in non-existent data compression software because well:established principles of information theory were ignored. This article is based on a presentation to the 2010 NZ Skeptics conference.
1 November 2010
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).
1 November 2010
Alison Campbell finds some claims about raw foods hard to swallow.
1 November 2010
Rayna Ramsey produced a photographic record of this years NZ Skeptics conference.
1 November 2010
1 November 2010
After 17 years as chair-entity of the NZ Skeptics, Vicki Hyde has stepped down. Annette Taylor talks to her about life, the universe and taniwhas.
1 November 2010
This year' s NZ Skeptics conference in Auckland was the usual mix of stimulating presentations and good companionship, but it will go down in the society' s history as the end of Vicki Hyde' s term as chair-entity. In this issue of the NZ Skeptic we farewell Vicki and meet Gold, who is taking on the chair-entity role.
1 November 2010
This article is a response to_ 'Truth is the daughter of time, and not of authority': Aspects of the Cartwright Affair _by Martin Wallace, NZ Skeptic 96.
1 August 2010
Bernard Beckett (Skeptic 95 , p8) says the ability of Creationism to make the same predictions as evolutionary psychology shows that the latter is not a scientific process. But the same is equally true of evolutionary biology. ("God made cats resemble tigers, and apples resemble pears, because He felt like it.") The fault is with Creationism, not evolution. An omnipotent Creator can be used to explain/predict absolutely anything, not only the universe as it is, but any other universe, possible or im-. You might say that Creationism, like Nostradamus and astrology, is very good for predicting the past. That is their fundamental failing.
1 August 2010
Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre. ISBN 978-0-00-728487-0. Fourth Estate, London. $26.99. Reviewed by Feike de Bock.
1 August 2010
As part of the Memorandum of Understanding between the National and Green parties, the Ministry of Health has been developing proposals for a natural health products scheme to regulate such products on the New Zealand market. To kick this process off the ministry has produced a consultation paper setting out high-level proposals for the scheme and called for submissions on it. The NZ Skeptics were among those who sent in a submission in time for the closing date on 17 May. Vicki Hyde and Michelle Coffey were the principle authors, with contributions from several other society members.
1 August 2010
While in the gym,_ Alison Campbell _considers some health issues.
1 August 2010
Spirits are increasingly making their presence felt in New Zealand, spurred on by celebrity ghost whisperers, says the Manawatu Standard (12 April).
1 August 2010
Gold looks back at the first year of Skeptics in the Pub.
1 August 2010
NZ Skeptic 17 (May 1990) included an item taken from the NZ Herald's "100 Years of News", published in 1963, looking back at the great New Zealand airship panic of 1909. This topic, and its parallels with more recent UFO crazes, was covered in more detail in NZ Skeptic 47.
1 August 2010
Eyewitness testimony is commonly regarded as very high quality evidence. But recent research has shown there are many ways memories of events can become contaminated. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics conference in Wellington, 27 September 2009.
1 August 2010
When creationists try to harmonise their worldview with certain inescapable facts of geology, the result is chaos.
1 August 2010
The 'Unfortunate Experiment' at National Women's Hospital has entered the national folklore as a notorious case of medical misconduct. But there is still disagreement about what actually happened.
1 May 2010
When Richard Dawkins made a flying visit to New Zealand in March he attracted people from all over the country - including three from this household. Tickets to all events were quickly snapped up, but fortunately friends in the Auckland Univeristy Alumni Association put some aside for us.
1 May 2010
NZ Skeptics link up with a British campaign against homeopathy.
1 May 2010
Noel Townsley continues our series on the psychic roadshows touring New Zealand.
1 May 2010
Alison Campbell looks at some words that cause scientific misunderstandings.
1 May 2010
At last year's NZ Skeptics conference Bob Brockie reflected on his career as a newspaper columnist and explained why he has no future with the Mormon Church.
1 May 2010
Claire and I have taken a year off to teach English in the Czech Republic. These two photos are our friend Lada indicating the site where Agatha Toott was burned to death 400 years ago.
1 May 2010
Some fields that claim the authority of science may be in need of an overhaul. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2009 conference in Wellington, 26 September.
1 May 2010
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).
1 February 2010
The dire predictions of the Club of Rome's 1972 report on_ The Limits to Growth _have supposedly been refuted by subsequent studies, but the refutations have serious shortcomings. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2009 conference in Wellington, 26 September.
1 February 2010
More 'ghosts' than ever are appearing in photos - thanks to digital cameras. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2009 conference in Wellington, 26 September.
1 February 2010
I had to wait for my prescription at the pharmacy and while browsing the shelves noticed a new homeopathic remedy for white-tail spider bites. At $18.40 a small bottle it's money for jam! No, that metaphor will just not work; perhaps money for water would be better? White-tail spider bites have been blamed for a huge range of injuries but the scientific evidence has discounted this attribution. (Those pesky skeptics again...!) Still, I thought it rather amusing to see a 'non remedy' for a 'non disease'.
1 February 2010
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).
1 February 2010
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.
1 February 2010
Alison Campbell ponders the evolutionary significance of lolcats.
1 February 2010
The nzskeptics Yahoo discussion group has been very busy of late, with December 2009 registering more than 300 new messages - the largest number in the almost five years of the group's existence. In large measure this has been thanks to contributions from a couple of participants who hold views which I would assume most of our members don't share.
1 February 2010
This excerpt from an_ NZ Skeptic _article of 20 years ago reviewed an evening with self-styled New Zealand 'magnetic healer' Colin Lambert. Presumably the pseudonym 'Alpha Beta' was used to minimise the chances of legal action should Lambert have considered anything in it defamatory. Lambert died in 2006, but his disciples maintain a website, www.magnetichealers.org.nz, where some of his books and CD's can be purchased, and workshops are promoted.
1 February 2010
Some claim our society is too materialistic and lacks spiritual values. But what would it be like to live in a society that rejects materialism?
1 November 2009
Vicki Hyde presents the chair-entity's report for 2009.
1 November 2009
Yet another_ Sensing Murder _veteran struts her stuff.
1 November 2009
THE 2009 annual NZ Skeptics Conference in Wellington was its usual mix of good times and thought-provoking material, though with some unique touches. The Kingsgate Hotel was a rather more luxurious venue than we're used to; the few problems that arose were mostly due to the high number of late enrolments, making this one of the largest gatherings in recent years.
1 November 2009
Economics has been called the Dismal Science. But to what extent are economics scientific, and economists scientists? This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2009 conference in Wellington, 26 September.
1 November 2009
In delivering a non-custodial sentence in the Janet Moses makutu case, Justice Simon France noted that expert witnesses considered the perpetrators were not acting out any customary cultural or religious practice. The appropriateness of a non-custodial sentence for manslaughter has been rightly questioned. Of additional concern, however, is that a golden opportunity appears to have been missed to condemn the very idea of makutu, that someone can be possessed by an evil entity necessitating a special curse-lifting ceremony or exorcism. Exorcisms, of course, are not confined to Maori culture.
1 November 2009
Gold gives the inside story of the beginnings of Skeptics in the Pub meetings in New Zealand.
1 November 2009
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).
1 November 2009
Vicki Hyde hands out this year's Bent Spoon and Bravo Awards
1 November 2009
Alison Campbell considers the evidence for the efficacy of parachutes.
1 November 2009
Loretta Marron exposes an Australian Australian alternative cancer therapist.
1 August 2009
Waikato University biological sciences lecturer_ Alison Campbell _posts a regular blog on matters biological (sci.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/). Her aim is to encourage critical thinking among secondary students. We think these need sharing.
1 August 2009
A therapy marketed as a guaranteed way to stop smoking appears to lack a sound theoretical basis and to have little experimental support.
1 August 2009
Justin Vodane's letter (NZ Skeptic 91) is a classic defence of the indefensible.
1 August 2009
Tim Hume (Sunday Star Times June 21) has written a good account of traditional Maori Medicine (Rongoa Maori). The Health Ministry provides $1.9 million annually for this nonsense. That money would pay for approximately 1000 hip replacements.
1 August 2009
Presenting numbers with excessive and artifical precision in product labels, newspaper articles and report tables does nothing for scientific credibility and sows confusion in the mind of the reader.
1 August 2009
Having recently joined the happy hordes of mp3 player owners, our household has been getting an object lesson in the nature of random events. For those who have yet to succumb to the charms of these amazing little gadgets, they can hold thousands of songs in memory and play them back in many different ways. You can, for example, just play a single album, or make up a playlist of songs for a party, or to encapsulate a particular mood.
1 August 2009
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).
1 August 2009
Stuart Landsborough has an interesting night out with one of the Sensing Murder mediums.
1 August 2009
In an occasional feature we look back at issues from the early days of NZ Skeptic.
1 May 2009
Evolution - What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters. Donald R Prothero, Columbia University Press. Reviewed by Louette McInnes.
1 May 2009
In his previous Hokum Locum column (NZ Skeptic 90) John Welch commented on an article on Chiropractic that appeared in the Marlborough Express on 22 August 2008. This relied upon innuendo, blog sites, opinions and basic mistruths to validate a spurious argument.
1 May 2009
Linley Boniface is to be congratulated for her humorous take on the prevailing hysteria around alleged "white-tail spider bites" (Dominion Post 9 March).
1 May 2009
Ian Luxmoore investigates the claims for BioMag underlays.
1 May 2009
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.
1 May 2009
When the Sunday Star-Times decided to survey the nation on how superstitious New Zealanders are and about what, Vicki Hyde got used as a guinea pig. Part One of her responses was published in the last issue of the NZ Skeptic. This is Part Two.
1 May 2009
Placebos may contain no active ingredients, but they have real effects on the human brain. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2008 conference in Hamilton, September 26-28.
1 May 2009
Although formal religion is continuing to decline in this country, belief in the supernatural remains high. That seems to be the main conclusion to be drawn from a recent survey of New Zealand religious affiliations and attitudes carried out by Massey University as part of the International Social Survey Programme.
1 February 2009
February 12 is Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, and the old guy, or at least his ideas, are still in pretty good shape. While evolutionary theory has been broadened and elaborated extensively in the 150 years since The Origin of Species was published in 1859, Darwin's fundamental concept of natural selection remains central to our understanding of life's diversity.
1 February 2009
In honour of the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his dangerous idea.
1 February 2009
Nikos Petousis, in his article Skepticism Greek-style answers many questions which have previously puzzled me, for which I thank him sincerely.
1 February 2009
Today, gonorrhoea infections in young girls are taken as certain evidence of sexual abuse. Yet there is an extensive but now-forgotten literature showing that this is not necessarily the case. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2008 conference in Hamilton, September 26-28.
1 February 2009
I thought they were all bogus! A Motueka man, Michael Dawson, was fined $4000 for describing himself as a chiropractor. This upset Nelson chiropractor Dr John Dawson who was quoted as saying his "unrelated namesake tainted the industry." Quite apart from Dr Dawson's pretentious use of the title 'Dr', his description of chiropractic as an industry is particularly apt. It is a massage business based on aggressive marketing and creating a non-existent need for gullible people to have their backs rubbed and clicked.
1 February 2009
While we were in Fiji recently there was a dengue fever alert. This unpleasant virus is carried by mosquitoes and naturally we were careful to use insect repellent.
1 February 2009
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).
1 February 2009
In an initiative intended to encourage critical thinking among students, the NZ Skeptics have donated copies of Vicki Hyde's book, Oddzone, to schools around the country.
1 February 2009
When the Sunday Star-Times decided to survey the nation on how superstitious New Zealanders are and about what, I got used as guinea pig. Having done a lot of survey design and analysis during the course of my hodge-podge of an academic career, I often end up writing more about the questions than answering them. Add to that the tendency for being, as Margaret Mahy once characterised our group, "a person in a state of terminal caution", and you can imagine the result.
1 February 2009
Annette Taylor learns it's not enough to have your cake, you have to test it too.
1 November 2008
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).
1 November 2008
I am a skeptic when it comes to psychics, mediums and anything to do with the 'paranormal'. Over the last couple of years, I have watched perhaps four or five episodes of the popular show Sensing Murder, each time growing more annoyed.
1 November 2008
There is something rotten in the state of China, a country where greedy people are quite happy to poison their own citizens in the name of profit. Milk powder is assayed for protein content by detecting nitrogen levels. Melamine, being a nitrogen-rich compound, gives a return in this test which indicates for protein, so if you have a poor milk product or it has been watered down, melamine can be added to make the product look as if it is up to normal protein levels.
1 November 2008
David Riddell revisits the 2008 NZ Skeptics conference.
1 November 2008
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).
1 November 2008
Another annual conference has come and gone, with the usual collection of thought-provoking presentations. This issue we present two highlights, from Waikato University biology lecturer and science communicator Alison Campbell, and Greek Honorary Consul Nikos Petousis.
1 November 2008
If students are to pursue careers in science, they need to be able to see themselves in that role. One way to encourage this may be through the telling of stories. This article is based on a presentation to the 2008 NZ Skeptics Conference in Hamilton.
1 November 2008
Modern skepticism owes a huge debt to ancient Greece. This article is based on a presentation to the 2008 NZ Skeptics Conference
1 November 2008
Vicki Hyde dishes out this year's Bent Spoon Award.
1 November 2008
A visit to Lake Rotoroa in Nelson Lakes National Park is rewarded with a remarkable sighting.
1 November 2008
Why is Canterbury University fostering an alternative therapy at its Health Centre?
1 August 2008
Extravagant claims are often made for the health-giving effects of anti-oxidants in the foods we eat. But sorting out the truth from the hype is not at all easy.
1 August 2008
The Skeptics have lost one of their founding members, with the death of Bernard Howard in Christchurch, aged 88. Active to the end, he collapsed suddenly while walking to the bus stop. As a regular attendant at Skeptics conferences, Darwin Day dinners and other events, and a frequent contributor to the NZ Skeptic, he will be sorely missed. As Denis Dutton said in the Christchurch Press, "Bernard had a probing mind and knew how to ask the right questions, especially the embarrassing ones. I have never encountered a man with such a rapier-sharp, yet gently delivered, wit. He is irreplaceable."
1 August 2008
Mike Palin queries the judging criteria in a recent high school science video competition.
1 August 2008
Ian Wishart is one of New Zealand's more prominent creationists. In a recent book he takes on evolutionary biology, a task for which he seems ill-equipped.
1 August 2008
Don't scoff. A magazine as authoritative as Woman's Day reports a case where a woman treated her breast cancer by drinking her own urine. Following a mammogram and ultrasound examination the patient reports: "I was introduced to a surgeon who said I needed to have both my breasts removed right away." This is complete nonsense as no surgeon would ever perform a bilateral mastectomy without a tissue sample confirming the diagnosis. It is quite clear that she never had cancer at all, but a condition colloquially known as lumpy breasts or benign fibrocystic breast disease.
1 August 2008
While the recent national curriculum review confirmed evolution's place as the central organising theory of modern biology, creationists continue to try and chip away at the edges. Most recently, Focus on the Family, an American-based Christian group, has distributed 400 resource kits to secondary schools throughout New Zealand, containing copies of Guillermo Gonzalez's Intelligent Design (ID) DVD, The Privileged Planet, and an accompanying booklet. The covering letter requests they be made available to science teachers and school libraries.
1 August 2008
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).
1 August 2008
Martin Wallace particularly likes two of the five definitions of 'pitfall' in the OED:
1 May 2008
Blind Faith, by Ben Elton. Bantam Press. Reviewed by David Riddell.
1 May 2008
John Welch seems to think that knee-jerk name-calling and immediate dismissal equates to scientific consideration. His constant ridiculing of many conditions with psychological components amounts to narrow-minded materialism. For those of us who have worked with severe cases of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) it seems bizarre to deny that the symptoms reflect a real underlying pathology of brain and emotional functioning. And of course, shell shock has been described since early in human recorded history. Denying its reality as a condition and disputing any need for treatment simply relegates those affected to ongoing suffering, but will not cause the condition to evaporate.
1 May 2008
A surgeon claimed that an alcohol-based hand wash had been responsible for a failed evidential breath alcohol test (EBA). He had been operating all day, went home, had two glasses of wine went out again, and failed an EBA. He argued that "the moderate amount he had drunk was not enough to have put him over the limit." He claimed that an alcohol-based hand wash had been absorbed by his skin. What was he doing? Drinking it?
1 May 2008
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.
1 May 2008
It always helps keep matters in perspective to read about skeptical episodes from days gone by. I've recently been reading The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero, by William Kalush and Larry Sloman; Houdini, of course, is regarded as one of the godfathers of the modern skeptical movement. Though he made his reputation from his magic act and, particularly, his miraculous-seeming escapes, he devoted much of his later life to an ongoing battle with fraudulent mediums. Always open to the possibility of communicating with the dead, he nevertheless knew better than anyone, from his background in magic, how easy it was to fool an observer unversed in the techniques of deception. Indeed, in his early years, struggling to put food on his table, he had performed a spiritualist act himself, before developing a full appreciation of the ethical issues involved with preying on the bereaved.
1 May 2008
Photos of a bright, slow-moving object over Northland caused quite a stir when they were published in the local newspaper last year, but some patient detective work has revealed the likely identity of this UFO.
1 May 2008
A strange transformation has overtaken the murky world of the creationists. This article is based on a presentation to the 2007 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 May 2008
In our last issue, Hugh Young looked at the practice of circumcision. But how did such a bizarre tradition ever get started?
1 February 2008
Intersecting as it does sex, religion, blood, medicine and masculinity, circumcision is a subject that is hard to discuss rationally.
1 February 2008
Those of you with broadband might enjoy one of the latest shots in the US 'culture wars' over creation and evolution. Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, is a two-hour documentary on the famous Dover, Pennsylvania trial which ruled that Intelligent Design was merely creationism repackaged, and that teaching it in a school classroom violated the US's constitutional separation of church and state. It can be viewed on the Public Broadcasting Service website (www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html).
1 February 2008
In NZ Skeptic 85 Alison Campbell discusses teaching evolution in the school curriculum with particular reference to the influence of local creationist pressures opposing this as a sole 'theory'. If New Zealand Skeptics are to be true to their cause they must also take a hard look at their own basic assumptions. My concern from an informed amateur perspective is that in teaching evolution it is important to be intellectually honest to students. The fact of the development of life forms over billions of years and their gradual divergence from earlier morphological templates is beyond question to any rational inquirer even if it cannot demonstrated in the traditional hypothesis/experimental test paradigm. Furthermore, Darwin's concept of natural selection is most obviously applicable to those life forms we are most familiar with and on which he based his inductive studies. At this level of macro development for instance, some morphological changes are clearly adaptive for predation or escape, and auditory or visual cues evolve to serve the attraction of mates or camouflage. However there is still substantial debate whether this paradigm can cover all stages in the evolution of life on Earth. It is when we get to the question of the origins of life or the complex operations within a single cell that questions arise. Such intricate developments are crucial to the central concept of Neo-Darwinism.
1 February 2008
Following on from online discussion and debate in the NZ Skeptic, a set of proposed motions to alter the society's constitution were mailed to all financial members four weeks before the conference, and voted on at the conference's AGM. Proxies were received from 24 members, all voting in favour of all four motions, and from two members giving their votes to the Chair.
1 February 2008
Religion Gone Bad, by Mel White, Penguin, 2006. Reviewed by Bob Metcalfe.
1 February 2008
I imagine that most people joining the Armed Forces would expect the likelihood of a posting to an area of conflict. I know I did. I spent six months in Iraq between the two Gulf Wars. I admit that it was stressful but it was also one of the most exciting and interesting experiences that I have ever had. But that's another story.
1 February 2008
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.
1 February 2008
Despite a series of studies showing it to be ineffective, ultrasound continues to be widely used by physiotherapists.
1 February 2008
In NZ Skeptic 82, John Welch wrote that there was something about general practice which attracts an interest in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Is it acceptable for medical graduates with a science degree to be allowed to carry on in this manner? Should we amend the medical registration so they can't? Is legislation needed to alter the culture-of doctors and society generally? This article is based on a presentation to the 2007 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 November 2007
The teaching of evolution in New Zealand schools may seem secure, but it has faced many challenges, and these appear to be on the increase. This article is based on a presentation at the Evolution 2007 Conference, Christchurch.
1 November 2007
Elizabeth Rata's article Ethnic Fundamentalism in New Zealand is a series of extraordinary assertions, supported not with reason and evidence but emotionalism and error.
1 November 2007
This is a transcript of a talk given at the 2007 Skeptics Conference. Parts of it were also published in the NZ Family Physician in early 2007. This paper can be found at www.rnzcgp.org.nz
1 November 2007
The Plausibility of Life-resolving Darwin's dilemma, by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-300-10865-6. Reviewed by Louette McInnes.
1 November 2007
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.
1 November 2007
Some risks in life are distributed throughout a population, others are all-or-nothing. There's a big difference. This article is based on a presentation to last year's Skeptics Conference.
1 November 2007
I must make a point of never again flying while the All Blacks are playing in the World Cup. I was over the Atlantic for the 1995 final, and flying home from the South Island during this tournament's quarter-final. The conclusion is plain: if I'm flying, the All Blacks lose. I know this is nonsense, but the power of coincidence is such that when two rare events coincide twice, it's hard not to feel they must be linked. Even when the main reason for my trip south was to attend the 2007 New Zealand Skeptics' Conference, where the pitfalls of such superstitious thinking were repeatedly exposed. As always, the event was a hugely enjoyable occasion, with lots of good company, interesting presentations and fine food.
1 November 2007
It's Bent Spoon time again-the time when the Skeptics highlight the worst-and best-of the year's media.
1 August 2007
The Letters to the Editor columns have been spilling over with irate readers concerned about yet another attack on New Zealand's sovereignty. The cause of all the anger is the proposed Therapeutic Goods Act, which would see a trans-Tasman agency take over the regulation of therapeutic products-a term which includes not only medicines and medical devices, but also complementary medicines and dietary supplements. No one seems too concerned that the new Australia New Zealand Therapeutic Products Authority will be regulating medicines; the fuss is all about what this move will do to the alternative health industry.
1 August 2007
Ethnic fundamentalism is a form of 'secular religion', an oxymoron that resists criticism. This article, originally presented at the NZ Skeptics conference in Auckland, September 2006, interrogates the beliefs of those who insist that ethnicity plays the primary and determining in creating the person. Are such beliefs merely old-fashioned and discredited racism in a new guise?
1 August 2007
One thing that activates my BS-meter is a miracle treatment with too many claims. Consider the following extract from an article, The Nutritional Benefits of Potassium Citrate, by John Gibb, from ezinearticles.com (search for "potassium citrate").
1 August 2007
Cranial osteopathy is based on the notion that the bones of the skull can be manipulated. Even doctors have been taken in by this nonsense. The following account is by a registered medical practitioner, Dr Putative (not his real name).
1 August 2007
An article in the Listener makes much ado about very little.
1 August 2007
After years of planning and fund-raising among the faithful, the Creation Museum has finally opened in Kentucky (Los Angeles Times, May 31).
1 August 2007
An Auckland University study reveals the costs-financial and emotional-of telephone psychics.
1 August 2007
Rudolf Steiner kindergartens look set to cash in on free early childhood education initiatives.
1 August 2007
It's often said that scientists long rejected the idea of meteorites, but the evidence for this assertion is far from convincing.
1 August 2007
Followers of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog (www.badscience.net), will be aware of the recent panic in Britain over wi-fi radiation in schools.
1 May 2007
Given that we're called the NZ Skeptics in virtually all instances-our website, journal, the flyers, the publicity posters etc-do we need to go through a formal change to the incorporated society's constitution to implement it?
1 May 2007
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. Bantam Press, $40. Reviewed by Vincent Gray.
1 May 2007
A visit to the birthplace of science prompts some thoughts on spatial and temporal patterns in alternative medicine.
1 May 2007
I recently spent several weeks motorcycling around southern India and was on the lookout for interesting examples of folk remedies and frauds. Ayurvedic medicine is popular because the remedies are cheap and have a long history of acceptance by ignorant and poor Indians. Middle-class Indians tend to be dismissive of 'Godmen' and Fakirs who can be found near every temple or religious institution but gullible western tourists provide rich pickings. An Austrian woman paid 34,000 Euros for Ayurvedic treatment of her memory loss. It transpired that she suffered from bipolar disorder and after an altercation in a temple she was sent home to Austria and subsequently sued over her unsuccessful treatment. The New Sunday Express Kochi 4 Feb 2007
1 May 2007
This is a transcript of a talk given at the Skeptics conference in Auckland last year. Parts of it were also presented at the inaugral lecture for Bruce Arroll on being appointed to a personal chair last October. The title of that talk was Highways Through Uncertainty and will be published in the NZ Family Physician in early 2007. This paper can be found on the internet at www.rnzcgp.org.nz
1 May 2007
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).
1 May 2007
After a bloodless coup, the NZ Skeptic has a new editor. This doesn't mean much in practical terms; for many years I've been working closely with previous ed Annette Taylor. She will now take on the roles that I used to-subediting, proofing, making cups of tea, cooking dinner and the like. It won't be long before we can enlist the daughter into the production of this fine publication.
1 May 2007
Judith Goodyear became the youngest ever presenter at the 2006 New Zealand Skeptics conference with this exploration of the chain letters of the average teen.
1 May 2007
There is no point in being gullible. What is so special about believing things that it is more righteous than questioning things?
1 February 2007
Claims about pre-Maori colonisation of New Zealand refuse to go away.
1 February 2007
During a short visit to Texas, my wife Hazel and I caught a session of Larry King Live, on which 'psychics' battled skeptics. It was clear from the outset the production was heavily biased towards the psychics. Three of them were in the studio with King, shoulder to shoulder. The two skeptics were on video feed, separately.
1 February 2007
Members of the Royal Society and other eminent doctors have written to every hospital in the UK urging them not to suggest anything but evidence-based medicine to their patients (Guardian Weekly Vol 174 No 23). This was a timely reminder given that Prince Charles had just been urging the World Health Assembly to promote alternative medicine. The letter writers reminded people that alternative and complementary medicine needs to be evaluated on the same criteria as conventional medicine. This was precisely the same argument most of us took when making submissions to MACCAH.
1 February 2007
How to Poison Your Spouse the Natural Way: A Kiwi Guide to Safer Food offers an interesting, non-technical, easy-to-read description of the risks we face at the dinner table. Reviewers and readers have been enthusiastic. This book has a recommended retail price of $24.95 but is now available for a limited time to members of the Skeptics for only $15, post-paid.
1 February 2007
Attacks on Darwinian evolutionary theory have come from within the scientific community as well as from creationists. Much of this is the normal process of scientific scrutiny, but some bear all the hallmarks of pseudoscience.
1 February 2007
Garfield was right-there's nothing like a piping hot lasagne on a winter's night. Especially when eaten with good wine and fine people.
1 February 2007
www.pointofinquiry.org
1 February 2007
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).
1 February 2007
Of all the so-called evidence that has been presented in support of human settlement in New Zealand before the second millennium, only a set of radiocarbon-dated rat bones has appeared scientifically credible. Now even that is coming under close scrutiny.
1 February 2007
The New Zealand Skeptics have launched a competition to encourage critical thinking among Auckland high school students. Entrants are to submit a 100-word summary outlining their proposal for a 10-12 minute presentation on some topic relevant to skeptical inquiry. Suggested topics include:
1 February 2007
In the 21st century, there are still people who believe the Earth is flat.
1 November 2006
Jim Ring finds some material to pass the time on a recent flight.
1 November 2006
It was an eye opener. Under the stern glare of past headmasters of Kings College, the NZ Skeptics were holding their annual dinner that always goes with the annual conference.
1 November 2006
A Listener article on Brazilian medium and 'miracle-worker' Joao de Deus has taken the annual Bent Spoon Award from the New Zealand Skeptics.
1 November 2006
Jim Ring's article, Lamarck's ghost rises again (NZ Skeptic 80) does an excellent job in laying Lamarck's ghost, and its recent revival, but it is bitterly unfair to Darwin and to one of the fundamental concepts of evolution when he attacks group selection and sociobiology. He is also wrong when he claims that social behaviour does not influence genetics.
1 November 2006
It has become a cliché that whenever something bad happens, a horde of counsellors descend on the survivors to make their lives a misery. It's true. Counselling does make you more sick compared to doing nothing.
1 November 2006
New Zealand has its own version of 'postcolonial science studies'. This is supposed to emancipate those who see themselves as subjects of colonial oppression, but the actual consequences may be very different.
1 November 2006
Louette McInnes found a talk by Richard Wiseman at Canterbury University well worth braving the winter cold for. Professor Wiseman holds the Chair of Public Understanding of Psychology at Hertfordshire University.
1 November 2006
Canterbury University will next year be offering a Stage I course on critical thinking, to be called Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus. Named after a classic book by Martin Gardner, the course, Philosophy 110, will be headed by founding member of the NZ Skeptics, Denis Dutton. Prof Dutton says it will fulfill a demand for a sharp, smart course in critical thinking from a standpoint quite different from that offered by traditional logic and philosophy.
1 November 2006
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).
1 November 2006
Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin, by Robert M Hazen. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, USA. Reviewed by Bernard Howard.
1 November 2006
In George W Bush's America, it's okay to throw human embryos in the trash, but not to use them as a source of stem cells.
1 August 2006
Jim Ring takes another look at Bishop Ussher's famous date for the creation.
1 August 2006
One of New Zealand's most senior journalists, and a long-standing member of the NZ Skeptics, has announced his retirement (Dominion Post, 2 December, Sunday Star Times, 3 December). Frank Haden has been best known in recent years for his columns in the Sunday Star Times, but his 50 year career in journalism has included time as editor of the Sunday Times and assistant editor of the Dominion.
1 August 2006
New Zealand's Amazing D'Urville Artefact and Equations of Life, by Ross Wiseman, Discovery Press, 2004. Reviewed by Hugh Young.
1 August 2006
Two presentations at the Skeptics' Conference had some features in common that arouse disquiet. Both had inflammatory titles-"Ethnic fundamentalism" and "Linguistic fascism"-that were not supported by the content.
1 August 2006
There is little doubt there are criminals who are prepared to drug women in order to sexually assault them. History records the commonest drug used was chloral hydrate in an alcoholic drink (Mickey Finn). The modern equivalent is rohypnol, a drug discontinued in New Zealand owing to its abuse potential. However, as Ogden Nash observed "liquor is quicker" and alcohol remains the most likely cause of incapacity leading to unwanted sexual activity.
1 August 2006
The promotion of critical thinking can seem an uphill struggle, but at least we don't get torn limb from limb for trying.
1 August 2006
Some people are skeptical about UFOs and alien abductions-but for all the wrong reasons.
1 August 2006
Warwick Don celebrated the 21st annual NZ Skeptics conference by presenting a potted history of the society.
1 August 2006
Over the last few years, there have been frequent suggestions that the Skeptics organisation in New Zealand should have a new name. At present, our formal name is the New Zealand Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal Inc. Originally, this was an adaptation of the name of our sister organisation in the US, the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. The American organisation has recently changed its formal name to Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. This has been a prompt for our committee to re-open the issue here. The reasons put forward for change, both here and in the US, can be summarised as:
1 August 2006
Alternative medical practitioners often start out in the mainstream, but other currents may take them into new channels. This article is adapted from a presentation at the 2006 NZ Skeptics conference.
1 May 2006
Debunked! by G Charpak & H Broch, translator BK Holland. Johns Hopkins University Press, Reviewed by Bernard Howard.
1 May 2006
"There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents and only one for birthday presents, you know."
1 May 2006
I had a dream. One of those ones which are slightly alarming in that they come true. In my dream a friend happily announced she was pregnant and when I chanced to bump into her the next day, she told me -- excitedly -- the good news.
1 May 2006
A knockout blow for evolution turns out to be nothing of the sort
1 May 2006
Mexican cancer clinics continue to do a roaring trade, despite their poor track record.
1 May 2006
Keith Garratt's critique of genealogy (New Zealand Skeptic 77) is a strange mix of arguments. He purports to be addressing genealogy "as normally practised" or "as often practised" but offers no evidence that this is the way that things are actually done. He also identifies a "traditional approach," a term which is used, however, almost interchangeably with the others. He presents no evidence as to the prevalence of these approaches amongst genealogists and most of his examples of misuses of genealogy, such as Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code, are not drawn from the genealogical literature. A review of the contents of the volumes of the bi-monthly New Zealand Genealogist for 2004 and 2005, as an example, contradicts most of his claims about what represents usual practice. Ordinary claims require ordinary evidence, at least, but little is provided.
1 May 2006
So-called conventional medicine isn't immune to nonsense.
1 May 2006
Nessie's an elephant, says a leading British palaeontologist (Dominion Post, 7 March).
1 May 2006
Skepticality is a hugely entertaining podcast that explores rational thought, critical thinking, science and the de-bunking of the supernatural and pseudo-science. It features interviews with favourite skeptics such as James Randi and Tom Flynn, as well as scientists, such as Phil Plait and Michael Shermer. The podcast also features general discussion of all things sceptical with its two intelligent hosts Swoopy and Derek.
1 May 2006
Early in 2005 Professor Kaye Ibbertson, the relentless grand vizier of the Marion Davis Library and Museum, asked David Cole to offer the Medical Historical Society some comments about the history of unorthodox medicine. He was in the process of assembling several convincing excuses, when Ibbertson turned off his hearing aid and any excuses were set aside. This article is based on the talk which resulted.
1 May 2006
The Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce has launched a trans-Tasman campaign to inform consumers about the most common types of scams and how to recognise whether an offer is genuine or false. Consumer Affairs Minister Judith Tizard announced in March the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and the Commerce Commission were joining the Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce, along with 16 agencies from across Australia.
1 May 2006
A website poking fun at veterinary homeopathy has become the unlikely symbol of a global backlash by conventional vets against their homeopathic colleagues, according to New Scientist magazine. The "British Veterinary Voodoo Society" (BVVS) is a parody, but its creators say they are making a serious point: that the claimed effectiveness of homeopathic veterinary medicine has no more solid scientific evidence behind it than voodoo. They object to a decision by the UK's Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) to publish an official list of homeopathic vets, which they say undermines the credibility of conventional veterinary medicine.
1 February 2006
This is the text of a letter sent to new Minister of Health Pete Hodgson in November 2005 by Keith Garratt, as a follow-up to his submission to the MACCAH committee in 2003.
1 February 2006
It was refreshing to see Jeremy Wells discussing conspiracy theorists, Paul Holmes, Jonathan Eisen, the Skeptics and wolverines, on TV2's Eating Media Lunch in November. Best line: When it comes to pointing out f*ckwittery, the Skeptics are usually on the money. For those who missed it, the Skeptics Video Library has a copy on DVD.
1 February 2006
Checking facts should be part and parcel of academic life, but too often it isn't done.
1 February 2006
Research scientist Hamish Campbell spoke of his experiences as Te Papa's museum geologist at the 2005 NZ Skeptics conference.
1 February 2006
The leading medical journal The Lancet recently published yet another analysis of trials of homeopathy. After examining 110 such trials, the Swiss researchers concluded that there was no convincing evidence that homeopathy was any more effective than placebo. In the accompanying editorial, the editor, Dr Richard Horton, made a comment which has an uncanny, and no doubt intentional parallel with the views of the founder of homeopathy over two hundred years ago:-
1 February 2006
PHARMAC is the Government drug-purchasing agency. Pharmac's 2005 Annual Review showed that about eight prescription items were issued per adult in that year. In the course of my work I write a lot of prescriptions but I certainly don't consume eight scripts per year.
1 February 2006
Many pharmaceuticals originate from nature, but their development is very different from that of so-called natural health products. This article was originally presented at the 2005 Skeptics Conference.
1 February 2006
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.
1 February 2006
Demands for equal time cut both ways.
1 February 2006
The last of Hamilton's highly successful Café Scientifique series for 2005 examined the issue of dating the Earth and the universe. The date was chosen to be as close as possible to Bishop Ussher's preferred date of October 22 when, he calculated, the creation of the universe began in the year 4004 BC.
1 February 2006
The decision by Judge John Jones ruling that the promotion of Intelligent Design (ID) in schools is a violation of the constitutional ban on teaching religion, is at least a temporary victory for scientific integrity (Newsfront, p10). Previous attempts to get creationism into the American classroom have been more ambitious, notably a Louisiana act which would have mandated for biblical literalism to be granted equal time alongside evolutionary theory, finally struck down in a majority Supreme Court decision in 1987. The proposal in Dover, Pennsylvania, was modest by comparison. It required that teachers read a 159-word statement declaring evolution "a theory ... [t]he theory is not a fact", and stating that ID is "an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view." The book, Of Pandas and People, was recommended for students who wished to understand what ID involves.
1 February 2006
For those of us who learnt of the tragedy through the media, the anguish and grief of the family who lost their two youngest children in the icy depths of Lake Wakatipu is painful even to imagine. We know their lives will never be the same again. So it was comforting to read that the people of Glenorchy are doing what close-knit communities always do in times of adversity.
1 November 2005
Just once in a while, speaking up can make a difference.
1 November 2005
In retrospect, it was a cunning move to give us each a Hopi ear candle. Wrapped in pretty cellophane, the little beeswax treats - if used correctly - would ensure people would be in prime mental health. This is essential if you're attending the NZ Skeptics annual conference, as we were. The candles are an amazing elimination technique which improve mental clarity, energy and wellbeing. By inserting them - lit - into the ear canal, they allow glucose and oxygen to enter the brain, restoring neural functions. Of course, expecting a bunch of skeptics to follow instructions was perhaps asking too much. They put them on the ends of their noses. They twirled them and flung them. Anywhere but lit and inserted in the ear.
1 November 2005
The Tertiary Education Commission was suffering from "dilutions of grandeur" when they identified homeopathic training as a nationally important strategic priority for New Zealand. That's the reason the NZ Skeptics have given the TEC the Bent Spoon Award for the most publicly gullible action of 2005.
1 November 2005
Surfing on the massive wave kicked up by the craze for things paranormal is Dunedin's spookiest entrepreneur, Andrew Smith - host of Dunedin's Hair Raiser Ghost Walk. Is it all nonsense, or is there something mysterious afoot?
1 November 2005
What a great Skeptic the winter edition is, thorough forethought all around, with even a hint of hope about the clairvoyant decision. Which is good because although I enjoy reading the magazine it's often quite depressing.
1 November 2005
Genealogy as normally practised gives us a very misleading view of our genetic heritage. This article was originally presented at the 2005 Skeptics Conference in Rotorua.
1 November 2005
During my recent overseas trip I had two stopovers in Hong Kong. The South China Morning Post (3 October) reports that demand from patients has led to a policy where acupuncture treatment will be allowed for patients recovering from stroke and cancer. This is rather an unfortunate move because a very recent study found no difference between acupuncture and sham acupuncture in their ability to perform daily activities of living or in their healthrelated quality of life. The study involved 116 patients who received 12 treatment sessions during a two-week period. [Park J and others, 2005: Acupuncture for subacute stroke rehabilitation. Archives of Internal Medicine 165: 2026-2031, 2005].
1 November 2005
Powermax magnetic water-treatment conditioners have been controversial since they were introduced in New Zealand in 1998. Now they've been withdrawn and the Consumer's Institute believes customers are due a refund.
1 November 2005
The Mormon church: anti-science and pro-repression. Still.
1 November 2005
Frank Searle, who produced 20 pictures of the Loch Ness monster and did more than anyone to make it a major tourist attraction, died on March 26 aged 84 (Dominion Post, 7 July).
1 November 2005
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).
1 August 2005
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.
1 August 2005
Occasionally, the Skeptics get correspondence from the general public. Chair-entity Vicki Hyde responds to two such inquiries.
1 August 2005
Apparently mediums and the paranormal have replaced cop shows as the latest television drama genre of choice -- if you are to believe TV3's marketing, whether news or promo puff pieces, there's fact behind the fiction. Yeah right....
1 August 2005
Since I wrote my piece (NZ Skeptic 75) based on Bruce Flamm's article in Skeptical Inquirer concerning a research paper on the efficacy of prayer, Dr Flamm has reported 'significant development'. Lest you jump to the conclusion that the authors, journal and university have acknowledged their serious error and have retracted the paper, be at once disabused. The significance of these developments, to my mind, is their minuscule and peripheral nature; nothing has really changed. One could reasonably grant a significant development to Wirth; he pleaded guilty to a 46-page indictment and is in jail for five years. Concerning the 'lead' author, Lobo, the journal later printed, at the bottom of the back page, an Erratum, that this name had been included 'in error'. Young researchers often complain that senior colleagues insist on their names appearing on papers unjustifiably. In the topsy-turvy world of this journal, people find their names put unknowingly on papers they have had nothing to do with!
1 August 2005
The product Body Enhancer, marketed by the Zenith Corporation, costs $95 per bottle and is "claimed to assist fat burning, muscle growth and liver detoxification." A judge, however, found that the product offered 'bogus benefits' although the couple behind the company remained defiant and claimed that they were "scapegoats for the natural remedy industry."
1 August 2005
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.
1 August 2005
Psychic scammer Maria Duval failed to foresee trouble over 'her' misleading advertisements. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is funded by the advertising and media industries, and has the stated purpose of ensuring that advertising is socially responsible and truthful. The ASA administers the Advertising Standards Complaints Board, which is the body that hears complaints about ads, and the Advertising Standards Complaints Appeal Board.
1 August 2005
The ACC-sponsored conference Many Faces of Abuse (Auckland, 10-12 August 2005) features a plenary speaker, Anne McDonald from Melbourne, who cannot talk, walk or feed herself. Her minder, Rosemary Crossley, is the inventor of Facilitated Communication - a technique whereby a facilitator supports the hand or arm of a severely disabled person and thereby enables that person point to letters of the alphabet. This technique gives severely disabled people the miraculous ability to spell out words, sentences and even whole paragraphs of astonishing, unlikely and often wildly pornographic prose. As a result of Facilitated Communication, hundreds of families and caregivers worldwide have had their lives and careers destroyed by devastating and subsequently-discredited allegations of sexual abuse. Among responsible organisations and individuals concerned with mental and physical disability there is now widespread agreement that Facilitated Communication is nothing more than a powertrip for manipulative therapists who prey on the vulnerability and dependence of the severely disabled.
1 August 2005
Herald Sun, Australia - 21 July 2005
1 August 2005
On 14 June 2005 the Advertising Standards Complaints Board met to consider Complaint 05/116, filed by Martin Craig for the Consumers' Institute, concerning the Maria Duval psychic services advertisements. This is an abridged version of their deliberations.
1 August 2005
"There's no need for your organisation. We're all skeptics nowadays."
1 August 2005
The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) is gaining a reputation as a Mickey Mouse government organisation that harms the reputation and integrity of New Zealand's tertiary institutions.
1 August 2005
Bob Metcalfe (Skeptic No 75) might have been reading New Zealand Tone magazine: Bringing Technology to Life, Sept-Oct 2004. The front cover promises "Hi-fi cables: science or hocus pocus", and on page 46 there is an interview with Bob Noble, "sales manager for respected cable manufacturer Chord". On page 47 there is a review of three Chord cables. The only science in the interview is the importance of screening to cables since cheap electronics in homes today are "leaking interference back into the same mains power ring that supplies the hi-fi. This degrades the final sound considerably. If you don't believe me, turn all those other appliances off and see what it does to your hi-fi sound." Nobody puts the case that there is any hocus pocus to cables.
1 May 2005
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1 May 2005
Given his ratings, only a tiny handful of you probably saw Paul Holmes in his new slot on Prime a few weeks back, talking to Don Maisch, described as an Australian expert on the health effects of magnetic fields. More precisely, he's doing a PhD in the Arts Faculty of Wollongong University on changes in the health status of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients following removal of excessive 50 Hz magnetic field exposure.
1 May 2005
The Green Party does not have a good record when it comes to scepticism. In 2002, party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons was an ungracious winner of our bent spoon award for her support of "etheralised cosmic-astral influences" as a means of eradicating possums.
1 May 2005
It is with sadness that I see that the Skeptic is still accepting articles and letters with political bias. I would like to spend much of this letter countering some of Owen McShane's arguments from his article "Why are we crying into our beer?", but I see we are still arguing in the pages of our magazine about science. It would be really nice if Jim Ring or C Morris could explain to me and I'm sure others who are puzzled by this whole affair, as to what legitimate arguments between legitimate scientists have to do with scepticism.
1 May 2005
Now that Terri Schiavo has been allowed to die peacefully there is an opportunity to reflect on the matter free from the hysteria and religious arguments advanced as an excuse to maintain her in a vegetative state. When discussing the ethics of the situation with a local surgeon he commented that the main problem was that the feeding tube should never have been inserted in the first place. A feeding tube is surgically inserted into the stomach through a hole in the abdominal wall. Once such medical interventions have been made it is very hard to reverse them. In this case the debate appears to have been hijacked by Catholic pressure groups.
1 May 2005
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.
1 May 2005
A New Zealander's quest to find Noah's Ark has suffered a double blow, with two samples he gathered in Turkey turning out to be rock, not petrified timber. Ross Patterson delivered the samples to crown research institute Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) in Wellington. Senior geologist Hamish Campbell, who examined the samples, said they were not wood or fossil material, but volcanic rock. One of the samples had "a lovely platey fabric" and Dr Campbell said he could see why Mr Patterson thought they might be fossil wood. "I'm all for somebody chasing something like this - it makes life interesting. GNS offers a service and we are very happy to sample rock in this way."
1 May 2005
A widely publicised trial which appeared to show prayer was effective in enhancing fertility now appears to have been fraudulent.
1 May 2005
The idea that low self-esteem is the cause of violent behaviour has been current for some time. Many years ago I attended numerous education meetings where I heard that certain (male) individuals "lacked self-esteem" when it seemed patently obvious that this was not true. I argued that these individuals greatly esteemed many of their own behaviours - it was just that these behaviours were those the counsellors thought should be deplored.
1 May 2005
When it comes to environmental issues, it's not always easy for a skeptic to decide where to stand
1 May 2005
There's a stereotype of card-carrying members of the Skeptics Society that we're dour, humour-less, cynical nay-sayers; depressed Eeyores not cheerful Tiggers. Like most stereotypes, it's 95% wrong. I'm often asked what characterises a member of the Skeptics, and I think of the diverse opinions, the range of religious and political beliefs, the spectrum of occupations and interests. Apart from a compulsive inquisitiveness about the world, the only other major thing all Skeptics seem to have in common is a large capacity for laughter.
1 May 2005
The medical community in Britain is suffering a severe attack of lèse majesté, and it is feared some distinguished heads will roll on Tower Green.
1 February 2005
Pseudoscientific beliefs can be dangerous when they form the basis of government policy
1 February 2005
In the Autumn 2004 issue of the NZ Skeptic, we reported on Vicki Hyde's prediction in the Dominion Post that George Bush would win the US presidential election. Given that this was at the height of the scandals over Abu Ghraib prisoners and the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, it seemed a bold claim indeed, on a par with her prediction that the All Blacks would miss the 1999 World Cup final. But once again, history has shown our chair-entity to be better at the prophecy game than almost any of the professional seers.
1 February 2005
SCIENCE has not "progressed only by slow cautious steps" as Piers McLaren claims (Forum, Spring 2004), but by great bold ones. Scientists should resist new ideas but it is a myth that they do so irrationally. Contrary to Maclaren's letter, quantum theory rapidly won the day. Planck published in 1900, Einstein in 1905, in 1913 Bohr produced a quantum structure for an atom. By 1922 all three had won Nobel prizes for work on quantum theory.
1 February 2005
If you don't get the answers you want from a Government inquiry, press for another inquiry. Vietnam war veterans have continued such a campaign and have produced a map to confirm that they were present in areas that were sprayed with the defoliant under the US Army "Operation Ranch Hand".
1 February 2005
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.
1 February 2005
Next time you visit the US don't miss the Museum of Unworkable Devices, the brainchild of physics Professor Donald Simanek from the University of Pennsylvania.
1 February 2005
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."
1 February 2005
Ken Ring of Titirangi is New Zealand's best known proponent of the idea that the Moon is an accurate weather forecasting tool. He publicly scoffs at official forecasters and climate scientists for ignoring the lunar effect, and the news media love him.
1 February 2005
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.
1 November 2004
The Break Free tour will be coming soon to a city near you. The week-long tour of lectures and book selling will start in Christchurch at the end of November and proceed to Wellington, Taupo, Hamilton and Auckland. The person who will head the tour is Phillip Day, who supposedly is "an award-winning author, health researcher and world-class speaker."
1 November 2004
Don't judge them by their demeanour. The vast majority of people in this business are sincere, well-meaning individuals, and they are very hard to distinguish from the con artists. They might well be honest, but this doesn't mean they can do what they think they are doing
1 November 2004
In connection with David Riddell's article about "Ancient Celtic New Zealand" (Skeptic, Winter 2004) your readers may be interested in my more detailed examination of the twaddle in Martin Doutré's book in two articles published in the Auckland Astronomical Society Journal last year.
1 November 2004
It will be interesting to see how the government handles the latest health scare which is being helped along by the usual sensationalist media reporting. How about this example: "The men who made the poisons that blighted a New Plymouth community…." (Sunday Star Times, 12 September 2004).
1 November 2004
We've all seen the claims - Spirulina! Nature's Health Solution! The World's Healthiest Superfood! Soulfood!
1 November 2004
A WHANGAREI computer programmer is spearheading an expedition to prove Noah's Ark exists, and that it lies about 2000 metres above sea level in Turkey (NZPA, 17 August). Ross Patterson is convinced that a mound of earth about 12km from Mt Ararat in Turkey contains the remains of the Ark, and says there is strong evidence that the events depicted in the Bible occurred. He had twice visited the site, almost 2000m above sea level and said a need to prove the theory and the associated religious implications had taken over his life.
1 November 2004
A new star on the psychic circuit impressed the makers of TV3's 20/20, but not the NZ Skeptics
1 November 2004
One of our members (who was supposed to be teaching carbon chemistry at the time and wishes to remain nameless!) used Jeanette Wilson's TV performances as a resource for teaching critical thinking to her year ten class. The results were encouraging, and very educational.
1 November 2004
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.
1 November 2004
Journalists in New Zealand generally show a lack of scepticism when dealing with issues of science and pseudoscience - except for mainstream medicine. This article is based on a presentation to the New Zealand Skeptics Conference, 11 September, 2004
1 August 2004
Occasionally, the NZ Skeptics receive correspondence from members of the general public. Recently, Chairentity Vicki Hyde took the time to reply to one of these. Portions of the original letter are indented.
1 August 2004
A London-based New Zealander has been named "World Champion Worm Charmer" after a competition in Devon. Garry Trainer, from Auckland, won the award by convincing 51 worms to come to the surface of a metre-square section of a field in 15 minutes.
1 August 2004
On Saturday, July 10, Cynthia Shakespeare died in a car accident on the way to a tramping trip. With her death we have lost a wonderfully enthusiastic and energetic member of the Skeptics.
1 August 2004
Few events have so captured the local imagination as the search for a thermal bore near Methven. Word of the search spread after a drilling rig appeared in a paddock. Nothing unusual in rigs -- they dot Mid-Canterbury in the eternal quest for reliable sources of irrigation water. This rig, though, was not after cold water, but hot.
1 August 2004
I am finding it difficult to respond to Alan P Ryan's diatribe (Skeptic Autumn 2004) as it borders on the incoherent and self-contradictory. I wonder if it will help if I summarise my views on moral values, about which he seems confused.
1 August 2004
A couple of months ago we were visiting my brother, and got talking about a friend of his, who had enrolled in a counselling course. It turned out that the course had come to be dominated by some rather staunch Maori elements, and my brother's friend, as one of only two non-Maori on the course, was embroiled in a dispute in which racial lines were very clearly drawn. But he was confident he had ammunition which would knock the course leaders off their perch, in the form of a book, Ancient Celtic New Zealand (see Feature Article). This purported to show that Europeans had in fact colonised this country thousands of years ago, and had established a thriving neolithic culture, until they were displaced by Maori early in the last millennium.
1 August 2004
A drug company has been perplexed at a shortage of Vitamin B12 created by a surge in use. A spokesman for the company said "doctors had so far failed to come up with a convincing explanation" and "Vitamin B12 was also used to treat chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and as a vitamin booster."
1 August 2004
We have recently received a message from OZ. Not transtasman Big Brother, but the cousins in France. OZ stands for Observatoire Zététique, a group of skeptical investigators (Zetetic is much the same as skeptic, as every Victorian schoolboy knew. The Greeks had not just one word for it, but two).
1 August 2004
There were more than 20,000 pilgrims packed around ancient Stonehenge for the 2004 summer solstice. Among them were witches, druids, new age healers… and Hamilton journalist Russell Joyce. He reports from the scene.
1 August 2004
It began like any other Saturday morning, out of bed even later than on weekdays, a leisurely breakfast, dismembering the 10 sections of the Press, and settling to a good long read. It was then that the pain began, and intensified until something had to be done. No time to send for homoeopathic medicines, no time to summon the healing hands of a Therapeutic Touch practitioner. No! Into an ambulance and delivery into the hands of the conventional medics at Christchurch Hospital.
1 August 2004
It had to happen, I guess. A new book, Sextrology: The Astrology of Sex and the Sexes, written by New York astrologers Stella Starsky and (wince) Quinn Cox gets a fair amount of column inches in the Dominion Post (July 8.)
1 August 2004
The Enlightenment -- a period of intellectual progress in Europe and North America during the eighteenth century -- saw superstition, dogma and ignorance lose ground to reason, science and freedom of inquiry. Enlightenment thinkers questioned received ideas and used rational methods to explore new possibilities in many fields. Despite persecution by government and church, the enormous increase in the publication of newspapers and books spread ideas widely. The result was an outpouring of knowledge and understanding about the way the world works. Western civilisation's high standard of living and openness today stem from the Enlightenment.
1 August 2004
Dr Robert R Holcomb was in Wellington in January to announce a technological breakthrough. Before an audience of New Zea-land government, business and environmental leaders, he announced for the first time a revolutionary new technology, Electron Stream Carbon Dioxide Reduction (ESCO2R), commonly called the Carbon Dioxide Converter, that goes to the heart of the global warming problem. The converter is patented.
1 August 2004
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
1 August 2004
Bob Brockie thinks he can explain why the Skeptic editor gets woken up at 2am every Saturday morning
1 May 2004
One of our members almost spots a UFO
1 May 2004
A Waikato University website on evolution has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers, says biological sciences lecturer Alison Campbell.
1 May 2004
When I sent my letter to the NZ Skeptic (Spring 2003), I did not expect vehement denials in the next issue. Such debate is, of course, healthy and occasionally useful. My letter, though, was not intended to cover the whole subject; merely to offer some points to ponder. The responses have been rather more thorough, and I feel I must defend my position.
1 May 2004
New Zealand soils are deficient in selenium and this can cause serious health problems for animals. A 500kg animal needs about 1mg selenium daily. There is no evidence that New Zealand adults need selenium supplements and this situation has been described as "a deficiency in search of a syndrome".
1 May 2004
Consumer response to the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy has involved a complex balancing of risk and price
1 May 2004
Two fortune tellers apparently failed to foresee the end of their alleged scam in Christchurch (The Press, January 29).
1 May 2004
"Energised Water" turns out to be much the same as the other kind
1 May 2004
Like scientists, historians use a dependable methodology to ensure their findings are reliable. Assertions of historical fact can properly be based only on empirical evidence. Historians then use their critical thinking skills to assess the trustworthiness of this data.
1 May 2004
1 May 2004
The US$3.3 billion Cassini mission is about to rendezvous with Saturn, but if some had had their way the robot probe would never have left the ground.
1 May 2004
It was a dark and stormy night. But (almost) without flinching we set off to hear Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Kevin Grazier speaking about the Cassini mission to Saturn.
1 May 2004
A Pakeha student whose necklace was forcibly removed by a teacher -- even though Maori students are allowed to wear their taonga (treasures) -- has quit school over the incident. Megan Church complained to the Human Rights Commission about the Marlborough Girls College dress code.
1 May 2004
Bob Brockie gets himself a qualification in acupuncture
1 February 2004
Bill Taylor explains some of the thinking behind the Time-Line installation, "Genesis Aotearoa", at Victoria University (See also Page 13)
1 February 2004
I've just witnessed a miracle. Probably. On January 2 I took part in a trip to the outer Hauraki Gulf to search for a bird that until recently had not been seen since the nineteenth century. Three specimens of the bird, the New Zealand Storm Petrel, sitting in museums in Paris and London, were believed to be the only representatives of yet another of this country's extinct species.
1 February 2004
An anonymous contributor to the website, http://mostembarrassingmoment.com, shares her experiences as a professional tarot card reader.
1 February 2004
One possible source of the outlandish reports given by children in cases such as the Christchurch Civic Creche affair was described at the 2003 Skeptics' Conference.
1 February 2004
Although I have been receiving free email alerts for a long time, I am a (very) new member. Among the goodies which I received a couple of days ago was the Spring, 2003 newsletter, number 69. Obviously, free speech is the first requisite of such an organ, but I was rather taken aback by contribution in Forum from Lance Kennedy of Tantec, an organisation in the biocide industry, on the subject of global warming. Its content is highly selective, and it contravenes all the principles outlined in the Skeptics Guide to Critical Thinking. He writes of a "sound and healthy reluctance to subscribe to anthropogenic greenhouse... warming". He says that the Scientific American is committed to "greenie (a pejorative term which has no place in a serious discussion) nonsense".
1 February 2004
Cellulite is the term used by women's magazines to describe dimpled fat. It has no scientific or anatomical validity and it is simply ordinary fatty tissue that assumes a waffled appearance because fibrous tissue prevents the skin from fully expanding in areas where fatty tissue accumulates. This has been confirmed by a study where biopsies of fat and cellulite were microscopically indistinguishable by pathologists who were blinded as to the samples' origin. Calling fat "cellulite" is part of the modern trend to seeking alternatives to the (unpalatable) truth, in this case an adipose euphemism.
1 February 2004
Hokum Locum talks with one of the unsung victims of the Christchurch Civic Crèche
1 February 2004
It may be time to expand the principles of the Hippocratic Oath
1 February 2004
An Auckland law firm was going to court late last year (Dominion Post, November 1) to block the opening of a funeral parlour opposite it. Death (or dealing with it) offends against the ancient Chinese art of feng shui. Contact with death can lead to bad luck and negative energy could flow from the funeral parlour into the law firm. The firm was concerned it would lose its Asian clients if the parlour opened. The parlour, meantime, said it had been granted resource consent. Haven't heard the outcome yet...
1 February 2004
Bob Brockie considers the enduring influence of the founder of Anthroposophy
1 February 2004
1 February 2004
The universe we live in is vast, in both space and time, so vast as to be beyond human comprehension. Mathematicians have devised a way in which the large numbers involved can be manipulated, the "exponent"1, but it can mislead us into thinking we comprehend more than we really do. It can blind us to the true difference between two numbers whose exponents differ by only one unit. Thus, if my bank balance grows from $102 to $103, I am richer by $900, but if it grows from $106 to $107, I have gained $9 million.
1 February 2004
Government hypocrisy is rife amid the talk of a "knowledge-based economy"
1 November 2003
The Eugenics movement in New Zealand had legislative successes greater than anywhere in the world outside the USA and Nazi Germany
1 November 2003
It's been another busy year, mostly working behind the scenes, with the occasional burst into the public arena.
1 November 2003
A female photographer was banned from flying with the Romania socccer team because of superstitions that women bring bad luck, according to Romanian sports daily Gazeta Sporturilor.
1 November 2003
Prior to attending the NZ Skeptics conference in Wellington this year, I read the discussion paper on the role of science in environmental policy and decision making, Illuminated or Blinded by Science, prepared by the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It seemed to me to be a reasonable document. It included a discussion of some of the issues which have to be considered by policy makers in the environmental area and pointed to some of the difficulties, institutional and procedural, in using science to form environmental policy. Following on from the request in the paper for comments from the public on how science could be better incorporated into environmental policy, the team leader for the discussion paper, Mr Bruce Taylor, gave a presentation to the Skeptics conference in which he introduced the paper and asked for views on it.
1 November 2003
Justice Minister Phil Goff has won the first-ever Bent Can Opener Award from the New Zealand Skeptics, for "refusing to open the can of worms that is the Christchurch Civic Creche case".
1 November 2003
Environmental issues have played an increasing role in skeptical subject matter over recent years, ranging from calls for biodynamic possum peppering earning Jeanette Fitzsimons the Bent Spoon last year, to skepticism about global warming, from pooh-poohing of environmental impacts on taniwha habitat to wondering just how much paranoia and hypochondria is at the root of the health issues of moth-ridden Aucklanders in the infamous spray zone.
1 November 2003
The British General Medical Council (GMC) has found family practitioner Michelle Langdon guilty of serious professional misconduct and banned her from practising for three months. According to press reports, Langdon had advised a couple that the gastrointestinal symptoms of their 11-month-old were caused by "geopathic stress patterns" beneath their home and then "dowsed" for a remedy by swinging a crystal attached to a chain over a book of herbal remedies. A hospital emergency department subsequently found that the child had gastroenteritis. The GMC also examined evidence that another patient had been prescribed an herbal remedy for a sore throat after the doctor dowsed for the treatment.
1 November 2003
Bob Brockie looks at the link between genius and eccentricity
1 November 2003
Level-headed Virgos everywhere will not be surprised, but a 40-year study of astrology has found it doesn't work (Dominion Post, August 19).
1 November 2003
Claire Le Couteur reports from the 2003 Skeptics' Conference in Wellington.
1 November 2003
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is calling for submissions on the role of science in environmental policy and decision-making. This article is based on a paper presented at the 2003 New Zealand Skeptics' Conference in Wellington.
1 November 2003
1 August 2003
A Washington think-tank has announced a breakthrough in the search for a pattern in the seemingly random episodes of US military aggression since the war.
1 August 2003
Traditional Chinese medical practitioners have given herbal remedies to Hong Kong Sars patients along with Western drugs, and public hospital officials said more patients might get similar treatment despite uncertainties about whether it helps.
1 August 2003
The Word-based submission to the CAM discussion document which was sent out in our (NZCSICOP) name is now available for you to read at http://skeptics.org.nz/cam
1 August 2003
The young earth creationists have been active again ... the Australian-based group Answers in Genesis (AIG), has been doing the circuit in New Zealand. Warnings on the Skeptics email list had alerted us to the fact that Carl Wieland, the head of AIG, was coming over to pollute young Kiwi minds so this was an opportunity we couldn't and shouldn't miss. Wieland is very influential in creationist circles, having produced many books, pamphlets and videos, and is really the driving force behind their main publications Creation Ex Nihilo and the impressively, but inappropriately, named Technical Journal (or "TJ" as they lovingly refer to it). It thus promised to be a good chance to see Wieland in action first hand and to get some clues as to how to handle him next time he appears on our shores.
1 August 2003
I am always astonished that famous mystical persons, such as the Virgin Mary (who was transubstantiated into an Australian fencepost in February) reveal themselves to us mere mortals. I once had an experience like that.
1 August 2003
The Skeptics flyer on colloidal silver (see the resources section on the Website) prompted this interesting correspondence from a doctor dealing with it.
1 August 2003
Fear of litigation is a powerful stimulus to over-investigation and over treatment. In an atmosphere of litigation phobia, the only bad test is the test you didn't think of ordering.
1 August 2003
Ancient Phoenicians in New Zealand? A recent book makes the claim, but the evidence doesn't bear scrutiny.
1 August 2003
Had an email the other day from someone we hadn't heard from in a while. Among other things, he took the opportunity to ask why we heard so little from the Skeptics in the media, and made unfavourable comparisons with the Consumer's Institute. Given the breadth of that organisation's support base and consequent level of funding, that hardly seemed fair.
1 August 2003
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).
1 August 2003
Should we trust psychologists and psychiatrists, especially as expert witnesses in court cases?
1 August 2003
1 August 2003
The World Health Organisation has issued a new warning against non-essential travel to the entire Western Hemisphere following renewed concerns about the spread of Severe Loss of Perspective Syndrome (Slops).
1 August 2003
A Waikato University lecturer has been named on a website for Latter-Day Saints as anti-mormon.
1 May 2003
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.
1 May 2003
A British man considers himself unlucky because the week he won the lottery, another person did too. So he had to share the £8 million ($NZ23 million) winnings instead of taking home all the money himself.
1 May 2003
We Dawkins fans have been waiting since "Unweaving the Rainbow" in 1998 for this. Unlike its predecessors, it is not written around a single theme, but is a collection of Dawkins's comments and reviews of the past 25 years, on a variety of topics, reflecting his wide-ranging interests and passions. His editor, Latha Menon, has arranged 32 of these into six groups and a final letter to his ten-year-old daughter on "Belief". In addition to a general Preface, Dawkins has written a short introduction to each group.
1 May 2003
These books are all subtitled "A Reference for the Rest of Us!". Perhaps I'm prejudiced but as far as I'm concerned, dummies is a better term for anyone who uses alternative medicine. Having said that, this book, written by a chiropractor and a science writer with a PhD in the history of medicine and science, is not as bad as I thought it was going to be.
1 May 2003
From the path we gaze down at them. From their grassed mound they turn an occasional incurious gaze back - primate watching primate. I have seen very few chimpanzees. For them we are just part of an eternal procession of their depilated, camera-toting, child-accompanying, gawping kin. Behind the idling chimps, beyond the grassed enclosure with its climbing poles, beyond the zoo, rise the hills and houses of Wellington.
1 May 2003
Estimates of world poverty are grossly exaggerated
1 May 2003
Some doctors see a problem and look for an answer. Others merely see a problem. The diffident doctor may do nothing from sense of despair. This, of course, may be better than doing something merely because it hurts the doctor's pride to do nothing.
1 May 2003
These are nervous times. By an astounding coincidence, as I wrote that line and paused to think of what to put next, I had a call from a friend to tell me there was a Sars case at the Waikato Hospital and to ask whether, in my other role as a subeditor at the Waikato Times, I would want to pass that on.
1 May 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.
1 May 2003
1 May 2003
Increased litigation will do nothing to reduce the rate of medical misadventure
1 May 2003
This book thoroughly demolishes the pretence that laboratory experiments in ESP have produced statistical evidence for the phenomenon's reality. But like almost all writers on the subject, Hines treats telepathic communication and precognition as merely alternative forms of the same thing. ESP does not exist. But telepathy conceivably could exist, if there was a "fifth force" explain it, whereas precognition would require that information travel backward in time -- an absurdity that can be refuted by the reductio ad absurdum it would produce.
1 February 2003
This article was originally presented on National Radio's Sunday Supplement
1 February 2003
The following correspondence between nursing lecturer Sue Gasquoine and Skeptics' chairentity Vicki Hyde is reproduced with the permission of the participants -ed.
1 February 2003
If the caring practitioner has no idea of what to do next, the decision may be best left in the hands of the Almighty. Too many clinicians, unfortunately, are unable to resist giving God a hand with the decision-making.
1 February 2003
In New Zealand Skeptic No. 64, Warwick Don critiqued Ian Wishart's article Walking with Beasts, published in Investigate, June 2002. This is Wishart's response.
1 February 2003
A Feng Shui practitioner who died while on a life mastery course in Fiji was ready to leave his body, his widow believes. Stephanie Challis, pictured in the Nelson Mail (11 December 2002) smiling happily with her three children, told how her 41 year old husband Will had undergone a course of body cleansing which involved colonic hydrotherapy and drinking quantities of good quality water.
1 February 2003
The Painted Apple Moth spraying programme in the western suburbs of Auckland has generated considerable controversy. An alternative programme was evaluated at last year's Skeptics
1 February 2003
1 February 2003
For almost half a century, it's seemed like human destiny to go into Space. When we were kids, everyone wanted to be an astronaut when they grew up. The loss of the Columbia space shuttle hasn't extinguished that dream, but it firmly reminds us that leaving the Earth behind is a very difficult thing to do. If things were just a little bit different - if our species were as big as elephants, or aquatic, or if the Earth's gravity were much stronger, it may have been impossible. As it is, raising a human being into low Earth orbit, to say nothing of going further, is a hugely expensive proposition. And once up there, the lack of gravity leads to muscle wasting and other physiological problems. Food and air also need to be brought up from the planet below.
1 February 2003
In Darwin's Shadow: The life and science of Alfred Russel Wallace, by Michael Shermer. Oxford University Press.
1 February 2003
Insecurities about water quality have led to a boom in sales of bottled water. But the health benefits of the phenomenon are probably minimal.
1 February 2003
In this issue Ian Wishart responds to Warwick Don's critique of his article on Intelligent Design.
1 November 2002
Mind the Gap! The book title is intended to remind all who have waited on curved London Underground railway platforms of the risk a careless step poses. The risks Dr Trask warns of are those which can label the writer as illiterate, ignorant of the nuances of English usage, or at least possessed of cloth ears. In offering this review to New Zealand Skeptic I do not imply that readers are particularly in need of the author's advice; rather, his comments have a distinctly skeptical slant, which should be music to skeptical ears (see entry: cliches). Consider the following entries in his alphabetical list.
1 November 2002
Skeptics - always in two minds about something…
1 November 2002
The year got off to a good start with a series of successful meetings run by our Auckland colleagues in conjunction with the Rationalists, and I thank those involved for their efforts. I'd also like to thank Claire le Couteur and others who, in conjunction with Philip Catton of the Canterbury Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, organised a local Darwin Day celebration at short notice. That was on February 12, and was our first participation in an international effort which should see us mark the occasion each year, culminating in 2009 with the 150th celebration of the publication of Origin of Species.
1 November 2002
I attended the recent Christchurch Conference and greatly enjoyed the excellent standard of presentation and discussion. One small item, however, left me wondering about the organisation that I had recently joined: the inclusion of global warming research in the list of core topics alongside biodynamic agriculture, alternative medicine and UFOs.
1 November 2002
What name do you give to a quirky bunch of people who are scientifically literate, who question fads, and who want their beliefs to rest on evidence from the material world -- the sort of evidence that does not require one to ignore or reject all the laws of physics and other knowledge we have and that we rely on daily when flying, taking antibiotics or using the computer?
1 November 2002
The year round suntan, carnation in the button hole, silk tie, Armani suit and tongue should all be equally smooth. Sartorial elegance and verbal eloquence are powerful substitutes for evidence.
1 November 2002
This article is based on an address to the Skeptics Conference 2002. A condensed version has also been produced for the NZ Listener.
1 November 2002
This is the press release (slightly edited) which announced this year's Bent Spoon Winner. Most of the reports used only a small proportion, and included a quote from Ms Fitzsimons saying that the Skeptics could "do whatever they like with their silly bent spoon".
1 November 2002
Proceedings on Saturday were meant to be opened with a talk from Elric Hooper, but we were denied the opportunity to hear that leader of New Zealand theatre. In order to keep appointments in the USA in the following week, he had been forced to fly out on 11 September, the only day on which seats were available.
1 November 2002
A Hamilton doctor is facing two charges of professional misconduct and one of disgraceful conduct after one of his patients was left looking "like something out of a horror movie". The Marlborough Express (August 21) reports Yvonne Short had gone to Dr Richard Gorringe in 1998 looking for a cure for her skin problems.
1 November 2002
1 November 2002
The full copy of the audited financial accounts for NZCSICOP Inc for the year ending 31 December 2001 is available for viewing by anyone wishing to do so at the AGM. The Society Treasurer is Ian Short; the accounts were audited by Jane Jackman, a chartered accountant of Christchurch.
1 August 2002
Mass screening programmes have generated considerable controversy in this country. But these programmes have inherent limitations, which need to be better understood
1 August 2002
Professor JS Werry deserves thanks for his contribution in these pages regarding the present use/abuse of methylphenidate (Ritalin) and ADHD.
1 August 2002
Vehemence based medicine: The substitution of volume for evidence is an effective technique for brow-beating your more timorous colleagues and for convincing relatives of your ability. New Zealand Medical Journal Vol 113 No 1122 p479
1 August 2002
A critique of "Walking with Beasts", by Ian Wishart, Investigate Magazine, June 2002
1 August 2002
Two recent items in the overseas press show that NZ is lagging behind in recognising that the child sex abuse panic has been greatly overblown. In a case which closely paralleled the Christchurch Creche, Dawn Read and Christopher Lillie, Newcastle, were cleared in court of molesting children in a nursery eight years ago, says the Guardian (July 31). Despite this they were fired from their jobs and hounded into hiding by the media and the community. They have just won a libel case against the review team who assessed evidence from the children, the Newcastle City Council and the local Evening Chronicle.
1 August 2002
John Riddell learns about some dangerous chemicals
1 August 2002
Whether or not you believe in the paranormal may depend entirely on your brain chemistry. People with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance in coincidences, and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none.
1 August 2002
Vicki Hyde reports from the 4th World Skeptics Conference
1 August 2002
Hamilton is a progressive place where the difficult issues are tackled. Rather than being a cow town (we're not! we're not!), we sit around of a Friday evening and debate the Big Questions.
1 May 2002
Aristotle's Books in Auckland has started a skeptics section of titles. Books debunking the New Age and religion in general are found there.
1 May 2002
Owen McShane examines last year's Great Soya Sauce Scare
1 May 2002
The best paper in New Zealand (Waikato Times, May 6 - and it's got nothing to do with the fact that I work there) reports that depressed patients tricked into thinking they are being treated have undergone healing brain changes.
1 May 2002
John Riddell learns to his cost that fishermen can be as easy to catch as the creatures they pursue
1 May 2002
It is hard to be sure what Mike Houlding is on about in his rather opaque letter but I gather that he is lumping the use of clairvoyants, homoeopathic remedies and ADHD under some collective rubric of quackery.
1 May 2002
With winter almost upon us, the time has come to curl up in front of a nice screen and browse the internet. Speaking of which, congratulations are in order to our chair-entity Vicki Hyde and media spokesman Denis Dutton for having their websites nominated in the sixth annual Webby Awards.
1 May 2002
I will detail these seven alternatives in forth-coming issues of the magazine. For now here is Eminence based medicine: The more senior the colleague, the less importance he or she places on the need for anything as mundane as evidence. Experience, it seems, is worth any amount of evidence. These colleagues have a touching faith in clinical experience, which has been defined as "making the same mistakes with increasing confidence over an impressive number of years." New Zealand Medical Journal Vol 113 No 1122 p479
1 May 2002
A man charged with threatening to poison food produced by Dick Smith has been refused bail in the Rockhampton Magistrates Court in central Queensland. Graham Andrew Cooper, 30, is charged with trying extort $100,000 from the Australian Skeptics Association.
1 May 2002
University days are a great time to explore new directions. But sometimes you may end up a long way from where you thought you were going.
1 May 2002
1 May 2002
Netsurfer Science is a website every skeptic should bookmark. It provides a good lead-in to many science and skeptic-related sites and issues on the web. Here are a couple of recent items.
1 May 2002
This article is drawn from interviews with Allan Coukell on the NZ National Radio science programme "Eureka!" in 2001.
1 May 2002
Damian Thompson argues that a tangle of folklore and urban legend, allied to a particular horror of paedophilia, has blinded many to the scientific facts
1 May 2002
Snake Oil And Other Preoccupations, by John Diamond. Vintage, 2001, $29.95
1 February 2002
When I spoke at the conference two and a half years ago, argument was rife as to when the next millennium would begin. Now, there is no doubt we are well launched into the third thousand-year period since something important was supposed to have happened.
1 February 2002
The Psychology of the Psychic, 2nd edition, by David Marks. Prometheus Books.
1 February 2002
In the latest NZ Skeptic, beside the chair-entity's report, there is a false history of subscriptions. From written records: the sub was $10 for '86 to '88, then $20 for '89 to '91 and $25 since. The new $40 rate follows the third increase since starting. I would hate to think the Skeptics allow false statements to go uncorrected.
1 February 2002
John Welch finds that the sexual abuse industry rolls on unabated.
1 February 2002
Auckland members are organising a series of meetings to debate controversial issues, in conjunction with the Rationalists. The meetings will be held on Sunday evenings at 7 pm at Rationalist House, 64 Symonds Street, Auckland Central.
1 February 2002
It was sad to see - two shelves of Lynley Hood's A City Possessed, heavily discounted at Whitcoulls.
1 February 2002
In the second of a two-part series, Jim Ring looks at what evidence means to different people
1 February 2002
When Raymond Richards included a lecture on the Mormon Church in his course on American history he ran foul of not only the Mormon community but also the University of Waikato heirarchy. He told his story at the NZ 2001 Skeptics' conference in Hamilton.
1 February 2002
Tony Blair and Cherie took part in a 'rebirthing ritual' during a holiday in Mexico, says the Dominion (17 December). They were guided through the ritual while dipping in a Mayan steam bath. At least they were clean.
1 February 2002
1 February 2002
John Riddell reckons he's a sensible bloke. But then, doesn't everybody?
1 February 2002
Once again the financial figures are presented in the format required by the Registrar of Incorporated Societies.
1 November 2001
Thank you kindly for the recent award for journalistic excellence I received from your society for my editorial in the NZ Medical Journal on alternative treatments. It was wonderful to be honoured by a society such as yours whose aims and intentions I absolutely support and whom I have always held in the highest regard.
1 November 2001
I'm pleased to welcome you officially to the 21st century, which I suspect will need Skeptics every bit as much as the last century, judging by the general level of activity over the past year.
1 November 2001
A documentary on faith healing that promised to scrutinise the practice demonstrated short-sightedness and has won for TopShelf Productions the 2001 Bent Spoon Award from the New Zealand Skeptics.
1 November 2001
Jim Ring's article on sodium chloride in Skeptic number 60 didn't mention a classic case. Red Seal markets a range of 12 remedies in tablet form called Dr Scheussler's Biochemic Tissue Salts. Among them is a substance called Nat Mur which is described as a "water distributor" and suggested for "excessive moisture and dryness in any part of the system - water colds, dry nose and throat, heartburn, great thirst, watery eyes, skin chaffing, dryness of the bowel, after-effects of alcohol, loss of taste and smell"
1 November 2001
Warfare has always been stressful for its participants. Before the psychological impacts of the conflict in Afghanistan became apparent, our regular medical columnist looks at the history of post-war syndromes
1 November 2001
Dr John Welch goes eyeball to eyeball with the iridologists, and takes a look at some famous faces
1 November 2001
It wasn't a dark and stormy night but a gaggle of skeptics got together recently to listen to ghost stories in Hamilton. Professional story teller Andrew Wright sent shivers down the groups' skeptical spines as they listened to his rendition of one of the oldest known horror stories, Lord Fox, a BlueBeard variation.
1 November 2001
Singaporean ghostbusters are turning to hi-tech equipment as they search for paranormal phenomena, reports the Evening Post (September 9).
1 November 2001
Scientific studies suggest "organic" foods are neither healthier nor safer than genetically modified products or those grown conventionally.
1 November 2001
1 November 2001
Sometimes the most successful prophets are the ones that don't even try
1 November 2001
This Bravo Award-winning item originally appeared as the editorial in the March 23 issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal
1 November 2001
In which John Riddell conducts an entirely unscientific experiment and saves himself quite a bit of money
1 August 2001
Is there anything on television worth watching? Maybe.
1 August 2001
Because Cowards get Cancer too, by John Diamond, Random House, 1998
1 August 2001
The Gallup Organization released the results of its new poll on paranormal beliefs in June, which indicate increases in the percentage of Americans who believe in communication with the dead, ESP, ghosts, psychic healing and extraterrestrial visitation (see http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr010608.asp).
1 August 2001
It's often claimed either that science doesn't have the tools to identify ESP, or that scientists have a prejudice against the whole idea. But American researchers have recently confirmed that certain individuals are indeed able to detect an energy field given off by living creatures in the absence of any other sensory cues. The only thing is, those individuals are young paddlefish.
1 August 2001
The Misinformation Age has arrived at last
1 August 2001
I enjoyed Jim Ring's "the Spectre of Kahurangi" (Autumn 2001). In Kahurangi National Park there is a bridge called "Brocken Bridge", quite close to Ghost Creek. Could this be an indication of supernatural forces emanating from this enchanting region?
1 August 2001
In which John Riddell reminisces about happy childhood days and reflects on the stories we tell to grown-ups
1 August 2001
A Colorado colour therapist was jailed for 16 years after being found guilty of causing the death of a 16 year old girl. It must have been quite traumatic for the jury who watched a videotape of the session in which the girl begged for air and screamed that she was dying". What we need in New Zealand are equally tough laws that protect children from acts of omission, particularly where children are denied safe and effective medical treatment in favour of ludicrous quackery. (Dominion June 20th, Hokum Locum #59)
1 August 2001
Skepticism is very much concerned with assessing the quality of evidence in support of a particular claim. But evidence means different things to different people. In the first of a two-part series, Jim Ring examines the legal profession's view of the matter.
1 August 2001
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.
1 August 2001
The placebo effect has long been of interest to skeptics for its presumed role in alternative medicine. The Skeptics' Dictionary (http://www.skepdic.com) has a lengthy entry, describing a placebo as an inert substance, or fake surgery or therapy, used as a control in an experiment or given to a patient for its probable beneficial effect. It goes on to add the effect has at least three components.
1 August 2001
The marketing of sodium chloride should be taken with a pinch of salt
1 August 2001
1 August 2001
1 May 2001
A $110,000 prize offered by Australian Skeptics Incorporated is safe after testing a world record number of water diviners at Mitta Mitta on Sunday. A total of 52 diviners, or dowsers, used an array of forked sticks, fencing wire, copper wire and bare hands to test their ability to divine water in surface containers on a green of the Mitta Mitta golf course.
1 May 2001
A new book on alternative medicine has little to add
1 May 2001
Recently returned from a posting in Saudi Arabia and now suffering from a cold and a bleeding nose, John Welch continues his column on medical matters.
1 May 2001
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.
1 May 2001
My brain hurts. I haven't used it in some years, so there's no surprise really. After managing to avoid external employment for a goodly time, a job has finally got its teeth into me and won't let go. Which is not to say I've been totally lazy at home these past years, there's been free-lunch work to do and projects such as the NZ Skeptic to help pass time. But all of these could be done in the privacy of one's own home, dressed in striped jarmies if the mood took and it often did.
1 May 2001
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.
1 May 2001
Howard Bezar and Denis Curtain
1 May 2001
Aoraki Polytechnic has paid former naturopathy students $515 000 for falsely advertising their course had degree status. The students were seeking $4 million in compensation.
1 May 2001
Being a skeptical parent in New Zealand isn't always easy, but it has its rewards. This was originally presented to the Skeptics' World Convention in Sydney, in November.
1 May 2001
Even in a secular age, it's hard to surrender the religious habits of old
1 May 2001
1 May 2001
1 May 2001
Goethe's Faust is a tale of the supernatural. According to a famous passage, on Walpurgisnacht a witch's sabbat was celebrated on top of the Brocken, a mountain in the Black Forest. Old maps show this point circled by witches on broomsticks. Although probably not a very ancient tradition, it grabbed the imagination of 19th century romantics. They claimed at certain times magical visions could be seen from the peak. Even though no witches were visible on the mountain, gigantic shadowy figures were projected onto the clouds; the Spectre of the Brocken.
1 February 2001
The old creationist claim that there are no transitional forms in the fossil record is starting to look a bit tired
1 February 2001
I hate to spoil a good story, especially a skeptical one, but is there something slightly adrift with William Ireland's piece on the Kaikoura UFOs?
1 February 2001
Bernard Howard reports from the Skeptics' World Convention, Sydney, 10-12 November 2000
1 February 2001
The Prevalence of HIV disease has continued to increase across the African continent and is a major public health concern due to cultural attitudes to sexuality and a degree of poverty which precludes effective pharmacological interventions. A quack Nigerian surgeon has been charging patients US$1000-1500 for a course of his vaccine which he claims has successfully treated 900 patients for HIV/AIDS. The Nigerian Academy of Sciences deemed the vaccine "untested and potentially dangerous". The Surgeon's response has been to allege that "he has been the victim of a conspiracy by transnational pharmaceutical companies, in league with the Nigerian Health Ministry, to steal his 'wonder vaccine'...." This is the familiar paranoid conspiracy theories of the quack.
1 February 2001
I wished I'd tried this one when I was at Gisborne Girl's High. An Oklahoma student has been suspended from school for casting a spell against a teacher, reports the Dominion (Monday October 30). The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on behalf of the student and also charged the school with repeatedly violating her rights by seizing notebooks she used to write horror stories and barring her from drawing or wearing signs of the pagan religion Wicca. No mention was made of how the teacher was faring…
1 February 2001
Astronomy is the science of stars and outer space stuff. Not everybody knows this and so astronomers get insulted when they get called astrologers. Astrologers will tell you that astrology is also a science, but is it?
1 February 2001
Another year, another millennium. We saw the old century out in a very quiet manner, watching Stanley Kubrick's 2001 with friends in Auckland. A few fireworks exploded from the top of the Sky Tower -- and then it was bed time. Given that this was the day when the old century really ticked over, there was far less hooplah this time -- the cockroaches were especially quiet.
1 February 2001
Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of the DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.
1 February 2001
An organisation founded in 1994 to help fathers accused of sexually abusing their children is winding down, saying the "epidemic" of allegations has ended thanks to its work.
1 February 2001
1 February 2001
The following is an abridged version of a paper presented at Skeptics 2000, Dunedin, New Zealand. The author would like to thank NZCSICOP and NZARH for sponsoring this visit to New Zealand.
1 November 2000
It's all over - the cheering and clapping are fading and the crowds have all returned home, with thoughts about the next one. I am, of course, not talking about that sporting thing on the TV from across the Ditch, but the annual Skeptics' Conference where, for a full two days, passions soared and speakers spoke.
1 November 2000
Members attending the Annual Dinner on 26 August last saw a bemused retiring NZCSICOP Secretary, even more tongue-tied than usual, responding to an unexpected gift. A collection of skeptical books, each signed by its distinguished author, and inscribed with flattering comments. Now that he has recovered somewhat from the shock, he wishes to send this message to fellow members; Thank you for your support and good wishes, and for this splendid gift.
1 November 2000
Vicki Hyde presents the year 2000 chair-entity's Report
1 November 2000
Ian Short provides a few comments on the Treasurer's Report presented to the 2000 AGM.
1 November 2000
This year's Bent Spoon Award from the NZ Skeptics has been won by Wellington Hospital for encouraging their nursing staff to claim special healing powers through the laying on of hands.
1 November 2000
A news item that Australian skeptics are considering video evidence of a "Bigfoot" sighting for a $100,000 prize should alarm all who have offered money for evidence of paranormal activity. I urge all NZ skeptics who have risked part of their fortune; if you have not already done so, insert a clause insisting that photographs, films or video will not be considered as evidence.
1 November 2000
An old mystery now looks rather less mysterious
1 November 2000
Thanks to reader Alan Pickmere for drawing my attention to colon cleansing. In a radio advertisement Alan heard the claim that the average adult has up to 10kg of preservatives and toxic waste in their colon. The actor, John Wayne had 20kg removed at autopsy, doubtless dating from the time spent venting his spleen against commie actors facing Senator Joe McCarthy's inquisition. Come to think of it, perhaps he should have "vented" more often.
1 November 2000
Taking a leaf from the UK Skeptic, we're turning our news clippings into a column. Which means I get to read them - never used to before! Many thanks to all those who've sent in material, and please keep it coming.
1 November 2000
There are plenty of things which are better to drink than distilled water, says John Riddell. But then, most of you probably knew that anyway.
1 November 2000
1 November 2000
It was a Ngatea farmer who finally got to Doug Edmeades on an Autumn day in 1985.
1 November 2000
Despite being clairvoyant Angel Destiny admits she was taken by surprise when her 1920s house collapsed around her as she soaked in the bath.
1 November 2000
Wherein intrepid ace reporter Vicki Hyde spills the beans on what Skeptics get up to at their annual meetings…
1 November 2000
Presenting the evidence just isn't enough
1 August 2000
The risks of third-generation contraceptive pills have been much in the news. But assessing risk can be a tricky business.
1 August 2000
There has been a considerable easing of international tensions since the dark days of the mid-twentieth century. John Riddell thinks he knows why.
1 August 2000
Christian fundamentalists usually come to the notice of the Skeptics when they make pronouncements on scientific matters, as with creationism. But, as Ross Miller indicates, fundamentalism results in junk religion, not just junk science.
1 August 2000
I was interested to read a recent article in the NZ Skeptic on Healing Touch, as I am a consultant anaesthetist at Wellington Hospital.
1 August 2000
As Professor Cole explained at the last Skeptics' Conference, "Quantum Booster"-like devices have been around a long time.
1 August 2000
John Welch started writing for the magazine in Issue 16, but a posting with UNSCOM to Iraq meant he had to relinquish responsibility for the column. He is delighted to once again have the opportunity to indulge his interest in bizarre medical beliefs and wishes to thank Dr Neil McKenzie for his efforts to date.
1 August 2000
The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals, by Simon Conway Morris. Oxford University Press.
1 August 2000
Many moons ago I packed into a dimmed lecture theatre along with 400 other keen-eyed stage I psych students to listen to a presentation on psychic ability.
1 August 2000
1 August 2000
What red-blooded skeptic could turn up an invitation to stay in a haunted house and meet the inhabitants -- certainly not your intrepid chair-entity....
1 May 2000
John Riddell has a few confessions to make.
1 May 2000
People involved in incidents such as rail crashes, bombings or armed robberies may suffer more in the long run if they undergo intensive counselling, some psychologists believe.
1 May 2000
It's a great privilege to have known Eileen, her warmth, her wit and her sharp mind undimmed by her failing health. In the last few years, when she might forget the word for something, she knew what she wanted to say about it.
1 May 2000
That was never six months just then -- it felt much longer. Banised to the depths of New Zealand, in Tuatapere (almost as far south west as you can get in the South Island), life took on a gentler pace. Momentous things did happen -- the stoat population declined by 300 around where we were, and the yellowheads had a successful breeding season.
1 May 2000
I just wanted to make a comment on the clipping from the Christchurch Star concerning "nuclear extinction" which appeared on p.9 of the NZ Skeptic periodical. In the clipping, a refutation of this possibility was based on some writings of one Bruce Cathie who is claimed therein to be a mathematician among other things.
1 May 2000
Numerology, or What Pythagoras Wrought, by Underwood Dudley, Mathematical Association of America, Washington DC, 1997
1 May 2000
Here's an idea that WINZ have yet to suggest -- but it may not be far off!
1 May 2000
Bob Metcalfe (Forum NZ Skeptic 54) seems to be calling for a change in editorial policy on footnotes and references. This has been consistent throughout the history of this society and any change would completely alter the character of this journal. What do members want? I thank him for his apology. Anything that increases feedback on articles in NZ Skeptic and the numbers of letters in Forum is to be welcomed.
1 May 2000
Remember the '90s? It was the decade when:
1 May 2000
The recent decision by the Kansas (U.S.A.) Board of Education to discourage the teaching of evolution in public schools raised the question "what would Darwin think"? In search of an answer, I asked three amateur psychics to contact Darwin and to film the encounter. Well, these three psychics took my large cash advance and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Their videotapes were found several days later. Here, for the first time, are the transcripts of their tapes, which are soon to be released in a major motion picture coming to a theater near you.
1 May 2000
At last year's conference, John Scott spoke on the problems of mixing misinformation and medicine.
1 May 2000
Readers of NZ Skeptic will have seen R.E. Bartholomew's article "The Great Zeppelin Scare of 1909" in last autumn's issue, no 47. This covered the same event as one of the chapters in this book. Several other chapters describe similar episodes which occurred in other times and other places, and in a final section all these are woven into a coherent story. Each chapter is supported by a copious list of references, most of them newspaper reports pubished during the development and decay of the case concerned.
1 February 2000
In which John Riddell continues his pub night discussions.
1 February 2000
Skepsis's last article on Menopause Madness [Skeptic 53] reminded me of my recent prescribing of progesterone cream for a well informed patient at her request. The good GP I am (I have faith, sometimes in evidence-based medicine!), I looked up the evidence on such creams and also perused the articles given to me by my patient. There was one Randomised Control trial, review article by a gynaecologist plus a lot of very biomedical in vitro research which was of little use to me. Not much in the Cochrane database and a little on MEDLINE. One clinical trial of reasonable quality showed some results in terms of symptom improvement. Safety issues hadn't really been researched but then again wild yam cream must be natural and therefore OK huh?
1 February 2000
A respected member of Skeptics passed away at the Hampton Court Rest Home at Taradale, napier, on 29 September last year.
1 February 2000
Sceptics have put up $100,000 in a bid to make a controversial Australian spiritualist eat her words over claims she does not need food.
1 February 2000
The Swedish chemist Berzelius coined the term "organic" for substances that could only be made by living organisms and not synthesised by humans. His German friend Wöhler synthesised urea in 1828 proving Berzelius wrong: there was no such distinction. Another brilliant German chemist, Liebig, then used "organic" to mean carbon-compound chemistry, extending this to include the chemistry of living organisms and so beginning biochemistry.
1 February 2000
It's my right as a parent to decide what is best for my child. After all, I'm a caring parent who dearly loves her children and would do only what is best for them.
1 February 2000
As a born-again skeptic, I find it hard to write about an experience which challenges my entire values system; dead men don't talk, dreams and premonitions tell you nothing except, perhaps, something about your body chemistry, the whole body of scientific knowledge in all the different fields of hard science hangs together, so if crap like creationism and flat-Earth geography are true, then everything else we've discovered in the last 500 years must be wrong... Still, I must be brutally honest.
1 February 2000
Firstly, I must commend the September 1999 Midland Renal Service Nephrology newsletter. It warned that anyone presenting with unexplained or worsening kidney disease should be questioned about their use of "natural" remedies.
1 February 2000
1 February 2000
I didn't wish to begin a debate about the issues surrounding religion in the 16th and 17th-century, nor would I ever wish to stop anyone from taking in interest in history. All I wanted to do was to point out that history is an academic discipline the same as any other, and it is dangerous to make pronouncements of such a dogmatic nature in the subject in which one has not been trained.
1 February 2000
Paper prepared for the 1999 Skeptics Conference, Auckland, 28-29 August.
1 November 1999
Well, that's another year in the "hot" seat, and more "interesting" times. I've had over 250 messages in my Skeptics email folder build up since January, and that's only the ones I wanted to keep. It provides a form of diary for what we've done throughout the year.
1 November 1999
I found it interesting to read Bernard Howard's article on complaining to the authorities. I myself complained about an incident that happened some years ago, when someone who was promoting a book he was trying to sell to a school library maintained that the author was "working with the health department on a cure for AIDS". The book was called Magnetic Healing and Other Realities. I complained to the Department of Trade and Industry, where I was in fact treated with the utmost courtesy and consideration.
1 November 1999
There are three types of people in this country. Those that can count and those that can't. It is common to blame the education system for this.
1 November 1999
Hedgehogs do not impale fruit with their prickles and run away with it, nor do they steal the milk from slow-witted cows. These are just two of the unsubstantiated rumours and misconceptions that were exploded at the recent Skeptics' conference in Auckland.
1 November 1999
TVNZ's Holmes show has taken this year's Bent Spoon Award from the New Zealand Skeptics for promoting extraordinary and untested claims regarding cancer treatments.
1 November 1999
THE 1999 Skeptics Conference in Auckland was a conference looking for a theme, and in the end none presented itself. We ended up with an eclectic mix of papers, ranging from "Reading Cats' Paws" (Ken Ring) to the paper on philosophical skepticism based on the work of David Hume (James Allan).
1 November 1999
1 November 1999
In the wake of the green-lipped mussel debacle, the Australian Menopause Society (AMS) convened an expert panel of doctors to discuss controversial areas of menopausal medicine. Alternative therapies are a boom industry in Australia and New Zealand (worth in excess of $1 billion in Australia) with menopausal women the highest users.
1 November 1999
1 November 1999
IT IS WELL, at the start of a discussion, to declare an interest. So, I begin by admitting that my fascination with the year 2000 was aroused nearly 70 years ago. Like many mechanically-minded lads of the 20s and 30s, I was a keen reader of "The Meccano Magazine". One issue of about 1930 looked forward to the distant future, and to what life would be like in 2000. I have forgotten the text, but a picture remains in my mind of tall, elegant buildings lining a wide street, along which glided, speedily but noiselessly, clean streamlined trains. The pictures and accompanying description appealed to the young Howard, and I dreamed how wonderful it would be to grow so phenomenally ancient as to be around at that splendid time.
1 November 1999
New claims that pollen grains on the Shroud of Turin link it to pre-eighth-century Jerusalem were made in August by researchers at the International Botanical Congress in St. Louis. In fact, the claims are based on earlier, scientifically discredited data.
1 November 1999
When the Holmes programme showcased the new "healing touch" service operated by Wellington Hospital, we swung into action with the following fax:
1 August 1999
John Riddell looks at a costly alternative to glue sniffing.
1 August 1999
Did a British regiment really vanish mysteriously at Gallipoli?
1 August 1999
More from last year's Skeptics conference.
1 August 1999
Three sketpics go head to head with a creationist lecturer.
1 August 1999
Winter is here, and it's time for all good skeptics to heed the call and flock to Auckland for the annual conference, where illuminating conversation and inspired addresses await. And then the same good skeptics can generate battle strategies to cope with all the fuss about the Millennium and the imminent end of the world. In the meantime, here's a copy of the Skeptic to read while making these important plans.
1 August 1999
1 August 1999
ONCE again the medical profession has made a mess of its relations with the public, and I'm not talking about Gisborne smear takers.
1 August 1999
1 August 1999
This title of a modest advertisement in the Sunday Star-Times last September caught my eye. Two statements in the ad surprised me: the first, that "usually only three treatments are needed", ie, it is implied that the therapy is a cancer cure, and the second, "...we are currently arranging a scientific Control Group with the Ministry of Health".
1 August 1999
From a medical member, recently moved to a rural practice:
1 August 1999
READERS of NZ Skeptic will have seen R.E. Bartholomew's article "The Great Zeppelin Scare of 1909" in last autumn's issue (No. 47). This covered the same event as one of the chapters in this book. Several other chapters describe similar episodes which occurred in other times and other places, and in a final section all these are woven into a coherent story.
1 May 1999
Bernard Howard has pointed out a typing error in his Summer editorial: there were seven founding member of the NZ Skeptics, but only five were named. The piece should have included Mr Ray Carr and Dr Jim Woolnough (both of Auckland and both now deceased). Dr Howard goes on to say that Dr Woolnough was a distinguished physician who put his career on the line by carrying out an abortion in the "bad, old days", and Mr Carr was a long time humanist and skeptic. Sincere apologies for the omission.
1 May 1999
A company which made staff walk barefoot over burning coals in a training exercise has escaped prosecution. Seven sales trainees suffered burns during the "motivational" session run by insurance giant Eagle Star. Two of the workers needed specialist treatment at a burns unit.
1 May 1999
I AM looking for ideas. For the last four years, I have had a challenge to psychics for them to find a promissory note with a value of $50,000. For the first six months, it was located within five kilometres of my tourist activity - Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World in Wanaka. I had two serious psychic challenges, each of whom seriously failed!
1 May 1999
Research is revealing how people can develop memories of things that never really happened.
1 May 1999
THROUGH various articles, books, radio and TV programs, most New Zealanders will be familiar with the name Richard Pearse. Many are convinced that Pearse flew before the first official flight in history, made by the Wright brothers on 17th Dec 1903. Some are indignant that Pearse has not received the recognition that he deserved. The best book on the subject is The Riddle of Richard Pearse by Gordon Ogilvie first published in 1973 and revised in 1994. Ogilvie provides an objective account and he personally discovered some of the most important evidence in this case. Nevertheless he draws some strange conclusions at times.
1 May 1999
1 May 1999
I START with another example of chemists' lack of ethics and the gullibility of the public. In November 28 issue of the Listener, the ever suspicious Pamela Stirling did a good expose on Cellasine, the new herbal cellulite "remedy", which sold out in a few days when it came here.
1 May 1999
1 May 1999
In which we look at another easy way to make money from home. No training or prior experience required!
1 May 1999
IT'S A funny old world, I was thinking to myself on the way home from coffee with a friend. Except, it wasn't coffee, it was decaff, and, to add insult, instant. During which she'd helped me to a generous serving of the state of the universe as she saw it.
1 May 1999
ROBERT Temple's book The Sirius Mystery suggests that astronauts from Sirius visited Earth in ancient times, 5000 years or more ago. These beings were amphibious humanoids, with the lower body fish-tailed. The evidence for this amazing assertion hangs largely on legend and folklore plus one piece of very puzzling astronomical evidence.
1 May 1999
Tarot readings really do work -- for the reader.
1 February 1999
Around 300BCE there started a school of Greek philosophy called Skepticism. It continued for centuries, but was more like dogmatic doubt than the modern version. Bertrand Russell put their creed as "Nobody knows, and nobody can know". They may simply have a bad press. Carneades, one-time head of the skeptical academy, was accused of denying the possibility of all knowledge. In fact he seems to have denied the possibility of certain knowledge, a very different thing.
1 February 1999
Founding member Bernard Howard reminisces on the Skeptics' history in this guest editorial.
1 February 1999
New Zealand was recently treated to a visit by what was proclaimed as "probably the best known archaeologist in the world", a chap by the name of Ron Wyatt. He was claiming to give us evidence that he had found the site of Noah's Ark, among many other things.
1 February 1999
A lucrative new career option!
1 February 1999
by Gavin East, from Top of the Morning Book of Epitaphs, ed Brian Edwards, Tandem Press, Auckland, 1998.
1 February 1999
Rats carrying the deadly bubonic plague will overrun Los Angeles, sparking mass evacuations
1 February 1999
This is an abridged version of Professor Hill's presentation to the 1998 Skeptics' Conference.
1 February 1999
1 February 1999
Like Noel O'Hare, I attended the September Skeptics' conference. Noel, winner of an NZ Skeptics Bravo Award "for critical analysis and common sense for his health column throughout 1997", had a gripe (Shadow Of Doubt, Listener, 19 September 1998). He accused us of favouring "soft targets -- psychics, New Age fads, alternative medicine, astrology." "Poking fun at Creationists or crystal healers," he wrote, "may produce a warm glow of superiority -- but doesn't change much."
1 February 1999
For some years the Skeptics have had a collection of videotapes available for members to borrow. These are on topics thought to be of interest to skeptics, including firewalking, spontaneous human combustion (unrelated to firewalking!), homeopathy, UFOs, alien abduction, etc. and have been sourced mainly from material broadcast in New Zealand.
1 February 1999
1 February 1999
James Randi has demonstrated that a water diviner has a 94% chance of success in finding water for the simple reason that 94% of the land surface has fresh water immediately below its surface. The diviner is likely to fail miserably when he/she is asked to find a dry spot. The notion that water flows in rivers underground is only true for some exceptional places, usually associated with limestone deposits. Normally, water is trapped in microscopic pores and only moves a few centimetres to a few hundred meters per year. Similar misconceptions and statistics are seen in oil divining.
1 November 1998
John Riddell finds some creationist claims really are testable, unfortunately for them.
1 November 1998
AS A CONFIRMED, but lightweight, sceptic, I have had to endure many jibes from friends and colleagues as I questioned information reported in the newspapers and on the news. Equally, I have had to explain what being a sceptic is really all about -- not straight dismissal of, but the opportunity to question information that is presented as fact.
1 November 1998
NZ Skeptic_ production & distribution
1 November 1998
Some of you may recall Mike plugging the following two books at the conference. Both are concerned with the anti-science backlash, promulgated mostly by the academic left in the USA: post-modernism, relativism, radical feminist critiques of science, ethnocentric science, and so on. It's a movement that's beginning to assert itself here, and we should be informed.
1 November 1998
IT'S BEEN a busy year on many fronts for the Skeptics, with a number of major firsts:
1 November 1998
1 November 1998
Vicki Hyde told the Conference how the Skeptics' complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority had progressed.
1 November 1998
I was interested to read the letters by Jim Ring and Felicity Goodyear-Smith to my article with the above title [NZ Skeptic 47].
1 November 1998
IN THE beginning (specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon) out of quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang out of inflationary cosmology. He saw that the Big Bang was very big, too big for creatures that could worship him, so He created the earth. And darkness was upon the face of the deep, so He commanded hydrogen atoms (which He created out of Quarks and other subatomic goodies) to fuse and become helium atoms and in the process release energy in the form of light. And the light-maker he called the sun, and the process He called fusion. And He saw the light was good because now He could see what he was doing. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
1 November 1998
As a follow-up to inspiring comments made by David Russell at the recent conference, we are looking for someone with possibly a little legal training (or a lot of enthusiasm) to undertake some research on behalf of the Skeptics.
1 November 1998
Oh My God, it's the End of the World! Again!
1 November 1998
Hypnotist Lawrence Follas claims he can increase the size of a client's bust by telling her to imagine her breasts are growing (Sunday News 24 May). He says his client's breasts have grown 2cm in three months, and some women in the States have added an extra 6cm by the method. The programme involves seven one-hour sessions at $75 each. A tape of Follas's hypnosis session is given to the woman who must listen to it every day.
1 November 1998
The paid-up membership of the Skeptics has hit the 500+ mark, with two-thirds of the membership divided reasonably equally between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and Dunedin and parts south holding another 50 members.
1 November 1998
The Skeptical Intelligencer is a quarterly magazine published by the Association for Skeptical Enquiry (ASKE), the UK's skeptical organisation. Each 70+ page edition contains articles for the intelligent lay reader on paranormal, pseudo-scientific and anti-scientific claims.
1 November 1998
If you're a fan of oddities such as those showcased in Ripley's Believe It or Not, you'll love the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. This home of quackery features some amazing fraudulent gadgets. Learn, for example, about prostate cures like the light-bulbed prostate gland warmer or the frighteningly named recto rotor. These delights and more await you at http://www.mtn.org/quack/
1 November 1998
SKEPTICS conferences are always a bag of allsorts. Having piped up at last year's AGM and suggested the next conference should be in Wellington, I was landed with organising it. Thankfully, I had the Wellington Cabal to help: Cynthia Shakespeare, Tony Vignaux, Richard Sadleir, Mike Clear, Bob Brockie and Wayne Hennessey.
1 November 1998
1 November 1998
NEW AGE theory holds that practically all cultures had a tradition of using medicines (mostly herbal) and that there is a danger that "Western medicine" will replace these, so losing irreplaceable knowledge.
1 November 1998
EVERYTHING was roses and buttercups until that fateful day. An omen, it was, for sure. In July, on Friday, only 17 days before the 13th, we had born on our humble dairy farm a calfie. She had four legs, nice black and white patches, a cute butt and two heads, four eyes, four ears and two tongues.
1 August 1998
Bernard Howard proposes an answer to a curly question.
1 August 1998
There is no "face" on the Red Planet, according to pictures sent back from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. The BBC's science correspondent says the news will dampen down the controversy that has raged since images were transmitted back to Earth in 1976 from the Viking spacecraft.
1 August 1998
An article by Gordon Hewitt in NZ Skeptic 47 states, "In June 1995...an article appeared in this publication saying counselling was no use. This judgement was based on a single study conducted in 1939." This is not true, but as the author of the article I am obviously biased. May I urge all skeptics to read it for themselves?
1 August 1998
Jim Ring takes a look at canonisation and finds the lives of the saints less than miraculous.
1 August 1998
The Skeptics make their first-ever complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority.
1 August 1998
Chances are, you're worried about all the wrong things.
1 August 1998
A ruse by any other name smells just as fishy, and it seems RSI, OOS and OOI are good examples, if a UK surgeon is to be believed. According to Murray Matthewson, the condition, whatever you choose to call it, is not what it's cracked up to be.
1 August 1998
Chair-entity Vicki Hyde responds to a letter from a member who resigned from the society over the Skeptics' donation to the Peter Ellis Defence Fund. We reprint her letter as a clear statement of the Society's position on a controversial issue.
1 August 1998
1 August 1998
IT'S a damned rotten trick, I know, but I rang up my mum and asked her a simple question, does the Earth go round the Sun, or is it the other way around? She wasn't sure, but felt the most obvious, correct answer was that the Sun orbits the Earth.
1 August 1998
John Riddell contemplates how the newspapers would read if psychics really had the powers they claim
1 August 1998
EMILY ROSA of Loveland, Colorado, designed and carried out an experiment two years ago that challenges a leading treatment in alternative medicine. Her study, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has thrown the field into tumult.
1 May 1998
As a counsellor and psychotherapist also trained in science and in scepticism I have been disappointed in the apparent lack of depth to the sceptical analysis of counselling that seems to be present from time to time in the NZ Skeptic. This lack of rigour in analysis goes back some way. In June 1995, for example, an article appeared in this publication saying counselling was no use. This judgement was based on a single study conducted in 1939.
1 May 1998
I am sure Jim Ring is correct when he says we are on the winning side of the creationist battle [Forum, Summer 1997], but there is no room for complacency. As he says, the castrated form of biology taught in American schools has resulted in a minority of Americans believing organic evolution has occurred.
1 May 1998
IT'S nothing short of a miracle that this issue has made it to the mailbox. For the last six months the family, including our cat and retired cattle dog, have been living in a small housetruck. (Just as well we farmed out the rabbits, mice and fish). The reason for our spartan existence is we are in the middle of building a rammed earth house. Not only do we fill buckets with the best of the builders, we, or should I say I, also feed them. (Nothing is too good for our boys.)
1 May 1998
When I was young enough to think Dr Who was scary, I remember thinking it was good to live in times when people didn't believe in superstitions anymore. Recently, US taxpayers coughed up US$350,000 testing the effectiveness of Therapeutic Touch. It's one of those alternative therapies. The practitioner waves his hands over the patient, without touching them, while thinking gooey thoughts.
1 May 1998
Jay Mann delivered this address with accompanying liquid refreshment (with and without MSG) at last year's conference.
1 May 1998
Perhaps it's a coincidence, but many experts in non-proven schemes fall on their own swords. For example, Hoxsey died of cancer, and recently a Lower Hutt clairvoyant went bankrupt (due to unforeseen circumstances). Dr Rajko Medenica, the Yugoslavian specialist whose unorthodox treatments created devoted patients and determined enemies, died at the early age of 58 (Bay Of Plenty Times December 3 1997). He practised in South Carolina and drew patients from around the world, including Muhammad Ali, the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran and the late Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. He served 17 months in a Swiss prison two years ago for fraud, many saying that his unusual methods were not based on science, but that he preyed on those that had lost hope. He obviously didn't do the three guys mentioned much good either.
1 May 1998
1 May 1998
THE YEAR 1909 was a tense time for New Zealanders. For centuries, Britain had the world's unrivalled navy, and an invasion of the motherland was unthinkable. Her colonies and outposts enjoyed similar protection. But all of that changed in 1908, and with an unnerving suddenness, as grave concerns were expressed in Great Britain over Germany's rising military strength which prompted fears a surprise invasion might be launched at any time.
1 February 1998
New Zealand Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (Inc)
1 February 1998
I think the world got a pretty big warning this year as to the dangers of pseudo-science and gullibility when the 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide in the belief that they were to be resurrected in some fashion on board a UFO following the Hale-Bopp Comet. It's not that we like to say "I told you so", but....
1 February 1998
THERE'S no denying it. We're a strange lot. Sitting in the small hall during the annual Skeptics get-together and listening to the varied, and often colourful, discussion, it struck me how dissimilar we all are.
1 February 1998
Some problems cannot be resolved by just "getting it all out of your system", reports Nigel Hawkes.
1 February 1998
Annette Taylor spends an afternoon checking out the alternatives.
1 February 1998
Ten or twenty years ago, prominent overseas creationists once toured in a blaze of publicity. They spoke in public schools and received plenty of air time on National Radio and prime time TV. Some of us were out there fighting, and we felt we won most of the major battles.
1 February 1998
Have you ever had a go at water divining?
1 February 1998
Two Nobel prizewinners are being sued for libel by Jacques Benveniste, the controversial French scientist whose research on the "memory of water", first published in 1988, appeared to provide a scientific basis for homeopathic medicine.
1 February 1998
THE GREYS may have crash landed on Earth in 1947, but the real invasion happened about two years ago when Bill Barker's SCHWA merchandise first hit the streets. Since then it seems that there is Grey merchandise for every possible cultural slipstream; for the young and hip there's trendy skateboarding gear, Fimo rave-pendants and drug paraphernalia ("Take me to your dealer"); while for the committed believer there are various clay, bronze and pewter renditions of the aliens, with or without crashed saucer-craft, in numerous commemorative editions.
1 February 1998
A ban on using any method to recover memories of child abuse has been imposed on members of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. They face a series of sanctions if they persist in using the controversial techniques to treat their patients.
1 February 1998
1 February 1998
Another "I've seen the light" American quack whizzed through New Zealand recently, spreading his own magical brew of antioxidants, lacto-vegetarian diets, bioFlavonoid herbs, and, wait for it, Maharishi Ayurveda compounds. Hari Sharma, Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University, says that physicians are becoming pathogens, they are creating diseases. Like most saviours of the human race before him, he mixes scientific half truths and anecdotal stories to rubbish hundreds of years of painstakingly researched evidence-based medicine (GP Weekly, October 1997)
1 February 1998
1 February 1998
One of the memorable presentations at the 1997 Skeptics' Conference was David Novitz's assessment of whether organised scepticism has a place in a liberal democratic society.
1 February 1998
I was recently reflecting on my career as a scientist, and realised that this year is the 50th anniversary of my first scientific paper.1
1 November 1997
John Riddell spends a lot of time in the pub. Ask his wife. Often, over a pint or two, some bloke or blokess spouts forth some new age dogma which naturally requires correction.. Now a seasoned debater, he this month begins a regular series sharing his collection of responses honed to the mental capabilities of your average bar-room intellectual.
1 November 1997
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
1 November 1997
WE WERE_ skeptical. We demanded you respond to our clarion call for pithy pieces -- but only a few of you pithed on us. For this we are grateful and we have sent suitable telepathic gifts to all of you, for which you should be grateful. _But seriously, a couple of readers have queried our policy on the format of submissions which they've interpreted as meaning we don't accept handwritten copy. Wrong. Our eyesight is sometimes challenged by the individualistic handwriting styles we sometimes see, so we prefer typed or disc-supplied copy because we can then guarantee accuracy. But above all, we encourage you enthusiastically to send interesting forum pieces in whatever format you have available. The only criteria we use in selecting pieces for the forum is their value and interest to readers. The writer of the best piece published in the next issue will receive the definitive volume on proven homeopathic remedies.
1 November 1997
Jim Ring continues his investigations into the Fijian paranormal scene.
1 November 1997
1 November 1997
Scientology recently offered $12 million to FACTNet, an Internet library providing information on the dangers of mind control and cults, including information critical of Scientology. FACTNet's directors turned down Scientology's proposal, because it contained terms they considered unacceptable.
1 November 1997
In the first of a new series, Tauranga GP Neil McKenzie comments on recent examples of pseudoscience relating to medicine.
1 November 1997
1 November 1997
I have just visited another universe; it seems a much more interesting place than the dull old world we are forced to inhabit.
1 November 1997
The Bible (or, more precisely, the Torah) is a heavenly word-find puzzle, according to Israeli mathematicians.
1 November 1997
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, by Carl Sagan. Headline, $29.95.
1 November 1997
AS MOST readers will now be aware, the Ian Plimer/Allen Roberts court case has been adjudicated, and the results for Ian were not as he had hoped. The case was brought under federal Trade Practices legislation and state Fair Trading legislation and concerned two issues. The first was a breach of copyright action, where Ian's co-applicant, David Fasold, alleged that Roberts had used a diagram, Fasold's intellectual property, without permission. The second issue alleged that, in his lectures and sale of tapes, etc, Roberts had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in pursuit of trade.
1 November 1997
IT'S BEEN a quiet old time in the Waikato, these past few months. My cat hasn't channelled any past lives, nor has she been abducted by aliens.
1 August 1997
IN an article entitled "Unravelling The Indian Rope-trick", in Nature, English researchers Richard Wiseman and Peter Lamont describe their systematic investigation of one of the world's best known paranormal exhibitions. There are many accounts, some first-hand, yet when investigators have searched for performances of the trick, even offering rewards, no one has come forward with a demonstration.
1 August 1997
EARLY in 1996 Mrs Carol McDonald and her family of Halswell, near Christchurch, were party to an apparent supernatural event, an event that became quite topical at Mrs McDonald's workplace, the Canterbury Agriculture and Science Centre at Lincoln. This centre is home to a number of Crown Research Institutes, including the home offices of Landcare Research Ltd. and Crop and Food Research Ltd., branches of AgResearch and HortResearch, and a number of smaller organisations.
1 August 1997
THE other day I was doing a spot of painting with the help of a friend. She was telling me about a fancy dress party she'd gone to, and how some friends had dressed up all in green, as aliens.
1 August 1997
THE opening salvos in the US Skeptics' new Council for Media Integrity's campaign to improve the treatment of science in television entertainment programming were fired in Los Angeles -- the heart of the TVand movie entertainment industry.
1 August 1997
Following the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult, Alan Hale, co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp, released a statement at a press conference in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. He began by reading from Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World...
1 August 1997
LET us be clear. We think skeptics are the most witty, pithy and intelligent of people. The type who can get their profound insights across in 300 lively, well-chosen words. We insist you prove us right by flooding us with splendid examples of the genre. The author of the best contribution in each issue will receive a suitable telepathic gift. The worst example will earn an unsuitable telepathic gift. Here are the rules
1 August 1997
THE committee notes with sadness the sudden death of George Errington. George and his wife Helen joined NZCSICOP in 1986 and have been active, enthusiastic members. He was a "behind the scenes" worker who shunned the limelight. For that reason, his loss is perhaps particularly keenly felt by the Secretary; he gave his time and creative and engineering skills generously to the increasingly onerous task of preparing this newsletter for distribution. His last contribution to the New Zealand Skeptics was to assist in devising a new system for managing our growing membership and subscription list. He will be greatly missed.
1 August 1997
The largely unremarkable hairless apes of Sol 3 really are largely unremarkable: the myth of the wandering womb.
1 August 1997
THE line which sharply demarks mainstream medicine from alternative medicine is the line of science. It is possible to cross that line, however. Any alternative treatment which is tested in a rigorous scientific manner and found to be safe and effective will be incorporated into mainstream medicine; it will have crossed the line.
1 August 1997
AROUND 40 years ago, at Hull Fair in England, I saw a man dip his fingers in molten lead. He also poured it into his palm and ran it through his fingers. He seemed to suffer no harm although it was real lead; I found a solidified splash and checked. In my vacations I used to work for one of the showmen at the fair, so I found my boss. "That fellow with the molten lead, why doesn't he burn his hands?"
1 August 1997
1 August 1997
THE world was 2.9% weirder in 1996 than in 1995, according to the Fortean Times, and weirdness is likely to increase up to 2000 with "pre-millennial tension".
1 May 1997
This article is abridged from a paper prepared for the "Day of Contrition-Revisited Convocation," convened by The Justice Committee, Salem, Massachusetts, January 13-14, 1997.
1 May 1997
THE concepts of God and evolution are inextricable. In the beginning God created the Universe. The series of events that followed produced man. This imperfect product needed a higher authority (scapegoat, infallible architect, benevolent headmaster, king of quiz) so before long the concept of God evolved. This God created the Universe. The series of events that followed produced man. This imperfect product needed a higher authority etc, etc.
1 May 1997
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.
1 May 1997
Home water treatment systems are often promoted on the basis of the purported health (rather than aesthetic) benefits of using them. This is particularly in relation to urban drinking water given the full treatment -- coagulation, sedimentation, filtration and disinfection -- where such claims usually constitute misleading advertising. In this review I will focus on a number of misconceptions about the health benefits of water treatment, examining each assertion in its wider context. The ensuing discussion applies less to rural water supplies, where valid reasons often exist for use of treatments -- eg removing nitrate or protecting against giardia.
1 May 1997
The other night, after a particularly fine feed of nachos, my friend pulled out her numerology book and proceeded to do my chart. I'd done some things wrong in a past life, and there were a number of lessons I hadn't picked up on -- but generally I was happy to learn my soul was a fairly evolved one.
1 May 1997
NEW ZEALAND MYSTERIES, by Robyn Gosset; Bush Press, 1996; 208 pages; $29.95
1 May 1997
1 May 1997
1 May 1997
Britain's The Skeptic magazine celebrated its tenth anniversary with a Top-Ten survey of paranormal phenomena of the decade.
1 February 1997
Carl Sagan, one of the world's greatest popularisers of science, died on December 20th at the age of 62, after a long battle with a bone marrow disease. Sagan was one of America's pre-eminent scientists, educators, skeptics and humanists. He was also a founding member and Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and a member of the Council for Secular Humanism's International Academy of Humanism.
1 February 1997
NZCSIOP does not take a stand against religious belief, per se, and many Christians are committed Skeptics. While Mr van der Lingen's essay may appear to contradict this stance, he is not arguing that religious belief is incompatible with being a Skeptic; he is only challenging some claims and methodologies adopted by those who take a particular set of positions regarding the relationship between evolutionary science and contemporary Christian belief.
1 February 1997
A conversation off the Skeptics newsgroup.
1 February 1997
The social vision associated with the name Walter Nash, or for present purposes Jack Marshall, has crumbled. The most secure and decent high culture, which flowered for some decades, is now on almost every measure except GNP in rapid decline2.
1 February 1997
1 February 1997
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.
1 February 1997
A crown-of-thorns starfish can cause severe pain if the spines penetrate your skin. Local remedies include placing the offending animal over the injury, presumably in the belief that the sucker feet will pull detached spines from the wound.
1 February 1997
1996 was an interesting year. Rush Limbaugh became the Republican nominee for President; Roseanne killed off her popular TV character; cures for baldness, arthritis, and AIDS were
1 February 1997
Alcohol makes complex astronomical concepts very difficult to comprehend. Alcohol makes complex astrological concepts much easier to comprehend.
1 February 1997
Names have been concealed to protect them from the international legume conspiracy.
1 November 1996
The media love to manufacture a mystery, and the Kaimanawa Wall is a great example of this. Watch closely, as a perfectly natural rock formation becomes a megalithic structure...
1 November 1996
One of the interesting things about the Skeptics is the wide range of opinions that can be found in our group -- not to mention the ever-readiness to express them. So I was interested to read Frank Haden's column on the conference and how he found it.
1 November 1996
It often seems as if home schooling is the domain of hard-line Christians. In fact, they're not the only people who feel that their children are better taught at home than in school.
1 November 1996
This year has seen one of the most significant discoveries ever made -- the announcement that there are solid indications of life having once existed on another planet. The implications for us all, whether scientific, philosophic or religious, are tremendous.
1 November 1996
A skeptical look at the Natural Law Party provided to journalists in preparation for the election.
1 November 1996
Malcolm Carr, from Waikato University's Centre For Science, Mathematics & Technology Education Research, talks to Annette Taylor about the nature of science education and the new science curriculum following his address at this years' conference.
1 November 1996
The organisation responsible for setting exams for New Zealand secondary students receives the Skeptics' annual rap on the knuckles for bad science.
1 November 1996
1 November 1996
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 fears that modern medicine is truly the victim of its own success. Now that so many of us live to old age, and find that pharmaceuticals and surgery can do little to prevent inevitable decline, we are encouraged to turn to away from "Western orthodoxy" towards "alternative" systems of other, more "spiritual and "holistic cultures".
1 November 1996
1 November 1996
At the AGM, and in a subsequent letter from a member, the question was raised "what are we saving money for?". Certainly the Skeptics bank account is a reasonably healthy one, after ten years of frugal saving on the part of Treasurers past and present.
1 August 1996
DARK NATURE -- A NATURAL HISTORY OF EVIL, by Lyall Watson; Hodder & Stoughton, 1995; $19.95
1 August 1996
This is the second half of the article begun in the last NZ Skeptic
1 August 1996
Yes, it is frustrating, even positively nauseating. There you are struggling day in day out, doing your best and striving for the real breakthrough in science. Yet the real breakthrough never comes. Lack of talent, originality, or just not the right friends? Who knows? And who cares?
1 August 1996
The Mysterious Origins of Man showed earlier this year on TV3 as a "documentary". It is likely to be a contender for this year's Bent Spoon Award.
1 August 1996
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 "great mystery" and worthy of the other "X Files puzzles" of Easter Island, South America and so on.
1 August 1996
**RIVER OUT OF EDEN: A DARWINIAN VIEW OF LIFE by Richard Dawkins.
1 August 1996
A physicist with hidden motives writes something unexpected for a "cultural studies" journal.
1 August 1996
Some police are still guilty of scepticism, but retraining is on its way
1 August 1996
CSICOP has been trying to have available, both to its staff and to anyone else who wishes to use it, the finest library of skeptical materials on the paranormal in the world. We have been gathering material for this collection as a part of the Center for Inquiry's library, under the direction of Dr. Gordon Stein. He has been combing the used bookstores of the country for appropriate material.
1 May 1996
When I received through the mail a coloured brochure from Time/Life advertising a series of videos and cassettes titled "Growing Younger", I was surprised to see that I could learn from Time/Life via their series how to develop an "ageless body". In addition I could learn to "help reverse ageing" and that the series could "open the door to a life free from the effects of aging" (sic).
1 May 1996
When reading the latest issue of the NZ Skeptic, I was somewhat dismayed to find that both our worthy Chair-Entity, and our Hokum Locum failed to appreciate the difference between a chemist and a pharmacist/druggist. Although this is a common failure on the part of the general public I would have expected better from fellow Skeptics.
1 May 1996
This article originally appeared in the excellent US magazine_ Skeptic_, edited by Shermer, (Vol 2 No 3) and also forms Chapter 4 of Shermer's book_ Hope Springs Eternal: How Pseudoscience Works and Why People Believe in It_. It's a thought-provoking piece which should be handy reference for any skeptic's library. This is part one of three.
1 May 1996
It is rare that Nelson interests the world's news media. The "sheep suspended from pine trees" story was sufficiently bizarre to get their attention.
1 May 1996
Readers familiar with Stephen Fry only for his TV comic appearances (A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder) may be surprised to meet him as author of a novel, and even more surprised that such a novel should be reviewed in New Zealand Skeptic. Squash your doubts -- this book is full of paranormal mysteries to delight the skeptical reader.
1 May 1996
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 reading", rather than the witness to remarkable extra-sensory powers as he appeared to believe at the time.
1 May 1996
Folie-a-deux can be defined as a paranoid disorder in which the same delusion is shared by two (or more) persons. The delusion is thought to be transmitted from a dominant but paranoid person to his or her dependent intimate(s), and the latter may recover "normal" reality testing after separation from the former.
1 February 1996
Skeptics can take an active stance in their daily lives, according to this abridged version of the Chair-entity's after-dinner speech from the Conference.
1 February 1996
Since the call for responses to the awarding of the Bent Spoon to the Justice Department's Hitting Home report, we've received responses from 16 people, some of which of which have been published in this and the previous Skeptic. Others were in the form of private commentaries or conversations. One member contacted the authors of the report directly for clarification and further comment, and passed on the correspondence that ensued.
1 February 1996
Walter C Clark, Chuck Bird and Nicky McLean criticise Hitting Home for not investigating women's violence towards men, that is, for not being another piece of research altogether. When biologists can produce papers about the hairs on the legs of one species of fruit-flies, this does not seem excessively specialised. One reason that that was not done is simply money. To have achieved the same accuracy would have required interviewing 2,000 women, doubling the cost.
1 February 1996
Ian McWilliam's comments on the Dunedin Chelation Study [Forum, September] indicates the many difficulties in understanding medical research papers. In consideration of his critique of the study:
1 February 1996
An article in NCAHF reminded me of past activities with respect to joint manipulation. Following a one week course I embarked on a short-lived career in spinal manipulation which is very easy to learn and causes a greatly inflated belief in one's ability to "cure" spinal ailments.
1 February 1996
Australian creationist Peter Sparrow toured New Zealand recently.
1 February 1996
The world's best psychics seem to have cracks in their crystal balls, says the Skeptical Inquirer.
1 February 1996
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, Skeptical activities helped New Zealand develop some early immunity to the worst excesses of the "repressed memory" virus. While many members supported the Hitting Home award on similar grounds, some members may have wondered whether Hitting Home was no more than a local aberration and that we were seeing international demons where none existed.
1 November 1995
We have made a big mistake. Hitting Home is careful, thorough, mainstream scientific research. It may be alarming, but it is not, as we said, "alarmist". It is a serious attempt to measure men's attitudes towards, and the extent of, their violence. It is social science, not "hard" science, but it has done its best to attach figures to subjective psychological statements. If it can be criticised, it is for accepting the men's reports of their own violence at face value, when the biggest problem associated with men's violence is men's denial. ("I just gave her a bit of a tap" -- and she spent three weeks in hospital.)
1 November 1995
I'm pleased to report that after 10 years of waiting with bated breath, the New Zealand Skeptics now has its very own leaflet-cum-application form for handing out to the uninitiated. We've bemoaned the lack of these for some time -- particularly those of us doing public presentations where we've often been asked for further information, contact details and the like. It should make it considerably easier for prospective Skeptics to find out about us and join the ranks. Bernard Howard, our ever-faithful Secretary, tells me that he has been getting in application forms from the new material, and we anticipate seeing lots more.
1 November 1995
TV3 on 20/20 at 8.30pm on Monday 19/06/95 screened an American story titled "A State of Mind". Extravagant claims were made about the medical significance of hypnosis and its therapeutic uses. One doctor claimed that up to 50% of her patients could be cured by hypnosis. I have just completed a course in rehabilitation studies at Massey University. The course text book had an interesting summary on hypnosis.
1 November 1995
My feeling after having read the report is that when it was ready for the printer, the authors had in fact reached the point where they were about ready to consult with people experienced in such research, as a necessary preliminary to the main investigation. I would have suggested a smaller pilot sample. This should have disclosed the pitfalls that lay in wait for them. By taking such steps they could have avoided the traps that they later fell into.
1 November 1995
Sorry -- not a 50% price reduction on BMWs, not even gratis cases of Bernkastler Beerenauslese. But:
1 November 1995
The Canterbury ME (chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS) are up in arms over proposed tighter controls on patients receiving both invalid and sickness benefits. CFS patients want funding for "residential detoxification services and "subsidies on natural remedies". CFS is a classical psychogenic illness and as such it is quite improper for any affected patient to be on any long-term benefit on their own terms. Because of self-denial these patients resist any sensible suggestions on treatment and end up chronically unwell in a fulfilment of Abraham Lincoln's statement that "most folks are as happy as they make up their mind to be."
1 November 1995
For those of you who have not been involved in selection of a Bent Spoon, here's how it is generally done and how this year's selection was made. Throughout the year, people propose likely candidates -- suggestions are passed on in the form of newspaper clippings, phone-calls, letters, email or, occasionally, videotape. Denis coordinates the discussion, which involves the Skeptic's executive officers and often members of the committee and members with appropriate expertise.
1 November 1995
This is a copy of a presentation given to the New Zealand Skeptics 1995 Conference in Auckland
1 November 1995
Post-mortem on the autopsy or autopsy on the post-mortem?
1 November 1995
A sceptical mini-history of the crashed flying saucer saga
1 November 1995
This year's Bent Spoon Award has ruffled a few feathers. In a controversial decision, what the Skeptics described as an "alarmist" Justice Department report on domestic violence in New Zealand has received the award.
1 November 1995
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 submarines and whether Lyall Watson had stumbled on a Philosopher's Stone called Supernature. He certainly seemed to be turning something into gold.
1 November 1995
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 Detective Inspector John Manning in particular for taking no notice of the advice being given him by one of Auckland's leading clairvoyants, Ms Margaret Birkin, who has her own programme on Radio Pacific.
1 August 1995
At the Festival of Possibilities in Nelson, all the usual New Age paraphernalia were on display. A current vogue is "pulsing" which is already available in at least two varieties, holistic and Tibetan. (I later experienced a pulsing; it's a variety of massage involving having different parts rocked or shaken, quite pleasant.) People at one stand tried to sell me Matol, a mixture of herbal extracts "that works at the molecular level" to increase the uptake of oxygen by my blood. I told them I trusted my body to take up just the right amount of oxygen.
1 August 1995
As a subscriber to your magazine, I am concerned by the general trends evident in the statements made by a number of your contributors. For example, in the last issue Mr Wyant complained about "whinging leftists", while Dr Welch claimed that "our own welfare state is a classic illustration of this problem" (i.e., assumed dependency).
1 August 1995
In the last issue I warned of the dangers of a medical ghetto developing on the Auckland North Shore. Fifty new doctors set up practice in Auckland last year and even more overseas doctors are pouring into New Zealand. There has not been a corresponding drop in consultation fees in a local aberration of the law of supply and demand. Fortunately, the Northern Region Health Authority has moved to cap any further increases in doctor numbers which have already cost an extra $20 million in subsidy claims. (Christchurch Press 24/4/95)
1 August 1995
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 should take responsibility for our own health and that we should not expect modern medicine to provide on demand pills to cure all our ills, particularly those which are self-induced or the result of old age. Moderation in all things (including moderation) will generally help any of us to lead a vital and active life.
1 August 1995
Surprising results from a US study of the effectiveness of counselling on reducing juvenile crime.
1 August 1995
The Geller case has ended -- the "psychic" is to begin a court-ordered payment of up to $120,000 to CSICOP USA.
1 August 1995
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, that rationality is no longer the only, or even the major, "communicative virtue" and that social, psychological, political and historical considerations must all take precedence over logic and reason.
1 August 1995
Recent issues of the Skeptic have contained expressions of puzzlement at some subjects being taught to tertiary students in New Zealand. The worst example is the Degree in Naturopathy planned for Aoraki Polytechnic. But is this really all that surprising?
1 August 1995
When author Arthur Koestler and his wife died, they left money to found a university Chair in Parapsychology. Edinburgh University accepted this gift after some hesitation, and Robert L. Morris has occupied the Chair since 1985. In a university hundreds of kilometres to the south, and some hundreds of years younger, Dr Richard Wiseman has also turned a scholarly eye on the subject. This book is a result of their collaboration.
1 August 1995
Recently I had a UFO experience in the comfort and privacy of my own home. Or rather, I would have had a UFO experience if it had been a UFO. Unfortunately, however, I found a rational explanation for it, which means this story's not nearly as interesting as it could have been.
1 August 1995
National Radio has scored a first by becoming the first public, non-commercial radio service in the English-speaking world to feature regular astrological advice. Every Monday evening around 8:40 pm Wayne Mowat and Linda Rose make fools of themselves by asking an astrologer earnest questions about listeners' fate for the coming week.
1 May 1995
The following extract from William Doyle's Oxford History of the French Revolution (pp 64-65) reminds us that things change but things remain the same.
1 May 1995
Everyone will enjoy this book. Well, everyone except paranormalists, ecological alarmists, pseudo-scientists, feminists, left-wingers, the entire New Age community, and of course those eternally doom-ridden types who seem determined to drag everyone else down to their own level of self-imposed suffering.
1 May 1995
This is a Feynman Commencement Address given by Richard Feynman at Caltech in 1974. This message is as relevant today as it was 20 years ago, especially for those who add their committed "science" to the cause of apocalyptic environmentalism.
1 May 1995
Thanks to a member who was present, we now have a set of audiotapes which record the complete proceedings of the 1994 CSICOP Conference in Seattle, on The Psychology of Belief
1 May 1995
Visitors to Fiji are still being told that village people have the hereditary ability to walk on white-hot stones. This is quite untrue (see Hot Footing it in Fiji,Skeptic 26). A tourist promotion video for airline passengers features the ceremony. It is pretty obvious to the discerning viewer that the stones are not white-hot, but how many tourists give more than a cursory glance?
1 May 1995
"US Universities, cringing under a wave of Political Correctness and an extreme form of "multi-culturalism" are abandoning programmes which present the history of Western Civilisation as anything other than the history of the rape and plunder of minorities and other victims by a conspiracy of middle-class white males." ("The Challenge to Reason", Skeptic 34.)
1 May 1995
The recent decision to award compensation to a lawyer who suffered depression because his bank loan was turned down is but one example of increasingly bizarre decisions by the ACC (Anything-goes Compensation Corporation). Money has also been paid out to victims for "memories" of childhood sexual abuse but in one recent case the alleged offender was aquitted and we are still waiting to see whether ACC will ask for their money back. (see Skeptic 34).
1 May 1995
An article in the Tucson Citizen, May 18, 1994, about a teacher in Chicago tells a frightening cautionary tale. An extract follows:
1 May 1995
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, and whether cyanide, nicotine or the botulism toxin, are natural and hence benign they change the subject. You might think that our classrooms are immune to such nonsense; in the November issue of Chemistry in New Zealand, Ian Millar of Carina Chemical Laboratories Ltd tells us we are wrong.
1 May 1995
An abridged version of the Skeptical Enquirer's report of the session dealing with "alien abductions" at the Seattle CSICOP Conference on "The Psychology of Belief"
1 May 1995
We need to immunise ourselves against this virus too.
1 February 1995
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 Angels. She had to publish it herself.
1 February 1995
Pull up a chair and hearken to the tale of the Great Drought of '94
1 February 1995
An editorial in the Christchurch Press (23 Nov 94) was critical of the Universities who are seeking approval from the NZQA and argued that they should continue to set their own high standards.
1 February 1995
I once was cool, but now I flame
1 February 1995
Lately -- my last few airline flights -- I've been listening to the in-flight comedy channels. This was how I discovered Bob Newhart and his monologues. These are things where he takes one side of a conversation and leaves you to imagine the rest. There's one that shows up quite often, where he takes one side of a conversation with Sir Walter Raleigh, who has just discovered tobacco and is sending eight tons of it over to England as an early sample.
1 February 1995
From a Skeptics' mailing list comes a record of psychic slip-ups for the previous year.
1 February 1995
must give way to "test and see".
1 February 1995
Tertiary institutes around the country are beginning to offer courses, and even entire degrees, in subjects that are pure pseudoscience.
1 February 1995
Seeing shouldn't always be believing, as a Nelson skeptic discovered thirty years ago.
1 February 1995
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.
1 November 1994
In a landmark case on September 30, a 59-year-old man, Bill1, was acquitted by a jury in the Auckland High Court on charges of sexually abusing three of his daughters about 20 years ago. The complainants alleged sodomy and rape, and indecent acts such as the insertion of a coat hanger in the vagina causing bleeding and loss of consciousness. The women claimed they had suppressed the memories which had only resurfaced in later life. All three daughters had attended therapy and made claims for damages from the ACC before they laid the criminal charges against their father. Two of the daughters reported memories of events happening in their cots when aged one year old or less. Bill was defended by Mr Peter Williams, QC, who dismissed evidence based on "recovered memories" as dangerous and fallacious.
1 November 1994
One of the perpetrators told the story behind the Grand Interplanetary Hoax of 1952 to the 1994 Skeptics' Conference.
1 November 1994
A friend of mine once visited a faith-healer, one of the religious variety from the United States who periodically come to New Zealand to swell their bank balances. She attended the meeting because of a persistent pain in her elbow. Despite my suggestions that it was only tennis elbow, she was worried and thought perhaps the pain was serious. She had an aisle seat near the front and during the proceedings the "healer" approached her and asked about the pain in her arm. Apparently she hadn't told anyone why she was there. She was impressed.
1 November 1994
I am writing in the hope that your readers may be able to help me in a little research I am doing, in my position of Publicity Officer for the Wairarapa Archive.
1 November 1994
Another sacred cow from my medical school days has been laid to rest. A letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 triggered a rash of anecdotal reports about facial flushing allegedly caused by monosodium glutamate (MSG) in Chinese food. "Chinese restaurant syndrome" had entered the popular medical mythology. Finally, 26 years later, two Australian scientists conducted a double-blind placebo controlled trial and found that some reaction to MSG was experienced by 15% of the subjects but the same reactions were also experienced by 14% of the placebo subjects. The scientists believe that the true cause of Chinese restaurant syndrome are histamine compounds found in fermented ingredients such as soy sauce, black bean sauce and shrimp paste. New Scientist 15 Jan '94 p15
1 November 1994
The New Zealand Herald of 5 September carried the headline "Ozone gap to lift skin cancer 7 per cent".
1 November 1994
Cynthia Shakespeare, Tony Vignaux and I are proud to report that we held a remarkably successful winter lecture series in June. We had organised speakers for local Skeptics before, with attendances of 30 or so, but this time we decided to group three speakers a week or so apart at the same venue, and advertised them jointly. We did a broader-than-usual mailout of a nice professional-looking flyer that included a map. Door charges were $2 to cover room hire and refreshments, but even at that low price we made a modest profit.
1 November 1994
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 Radio. If you have wondered about my recent absence from the media, it is because I have been preparing to launch my own magazine.
1 August 1994
What is the link between chemicals and cancer?
1 August 1994
The media were quick to cry "Wolf" when concerns were raised about the fungicide Benlate.
1 August 1994
Congratulations on featuring the superb contribution from Peter Münz in Skeptic 31. It seems to concur with a passage from Antony Flew I have just been reading. He says that to know something is "to believe what is in fact true, and to be rationally justified in that belief". Like most people shivering in the postmodernist shadow, my first reaction was to draw back, thinking that all seemed a bit too definite. Surely it's not still allowed to be definite about something?
1 August 1994
Neither Nutrasweet nor sugar-rich diets produce any change in children's behaviour. (New England Journal of Medicine 330:301-307, 1994)
1 August 1994
On 8 February 1994, Professor Clyde F. Herreid, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Buffalo, gave a talk in the Department of Zoology, University of Otago entitled "The Magician as Skeptic". Notices were circulated to zoology staff and senior students, other university departments, and to local skeptics. Some 40 people thoroughly enjoyed the talk. Professor Herreid demonstrated, using a variety of magical tricks, how important it is that a natural explanation should always be sought for an apparently paranormal phenomenon. If such is not immediately forthcoming, any attempt at an explanation should be held in abeyance.
1 August 1994
Can traditional Maori knowledge be considered scientific?
1 August 1994
Late in his life, in answer to a question, Freud compared the human condition approximately to the contents of a baby's nappy. When I first heard this story, it seemed to mark a bitter old man. That was when I was in high school in the late 1950s. Higher education was spreading in the world's democracies. Ignorance and superstition, the plague of the human species since the caves, were on the way out. Reason, knowledge and tolerance would rule the future of the world. Or so it seemed. Does it look like that today, even to high school students? A few news items:
1 August 1994
Skeptics who've ordered direct from Prometheus Books will be well aware of the realities of the extra exchange and bank costs that can make a price quoted in US dollars burgeon into a massive account in New Zealand money.
1 May 1994
Did you catch TV3's Inside New Zealand documentary programme a few weeks ago on "Satanic Ritual Abuse"? If so, you won't have forgotten it, try as you might to "repress" the memory. It was one of the most sublimely awful hours of television ever to be broadcast in Godzone -- silly, irresponsible and sleazy. A middle-aged woman led a camera crew around the North Island to the sites where as a child she claims to have been sexually abused in the late 1940s and 1950s by her mum and dad, the parish priest, town dignitaries, and no doubt the local dog catcher and all the dogs.
1 May 1994
The following message from James Randi was posted to the Usenet newsgroup sci.skeptic on February 4th by Jim Kutz.
1 May 1994
Our intrepid correspondent finds himself suffering from that most fashionable of psychological afflictions, Multiple Personality Disorder!
1 May 1994
Peter Lange mentions in his review a common creationist claim -- the lack of intermediate fossil forms. Someone whose name I've lost, recently wrote the following on sci.skeptic about the subject:
1 May 1994
The account of the meeting between the Moa hunters and the Christchurch Skeptics was interesting, but contained some very odd statements. How many skeptics had done any hunting, I wonder? The account reads as though there were no experienced hunters present who could challenge some of the statements made. That is rather like examining key-benders without a magician present. However, the account, like many UFO sightings, contains several inconsistencies which are not obvious to the inexperienced.
1 May 1994
In Skeptic 30, John Britten outlined the tragic results which can occur when patients fall into the clutches of quacks. In this case, a man with rheumatoid arthritis was not only starved but ended up paying for expensive and useless medications. Most doctors can relate similar examples.
1 May 1994
What can events 100 years ago tell us about a modern disorder?
1 May 1994
Vicki Hyde suggests (Skeptic 30) that we are in for a lot more doomsday predictions as we approach the year 2000. I am afraid she is right, but why should fundamentalists get so excited about a round number of years?
1 May 1994
Richard Milton has written this book as a "hang on a minute" reservation about Darwinism and its apparent unquestioned acceptance by mainstream science from geology through to biology (and in one chapter political science) in the manner of the small boy who questioned the reality of the Emperor's new clothes -- "Look Mummy, all those university professors, all those Nobel Prize winners, have got no actual proof to cover their hypotheses with".
1 May 1994
What is it that keeps superstitions going in the face of our increasing knowledge about the world?
1 May 1994
Attempts to interpret the results of quantum mechanics in ways people can understand can themselves lead to confusion.
1 February 1994
That arbitrary slice of the continuum of time known as 1993 has been a busy one for the New Zealand Skeptics. High spot of the year was the visit of James Randi in early July. Unfortunately, his timetable allowed only four public appearances, one each in Christchurch and Auckland and two in Wellington.
1 February 1994
A couple of weeks before my medical finals late last year I sat down in the waiting area of the Christchurch rheumatology clinic. I struck up conversation with the only other person there, a man in his late forties. The story he told me about his arthritis made my few remaining strands of hair stand on end.
1 February 1994
The Indian Skeptics sometimes seem to be up against some very big opponents. Our Chair recently received the following letter:
1 February 1994
John Jewel was Bishop of Salisbury during the reign of Elizabeth I.
1 February 1994
Some time ago I remember reading a letter in the Listener from a frustrated doctor who accused the public of being medically illiterate. Sometimes I feel this way myself but it is not a good practice to attack one's audience. Public education cannot be achieved within the context of traditional ten-minute medical consultations compared with quacks who may spend up to an hour providing mis-information. Drug companies are on record as cynically exploiting a gullible public eg. "...neither government agencies nor industry, including the supplement industry, should be protecting people from their own stupidity".
1 February 1994
Award-winning author and long-time Skeptic Margaret Mahy delivered the after-dinner speech at the 1993 Skeptics Conference. This is an abridged version of her talk.
1 February 1994
This book explains an approach to interpreting the French "prophet" Nostradamus's predictions. It is the culmination of 16 years research by an English woman, V.J. Hewitt. She has invented a system of decoding his quatrains using anagrams -- and not just the sort that you get in cryptic crosswords, but huge, French ones. She takes a Nostradamus quatrain, mixes up all the letters, removes the letters of the subject she is interested in (and it could be anything from soccer hooliganism to an air traffic controllers' strike), adds the date, and then rearranges the remaining letters to produce the prophecy that Nostradamus had clearly intended. What's more she does it in French.
1 February 1994
A detective with long experience in tracing missing persons gave the 1993 Skeptics Conference the word on how useful psychics are in police work.
1 February 1994
It was a surprise to many outside observers, especially those who don't well understand the Skeptics. Paddy Freaney, Rochelle Rafferty, and Sam Waby, the trio who gained world attention early this year by their claim to have glimpsed a living moa in the Southern Alps, were invited to put their case before a meeting of Canterbury Skeptics.
1 February 1994
Are the End Times drawing nigh? Are fires and floods from heaven on the brink of seething down in wrathful purge, damning the damned and raising the faithful? Is God's finger poised on the panic button?
1 February 1994
For those of you who didn't notice, the end of the world came and went on November 14th. It also ended on November 24th, and is set to do so at the end of this year. If you've got a Christmas trip to Los Angeles planned, don't bother going -- a massive earthquake wiped out the city of the Angels as well as neighbouring San Diego at 7pm on May 8th.
1 February 1994
Lights in the sky are not always aliens on the lookout for earthlings to abduct. Sometimes they are mostly a load of hot air.
1 November 1993
A jury which in August ordered the Christian Science church to pay $US5.2 million ($NZ9.6 million) in damages in the diabetes death of an 11-year-old boy followed this by adding a further $US9 million in punitive damages.
1 November 1993
Following his own empirical observations that bee "treatments" helped his arthritis, a Levin bee-keeper is claiming that he is being ignored by the medical profession. (Press 3/8/93) Not surprisingly, his trial of 11 patients failed to impress skeptical observers. Two patients dropped out and the remainder reported that the "sting" was effective. Having paid for the privilege of being stung, a sensation to be normally avoided, they are hardly likely to say that the treatment was worthless.
1 November 1993
The New Internationalist Review, a magazine not normally known for gullibility beyond the political, decided not all that long ago to examine the paranormal. Our intrepid reporter Peter Lange decided to have a look.
1 November 1993
On Thursday, 19 August 1993, the Christchurch Press carried a full-page advertisement for the initial New Zealand opening of the "Matrol Opportunity".
1 November 1993
There is a worldwide epidemic of satanic child abuse allegations. Are they true? Has satanic child abuse happened here in New Zealand?
1 November 1993
A selection of the song competition entries presented at the Skeptics Conference.
1 November 1993
In the years since the Skeptics' beginnings in 1985 we've seen paranormal and pseudoscientific fads come and go. The Shroud of Turin was big back then, till carbon dating did it in (except in the minds of the hard-core Shroud Crowd, who now claim that rising from the dead involves an emission of neutrons which increases the atomic weight of the carbon in your winding cloth). Uri Geller is more feeble than ever, UFO sightings are in decline, and Bigfoot has made himself even scarcer than usual. But quackery in the name of "alternative" medicine still flourishes, and cold readers (such as the lamentable James Byrne) periodically meander on stage.
1 August 1993
The programme for the 1993 Skeptics Conference is still under development, but it's shaping up to be really interesting. It'll be a rather omnivorous event, complete with meat and teeth. Come along for the usual humour and frivolity that make our conferences fun, but also be prepared to be challenged.
1 August 1993
The British Independent recently ran an editorial not worth reproducing in the Skeptic. The editorial did, however, generate a vigorous response from Richard Dawkins which is worth thinking about.
1 August 1993
Several of my friends are orchardists, and two of them lost their crop last year due to a hailstorm.
1 August 1993
The pop star Michael Jackson has denied that he uses chemicals to lighten his skin and claimed to be suffering from a disorder called "vitiligo," which is a spontaneous loss of skin pigment. Jackson said "There is no such thing as skin bleaching. I've never seen it. I don't know what it is." (GP Weekly 24 Feb, 1993)
1 August 1993
Rejuvenation! The wish of many a tired old man, and not so old: to regain the physical and sexual vigour of youth.
1 August 1993
Continued from last issue. Prices are US dollars.
1 August 1993
A Sprite in your Spirit, a Bogle in your Benzine, a Fury in your Fuel, a Greyhound in your Gasoline. With acknowledgement to the oil company which, many years ago, urged us to "Put a Tiger in your Tank."
1 August 1993
This article is an abridged version of the fourth article in a series on philosophy and the paranormal. Here Dr Grey discusses David Hume's analysis of miracles and his view that belief in miraculous events is always unjustified. He also investigates the nature, virtues and dangers of different skeptical viewpoints.
1 August 1993
On open access computer bulletin boards, any entity with a theory can expound on it at length. Many do -- usually to a very unappreciative audience. A seemingly-large proportion of such expositions are surprisingly similar in style. The following scale (tentatively attributed to John Baez of Usenet sci.physics) will help readers establish just how crackpotted something is...
1 August 1993
John Cole, editor of Creation/Evolution, recently wrote of his tendency toward hair-pulling, in the National Centre for Science Education Reports, Vol 12 No 2 (Summer 1992).
1 August 1993
Several copies of each issue of our newsletter are sent to the international skeptical movement's headquarters in Buffalo, New York. Many of these are distributed to our sister organisations around the world, and it is gratifying when items by our members are noticed in other publications.
1 August 1993
It may interest skeptics to know that I have solved the world's energy problems. The concept is surprisingly simple... but then works of great brilliance often are.
1 August 1993
Do you ever feel dirty or ashamed? Do you have no sense of your interests or goals? Do you sometimes feel powerless, like a victim, have phobias, arthritis, or wear baggy clothes? According to two recent books, The Courage to Heal, (over 500,000 copies sold) and Secret Survivors, if your answer to any of these questions is yes, you may well be a victim of incest.
1 May 1993
This is an excerpt from Thomas and Rusk's lengthy bibliography of works with skeptical viewpoints. Prices noted are in US dollars.
1 May 1993
In the medical magazine Patient Management, Denis Dutton last year presented a tongue-in-cheek account of how GPs might incorporate alternative techniques into their practices. The article generated an interesting exchange.
1 May 1993
Our everyday "cuppa" comes from the plant Camellia sinensis and it, together with a number of other common drinks including coffee, cocoa, guarana and maté contain small quantities (10-100 mg per cup) of caffeine, a mildly stimulatory alkaloid. In addition many people enjoy hot and cold beverages made from a wide variety of other herbs such as chamomile and dried raspberry leaves.
1 May 1993
In the last issue I discussed how quackery can be practised by New Zealand doctors with impunity, "if they do so honestly and in good faith." Alaska has a similar clause which only disciplines maverick doctors if they harm their patients. In fact, the latest NCAF newsletter outlines how a Dr Rowen has been appointed to the state medical board after "curing" the governor's wife of lumbago by extracting one of her teeth. The link between the tooth and the back was made by an electro-acupuncture circuit using a Vega machine.
1 May 1993
Magic potions made from natural ingredients are generally hailed as environmentally friendly. But is this necessarily true? Not if you're a rhinocerous!
1 May 1993
Some Skeptics have been surprised that our organisation has been so restrained in its response to the purported moa sighting near Cragieburn. As we see it, the whole issue is fraught with difficulty.
1 May 1993
From Jerusalem comes news that Israel's former Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has ruled that trained monkeys may turn off lights or do other domestic chores forbidden to Jews on the sabbath. But only a borrowed monkey -- or a dog or other animal capable of performing such tasks -- can be used because their own beasts must be allowed to rest.
1 May 1993
President Bush was not re-elected. Madonna did not become a gospel singer, and a UFO base was not found in the Mexican desert. These were just a few of the many predictions that had been made for 1992 by famous "psychics", but were dead wrong, as chronicled by the Bay Area Skeptics.
1 May 1993
Many people will remember Dr Bill Morris's entertaining autobiographical talk at the last Skeptics' conference in Wellington. From his presentation, we extract this discussion of what is still the most persistent and potent medical effect known to the human race.
1 May 1993
"Mind my left ear." cautioned Mrs X, "there's a needle in it."
1 May 1993
The TVNZ fortnightly newsletter, Networks, recently carried the welcome news that a Senior Editor in TVNZ's news division has written a book. The Astrologer and the Paradigm Shift will, according to Networks "clear up many common misconceptions about astrology."
1 May 1993
A CSICOP video library is run by Alastair Bricknell, RD2 Kuaotunu, Whitianga. Tapes may be hired for the cost of postage and packing, around $5 (extra donations gratefully accepted).
1 February 1993
Can a cotton wristband and a plastic button alleviate seasickness? The British Consumer's Association thinks so, but scientific evidence indicates otherwise.
1 February 1993
The New Zealand Skeptics lost one of its founders with the recent death of Dr Jim Woolnough, aged 77.
1 February 1993
This is a summary of a talk given at the 1992 Skeptics conference by_ Dr Eric Geiringer.
1 February 1993
The article on creationism by Barend Vlaardingerbroek (Skeptic 24) contains much with which I would agree, but there are also several points that could be contested.
1 February 1993
An American study reported in the GP Weekly (2 Sep 1992) found that chronic fatigue syndrome was indistinguishable from depressive disorders. (Refer also Skeptic 21) Patients diagnosed as having CFS were likely to believe that their illness had a viral cause, but it is more likely that CFS is a new age variant of the 19th century neurasthenia.1
1 February 1993
New Zealand Skeptics walk happily on red-hot embers, protected by the laws of physics. Fijian firewalkers, however, are said to stroll across white-hot stones. How do they do it?
1 February 1993
Brew up a miracle for fun and profit, in the comfort of your own kitchen.
1 February 1993
The failure of clairvoyants to locate the missing Wellington man, Michael Kelly, or to know the manner of his death, will not startle many skeptics. No major missing persons case in the history of New Zealand has been solved with paranormal help, despite the fact that police have been deluged with clairvoyant tips over the years -- from Mona Blades to Kirsa Jensen, Teresa Cormack, Luisa Damodron, Heidi Paakkonen or Michael Kelly.
1 February 1993
Dr J.F. De Bock gave the 1992 Conference an update on the study of UFOs.
1 February 1993
Sometimes feeling better isn't a good sign at all... Carl Wyant recalls an occasion when faith healing showed itself better at handling symptoms than causes.
1 November 1992
Are Skeptics pussy-footing around by not attacking the major source of superstition and pseudoscience -- religion?
1 November 1992
After seeing a demonstration of cold reading at the Skeptics Conference in 1989 I thought this was something I could have fun with, so I boned up on the list of commonplaces provided at the time:
1 November 1992
Not surprisingly, the awarding of the Bent Spoon to Consumer magazine saw a vigorous defence mounted by the Consumers' Institute.
1 November 1992
Do horses really have a distinct set of personality types or is it just a load of equine excreta?
1 November 1992
Your main article in the March issue (Skeptic, #23), "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Vincent Gray, is perhaps the worst I have ever read. It consists almost entirely of bald assertions, all un- referenced and mostly false, vilifying unspecified "environmentalists". I shall take room to correct only the worst of these assertions; my main complaint about the piece is more formal, namely that it is unrelated to the NZCSICOP's aims, and on that ground alone should never have been printed in the magazine.
1 November 1992
The Bent Spoon Award this year created more controversy than usual when it was awarded to Consumer magazine. Why did we feel it necessary to bite our consumer watchdog?
1 November 1992
The abuse of the Skeptics as "arrogant, narrow-minded bigots" by defenders of Consumer is annoying, but it doesn't yet surpass an art teacher who wrote an article for a Wellington paper in 1986. Overseas -- or rather underseas -- skeptics, he warned, had once tried to disprove ESP by going down in two submarines. In one, skeptics rushed baby rabbits to death, while in the other submarine skeptics measured the reactions of their mother to see if she was getting the terrible psychic vibes. Despite her pathetic shudders, delivered on cue, those awful skeptics still wouldn't believe in ESP!
1 November 1992
At the Skeptics Conference in Christchurch in 1989, Denis Dutton mentioned that women's magazines offered horoscopes but men's magazines did not. There were two significant exceptions: the feminist magazine Broadsheet did not, but the gay (and nominally lesbian) Pink Triangle did -- a particularly bland and space-wasting one:
1 August 1992
A colouring book for young patients of chiropractors says "A is for alligator and adjustment. B is for bells and for back. C is for caterpillar and for chiropractor. D is for dog and for doctor." The latter two may have more in common than is apparent at first glance.
1 August 1992
Also, as a NZCSICOP newcomer, I'd like to respond to Carl Wyant, who asked why skeptic groups rarely attack the Big Groups. Firstly, skeptics challenging religious beliefs or their legal implications do so elsehere as atheistic or political groups. Secondly, religious belief is untestable, so a skeptic cannot point to refuting evidence. The argument reduces to philosophy. Thirdly, pseudoscience is a lot more irritating than something not even pretending to be scientific.
1 August 1992
One of the techniques used by quacks is to attack conventional medicine as being a conspiracy against the laiety.
1 August 1992
Isaac Asimov, one of the great explainers of the age, died on 6 April, aged 72.
1 August 1992
A very interesting look at the state of homeopathy in the UK in the '90s, including its use by some "conventional" doctors and vets. Details are given of a few trials (some double and triple blind) that have been conducted claiming to give support to homeopathic techniques. Unfortunately, relatively little time is permitted for dissenting views, and I am sure many of our rural members will have other explanations for some of the "miraculous" animal cures presented. A thought-provoking programme nevertheless; it should be essential viewing for any skeptic confronting homeopathic enthusiasts.
1 August 1992
I was struggling with the vacuum hose to reach an awkward corner of the kitchen.
1 August 1992
There is much upheaval among the stars this month. Jupitor moves into the house of Aquarius. Aquarius goes to stay in Gemini's house for the weekend. Meanwhile Saturn moves into the house of Aries for a nominal rent while the builders damp-proof his rings. (They should be out by Thursday).
1 August 1992
It's a mindbending situation, but I guess you'd have to call me a skeptical believer. Like parapsychologist Susan Blackmore, personal experience inclined me towards the idea that supernatural events really happen.
1 August 1992
Irreproducible achievements finally get what they deserve
1 August 1992
Creationists are winning hands-down in the publicity stakes, despite, one presumes, no real assistance in the form of Divine Guidance.
1 May 1992
Simon Upton, the Minister of Health, recalls a childhood and adolescence without television, and warmly welcomes the "Great New Zealand Television Turn-Off"
1 May 1992
An enterprising skeptic has found the answer to our energy and transportation problems, if only the Illuminati will let him speak...
1 May 1992
In reference to Ruth Walker's article "Absurdities of Creationism" [Skeptic 22], I would like to remind fellow Skeptics that it is not only "fundamentalist" Christian schools that teach creationism.
1 May 1992
There is something in the German psyche which has a peculiar fascination for the medieval...
1 May 1992
Juan Perez may not be one of the most well known Great Skeptics of History, but he was one of the bravest. Hilary Evans tells his story in "Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors". Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Perez, a Madrid workman, was arraigned by the Inquisition for denying that there existed a Devil with power to seize the human soul. He admitted this sin and explained why:
1 May 1992
Last year there was an excellent article published in Metro magazine about a young boy, Kurt Boyle, with a mysterious illness causing paralysis. The family had featured earlier on the Holmes show when they alleged that their son had been mistreated by the Hospital staff, who were treating him for a psychological problem.
1 May 1992
A scale replica of the Great Pyramid of Egypt has been built in Coromandel as a chapel and healing centre.
1 May 1992
Every year the Bay Area Skeptics takes a look at how successful psychics were in predicting the preceding 12 months. It looks like 1991 was as much a fizzer as previous years.
1 May 1992
Sacred Sex is a seat-squirmer of a film — one of the most irritating films I have ever seen. I went along with my wife hoping for entertainment, maybe a bit a spice, and came out so cross I couldn't get to sleep for all the wrong reasons.
1 May 1992
What's worth a Skeptic's attention? In this issue's Forum, Carl Wyant asks why worry about fraudulent spoon benders when there are far more harmful forms of ignorance and wickedness about, such as Chinese superstitions promoting female infanticide.
1 May 1992
Exaggerated claims and scaremongering of such "crises" as global warming, toxic wastes and endangered animals may mean a loss of credibility for environmentalists.
1 February 1992
Fundamentalists suffer contortions in trying to make their assumptions fit Biblical accounts.
1 February 1992
Gentlemen attending the most recent Christchurch meeting of NZCSICOP unselfishly agreed to give of their all for their country. They have member Lawrence Livingstone to thank for the suggestion.
1 February 1992
An Auckland 'doctor has been struck off the medical register for "disgraceful conduct", the Medical Council said yesterday.
1 February 1992
WELLINGTON (PA) — The death of a 5-month-old baby had uncovered an appalling picture of a parent's belief in homeopathic medicine, a coroner said.
1 February 1992
In a memorable encounter, National
1 February 1992
James Randi is being pursued by Uri Geller in the US courts, to gag his outspoken comments on the "paranormal" performer. The cost of Randi's defence is frightening, and NZ Skeptics were quick to contribute to his defence fund.
1 February 1992
A diabetic girl died in Wellington Hospital after her parents stopped her supply of insulin in the belief that she had been healed by a Christian faith healer, coroner Erica Kremic said in the coroner's court here.
1 February 1992
Christopher Urswick, was almoner (an alms-giver or medieval social worker) to Henry VIL. His account of the king's run-in with an astrologer was repeated, with glee, by Erasmus.
1 February 1992
Myocardial infarction (heart attack, coronary thrombosis) is commonly caused by a blood clot blocking one of the three coronary arteries supplying blood to the heart muscle. It is the commonest cause of death (4,000 p.a.) in New Zealand and other Western countries. Specialists have long wondered whether early administration of a fibrinolytic (blood clot dissolving drug) would reduce mortality.
1 February 1992
The Minister of Civil Defence, Mr Lee, believes that the Bible, written almost 2000 years ago, predicted the increasing prevalence of earthquakes today.
1 February 1992
by V. J. Hewitt & P. Lorie; Bloomsbury Press, 1991; $49.95
1 February 1992
A medical degree is not a shield against quackery, but better understanding of the scientific process may help doctors and their patients to better evaluate treatments.
1 February 1992
The debate over how "dry" a skeptic should be in promoting skepticism does not appear to take into account the dangers of ridicule in hardening the very views we are attempting to counter. This is particularly so in schools, where both teachers and pupils have things to learn.
1 February 1992
In the arguments for and against being definitively skeptical, the social climate and moral responsibilities of skepticism are often overlooked. This is an abridged version of the after-dinner speech given at this year's NZCSICOP Conference.
1 November 1991
1 November 1991
A recent article in the horticultural journal Growing Today suggests that chickens are performing cold fusion reactions within their bodies. It uses a simplistic — and totally incorrect — form of chemical addition to show how this is so.
1 November 1991
by D R Selkirk & F J Burrows; NSW University Press, 1987; 158 pp
1 November 1991
On the National Programme recently, Vicki Hyde mentioned a claim that a bird had changed one element to another inside one of its vital organs.
1 November 1991
William of Malmesbury chronicled the reign of ill-fated William Rufus, the red-headed son of William The Conqueror who was shot, so 'tis said, in mistake for a squirrel. In the early part of the 12th Century, he expressed some scepticism concerning portents following the king's burial within the tower of Winchester Cathedral.
1 November 1991
Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) has been described as epidemic neuromyasthenia, Iceland disease, Royal Free disease and post-infective fatigue syndrome. I will refer to it as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), a good neutral description free of unproven association with infective illnesses.
1 November 1991
Armed with rope and stick, Matt Ridley went out at night on his Northumberland farm and within minutes came up with an answer to a recurring summer puzzle.
1 November 1991
The Bent Spoon, as oft we've pointed out, is the only negative press award in New Zealand. Recipients' reactions to it have varied.
1 November 1991
Television New Zealand says it will axe an Earth Care advertisement claiming that burnt possum testes can keep possums at bay, if the biodynamic technique turns out to be no more than quackery.
1 November 1991
A quick perusal of the shelves of your local library can show you where the purchasing priorities lie — and they're not in the science section.
1 November 1991
Among the papers at the Skeptics conference were Bill Malcolm's four. entertaining "illustrated truth kits" — short two-projector slide-shows on topics like fad diets, the New Age, fringe therapies, and scientific method. This one is the New Age primer.
1 November 1991
by Howard Blum; Simon & Schuster 1990
1 November 1991
Hydrogen peroxide — sometime rocket fuel, blonde bleacher and disinfectant — is increasingly being touted as a cure for what ails you.
1 November 1991
NZSCICOP now has a videotape library in the capable hands of Alastair Brickell, RD 2 Kuaotunu, Whitianga. Tapes may be hired for the cost of packaging and posting, around $5 (more will be gratefully received). If anyone has something interesting on video, Alastair would, no doubt, be delighted to receive a copy. There are already three under request: the Oprah Winfrey show on UFOs, a programmne on European tests which showed scientific backing for homeopathy, and one from a few years back involving James Randi and Australian water diviners. In the meantime, here are the current titles.
1 November 1991
A breathless story about a Tibetan who supposedly cures brain tumours prompted the Skeptics to give their annual Bent Spoon award to the New Zealand Listener.
1 November 1991
by Charles Berlitz; Grafton Books, 208 pp; $14.95 (paperback)
1 November 1991
Most people have great difficulty in conceptualising low frequencies and low concentrations. Pesticide concentrations are reported in parts per million (ppm), parts per billion (ppb) and parts per trillion (ppt). One television personality accused an industrial spokesman of releasing effluent with "15 parts per trillion" (his emphasis, implying a very large, rather than a very small concentration).
1 August 1991
In August 1989, the Christchurch Press published two articles from The Economist which were highly critical of "scientific" creationists and their "discipline". The articles sparked a correspondence under the heading "Evolution", which attained Guinness Record proportions — 118 letters, involving 52 correspondents over 86 days.
1 August 1991
An attempt at chiropractic consultancy in Southland schools didn't do too well after their dubious practices were debated by the local community.
1 August 1991
Information provided by Nelson clairvoyants about the disappearance of a 21-year-old man seven months ago in the Abel Tasman National Park has proved fruitless.
1 August 1991
The Associated Press recently ran an item with interesting implications. Datelined Washington, the story (Christchurch Star, May 4) told of efforts by a panel of geneticists to obtain for analysis samples of cell material from Abraham Lincoln. Because Lincoln was shot, bits of his brain, with samples of blood and hair, were preserved from the surgeons' attempt to save his life.
1 August 1991
by Peter Neville; Sidgwick & Jackson, 1991; $24.95
1 August 1991
Denis Dutton travelled up the Sepik River in New Guinea earlier this year to study tribal carving. He couldn't resist teaching the locals a few tricks.
1 August 1991
Is a high-fibre, cholesterol-free, non-dairy diet the answer to one's health problems? It may be for some, but for others it can pose a downright danger.
1 August 1991
Even the most republican-minded skeptic must admit that monarchical feelings sometimes have their uses. New Zealand was recently visited by Jacqueline Stallone. She arrived in a blaze of publicity, widely airing her views on astrology and other psychic matters.
1 August 1991
Gaia is alive and well in New Zealand, as the following abridged Department of Conservation report shows. It was prepared for a meeting of the Engineers for Social Responsibility by DOC botanist Philip Simpson. The full report is available from DOC.
1 August 1991
The Gaia hypothesis is still being debated in scientific circles, but has been enthusiastically embraced by the environmental movement. The question is, is it appropriate to propose a planetary consciousness for Gaia, the Earth Goddess, or is it of more interest as an ecological construct?
1 August 1991
It's beginning! I have long wondered when our health system would give in to public demands for fringe medicine, and I see that the West Auckland Health District has appointed a part-time naturopath offering alternative or complementary methods for the treatment of smoking, alcohol misuse and high blood pressure and including nutritional advice. This at a time when the Board's own nutrition services are struggling for funding.
1 August 1991
A couple have had five girls in a row. What is their next baby likely to be? (a) boy, (b) girl, (c) either equally likely.
1 August 1991
People are very bad at estimating probability or understanding chance and randomness. Such innumeracy could well explain much of the phenomena currently treated as paranormal. This article, adapted from ones appearing in New Scientist and the Auckland Star deals with the illusions of probability that lead to claims of psychic powers.
1 August 1991
The symbol of infinity is the emblem of those Extraterrestrials who created Mankind using DNA and genetic engineering. The original Hebrew biblical text refers to them as ELOHIM (those who come from the sky) mistranslated in english by the word "GOD". This explanation of the mystery of God and Life is a part of the Apocalypse (Apocalypse in Greek means Revelation) which has been announced by the prophets of all religions. The Elohim would like to be welcomed officially in an Embassy we will build for them on earth.
1 August 1991
By KINGSLEY FIELD and FIONA BARBER
1 August 1991
The following is a letter dated May 11, 1991 from magician James "The Amazing" Randi to friends, sympathisers, and the skeptical community. It came to us via the international skeptics computer bulletin board.
1 August 1991
Zealand Publishing House, Tauranga
1 August 1991
by Carole Potter. Michael O'Mara Books. $39.95.
1 May 1991
The Lancet article on survival of patients with breast cancer attending the Bristol Cancer Help Centre (BCHC) has provoked widespread comment and badly shaken the confidence of those who believed that, at the very least, complementary therapies in cancer couldn't do any harm.
1 May 1991
Advocates of Britain's internationally known alternative cancer clinic, the Bristol Cancer Help Centre, have been surprised and shocked to find that their patients are dying faster than those under conventional care.
1 May 1991
Researchers in Kansas City recently went to five professional astrologers with the horoscope of convicted serial murderer John Wayne Gacy. Without knowing to whom it belonged, they described him as having a "well rounded personality", that he could "offer a good role model" and that he would "be excellent for working around young people."
1 May 1991
Alternative views of reality exist outside the Western framework of rationalism and science, and these views have an internal logic of their own with their own variety of scepticism.
1 May 1991
Despite recent claims that "natural" foods are safer, there is evidence that "natural" pesticides can be present at much higher concentrations than residues from synthetic pesticides. These "natural" chemicals are often untested and of unknown toxicity, with little evidence of health benefits.
1 May 1991
Englishwoman Doris Stokes was a medium — by which I don't mean that her dress size was between small and large. She claimed she spoke to people "on the other side," to use the euphemistic jargon of the darkened drawing-room. She was a sort of cosmic Telecom operator, only I suspect her charges were a good deal higher than 99c a minute plus GST.
1 May 1991
A strange phenomenon is again manifesting itself in the pastoral areas of our borough. October has once again brought appearances of what we Mt Eden Skeptics call "Crop Rectangles" — bare, rectangular patches of earth amongst the normally verdant parklands. They have no reasonable explanation, but they do have a common, peculiar feature, which leads us to believe that they are associated with some sort of meteorological cult.
1 May 1991
The Crusader Radulph of Caen expressed doubts about the discovery of the Holy Lance of Antioch during the First Crusade. The drawing at left shows Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy, carrying the Lance in battle outside the gates of Antioch.
1 May 1991
Homeopathy could provide the answer to New Zealand's possum problems, according to Napier Mayor Alan Dick.
1 May 1991
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
1 May 1991
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.
1 May 1991
Calls for Maori input in the science classroom are fine for encouraging students in the belief that science is relevant to their lives, but could also be used to cut them off from the international scientific community.
1 May 1991
In issue 16, I reported on an AIDS treatment scam run by a British doctor, James Sharp, and an Iraqi vet. This had been exposed as such by an investigative journalist.
1 May 1991
MANILA—Philippine psychics predicted last week that Iraqi troops will pull out of Kuwait and a Persian Gulf war will be averted.
1 May 1991
By Graham Phillips. Pan, 1990. 168pp. $9.95 (paperback).
1 May 1991
by David Fasold. Sidgwick and Jackson, 1990. 331pp.
1 May 1991
With this issue, the Skeptic comes under a new editorial regime. Vicki Hyde, whose excellent New Zealand Science Monthly has recently hit the stands, comes aboard as managing editor. Vicki's extensive science journalism background, her publishing experience and her literate editorial eye — not to mention her sceptical temperament — make her the perfect person for the job.
1 May 1991
About this time every year some diligent journalist trawls through all the year's events that made news and matches them against a list of predictions published a year earlier.
1 February 1991
On Thursday evening, 26 June 1990, a large number of members and friends gathered at the University of Canterbury Staff Club in Christchurch, to hear Prof. T.W. Walker, late of Lincoln University, talk on Organic Gardening.
1 February 1991
Dr Michael Evans, a former student of Atlantic College, came last week to give a Friday evening lecture on anthroposophical medicine (A.M.). From what J can gather, it seems to be a system of medicine founded at the instigation of Rudolph Steiner, who claimed that a science limited to what was perceptible by the physical senses and using only analytical thinking would not be capable of understanding the fundamental life processes of man. A.M. believes that many illnesses are not wholly or ultimately explicable in terms of disordered physics and chemistry, but that the subject of the illness is lacking in some "vital essence" or that the vital essence has been disturbed in some way. It questions the reductionist approach of breaking down processes to the cellular or molecular level because: :
1 February 1991
Popular books on the paranormal often source their supporting evidence from all over the world. While this may seem to enhance an argument's credibility by giving the impression the phenomenon in question is universal, I suspect it is more because of the paucity of evidence that the net is cast so widely. When on occasions the net reaches as far as New Zealand I find I am especially skeptical. To take a recent example, in Jenny Randle's "Abduction" a New Zealand encounter of the third kind is described thus:
1 February 1991
This is my last newsletter. I am pleased to be handing over the editorship to Denis Dutton. I feel I have been very fortunate in the quality of contributions I have received and to have had regular contributors. A special acknowledgement is due to Mark Davies, Andrew Vignaux and Karen Tumer who physically produce the magazine. I had no idea of the amount of work they undertake until I became involved in it myself.
1 February 1991
E. Frenkel, the Russian who late last year undertook the ultimate test of his ability to stop on-coming trains using only his brain power, was a hit with NZ Skeptics too. Members have sent in eight clippings relating to the incident—an all-time record by a long way.
1 February 1991
While archiving material on Irene F. Hughes, the Golden Numbers astrologer about whom Hugh -Young spoke at the 1989 Conference, I noticed she has a variety of signatures. The three printed below no doubt reflect her varying state of mind. Interpretative comment is welcomed.
1 February 1991
A report of a survey conducted in 1988
1 February 1991
(from the New Zealand Herald 1/5/90)
1 February 1991
The results of a study of women attending the Bristol Cancer Help Centre have concentrated a few minds. The findings published in The Lancet last week may be baffling, but they are undoubtedly disturbing: women with breast cancer who attended the centre in addition to having conventional treatment fared very much worse than a control group of women who received conventional treatment alone.
1 February 1991
Even those who find the new look Skeptical Inquirer a little tedious will have to admit it is more stylish than the old. Reading the certainly-not-tedious The Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth Catalog edited by Ted Schulz (now available in Wellington at Whitcoulls and Unity Books at $45.00) I was astonished by the similarity between the logo for the Hypno-
1 February 1991
At the 1989 NZCSICOP conference Dr Denis Dutton generalised that women's magazines contained horoscopes and men's magazines didn't. A female voice rightly objected that Broadsheet was horoscope-less. There is also a dubious exception to the generalisation about men's magazines (see box). Nevertheless, what Denis said was largely confirmed by a quick survey I made of women's magazines at a Whitcoulls newsstand. New York Woman doesn't carry horoscopes, neither does Moxie (but it does carry an advice column by a so-called psychic). These were the only additional exceptions I could find. However I discovered Australian Elle has not only horoscopes but a numerology page as well.
1 February 1991
Picture's ratio of cheesecake to beefcake favours the former to such an extent it must be considered a man's magazine.
1 February 1991
by John Allen Paulos. Vintage Books, 1990. 180pp. $23.95
1 February 1991
Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of New York, 1985.
1 February 1991
"Repetitive strain injury": an iatrogenic epidemic of simulated injury.
1 February 1991
In this talk a journalist reflects on the rise and fall of a media superstar.
1 February 1991
By Michael Howard. Century Hutchison, 1989. 196 pp. $45.95.
1 February 1991
Dowsing, the art of searching for water or minerals using a hand-held pendulum, may really work, according to an Australian engineer. Frank Irons of the University of New South Wales has analysed the chaotic swings of dowsing pendulums. His analysis shows that diviners might be able to detect ore deposits by the variations in the force of gravity they produce (European Journal of Physics, vol 11, p 107).
1 February 1991
NEW research dismissing the role of tinted lenses in treating reading difficulties has sparked an angry reaction from special education experts.
1 February 1991
Nearly everyone knows that in Old Testament times Sodom and Gomorrah were pretty naughty places to be and that the Lord, after negotiations with Abraham, was moved to spare any good people that could be found in them. In the event, it seems that only Lot, his wife and his two unmarried daughters fitted the bill. It is true that his two sons-in-law-to-be were invited to leave with Lot and his family, but they scoffed at the idea that two angels were going to destroy the city of Sodom with little obvious help.
1 November 1990
An intention to celebrate the New Zealand Sesquicentennial with a series "Great Paranormal Moments in New Zealand History" has been abandoned. Readers may, however, be interested in the following item from "100 Years of News', a publication of the New Zealand Herald on the occasion of its centennial in 1963.
1 November 1990
The following item was sent by Bernard Howard of Christchurch. It appeared in the (Christchurch) Observer of 22 January 1990 under the headline "Hagley visits on UFO agenda—claim".
1 November 1990
Is there a scientific explanation for the near-death 'tunnel' experience? This article was first published in the British & Irish Skeptic and is reprinted with the kind permission of Dr Blackmore.
1 November 1990
The New Zealand Woman's Weekly has been the recipient of a New Zealand Skeptics' Bent Spoon Award. Does Broadsheet, "New Zealand's feminist magazine", make a more intelligent response to matters of interest to Skeptics?
1 November 1990
Experience of synchronicity (co-incidence) has occasioned thoughts on the inter-connectedness of things.
1 November 1990
Anabolic steroids were in the news during the Commonwealth Games and Dr Michael Kennedy has been studying their use by athletes for the past ten years. His conclusion is that "anabolic steroids have no effect on aerobic sports, such as running and swimming, but may lead to a small improvement in the performance of trained weightlifters." He quotes a 1972 study that showed when athletes were given placebo and told they were steroids, they got stronger and trained harder.
1 November 1990
(From the London Sunday Times Supplement)
1 November 1990
The New Truth articles on the "Disappearing Regiment" were examined in New Zealand Skeptic No. 15. A curious sequel to these stories, headed "Mystery clouds hold secret to rail horror!", appeared in New Truth's issue of 20 October 1989. After reading the "Disappearing Regiment" articles (25 August and 1 September 1989), Mr Jack Bramley, a wood carver now living in Whitianga, told New Truth of three clouds he had seen from Taupo and which had remained in the same position near Mt Ruapehu for the three days before Christmas 1953. In the article the clouds were linked to the disaster which occurred when the Wellington-Auckland express was plunged into the Whangaehu River shortly before 10.30 pm on 24 December 1953.
1 November 1990
The following item was sent by Mr A.S. Hamlyn of Dargaville. It appeared in The Northland Times of 23 March 1990 under the headline "Sceptic flabbergasted by Indian holy woman".
1 November 1990
When Benjamin Creme first visited New Zealand in January 1989, I was overseas. Fortunately, the prophet of the returned Christ decided to pay a return visit.
1 November 1990
The following may interest those who hesitate at the idea of "mushroom rings" being evidence of UFO landings—or of fairy shindigs.
1 November 1990
With immigration a topical issue, some New Zealanders may be interested in an article in a recent Omni (January 1990) which looks at apocalyptic prophecies. In it Mark Harwell of Cornell University's Global Environment Program offers cheer to those fearful of nuclear winter: "Move to New Zealand. It's way the hell south and has 30 sheep per capita. You can survive on lamb chops until the smoke clears out of the stratosphere."
1 August 1990
The above is a suggested logo for NZCSICOP. It was designed by a Wellington Skeptic, Hugh Young. Hugh has provided the following commentary:
1 August 1990
A talk given to the 1989 NZCSICOP Conference, Christchurch
1 August 1990
There were some strange responses to New Zealand's first big earthquake prediction.
1 August 1990
The German physician, H. Rheder described the following clinical trial in 1955. In the local hospital were three patients under his care; one suffering from chronic gall bladder disease, a second from severe pancreatitis associated with weight loss, constipation and depression, and the third had an inoperable uterine cancer, with anaemia, weakness and massive accumulation of fluid in the abdomen.
1 August 1990
A recent best-seller illustrates the history of the triumph of intellectual theory over ignorant pragmatism or reactionary ideology.
1 August 1990
The Skeptics have been saddened by the deaths of two of our most lively and engaged members.
1 August 1990
I have just got around to reading the article "Science vs Religion" in Skeptic No. 11, and am still wondering why it was written for such a journal (or was it?).
1 August 1990
A recent leading article in The New Zealand Medical Journal looked at Diet and Behaviour. Food intolerance was strongly associated with the mother's level of education. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing? As regards the putative link between sugar and problem behaviours the article says "'...it is just as likely that restless or aggressive children seek out more sugar as that sugar causes the inappropriate behaviour." The authors conclude "...it should be recognized that modification of a particular child's diet is almost always accompanied by changes in management."
1 August 1990
While critical thinking is an essential part of the defence against pseudo-science, general knowledge also has an important role. The more knowledge you have about more things, the better equipped you are to detect the propagation of nonsense. However, the authorities may not be so concerned.
1 August 1990
I was first conscious that I had met Procrustes about 20 years ago, though I did not at that time know his name. At the beginning of a course of instruction on how to examine medical patients the clinical tutor had us don headphones plugged into an amplifier while his stethoscope wandered over the chest of a lady who each year donated her time to the greater glory of Medicine. She had a diseased mitral heart valve and we were invited to identify the "low pitched rumbling diastolic murmur" and "There! Listen carefully!
1 August 1990
Ray Carr was a fine example of an active Skeptic.
1 August 1990
From Ancient Skies, Vol 16, No 6. (1990)
1 May 1990
The 1989 Annual General Meeting of NZCSICOP was held at the Science Lecture Theatre, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, on 3 September 1989.
1 May 1990
Early on Saturday, 2 September, on a bright but cold Christchurch day, over one hundred and fifty members and others met at the University of Canterbury for NZCSICOP's Fourth Annual Conference. After Chairman Tony Vignaux's welcome and introduction, Dr Bridget Robinson of the Christchurch Clinical School opened the programme with a talk on "Alternative Medicine, Cancer and Quackery". Mr Hugh Young of Radio New Zealand followed with "Cashing in on Gullibility". Other speakers were Dr Denis Dutton, "I know they're out there—The Psychic Universe of the UFO Believer"; Dr Matt McGlone, "On This Planet Skeptics are the Real Aliens"; Dr Colin McGeorge, "The Psychic Dog of Fendalton, the Horrible Severed Hand, and Other Colonial Wonders"; and Dr John Campbell, "Strolling Across the Coals—Physics Takes a Cool Look at a Hot New Age Fad".
1 May 1990
At the Annual Dinner on 2 September media excellence awards were made to the following:
1 May 1990
Is it the influence of New Age vegetarian extremists?: the latest paranormal enthusiasms are cress seed-sprouting (it's a more growing experience than metal spoon-bending) and crop circles. We have Time Magazine's authority for crop circles having occurred here, and not only the British Skeptics but the New Zealand Skeptics would welcome any information about the crop circle phenomenon in this country.
1 May 1990
by Whitley Strieber, Arrow Books, $12.99.
1 May 1990
We want to be active Skeptics but there is always something real to do and anyway the lunatic fringe aren't daft enough not to charge admission. (Our scepticism has financial limits.) But, one hot holiday evening, a free talk sponsored by the "Emin Foundation" was announced. With joy in the feeling of joining a jihad we went along—only to fail!
1 May 1990
Who or what is responsible for those puzzling crop-field rings?
1 May 1990
Dr Campbell's lecture at the 1989 Conference was an excellent piece of science education. The following article has a little physics, but is mainly a behind-the-scenes exposé of scientific show biz. It was prepared for The New Zealand Physicist.
1 May 1990
David Shanks' report on Mr Beta and Filippino psychic surgery reminded me of Brian Edwards' investigations of this on his Saturday night TV show many years ago. He used a Filippino magician to present a very convincing demonstration of the bloodless removal of offending growths from a sufferer. He then revealed the true identity of the "surgeon" and they gave a detailed demonstration of the trickery used in the operation. It was a very powerful presentation and must have been seen by thousands of viewers.
1 May 1990
To all those who came to the Annual Conference in Christchurch—thank you for your support, and for making the event such a great and satisfying success. To those who could not come—we missed you. To all members—we hope to meet you at the Fifth Conference next year in Palmerston North.
1 May 1990
Warwick Don was elected at the AGM to succeed Prof. Tony Vignaux as Chairman of the New Zealand Skeptics. Mr Don, a senior lecturer in Zoology at the University of Otago, was a founding member of the society. However his experience as an advocate for science and the scientific approach goes back much further. My personal collection of clippings contains two articles he had published in Otago University's student newspaper in 1966 and 1967 responding to attempts to recast evolution in a religious mould. He is also a formidable debater against creationism—as was evident from the letters in The Nelson Evening Mail (27/5/87 to 30/7/87) in which he and Jim Ring presented the skeptical viewpoint. Mr Don's special concern at the moment is the draft Form I-V science syllabus—in particular its inclusion of non-scientific elements.
1 May 1990
You may be aware that 'crop circles' have been much in the news recently in the UK. In case you have not seen them, they are perfect rings or discs of flattened crops which apparently form overnight, sometimes in groups.
1 May 1990
Massey University Palmerston North August 17,18,19, 1990
1 May 1990
According to the Otago Daily Times, 19 June 1989:
1 May 1990
"Three Kiwi soldiers' shock claim 'ALIENS TOOK GALLIPOLI REGIMENT". So declared the front page of New Truth's 25 August 1989 issue.
1 May 1990
The following article appeared in The New Zealand Herald of 6 September 1989. It was the most comprehensive coverage of the 1989 Conference to appear in the national press.
1 May 1990
One of the highlights of the 1989 Conference was an entertaining history of the paranormal and pseudo-science in New Zealand. Part of Dr McGeorge's talk follows, beginning with his account of an attempt early this century to control quackery by legislative means.
1 February 1990
This will be the last editorial that I write as in September, my wife and I will leave for Thailand, where we shall be doing voluntary work. The first issue of the Newsletter went to 80 members, the last one went to 180 (with another 55 going in bulk to the U.S.A.). Such growth in just over 3 years is very gratifying and the credit for that belongs to our members who have so faithfully sent in articles and cuttings. (Especial thanks to Malcolm McCleary who has just sent me more material on the infamous Time Life series of loony books. $35 a throw). I am not naturally efficient, and if I have failed to use your contribution, I apologise. It was my policy to use everything sent to me and if I failed in this it was not intentionally. Thanks are also due to Mark Davies and his gang at Vic who, apart from the first few issues, typed out the material, duplicated it and stapled it together. If you look back over the past issues, you can immediately tell when Mark took over by the startling improvement in the layout and appearance of the newsletter.
1 February 1990
For those of us who cannot communicate by paranormal means, email is a useful alternative to letters, FAX, and phone calls.
1 February 1990
As you know, we occasionally get copies of the Newsletter of overseas skeptical groups. We recently received a copy of Skeptiker (2) 1989, a beautifully produced newsletter from Germany.
1 February 1990
With this issue we farewell our editor Keith Lockett, who has served us so well in the nurturing and development of the New Zealand Skeptic. We have all seen how, from modest beginnings, the Newsletter has grown in stature and contents to a periodical that can hold its head among like journals internationally. Even the bleak patches when Keith was desperate for contributions proved temporary and recent editions demonstrate that we have a lively and informative journal that we will be proud to place in libraries in New Zealand and exchange with groups overseas.
1 February 1990
Grant Duncan in his letter in the June 1989 N.Z. Skeptic has I feel been unfair to me in what I wrote about homeopathy; and he seems bent on being unfair to himself too.
1 February 1990
The Skeptics have organised some splendid meetings over the years, but our 1989 conference at the University of Canterbury promises to be the hottest ever—peaking at about 900 degrees celsius, to be precise....
1 February 1990
Recently your newspaper has featured several articles on the UFO phenomenon, with special reference to the theories of Jan Pajak from Dunedin.
1 February 1990
Zecharia Sitchin's 12th Planet, called "Nibiru" by the Sumerians and "Marduk" by the Babylonians, if it exists has five times the mass of Earth, travels an elliptic orbit around the Sun every 700 to 1000 years, and was known to the Sumerians 6000 years ago. Our little Moon produces tides of 10 meters (32.8 feet) or so. Nibiru would produce a "Super-tide" on Earth, pulling the waters of our oceans up to where Noah's Ark was found on Mt. Ararat at the end of the "40 days and 40 nights" of rain. Of course, rain could not have produced such a flood as the Great Deluge, but Nibiru could have.
1 February 1990
The skeptics having been invited to Mr Beta's lecture, I went along to clutch, if not wave, the flag. I duly arrived at the local spiritualist church, a commanding fading edifice at 14, Gullible St. A chap with a withered leg hobbled up the front steps; things were auguring well. An audience of approximately 100 slowly assembled, 90% women, mostly middle aged.
1 February 1990
I wonder if scepticism toward pseudoscience has any contribution to make to the abortion debate?
1 November 1989
Thanks again to members who have sent me material. I now have so much, that for the first time, I shall have to hold some over until the next issue. Thanks to H. Ruis of Tokoroa who kindly sent me the reply from Irene F. Hughes. It now appears that the psychic never visited N.Z. at all and her facilities are only available from her Chicago office and not from Auckland. She was not willing to send out copies of her citations for crime busting.
1 November 1989
And there was the perhaps inevitable clairvoyant, offering to point out the location of the gold for a share of the spoils (he eventually told Kelly that he was looking miles away tom the right place). Kelly had never placed his faith in clairvoyants and he was not likely to now, but he allowed himself to be convinced that this one, a young African man, should be allowed a trial. In the event, all they got out of it was a memorably hilarious day.
1 November 1989
Keith Lockett, our hard-pressed and indefatigable Editor, has particular difficulty in getting good material for the NZ Skeptic and it turns out that he is not alone in his editorial problems. One overseas skeptics group editor has offered a free subscription to the US Skeptical Inquirer to anyone who agrees to write a regular column. Another editorial, from the Iowa group, complains that "material was in short supply, as was time" and that "sometimes the time involved in putting together a newsletter like this can become large". These problems, which Keith will recognise readily, meant that their Fall issue was late and had to be combined with the Winter issue. Even then it was about the same size as one of our regular issues.
1 November 1989
Samuel Hahnemann: The Organum of Medicine,
1 November 1989
MAGNETIC HEALING AND OTHER REALITIES, by Colin Lambert (Moana Press, $24. 35), Reviewed by David Riddell.
1 November 1989
In order to supplement the article on homeopathy by Bill Morris (March, 1989), I enclose copies of abstracts of clinical trials of homeopathic preparations published in reputable medical journals, some of which Morris has overlooked.
1 November 1989
No doubt the dates for the 1988 conference were selected after consultation with the noted Christchurch psychic Omniscia. The vibes clearly showed 20/21 August to be good for discussing paranormality: that same weekend was chosen for a Psychic Fair in Dunedin and for the Theosophists' Festival of Life—"An open day for alternative spiritualities in Auckland". Conspiracy theorists, however, will see these latter events as attempts to derail the Skeptics' publicity machine.
1 November 1989
James Randi, a member of the US CSICOP has been named the recipient of the 1989 Forum Award of the American Physical Society. The Award is given for promoting public understanding of the relation of physics to society. The citation reads, "For his unique defense of science and the scientific method in many disciplines, including physics, against pseudoscience, frauds, and charlatans. His use of scientific techniques has contributed to refuting suspicious and fraudulent claims of paranormal results. He has contributed significantly to public understanding of important issues where science and society intersect."
1 November 1989
Published by the author. $169.00 (inc GST and packing & postage within New Zealand).
1 November 1989
A report of a meeting of the Wellington Skeptics
1 November 1989
The education subcommittee of the US CSICOP is working on two projects: First, it is compiling materials on the scientific investigation of the paranormal, suitable for 6 and 7th form High school and for University level and second it is designing a'set of guidelines for tertiary institutions considering offering extension and adult courses on paranormal subjects. If you are interested in these topics and can suggest something that might be useful to them, you are urged to contact the Chairperson: Steven Hoffmaster, Education Subcommittee CSICOP, Physics Department, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, 99258, USA.
1 August 1989
THE Lotteries Commission has been accused of tacitly supporting crackpot lucky number schemes to boost the sales of Lotto tickets.
1 August 1989
This is the definitive book on the scientific arguments for creationism, it is exhaustive and thorough. It is a massive book, 550 double column pages, 600 references cited, a 13 page index, 54 chapters with about 10 illustrations per chapter. As far as I can see, it covers all the main points at issue; the nature of Science, pseudoscience, entropy Omphalos, radioactive dating and creationist arguments for a young cosmos and young earth. However it is especially strong on geological arguments as befits the author, formerly Professor of Geomorphology at Columbia. Nearly half the book deals with this aspect, covering the Biblical view of the Flood and creationist ideas on plate tectonics, the rapid deposition of sedimentary rocks, evaporites and petroleum and ore deposits. It then deals with the scientific account of these matters and finally gives a thorough account of our evolutionary history. It is especially good on human evolution.
1 August 1989
" 'Alternative' medicine is usually defended by a 'skeptical' argument, that we should keep our minds open." Petr Skrabanek in his article "Demarcation of the absurd"1 looked for guidelines on quite how open we should leave our minds and for how long. As he put it "Anything is possible. 'You have to keep your mind open'—until your brains drop out." He argues that we should be prepared to express unbelief because we can always change our minds, but by being gullible or keeping the mind too wide open we "lose reason from the very beginning."
1 August 1989
Several members have sent me cuttings which I am afraid we can not use but which I am always glad to get. Malcolm MacCleary especially has sent me some good stuff on how to be a winning punter, news from the Order of the Magical Rose, Nelson and some more remarkable extracts from the Melchizadek Manuscripts. See how many clangers you can find in this passage:
1 August 1989
A very short note this time as space is limited.
1 August 1989
An alternative approach to health is being expounded in New Plymouth by an Australian visitor, Mr Nick Singer.
1 August 1989
Reprinted from the British and Irish Skeptic.
1 August 1989
Sometimes a programme really makes one think about how television defines what is important for us to know about.
1 August 1989
Otago Daily Times, 18 October 1988
1 May 1989
Book Review of “Astrology; The Evidence of Science”, by Percy Seymour (Lennard Publishing, £12.95).
1 May 1989
The University of Edinburgh announced on Saturday 18 May that Dr Robert Morris had been invited and accepted an offer to become the first holder of the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh. Dr Morris, who is expected to take up his post at Edinburgh by 1 January 1986 is currently Senior Research Scientist in the School of Computer and Information Science at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York State, USA.
1 May 1989
1 May 1989
1 May 1989
A HAMILTON woman claims the predictions of a computerised horoscope she subscribed to were so accurate that she had a nervous breakdown.
1 May 1989
God forgot to make, and which, therefore,
1 May 1989
Many thanks to all members who have sent me material recently. Most of it is too voluminous to be used and some of it will be well known to us all. It was nice to have sent on Irene F. Hughes' Golden Numbers form letter and to know that "It is always a strange feeling—opening letters from people whose desire is so clearly intense. At this very moment, your desire is priority #1. It is now '11:33' and your case has just been completed. As always, it gives me a warm feeling to see that once again the numbers reveal their hidden meanings so willingly to someone who asks from the heart." Incidentally my Golden Lucky Number is 11 and so my lucky times are 11 a.m. or 2 p.m.
1 May 1989
Psychic healer Ola Williams' latest triumph is curing a bumble bee with a cold.
1 May 1989
For those who were not at the AGM in Auckland, I should tell you that I was elected as Chairman and Phil Bradley as Secretary at that meeting. Other Committee members are listed elsewhere in this edition. I cannot hope to emulate Denis Dutton or David Marks before him but I'll certainly do my best to keep the momentum of the Skeptics going.
1 May 1989
Interest in the healing power of mineral stone crystals has taken off in the past five years and not only in the United States.
1 May 1989
The Press Council has not accepted that a jam-eating poltergeist was a logical explanation for a series of events reported in a Truth story.
1 May 1989
Sir, — Your front page of July 28 featured Magda Palmer, promoter of healing by crystals. As if that wasn't enough, another page of the same issue featured a woman promoting colour therapy healing by threads of specific lengths and colours.
1 May 1989
A virus has inflicted NZCSICOP, analogous to computer viruses that print messages if mild, but self-destruct if severe. The carrier is the ortho-skeptic, acting as a mole in the secret service, programmed to turn Skeptics into pseudo-skeptics, or pskeptics for short.
1 May 1989
"Do you believe in science or religion?" is a not uncommon question amongst layfolk caught in the crossfire between, for example, biological and cosmological evolution, and creationism. Creationism has made one largely unrecognised major inroad: it has managed to create a broad dichotomy in the public mind, which has on the whole responded according to the "two sides to every argument" sense of fair play and concomitantly cocked an ear to proponents of the "other view". It is my assertion, however, that the very issue of "'science vs religion" is as mythical as the charming creation-stories of many a mythology in that creationists are not at all representative of "religion" in its global sense.
1 February 1989
Extract From Act of God by F. Tennyson Jesse, a novel published in the 1930's.
1 February 1989
The recent revelations that the United States President's wife consults astrologers in scheduling important presidential events have embarrassed the U.S. Yet this startling discovery reveals only the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the world people make investments, change jobs, select their mates, and seek medical treatment on the basis of astrological forecasts. Virtually everyone knows the "sun sign" under which he or she was born. Yet very few people understand the origins and tenets of this ancient practice. Especially disturbing is the fact that according to a 1986 Gallup poll, 52 percent of teenagers polled accept astrology as true.
1 February 1989
1 February 1989
Head, Department of Geology, University of Newcastle.
1 February 1989
Several members have kindly sent in a copy of Irene's advertisement in the Listener. We have decided not to reproduce it because it will be familiar to many. However, member DJ. Ibell of Birkenhead followed up the advertisement, writing for details of Irene's abilities as a crime sleuth. We are very grateful for this kind of follow-up, it is just the sort of thing needed to keep the society vigorous and challenging. He has kindly sent me the results of his letter.
1 February 1989
The first two NZCSICOP conferences enjoyed such success that they are difficult acts to follow ... but our third conference may prove the most lively of all.
1 February 1989
The New Zealand Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (Inc.) seeks nominations for its annual journalism/media awards for 1987-1988. Awards will be presented at the annual meeting of the Committee, held this year at the University of Auckland, August 20-21.
1 February 1989
Reprinted from June 1987 issue of University of Edinburgh Graduates Journal
1 February 1989
During the past few days the world's soothsayers have been trotting out their annual predictions for the year ahead, ranging from massive flooding of low-lying New Zealand to the death of Cuban leader Fidel Castro by swallowing a giant insect. But psychics and stargazers have taken a battering over the accuracy of their predictions — we have been waiting two years for AIDS to claim a world leader for example — with little to commend astral messages.
1 February 1989
Astrological betting systems which claim to win on Lotto are bunkum, according to a group which investigates the unexplained.
1 February 1989
President Reagan has made executive decisions, including the scheduling of a missile treaty signing, based on advice his wife received from an astrologer, according to sources close to the Reagans.
1 February 1989
For most individuals the result of a consultation with a psychic is a good laugh. But some get hurt.
1 February 1989
Radio Clairvoyant: Mary Fry's Own Story (Grantham House, $14.95).
1 February 1989
I have been reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (Methuen 1987) and very interesting it is too. Postman takes some vicious swipes at Television; although tolerant of Dynasty, Dallas and Sledge Hammer he is unrelenting in his condemnation of its 'best' programmes. His main point is that TV is killing off our abilities to think and express ourselves logically. I will summarise briefly; to catch the full flavour of Postman's invective you will have to read the book.
1 November 1988
We recently received through the kindness of skeptic Malcolm McCleary information on the thought of Barry Long. It comes from the "Barry Long Centre (NZ)" in Auckland. Mr. Long is an Australian who left his career in journalism and PR "when he started to question the purpose of his life. He was made aware that the truth or spirit was entering him and directing his life."
1 November 1988
1 November 1988
1 November 1988
When the local paper carried a new advertisement, for 'Esoteric Astrology,' I had to reply to the number given. 'Esoteric,' of course, means 'intelligible only to the initiated' and the account given by its exponent laid her open to prosecution under the trades description act since it was clear that she, at least, had no idea what she was talking about. She said that her kind of astrology made no attempt to foretell the future, but that she used the predictions obtained to counsel people who were worried and perplexed. When I asked her what was the connection between the movement of the planets and the personal problems of people in New Plymouth, she replied in the pitying tones of a teacher talking to a backward five year old, "Well, you know that the moon is responsible for the tides." The following dialogue then ensued.
1 November 1988
The Creationists' tactics in getting their ideas accepted are not to promote their own (the biblical) version of creation but to attack the "orthodox" scientific view. A constant barrage of criticism of evolutionary theory and of geological theories on age and origin of the earth (and universe) is levelled with the aim of discrediting the theory or theories. Then, with a nimble leap sideways, it is concluded that "The Alternative" explanation is just as likely to be true, "the alternative" being of course the Genesis account. This ploy cleverly presents the biblical account as a viable alternative to an existing scientific theory thereby conferring upon the account the status of an "alternative scientific theory" and obscuring its real nature—that of a religious notion. This constant attack forces scientists into a defensive position—defending their theories by rebutting the creationist arguments.
1 November 1988
In your November 1987 issue, Dennis Dutton (page 3) asks whether it matters that sick people, especially cancer sufferers, are not discouraged from using "alternative" or "complementary" treatments, The answer of course is the one that he himself has given: it does and it doesn't.
1 November 1988
The Treasurer reminds readers that members' subscriptions to NZCSICOP for 1988 are now due. If you receive a renewal notice, please don't put it where it might be forgotten, but deal with it promptly. Your subscriptions are NZCSICOP's blood.
1 November 1988
Nostradamus and the Millenium. By John Hogue. Bloomsbury/Roulston Greene. 1987. 209 pp. Illustrations. $45,
1 November 1988
An 80-minute cassette of excerpts from Hugh Young's "World of Science" radio series—ESP?, Astrology*, Creationism, Phrenology, and how to recognise pseudoscience.
1 November 1988
The Evening Post, 28 December 1987
1 November 1988
"Scientific" creationists are fond of easy examples that seem to contradict evolution: so much the better if they seem to make scientists look silly.
1 November 1988
Through the kindness of Gordon Hewitt, I was told about the existence of the Thomas G. Barnes Institute of Physics. I hastened to write to them for information and have received a full reply from its President, Max Cullen. The egregious Dr Barnes is well known to students of creationism as the first Dean of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Creation Research. He is the author of a loony argument for a young earth supposedly based on measurements of the earth's magnetic field. He claims that the magnitude of the magnetic field is decreasing and that it must have had an impossibly large value not long ago. The theory totally ignores the massive evidence for periodic reversals in magnetic field. To illustrate the activities of the Institute, I cannot do better than quote from Max Cullen's paper. These quotations are all entire sentences, with the spelling corrected.
1 November 1988
—in the New Scientist, 21 January 1988
1 November 1988
Doris Stokes, the medium superstar, was a fraud, says a British author, Ian Wilson, in his book, "The After Death Experience."
1 November 1988
The Spectator, 20 September 1986
1 November 1988
SEELISBERG, Switzerland (Reuter). — Followers of Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi have staged what they called Europe's first European yogic flying" competition, describing it as a demonstration of their leader's programme to end violence on earth.
1 August 1988
I had intended to make this issue one devoted to the conference and was going to reprint all the talks and discussions there. However the conference was such an overwhelming success and there was such a fine attendance, that it would be a waste to reprint what so many had heard in person. I therefore asked all those who spoke to give me their second thoughts on their talks, the things they meant to say but forgot, the replies they would like to have made in the discussions, the witty rejoinders that came to them in the middle of the night after we had all gone home. Most of the speakers have had nothing to add but I should like to make a correction to the impression left with my hearers.
1 August 1988
Do you have any small quotations or one-liners (even two-liners) that you think other members might appreciate—send them to the editor.
1 August 1988
The "Cancer Line" programme shown on TVNZ (November 11) was in some respects an undoubted success. Television in general demands that most topics be exploited in terms of their emotional dimensions. (If you're ever interviewed by the "Close-up" team, you can be assured that your contribution will make it to air only if you manage to weep: the "Close-up" producers think the zoom lens was invented to magnify teary eyes). Not wanting to take the depressing route, "Cancer Line" determined to make cancer a real laugh, with McPhail and Gadsby and other entertainers. This probably helped keep viewer interest high.
1 August 1988
1 August 1988
Copyright © 1986, Journal of Irreproducible Results
1 August 1988
Since the August meeting I have had a number of letters (six to be precise), hardly an avalanche, but they raise some interesting points.
1 August 1988
A front page report of a self-proclaimed psychic's prediction that Louisa Damodran's body would be found "on a beach" has earned the "New Zealand Truth" an award for gullibility from the country's Skeptics.
1 August 1988
"Critical thinking" is the name given to a way of reasoning, in everyday language, which is a great benefit to everybody who uses it. It is a tool which can be used to improve our understanding of other people's arguments, to improve our own reasoning, to improve decision making, and to aid communication. It is especially useful for skeptics and debunkers. It is also a new idea, since in the past people have never been taught how to reason properly using everyday language, which is how most of us reason most of the time. Most of us could improve our thinking considerably by using critical thinking methods. I would like to see the Skeptics involved in the promotion of this subject.
1 August 1988
Rhodes, which gave the classical Greek world one of its seven wonders, also gave it Cleobulus, one of the seven wise men. The recent search for the lost 100-foot bronze Colossus, prompted by the visions of an Australian clairvoyante, revealed nothing except, perhaps, that there is little wisdom left on the island.
1 August 1988
(Address to Joint Australia/New Zealand Health Inspectors Conference, Christchurch, 15 October 1987)
1 August 1988
An access training scheme to teach alternative medicines is about to start in New Plymouth. But the four-week health skills course has drawn criticism from le to alternative therapies and to the course's ing. The course, in mid-November, will teach homeopathy, reflexology, massage, herbal knowledge and stress management.
1 August 1988
Our NZCSICOP archivist, Phil Bradley, continues to build our Archive. Phil needs from members cuttings appropriate for the collection.. Please keep your scissors handy and send Phil reports of paranormal claims which appear in your newspaper. We depend on our members for this. His address is:
1 August 1988
Futile dreams of apocalyptic grandeur
1 August 1988
Since the founding of CSICOP in 1976, and with the growing numbers of localized skeptical groups, the skeptic finds more ways to state his or her case. The broadcast and print media, along with other forums, provide more opportunities for us to be heard. For some of these occasions, we have the luxury of carefully planning and crafting our response. But most of the time we have to formulate our response on the spot. But, regardless of the circumstance, the critic's task, if it is to be carried out properly, is both challenging and loaded with unanticipated hazards.
1 August 1988
The Dominion Sunday Times, 4 October 1987
1 August 1988
Shortly after our Wellington convention, Radio New Zealand presented a superb Insight documentary on NZCSICOP. This half-hour programme was broadcast on a Sunday morning on National Radio and rebroadcast the following evening. The producer was Colin Feslia, who will be remembered for having patiently taped the whole of our Wellington meeting. We have to admire the way he assembled the material into a coherent, interesting half hour of radio. It is an excellent introduction to the Skeptics.
1 August 1988
The Evening Post, 31 August 1987
1 August 1988
The New Zealand Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (inc.)
1 August 1988
Acommon failure of the imagination and of intellectual rigour is the belief that these two qualities cannot co-exist. In fact one is indispensable to the other if art and intelligence are not to be separated and trivialised.
1 May 1988
You know those little white areas you don't see at the bottom of newspaper columns, it would be nice if we could avoid them here too. Were it not for this message you would be looking at a blank (possibly shaded) space. In order that this catastrophe be avoided in future issues we make the following appeals:
1 May 1988
The Geller Effect. By Uri Geller and Guy Lyon Playfair. Jonathan Cape, 1986. 288 pp. $32.95
1 May 1988
In his predictably naughty way, Brian Edwards did a bit of stirring when he was the after-dinner speaker at the annual conference of the New Zealand Skeptics Society during the weekend. Skeptics, he needled, should have at least something to believe in. Members counter-stirred. At their annual meeting the next day, they passed a resolution "endorsing the existence of Santa Claus, but still expressing doubts about the tooth fairy."
1 May 1988
Our heartfelt thanks to the efforts of our many members who helped make the Wellington meeting such a success. The papers aroused great interest, and it was extremely gratifying to see the number of media reporters who stayed around simply to listen, long after they had fulfilled their obligations to their employers.
1 May 1988
The N.Z. Federation of Spiritual Healers (Inc)
1 May 1988
Controversy is nothing new to Uri Geller. Nor are setbacks.
1 May 1988
To secure a place in American schools creationists now claim their doctrines are scientific, while evolution, on the other hand, is a 'religion'.
1 May 1988
With a magician-like sleight-of-hand, British faith healer Melvin Banks delivered joyful smiles and apparent cures to many who queued for his healing at Hamilton's Assembly of God Church last night.
1 May 1988
On Sunday, 24 May, there was broadcast on the Commercial programmes a debate on Evolution-Creationism. The host was George Balani and our member, Gordon Hewitt, spoke for evolution and Dr Arthur Wilder-Smith defended creationism. This debate provided the perfect example of creationist technique in action. How do creationists do it?
1 May 1988
I am making the transition from part to full time availability and thus need to expand the number of people who are aware of what I have to offer.
1 May 1988
Jesus Christ lives on Venus. Earth has narrowly escaped invasion by the Fish Men. Two machines pull in healing energy from deep space and spread it around Earth each night.
1 May 1988
What price progress as many seek alternative remedies?
1 May 1988
Britain's spiritualist mediums are suffering a crisis of over-popularity, brought on by an apparent national urge to get in touch with The Beyond. The Spiritualist Association of Great Britain is finding it impossible to keep up with the demand from local churches for experts with access to "the room next door".
1 May 1988
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruling striking down Louisiana's creationism law signals trouble for fundamentalist parents in Alabama who have challenged public school textbooks on religious grounds, attorneys and educators are saying.
1 May 1988
The New Zealand Skeptics are offering $10,000 for a paranormal person.
1 February 1988
Peter Dady, MD, MRCP, Director, Oncology Department, Wellington Hospital.
1 February 1988
A flying competition with a difference will be held in Auckland at the weekend.
1 February 1988
Didi you know that the 'principle' of water-divining was used to find people buried under snow? I did not, until I read about it in Nature (letter from Rolf Manne, of Pergen, Norway, in the issue of 4 December, 1986). This practice has been foisted on the Mountain Rescue Organisation of the Norwegian Red Cross, and is also taught in the Norwegian Army.
1 February 1988
With a nearly firm programme in hand, the 1987 NZCSICOP conference is shaping up to be a remarkable event. The presentations will cover a wide range of arresting topics, from the dangers of alternative medicine and fraudulent faith healing, through the connections between paranormal belief and the decline of religion, to astrology, creationism, the not-so-mysterious Shroud of Turin, and more.
1 February 1988
The New Zealand Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (Inc.) seeks nominations for its annual journalism/media awards for 1986-1987. Awards will be presented at the annual meeting of the Committee, held this year at Victoria University in Wellington, August 29-30.
1 February 1988
A fire that recently burned a marquee at a Christian camp "inexplicably" died because of the plastic roof — not a miracle of God.
1 February 1988
Sir, — I share Colin Bell's concern about what goes on in our universities and what sort of watching brief the university councils keep on their tutors (March 2).
1 February 1988
Evidence of the Shroud. By lan Wilson. Macmillan, 1986. 158 pp. $46.15.
1 November 1987
Since ancient times, alternative healing methods have been used by medical practitioners and spiritual adepts to soothe the irritation of body and soul. Many people today are drawn towards the mystical and transcendental as alternatives to orthodox methods. Before people condemn these alternatives, they must look carefully at them, not shutting their eyes to the unsatisfactory and disastrous results that happen when they have ignorantly employed. For those wanting to channel their research into the area of alternative medicine, I give a list of practices currently being carried on in New Zealand.
1 November 1987
No two American faith healers are exactly alike since they are competing in a crowded market place, but they do have enough features in common to make a general survey possible. This account of how 'big name' healers work is put together from reports by skeptics who have attended their meetings.
1 November 1987
Self-proclaimed psychic Colin Amery is suing the former leader of the sceptics society, Dr David Marks, claiming his tarot card reading business crashed after Marks publicly questioned psychic abilities. Marks was senior psychology lecturer at Otago University when he tested Amery's claimed extrasensory powers.
1 November 1987
Ruben Romany is an artist and to support his artwork he also practises astrology and palmistry. Presently visiting Dunedin from Christchurch to practise his craft, Ruben is quick to admit that he is one of the ''biggest sceptics out"'.
1 November 1987
1 November 1987
1 November 1987
Stephen Jay Gould, the world's best known palaeontologist, was approached by a creationist in Auckland after a lecture.
1 November 1987
During my recent visit to America, I had the pleasure of making contact with several of the Skeptics in the San Francisco area. The editor of BASIS (Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet), Kent Harker, entertained me for a day and gave me the information from Free Inquiry that has been put together to make the article on American Faith Healers. I also had a happy evening with Bob Steiner, the founder of the Bay Area Skeptics, He is a chartered accountant but now spends more time on his magic shows and the affairs of the skeptics. He is currently demonstrating to local policemen how sharks work the 'three-card-trick' or 'thimble-rigging' and how accomplices work with them. Numbers of these sharps can be seen in action on the streets of New York, but not to my knowledge elsewhere. Most interestingly, Bob showed me the video of his appearances as 'Steve Terbot', the American psychic on the Bert Newton show in Australia. He was on three shows. In the first two he demonstrated his powers and then allowed himself to be unmasked. He also appeared at some local halls and was showered with money (which he returned) from earnest believers. I have several issues of BASIS, dealing with the matter but will not repeat them here as it was fully covered in the June 1984 issue of the Australian Skeptic which many members will receive. However, if members would like to know more, please let me know. I have several phone numbers of Bay Area skeptics. If anyone is visiting there I am sure they will be as warmly welcomed as I was.
1 November 1987
New York may be the slickest and sharpest of cities, but its smartest citizens are turning to tarot cards, psychics and inter-species communicators to solve their problems. Shirley Lowe has tuned in.
1 November 1987
The suggestion that fringe medicine is more successful than orthodox medicine (NZ Skeptic 3, editorial) was presumably put forward at challenge). It is a suggestion encountered quite frequently these days but rests on two major fallacies. Firstly, medicine is narrowly described as a cure for disease. Secondly, it is assumed that people who recover have been cured by the treatment received. The success of real medicine is illustrated by a cutting from Scientific American, Oct, 1936. It gives the average life expectancy for white males and females in America. In 1900, it was: males 48, females 51, In 1936; males 59, females 63. Compare these with recent figures, The great successes of orthodox medicine have been in the prevention and eradication of diseases. The list of once threatening diseases in N.Z. includes; tuberculosis, polio, typhoid, diphtheria, cholera and smallpox.
1 November 1987
Circle the dates 29 and 30 August on your calendar, for these are the days for the second annual conference of NZCSICOP, to be held this year at Victoria University in Wellington. We plan to have lectures and symposia all day Saturday and till noon Sunday, so there will be opportunity for a good mix of material. Accommodation will be in Weir House and can be expected to be quite reasonably priced. Last year's meeting was of course very successful, and we can expect an equally arresting series of presentations this year in Wellington. Plan now to join us. And if you have any ideas either for a presentation yourself or for a speaker or event you'd like to see, please let me know.
1 November 1987
The meeting organized by Christchurch members on "Medicine: Orthodox, Fringe and Quack" was held in the School of Medicine on 6 December, 1986. It was, as far as can be judged, a success on several counts. It was attended by over 80 people, many of them medical practitioners; the fee charged enabled us to make a small profit; we enrolled some new members; and gained further attention from the news media.
1 November 1987
It's thumbs up for Sunday News in a long running battle with self proclaimed psychic Colin Amery.
1 August 1987
Faith healing, like the fundamentalism it is often associated with, is a generic term, rather than a specific one. The New Guinea tribesman consulting a witch doctor for a potent spell to cure him, the quiet prayer meeting for a friend in hospital, the Indian girl who immerses herself in the waters of the Ganges to aid her infertility are all exercising faith healing. The oft- reported efficacy of placebos on people suffering from chronic pain serves as a reminder that the power of faith may sometimes outdo rational, modern medicine.
1 August 1987
1 August 1987
This issue contains three varied articles on medicine, all by members. They are meant to be provocative and I hope that members will respond. Member Jim Woolnough of Auckland kindly sent me the October issue of "The N.Z. Psychic Gazette". At only 80c an issue it is value packed and I urge all members to buy one copy. This issue is worth the money for the front page poem about one's best friend, the dog (I'm clumsy and sweet and get under your feet, etc). There are articles on numerology, the psychic aura of animals and photographing ghosts. There are also the advertisements for psychic counselling, postal psychometry, Karma destiny, holistic spiritual massage, for pendulums and reflexology balls (no jokes now, please).
1 August 1987
About the time this newsletter arrives, the New Zealand Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal will have sponsored its first special-issue conference. The half-day meeting at the Christchurch Clinical School is entitled "Medicine: Orthodox, Fringe, and Quack, " and it brings together a diverse group of people on an important set of concerns. We hope that the next number of the "Skeptic" will have reports, both from us and from the press, to indicate that the meeting was a success.
1 August 1987
SIR, M L Lester (Post, Sept 26) says "The New Zealand Skeptics Society has repeatedly claimed that there is a widespread (nationwide) problem here in New Zealand with fake psychics, mediums, charlatans, magicians and so on".
1 August 1987
Your state of mind can make you sick or speed your recovery from illness. This idea is hardly new but only now is it gaining respect and attention from Western doctors. The result is a variety of new medical therapies being developed for the future. This approach, called holistic medicine, is based on four general principles.
1 August 1987
Medical graduates and workers in related fields are invited to a meeting to be held on Saturday 6 December 1986
1 August 1987
When I entered medicine more than fifty years ago, few maladies could be effectively treated. Lobar pneumonia, diabetes, pernicious anaemia, malaria and a few others. Patients with other disorders received careful medical attention while the illness ran its natural course,' unless the doctor made it worse. A warm relationship with the doctor eased the burden of serious illness for the patient and his family. Relentless killers which raged then have now vanished; poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, diphtheria, syphilis and smallpox. Childbirth was hazardous to mother and baby. There was no specific treatment for psychotic illness. Psychiatric research related mainly to taxonomy. A quarter of asylum inmates had general paresis, which killed them in a few years; today, thanks to penicillin, it is rare. 50 years ago, surgeons could treat many life-endangering conditions. They thought that physicians were pretentious tinkerers whose professional high spot was a brilliant diagnosis confirmed by a brilliant post-mortem.
1 August 1987
The Evening Post, Thursday, October 2, 1986
1 August 1987
After we have marvelled at the endurance shown in "The Wooden Horse, and thrilled to the weekly plottings of "Colditz," can we be expected to be interested in yet another prisoner-of-war story? Especially if it all happened nearly seventy years ago? For readers with a skeptical interest in matters clairvoyant, the answer in the case of "The Road to En-
1 May 1987
An Auckland astrologer who predicted the space shuttle accident says the American space shuttle accident says the American space programme will face further disasters this year.
1 May 1987
1 May 1987
A Christchurch expert on the Shroud of Turin, Dr Denis Dutton, was yesterday elected chairman of the New Zealand Skeptics Society, which investigates psychic claims.
1 May 1987
This tape was very intermittent and parts of this account will seem disconnected and bitty. In addition, Gordon had some excellent slides and diagrams which obviously we can not reproduce here.
1 May 1987
You have as much to gain by showing that someone has paranormal powers. David [Marks] and I would win a Nobel Prize if we could prove that. We've nothing to gain by just refuting another case.
1 May 1987
By all accounts the first annual meeting of the Society at. Dunedin recently was a great success. This edition of the Skeptic has been designated as a conference special as we thought that members would welcome a permanent record of an historical occasion. The timing of the conference was determined by David Marks' departure and this meant that several of us were unable to go. 1 could not go because I had to supervise the dress rehearsal of the school play (If you want to know, Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco and a great success).
1 May 1987
An Australian-based mining Company is in turmoil after recent revelations by the Australian Skeptics that it paid the magician, Uri Geller, to search for gold.
1 May 1987
Enlightenment or deception? Illusion or delusion? HOWARD WARNER paid $25 for 30 minutes to find out.
1 May 1987
I wedged the car between two others. We'd found a park at Jast. It was an orderly suburb. Street lights flickered to life. A boy swished past on a skateboard.
1 May 1987
Former Star news editor Josh Easby has collected . an award for journalistic excellence for his "psychic duel" with an Auckland clairvoyant.
1 May 1987
The first Wellington psychic Mary Fry knew of her terminated contract with Radio New Zealand was when a friend rang up and said her husband had seen it in the newspaper.
1 May 1987
David gave an account of three psychics he has studied, Kreskin, Geller and Colin Emery. It has taught him a great deal about human nature.
1 May 1987
Thank you for your letter of 21 August and your expression of concern about our "Tonight Show" broadcasts by Mary Fry.
1 May 1987
Since 1981, recipients of MacArthur Foundation grants, the "genius awards" that permit five years of financial freedom. have included poets and composers, scientists and even a mime. Bula prestidigitator? Last week James Randi, a.k.a. "the Amazing Randi." whose sleight of hand has exposed psychic gimmicks. hoaxes and claims of the paranormal. was among this year's 25 winners, picking up $272,000 for his crusade to protect sick people from unscrupulous faith healers. The award came as a total surprise. "You can bang your head against the wall, call Sophia Loren or take it soberly." he notes. "It takes about 48 hours to settle in. All the time I was saying, 'I really won?' Now that the question has been answered, Randi, 57. is wasting no time in putting the money to work, expanding his office, hiring a full-time researcher, and planning for a college scholarship so that more debunkers can be set to work. The Great Doubter has become a true believer in his benefactors: "They reached very far out, perhaps dangerously so, in giving it to a magician instead of some academic. I feel a great responsibility to the foundation."
1 May 1987
In the after glow of our first annual convention, NZCSICOP members will have to feel pleased by the progress of our organisation. The meeting itself attracted considerable media attention, all of it favourable, and discussion of our aims and purposes continues to reverberate in letters weeks later. Our membership now stands at just short of a hundred and it is still growing. And well it must, for a group such as ours has much work to accomplish. Unless we have enough people scattered nationwide who are willing to take an active part in our projects we cannot flourish.
1 May 1987
Any medium who demonstrates communication with spirits under controlled conditions will be able to collect $232,000, Dr David Marks, the chairman of New Zealand Skeptics said yesterday.
1 May 1987
Pseudoscience in its various manifestations is now enjoying enormous popularity, is increasingly well organised and politically powerful. We can not identify pseudoscience by its errors. Seven hundred years ago Astrology was as wrong as now but was not pseudoscience, we might call it protoscience. The discovery of Polywater and the rush of confirming experiments was not pseudoscience. We know now that it was due to contaminated apparatus and wishful thinking and no one now has any evidence for it, so eventually its errors became known,
1 May 1987
We are interested in monitoring the activities of Mr Emond Harold, who is currently touring New Zealand. He energises crystals with thoughts of love, and helps alleviate the effects of repetitive strain injury and leukaemia, while turning a bob or two for himself. Though he knows lots about people heating their homes (with volcanoes) in Atlantis, we doubt if he has read the medicines act of 1981. Please send any news or cuttings regarding Mr Harold to Bernard Howard, P.O. Box 13, Lincoln College, Canterbury.
1 May 1987
A group called New Zealand Skeptics has called on newspapers and magazines in New Zealand to carry a disclaimer with their astrology columns.
1 May 1987
Claims that energy from quartz crystals can treat diseases may be illegal, says the New Zealand Skeptics Society. The newly formed society is considering its first legal action as a result of claims by touring healer, Mr Edmond Harold.
1 May 1987
I would like to thank Dr David Marks and the Committee of the N.Z. Skeptics for inviting me over and to Dr Dennis Dutton and Ricky Farr for their hospitality. I am glad to be at the first convention of the New Zealand Skeptics. Having organised the first two conventions in Australia, I know how much work is involved and am glad someone else, Dr David Marks, is organising this one.
1 May 1987
We now have nearly ninety subscribing members. When | divide them according to their addresses, and also for the difference in population between the North and South Islands, it appears that South Islanders are about four times more skeptical than are North Islanders.
1 May 1987
I return this born-again spoon to you as a symbol of the power of the press. I assure you I have no knowledge of what sleight of hand unbent it. I only left it in the newsroom for a few moments, too.
1 February 1987
A Christchurch doctor, Dr Robert Blackmore, who uses the same diagnostic method for alleged chemical poisoning as Dr Tizard, would like the method to be scientifically validated.
1 February 1987
I was a teacher of Biology and Science at a State High School in North Queensland throughout 1983 and 1984. In this article I wish to briefly present the successful creationist campaign there as 1 personally saw it, and to point out trends and other factors which were conducive to this success, with comparative references to the New Zealand education system.
1 February 1987
Claims by an Auckland Physician, Dr Matthew Tizard, of having diagnosed cases of herbicide Poisoning have been rejected by a task force set up by the Director-General of Health.
1 February 1987
Police are dumbfounded at an extraordinary claim by internationally famed medium Doris Stokes that she pointed them to the grave of a New Zealand murder victim.
1 February 1987
For many readers this newsletter will be their main method of contact with other skeptics. It is essential then that it be a lively and thought provoking assessment of the scene in New Zealand. The stimulating and amusing material can only come from members. It is true that there is plenty of good stuff in the Skeptical Inquirer and the Australian Skeptic but I do not want to use that as I suspect that most N.Z. sceptics will receive one of those publications already. Hence this is a strong plea for articles. I have already sent some begging letters to particular members and I shall send more. We also need members to send me cuttings from the the press with examples of fatuity and danger (I seem to see very little of this in our New Plymouth papers, perhaps we are more sensible than elsewhere in N.Z.). Please send me material to make this a trenchant, relaxed and informative publication.
1 February 1987
Dear fellow skeptics, please note the following: N.Z.C.S.I.C.O.P. incorporated's first annual convention, University of Otago, 9-10 August, 1986
1 February 1987
The Health Department was planning a study of pesticides and other Chemicals which New Zealanders might be consuming In food and water, said the acting departmental press officer, Mr John Boyd, yesterday.
1 February 1987
Health quackery flourishes in New Zealand because we are less critical of fraud, less critical of what, in the United States' would be labelled as criminal deception.
1 February 1987
12 - 2 p.m., Press Conference,
1 November 1986
To investigate scientifically and with an open mind, claims and events of an apparently paranormal nature.
1 November 1986
Our recently founded "Skeptics Society" is growing fast. We now have almost 50 paid-up members through the country and, by the time this reaches you, we should be a legally incorporated Society. Through individual and media communications NZCSICOP is providing a counterbalance to the ever-increasing number of paranormal claims. The response from the media has to date been most receptive and encouraging, and NZCSICOP seems to be fulfilling a genuinely-felt need for a rational and skeptical approach to magic, myth, and mystery. It has been a pleasant surprise to encounter many hard-nosed skeptics in the media and perhaps they too have grown weary of the psychics and mediums who seem to claim all but demonstrate nothing.
1 November 1986
Is there any manner in which you would be able to assist the Committee in furthering the aims of NZCSICOP? (e.g. providing expert opinion, public presentation, fund-raising, media contacts, newsletter contributions, etc.)?
1 November 1986
1 November 1986
Readers are invited to submit nominations for the following awards.
1 November 1986
NZSCICOP recently challenged psychics to put their abilities to the test under controlled conditions. Colin Amery of Auckland took up the challenge. Mr Amery claims to be skilled in telepathy, clairvoyance, and Tarot reading. He was tested in the Otago University Psychology Department in March this year, claiming that he is "50% successful" in telepathy and "80% successful" in Tarot reading.
1 November 1986
A great gift for relatives and friends (Gifts to your local library are tax deductible.)
1 November 1986
Carison, S. A double-blind test of the astrology hypothesis. Nature, December 5, 1985, 318, 419-425. Two double-blind tests were made of the thesis that astrological 'natal charts' can be used to describe accurately personality traits of test subjects. Despite using highly regarded astrologers, despite incorporating their suggestions into the design, and despite the fact that they approved the design, astrology failed to perform at a level better than chance. The astrological hypothesis was clearly refuted.
1 November 1986
Denis Dutton (University of Canterbury) Secretary, NZCSICOP.