13 October 2025
In the last few months NASA has announced the detection of a third extrasolar object, named ATLAS, on its way through the solar system - following Oumuamua (in 2017) and Borisov (in 2019). We've only been detecting these objects that aren't gravitationally bound to our sun - visitors that fly through our solar system and then continue on their way, never to return - for the past decade or so, and there's good reason for this. Several projects have been created recently that attempt to detect objects that have the potential to collide with earth, such as Pan-STARRS (the Panoramic Survey Telescope And Rapid Response System) and ATLAS (the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System). These two projects found Oumuamua and Comet Atlas respectively, whereas the other extrasolar object, Comet Borisov, was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov (an awesome guy who spotted it using one of the many telescopes he has designed and built himself and operates at his personal observatory).
13 October 2025
Earlier this month the UK Coroner ruled that British health blogger Kate Shemirani, who promoted conspiracy theories, had "adversely influenced" her daughter, Paloma Shemirani, to refuse chemotherapy, causing her death from cancer on the 24th of July 2024.
13 October 2025
Donald Trump is no stranger to outlandish conspiracies or strange social media posts. But, by any measure, his post on Saturday night a couple of weeks ago was particularly bizarre. The president posted (and later removed) a clip on Truth Social of a fake Fox News segment with Lara Trump detailing the White House's announcement of the world's first Medbed hospital and a national MedBed card system (two things that very much do not exist). Fox News told The Verge that the Medbed segment, “_never aired on Fox News Channel or any other Fox News Media platforms._”
13 October 2025
I was in the middle of compiling a “Fortnight in Skeptical History” article when I realised that over two years, back when the newsletter was released weekly, I had already covered both weeks in the period from October 13th to October 26th. While I had to scrap that idea, I saw my entry for Zholia Alemi and was curious about the progress of her legal case in the UK. I covered Alemi in my October 2023 article about fake doctors or doctors who worked fraudulently in New Zealand. As I wrote back then:
13 October 2025
Recently a group of well-known scientists and academics, some of whom were once regular speakers at Skeptics conferences around the world, published a book called “The War on Science”. Collated by physicist Lawrence Krauss, the 39 essays in the book are written by authors such as Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, Jerry Coyne, Steven Pinker, Peter Boghossian, Niall Ferguson, Alan Sokal and Gad Saad.
13 October 2025
As a calendar geek, I was surprised to hear calendar conversion raised as a reason the rapture didn't happen as predicted.
13 October 2025
RFK Jr. continues to find more and more reasons to blame acetaminophen for autism.
29 September 2025
I was intending to do further blogs on esoteric climate related subjects such as the recent articles from the Guardian on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) changes that may be responsible for very significant alterations in the climate over the next century. Ocean currents are very much in the climate change news, and are certainly altering - likely due to the climate crisis - and have altered in the past, contributing to ice ages in the North and warming in the Southern hemisphere, documented from ice cores and other evidence.
29 September 2025
I'm looking forward to the day that someone writes a reasoned critique of the New Zealand Skeptics that we can engage with. We receive quite a few emails from people challenging us, but so far there's been nothing we could get our teeth into - we mainly see bad faith arguments, people's personal bug-bears, and grievances based on misremembered events.
29 September 2025
Some recent research has pointed to some potential health impacts for those on the keto diet long-term. I wrote about the keto diet in the newsletter in May 2023, so I was interested to see this update as we are sorely lacking long term data on the impacts of this diet on healthy people. Although the diet has been used since the 1920s as an intervention for some specific health conditions such as epilepsy, I am more interested in whether it is an unnecessary risk for those who do not have a specific medical condition.
29 September 2025
What I hope has been self-evident in previous instalments of my Wham, Bam, Autism Scams series is that some people are willing to do whatever it takes to spare their children from what they see as a lifetime of suffering; usually by avoiding vaccines and making their children ingest all sorts of god awful things, i.e. bleach. What I haven't really explored is the things people do to themselves to prevent having Autistic children because, well, people don't necessarily think of preventing Autism at the parent-level, save for the occasional new blurb about sex selection in fertility medicine. Developments in the United States last week demonstrate what happens when unchecked Autism misinformation is used to justify asking women, pregnant people, and their families to make a choice that could kill them.
29 September 2025
In an article from two weeks ago, I wrote about an Official Information Act request sent to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet by Melanie Petrowski, a conspiracy theorist from Napier. The request was about the rapture, which had apparently been given a date of September the 24th this year. Melanie wanted to know whether the Government was aware of this pending event, and what preparations they may have made. She also wanted to know if the government was ready for some of the new systems that were about to be put in place by the antichrist to monitor and control us, and she sought reassurances that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (or Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour if Luxon was raptured) was going to resist these new technologies, such as drones, the Beast System, quantum dot tattoos, and more.
15 September 2025
It has been a bad week for anyone who takes a birth control pill as a contraceptive or an abortifacient. Well, specifically a bad week for people in America or whose health care is impacted by the decisions of the President of the United States.
15 September 2025
The documentary Prisoners of Silence marked one of the first critical investigations of Facilitated Communication (FC) that aired on prime-time television in the United States. Because the mechanics of FC has changed very little since its inception, the documentary is still relevant today. Not only did Prisoners of Silence capture the religious-like fervor of proponents at FC conferences hosted at Syracuse University, the documentary also debunked the idea that individuals using a one-finger hunt-and-peck style of typing can accurately select letters to spell out words without looking at the board (they cannot…no one can). It also showed FC founder Rosemary Crossley “facilitating” with someone in a coma.
15 September 2025
Twelve years ago, back in 2013, I subscribed to the Fluoride Free New Zealand (back then known as Fluoride Action Network New Zealand) newsletter, to keep an eye on what the group was doing. I've been happy to see that recently my Gmail account has been treating these newsletters as spam, and I hope that many other people receiving this newsletter also having it going into their spam folders - as there's so much misinformation and fearmongering in the emails (along with regular begging for money), that it's best off being left unread.
15 September 2025
Sara Passmore, the President of the NZARH (Rationalists & Humanists) and one-time committee member of the NZ Skeptics, recently shared with me a link to an interesting Official Information Act request. The request was sent by Melanie Petrowski to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on August the 22nd this year (2025). Now, Melanie's an interesting character - she's a Christian, and hosts the hour long weekly show “Mel's Magnificent Bible Study” on Radio Hawkes Bay. She's also known in her home town of Hastings as something of an anti-vax protester, and even her own father has had to step in in the past to help the police curb one of her more enthusiastic protests, where she stationed herself outside a supermarket with a megaphone.
15 September 2025
The Telepathy Tapes is a 10+ episode podcast series that was released in September 2024. Created and hosted by Ky Dickens, Season 1 is described as daring to… “explore the profound abilities of non-speakers with autism - individuals who have long been misunderstood and underestimated”. But Dickens doesn't content herself with the common trope of autistic savantism and instead goes full paranormal. Specifically, as the podcast name indicates, Dickens presents incidents of telepathy, but also astral projection (see episode 3), mediumship (see episode 2), talking to god (see episode 7), and prognosticating (see episode 5 and 7).
1 September 2025
Someone asked me recently how I thought FC had changed since the early 1990s. My initial reaction: not a whole lot. If you're talking about the mechanics of the technique itself, very little has changed. That's why the reliably controlled studies to explore FC authorship conducted between 1990 and 2014 remain relevant. Facilitators still use physical, verbal, and auditory cues to influence and control letter selection. With some variants of FC, like Spelling to Communicate (S2C) and Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) the boards are generally held in the air, something critics of FC raised concerns about in the earliest studies of FC, but proponents chose/choose to ignore. In addition, facilitators (still) insist they can provide these cues to their clients without influencing or controlling letter selection. There was and still is no reliably controlled evidence to prove proponent claims that FC (in any of its forms) produces independent communication (e.g., communication that is free from facilitator control). And facilitators, still, prefer to market FC through popular media rather than face scrutiny under reliably controlled conditions (e.g., message passing tests that screen facilitators from test protocols).
1 September 2025
On a recent American Psychological Association podcast the hosts interviewed Dr Ellen Peters, author of Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers. Her book discusses how numeracy affects people's health, financial security, and other life outcomes. She is also the author of some interesting papers in the same field, including this one that sets out a framework for interventions to improve the situation.
1 September 2025
I recently attended the yearly meeting of Ora Taiao: The Aotearoa New Zealand Climate and Health Council. This is a body made up of health professionals, organisations, and supporters who advocate for equitable, rapid, and regenerative climate action. The society is a not-for-profit politically nonpartisan incorporated society. Its objective is to lead by example in advocating for health-enhancing climate action.
1 September 2025
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, a newly-formed small games development company from Adelaide, Australia called Team Cherry released the computer game Hollow Knight back in 2017. Hollowknight is a game in the “Metroidvania” genre, meaning that the core gameplay mechanics are very similar to both the Metroid Prime and Castlevania games franchises - created by Nintendo and Konami respectively. It's basically a 2D side-scrolling game with large levels, where the main character explores parts of the map, gathering special abilities on the way that allow for more exploration, collection of the resources needed to fight level bosses, etc. Here's a screenshot from my playthrough of the game:
1 September 2025
While I've been reviewing the Telepathy Tapes there have also been updates to some of the other stories I've either covered recently (Cryonics [parts 1, 2, and 3] and Annabelle the doll), have ongoing investment in (International School of Temple Arts or ISTA), or haven't been touched in a while (The Campbells)
1 September 2025
Bridget Williams Books warmly invites you to a special BWB Talk in Christchurch for Shaun Hendy's latest book: The Covid Response: A Scientist's Account of New Zealand's Pandemic and What Comes Next.
18 August 2025
Sometimes I get weird MSN 'News' landing pages that are chocka with adverts. One of the linked pages I saw recently was this one. It lists piles of gadgets that I apparently urgently need, and which are going to sell out soon. Being curious, I had a look.
18 August 2025
The MMR vaccine was developed for use in preventing measles, mumps, and rubella. Andrew Wakefield was the lead author of a study published in 1998, based on just twelve children, that claimed to find indications of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The journalist Brian Deer had a key role in identifying issues with the work, including fraudulent manipulation of the medical evidence.
18 August 2025
In episode 9 of the Telepathy Tapes' extra episodes, titled the Talk Tracks, host Ky Dickens has Adam Curry on to talk about the “science”, in an episode titled “The Science of Intuition: Consciousness, Intention, and the Edge of Reality”. According to Ky, dam is apparently an inventor and “deep thinker”, although in the episode he describes himself as an “armchair scientist” and “consciousness researcher” - although all I could find of his research online was a single paper on Google Scholar, where he is listed as the third author on a paper about retrocausation. Two websites I found that have profiles on him both listed many research papers, but none of the papers had his name attached to them, despite the fact that they were listed in one case on a website he owns, which sells an app he created (Entangled), and in the other case were listed on his profile page under a picture of him. So I'm left thinking that maybe he's not so much of a researcher after all. Although even if he had been an author on those papers, looking at the quality of them and the places they've been published (and many haven't been published anywhere) makes me think that it still wouldn't be that much of a flex.
18 August 2025
The Telepathy Tapes is a 10+ episode podcast series that was released in September 2024. Created and hosted by Ky Dickens, Season 1 is described as daring to… “explore the profound abilities of non-speakers with autism - individuals who have long been misunderstood and underestimated”. But Dickens doesn't content herself with the common trope of autistic savantism and instead goes full paranormal. Specifically, as the podcast name indicates, Dickens presents incidents of telepathy, but also astral projection (see episode 3), mediumship (see episode 2), talking to god (see episode 7), and pronosticating (see episode 5 and 7).
4 August 2025
After 12 years of running a fortnightly Skeptical Activism group in Wellington, it's finally come to an end. We will look into the feasibility of running an online activism meeting at some point, but for now the in-person event, with a free beer for your first complaint, is no more. To give everyone a flavour of the kind of work we did at our activism meetings, we thought we could let you know what we got up to on our final night.
4 August 2025
There we go. There's that word we hear so often as skeptics, 'quantum'. It seems likely Ky is referring to a state called 'quantum entanglement' that results in entangled particles (and photons) having their states correlated over theoretically limitless distances, through tiny wormholes.
4 August 2025
Since the explosion in popularity of the podcast The Telepathy Tapes soon after it was released, creator Ky Dickens appears to have quickly realised that her intention to have a break between seasons was not going to be in the best interests of maintaining the attention of the many listeners she had attracted in a very short amount of time. And so, at the end of Season 1 after 10 weeks of weekly releases, Ky announced that she would be releasing bi-weekly interviews, called The Telepathy Tapes Talk Tracks, to bridge the gap to Season 2.
4 August 2025
The Telepathy Tapes is a 10+ episode podcast series that was released in September 2024. Created and hosted by Ky Dickens, Season 1 is described as daring to… “explore the profound abilities of non-speakers with autism - individuals who have long been misunderstood and underestimated”. Dickens has a varied directing career in advertising and film. Her film work is predominantly documentary projects, where she usually serves as the writer, producer, and director. Issues around health equity have been her main output since 2017, so the topic of autism is not entirely out of left field for Dickens. However, the profound abilities that Dickens' refers to in this podcast are not the conventional tropes of Autistic savants or prodigies in the fields of mathematics or art. Instead, Dickens contemplates whether her subjects have paranormal gifts. Specifically (as the podcast name indicates) telepathy, but also astral projection (see episode 3), mediumship (see episode 2), talking to god (see episode 7), and pronosticating (see episodes 5 and 7).
21 July 2025
TikTok is an interesting social media platform. As a host of short videos that anyone can make these days pretty easily with just a mobile phone, an interface that makes it easy to scroll through hundreds of videos, and an algorithm that attempts to feed you content that will keep you engaged, many kids use Tik Tok as their main social media platform. The platform allows viewers to easily engage through not just their likes, but also through posting their own opinions in response videos.
21 July 2025
According to Life Extension, a website selling brain-boosting supplements called nootropics, our brains can be hacked (known as “neurohacking”) through “a variety of complementary strategies, including dietary and lifestyle changes and the use of nootropic drugs and supplements, brain-training activities and games, and neurotechnologies (e.g. electrical stimulation devices) designed to increase brain fitness”. Their Australian branch will sell you 30 pills for about AU$30. The pills contain gotu kola, bacopa, and marigold extract.
21 July 2025
On Friday evening Bronwyn and I, rather than running our usual Skeptics in Cyberspace meeting, visited the Johnsonville Community Centre to experience the signs and wonders of a Christian Revival event, where we were promised healing, hope and miracles.
21 July 2025
On July 13th, paranormal investigator Dan Rivera died in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Occult news from the United States doesn't normally hit the NZ Press, but the NZ Herald did report this particular story in its Entertainment section.
7 July 2025
While I remain unconvinced by the premise of cryonics, I've come away with the impression that most cryonics companies currently in operation have protocols that enable the ethical treatment of family members caught unawares by their loved one's unorthodox final wishes. In one Alcor case study, staff were reported as telling one family that the condition of their daughter's body made it hard to justify proceeding with suspension, as the cooling and freezing process would exacerbate the damage to the brain caused by autopsy and transport delays. While this should be a given, I think many skeptics will agree that when it comes to fringe and pseudoscientific enterprises, the bar for decency is all too often on the floor. However, the aftermath of the Chatsworth incident (in which 9 patients thawed out) revealed that such protocols really benefit the companies. It ensures that the majority of their customers are prepared, true believers.
7 July 2025
My quest for finding and reviewing the cheapest products possible has taken an interesting turn. This time I roped in a group of friends to tackle a twist on the Pepsi challenge - testing an array of sugar free cola beverages, seeing what comes out on top and if the no-name brands can stand up to the titans.
7 July 2025
Nearly a decade ago, I was in a local pharmacy and noticed that they had a flyer for a Weleda product that was making some pretty strong claims.
7 July 2025
The article from Aaron Davies about blind testing diet colas is a really interesting one for me. As a little background info for you, Aaron is an ex Jehovah's Witness and was a NZ Skeptics committee member a few years ago. In the article I'm the “Mark” mentioned in the testing. So, if you've read the article already, you'll know that when challenged with picking out my favoured beverage, Diet Coke, from a line-up of identical looking drinks in identical looking cups, I successfully identified the Diet Coke.
7 July 2025
In the June 9th edition of the newsletter, Mark wrote about the Russian right-wing new religious movement called Anastasianism, or the Ringing Cedars. I won't retread what he and the fairly detailed Wikipedia page cover, but I'm here to report that, despite Mark's hopes, Anastasianism is not isolated to the Wellington suburb of Brooklyn; its adherents and admirers can be found throughout New Zealand.
23 June 2025
Cryonics is the pseudoscientific practice of freezing humans (and animals) with the hope that medicine and science will reach a point in their advancement where reanimation will be possible.
23 June 2025
How long can humans really live without changing their actual form, for example by doing something drastic like a brain transplant, cloning, or uploading themselves to the cloud?
23 June 2025
Whatever the science may say, there's no lack of people who are chasing the holy grail of a longer life, often known as Extreme or Radical Life Extension, and who are keen to tell you that they've figured out the secret. Unsurprisingly, they often also have something to sell you. I decided to look into some of the more vocal and well-known of these advocates for extending our lives, to see whether their ideas stack up.
23 June 2025
While trawling alt-med websites for nonsense recently, I noticed a particularly egregious claim made by Ben Warren's BePure company for their multivitamin product, BePure One. The advertisement claimed that it was essential, and that people need to take it every day. Now it strikes me as surprising that any product would need to be taken by everyone, no matter their situation - especially as alternative medicines are not only unproven, but they're often also pretty expensive. BePure One, for example, is $69 for a month's supply - not nice, especially as most people who eat a balanced diet don't actually need a multivitamin, as they're getting everything they need from their food.
9 June 2025
On May 23rd, Australian actress Clare McCann faced the devastating loss of her 13-year-old son.
9 June 2025
I would like to discuss an article from Environmental Research Letters. The author is Gerrard Wedderburn-Bisshop,and he writes for the World Preservation Foundation. The title of the article is ”increased transparency in accounting conventions could benefit climate policy”.
9 June 2025
How does a laboratory person know that they can trust the results being produced by an analysis? They use a validated method. I will describe the steps normally taken to validate an analytical method.
9 June 2025
Recently someone shared with me an article from the March 2025 issue of the “Brooklyn Tattler”, a monthly magazine for the residents of Brooklyn, Wellington. The article in question was written by someone from the Brooklyn Wellness Hub, a group of “natural” health practitioners local to the area. The obvious nonsense that I was being shown was part of a list of tips for growing vegetables and fruit in your garden, and it advised readers to:
9 June 2025
On 27 January POTUS (the President Of The United States) signed an executive order to create an “Iron Dome” of defence against ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missiles and other advanced aerial attacks. This was renamed “Golden Dome for America” on 24 February. Surprisingly, the renaming isn't about POTUS' preference for golden things. Apparently “Iron Dome” is a registered trademark, owned by an Israeli defence firm.
26 May 2025
A couple of weeks ago I started seeing posts about how Google's AI was bending over backwards attempting to explain idioms that didn't exist. I didn't think much of it until a few days ago, when I was searching for advice on a level in the game “Consider It” on the Switch. The level in question involved a couple walking down the pavement together towards some dog poop, and I couldn't work out how to avoid stepping in it - so I searched for “consider it poop level”. Google's AI then tried to explain the phrase I had searched for as if it was a well-known saying.
26 May 2025
I have an out-of-town meeting, and the other party is bringing a lawyer. I print a recent court decision that I think could be very relevant. I read it, this takes a while, but I come to the conclusion that nope, it's not relevant to my case. Time wasted. I'm in a rush and there is no recycling bin near me, so I put the court decision in my bag and start driving.
26 May 2025
John Campbell recently released a new TV show on TVNZ where he investigates the controversial Destiny Church and its leader, “apostle” Brian Tamaki. The show is called Under His Command, and it's quite short - running to five episodes, each only around 15 minutes long.
26 May 2025
In August of 2023, I wrote two articles about the Two-by-Twos (TBT), a sect with “2” many names, and just as many problems. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 to catch up.
12 May 2025
There are so many things going on in the climate space at the moment that it is difficult to keep up with them all. My sources of recent information are Dr Catherine Dyer, Bernard Hickey, and Peter Bale from the Kākā - a weekly podcast on political economy, climate change, and international affairs (from Dr Robert Patman University of Otago), together with invited guests each week from other areas of interest including economists and politicians. I believe this is a worthy site of usually peer-reviewed information concerning these topics. I would like to make a plug for the Kākā, which unfortunately is a pay site (but most reliable news these days is). For under $20 a month, one receives a daily briefing and a set of links to other sites (also often unfortunately behind paywalls). Many people might say it is mildly left of centre, and it is certainly not particularly complimentary of our present government. It is available through a platform called Substack, interestingly enough run by a young expatriate New Zealander.
12 May 2025
The story of the Commonwealth Covenant Church (CCC) has been hanging out in the chasms of my Google Drive for some time. A while ago I was asked about cults or sects that might be in the Wairarapa besides the 2x2s. This group came up in my search, although much of what I found about their activities was not based in the Wairarapa but rather in the Hutt Valley. The CCC is not the easiest group to research, as their numbers had thinned considerably by the early 2000s, and numbered just six by 2013. They were a long-dead congregation by the time anything would be recorded on the web. Archival records are limited (or restricted), and when the CCC does warrant a mention in a book or academic work, it's limited to one or two lines.
12 May 2025
I wonder if, in the dark night of the sea, the octopus dreams of me.
12 May 2025
Last weekend three of us intrepid skeptics attended a creationist talk titled “How Evolution Hurts Science and People”, given by Mike Collins at the Abundant Life church in Wellington. Mike is an aircraft maintenance engineer who, since leaving his real job, has shacked up with Creation Ministries International (CMI), the evangelical Christian group who run the creation.com website and is one of their regular speakers at churches all around New Zealand.
28 April 2025
I intend this episode to comment on several issues.
28 April 2025
Committee member Hamish Dickson posted the above image to our committee chat the other day, along with the question:
28 April 2025
The last newsletter held an especially interesting topic for me; “EMF”, as I have many years of practice in this field.
28 April 2025
I doubt anyone could have anticipated the degree to which the death of Pope Francis has drawn the attention of the internet. The fervour is likely fueled by the unexpected fan base that sprang up around the 2024 movie Conclave, a film about the quiet intrigues of cardinals as they select the next pope. I'm confident there is a media literacy paper in here about the intersection of prestige films with a meme culture informed by reality television. But until then, I'm enjoying a very niche form of mash-up humour while I can get it.
28 April 2025
Not all things connected to religion are bad - it's good to help the poor, feed the homeless, and strive for non-violence. But what if there's something that another religion has, but yours doesn't? Often when this happens to Christians, they'll simply label it as occult or demonic:
28 April 2025
In part one of this series I recapped the core beliefs of sovereign citizens, and where those beliefs come from, as well as some of the mischief being caused for Councils and the Police. In part two I looked at their interactions with Justices of the Peace. In this final part I explore what's been happening in our Courts. The focus is mainly on NZ Courts, but I will also delve briefly into a couple of Canadian cases, one of which is drawn upon extensively in most NZ Court rulings around sovereign citizen behaviour.
14 April 2025
I had YouTube running as background noise while marking some essays the other day, and my playlist decided to reward my lack of attention with a new video by one of my favourite channels, Keya's World. It's a great channel that follows the various scams and scammers in the entrepreneurial and health & wellness spaces. Keya has an interesting perspective on it all, having once been deep into the woo. Her commentary style won't be to everyone's taste, but I'm always fascinated by what she finds; her videos on Matthew McConaughey's foray into motivational speaking/self-improvement are appointment viewing. This time, however, it wasn't McConaughey that pulled me away from my stack of essays.
14 April 2025
Last week I received a text supposedly from NZ Post (sent from linsystefanoq@resquar.help as an iMessage, rather than an SMS message):
14 April 2025
I just got back last week from my third experience riding in the Cavalcade. This year it was held in Twizel and, the same as last year, we rode with the heavy wagons. To clarify, we rode our horses alongside and around a bunch of wagons, carts, and buggies of all shapes and sizes. Part of the deal when you get to ride with the wagons is you should be ready to jump off and assist at times. For example, when a buggy with no brakes had to ascend a steep slope, another person and I had to jump off and be the brakes by hanging onto a rope tied to the back of the buggy. I can feel the anxiety just recalling the memory.
14 April 2025
In part one I recapped the core beliefs of “Sovcits” (Sovereign Citizens) and where those beliefs come from, as well as some of the havoc being caused for local Councils and the Police. I really do recommend you read that part first if you are curious about the 'why' of Sovcits.
31 March 2025
The NZ skeptics mailbox recently received a request from a company selling breathalysers in NZ. They wanted us to help them game the system when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, so that they could increase their sales. Given that I wrote about SEO just a few weeks ago, I figured the email exchange might be of interest to our readers. I think the emails tell the story quite well by themselves, so here they are in chronological order:
31 March 2025
Buckle up for a deep dive on Sovereign Citizens and the law in New Zealand.
31 March 2025
Further to my previous articles on climate change, this week I will talk about several short topics from recent publications.
31 March 2025
It was announced this week that RFK Jr. has hired David Geier as an analyst on a new study into the links between Autism and vaccines. A link that was debunked years ago, which even its most profitable holdout, American charity Autism Speaks, disavowed about a decade ago. This decision is just another in a series of attacks the White House has made against the disabled, and against science in general.
31 March 2025
On March 21st my Facebook feed brought up the following dire warning:
17 March 2025
A couple of years ago, I wrote about some of the most elite “High IQ” societies, and how they mostly seemed to be nothing more than vanity projects created by self-professed polymaths who had built up cult-like followings. The supposed pinnacle of these groups was the New Zealand based Tera Society; headed up by Roddy Young, and with an entry requirement of a one-in-a-trillion IQ. In reality I suspect Roddy wouldn't even manage to pass the Mensa IQ test.
17 March 2025
When cyclone Alfred hit Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the North of New South Wales recently, I was watching the news coverage closely. My sister lives on the Gold Coast and, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, she was going to be in the zone predicted to be hit with the most damaging winds. She was pretty sure this was no big deal for her, and fortunately she was right.
17 March 2025
A couple of months ago, the YouTube algorithm (correctly) decided that I would be interested in several videos where YouTube content creators dunk on TikTokers. But instead of spilling cold tea on influencer gossip, YouTube gave me a conman magic show that would make Randi spin so fast in his grave that he would be considered a renewable source of energy.
17 March 2025
This week I will comment on two articles. The first is an article from Science Advances by Richardson et al. 9 from 13 September 2023. This is a research article with the title “Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries”. This article is a collaboration between multiple climate scientists, including those from the renowned Potsdam Institute (Rockstrom et al).
3 March 2025
I'm unreserved in my assessment that this has been one of the biggest weekends in ISTA/Highden history, just not for the reasons ISTA would have anticipated. Anya Kamenetz, writing for New York Magazine's The Cut, has written a damning piece on ISTA, with the subtitle of: “_Can a neo-Tantric sex group dedicated to exploring dark desires root out abuse?_”
3 March 2025
This week I accidentally stumbled upon an excellent resource created by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) called Keep It Real Online. This website has content targeted at youth, as well as content for teachers in Primary and Intermediate/Secondary School.
3 March 2025
Microsoft released a video last week claiming they have created a new state of matter, a base building block for their efforts to make a new type of quantum computer using “topological superconductors”:
3 March 2025
Astute reader that you are, it has probably not escaped your notice that politics has taken a turn for the conspiratorial in the last few years. We've recently seen a rise in anti-vaxxers, sovereign citizens, and people convinced that They (whoever They are) made up a global disease in a bid for control over the populace.
3 March 2025
Search Engine Optimisation (known as SEO) is an IT discipline in which a website owner attempts to optimise their site in a way that makes it appear high up in google's search results, ideally on the first page. The factors that Google considers when ranking pages, through an algorithm called PageRank (and more recently other technologies), are something of an open secret these days.
3 March 2025
The Christmas before last, I received a work email informing me of the holiday dates during which our office would be closed, and that for these dates I would need to book annual leave. I guess in an attempt to soften the blow of people needing to use over half of their annual leave on days outside of their choosing, management decided to let us know of the benefits of taking leave:
18 February 2025
In a previous article on Men in Black (MIB), I referred to the frightening experience of New Zealander John Stuart that caused him to abandon his UFO research. The above book is an account of those apparent experiences. (The cover above has nothing much to do with the tale)
18 February 2025
The new Australian mini-series Apple Cider Vinegar was just released on Netflix. The series dramatises the true story of Australian Belle Gibson, who was a wellness influencer who falsely claimed to have cured her terminal brain cancer through diet and alternative medicine. She released an app, and later a recipe book, called The Whole Pantry, and pocketed $300K in donations meant for charity.
18 February 2025
The IPCC report of 2022 notes that climate change is a major risk to planet Earth. (IPCC 2022). New Zealand's Net Zero Carbon Act has been passed by parliament, and has been accepted by the National party, Labour Party, Green party, ACT party and Te Pati Maori. The NZ First Party is ambivalent. This would suggest that very urgent and far-ranging changes are necessary to our society in New Zealand within the next six years, to try to get to 1.5° C of global warming by 2050 - or preferably earlier. It should be noted that we are already close to that target in 2024, and atmospheric greenhouse gases have increased rather than decreased year by year since then. These have led to year-on-year increases in record temperatures, with associated increases in floods, droughts, wildfires, strength of storms, sea level rise and catastrophic effects in many countries including New Zealand. The most affected countries are in the “Global South”, yet they produce the least greenhouse gases. New Zealand is the 7th highest producer of greenhouse gases per person in the world.
18 February 2025
Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV from here on in) is described in its press release, and in the opening scenes of each episode, as inspired by a true story, with certain characters and events being fictionalised or created. Standard stuff for this type of ripped-from-the-headlines, true crime docudrama. However, with the ongoing defamation lawsuit around another Netflix property, Baby Reindeer, we can forgive the producers and writers for wanting to preserve their creative license.
18 February 2025
A week ago I attended a talk given by Michael Connett, the son of long-time lawyer Paul Connett. Michael, like his father, lives in the US and has dedicated his life to fighting against the use of community water fluoridation. He's a lawyer, and specialises in civil lawsuits where there are claims of damage by toxic substances. He recently won a court case in the US where he argued that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) was not doing enough to address concerns about the risks of fluoride in drinking water.
18 February 2025
The other day my eldest daughter shared an image on TikTok with me from an account called Genknowladge (@genknowledge1), claiming that sand looks like this under a microscope:
3 February 2025
For those who have been around in skeptical circles for a while, you're probably aware not only of skeptic Brian Dunning and his Skeptoid podcast, but also of his conviction for wire fraud, in a case where he was accused of cookie stuffing. Wikipedia summarises it nicely on Brian Dunning's Wikipedia page:
3 February 2025
It's not a good day when a closer analysis of the path of a near-earth approaching asteroid doesn't rule out impact, but instead shows that it might actually hit earth in 2032.
3 February 2025
There is wide acceptance that the evidence provided by randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that are conducted to high standards is at the top of a hierarchy of evidence. Some web sources are listed below that, because they base their advice on careful and transparent evaluations of the available evidence, can be trusted.
3 February 2025
I'm a middle-aged guy who likes to spend time talking with Mormon missionaries, and by now I probably get visited about once every month or two by any new missionaries who turn up in the Porirua area. I had two missionaries visit me at the beginning of the new year, and another two just last week. I enjoy talking with them - both hearing their perspectives on their faith and the Mormon church, and trying to give them food for thought when it comes to some of the worse parts of their church organisation.
3 February 2025
The "Canterbury Panther" is often described as a large, black, panther-like creature said to roam the rural South Island. It has become a subject of curiosity and intrigue for many, but when subjected to closer scrutiny, the story seems to unravel. Skeptical analysis of these sightings suggests that the mysterious panther may be nothing more than a combination of mis-identifications, myth-making, and the power of suggestion.
3 February 2025
In the first part of this article, I looked at some of the common archaeological misconceptions used to spread doubt about Māori being the first to settle New Zealand. Having spent some time debunking some of the more common ideas floating around on social media, which are supposedly covered up to hide the “truth”, this second part will be devoted to looking at the more widely accepted versions of historical events.
21 January 2025
First published in the NZ Skeptic on November 1, 1996
21 January 2025
Recently I was messaged by one of our “spies” - someone who was still in the Discord group for Global Flourishing, the claimed Rationalist group that looked more like a proto-cult that I'd looked into last year, based in Auckland. The spy let me know that the group's leader, Paul Bryant, was shutting it down, and had sent everyone this message:
21 January 2025
Okay, now I know my title is a loaded question. The answer could be that I'm a curmudgeonly old boomer who pays way too much attention to musical trends. Or it could be that I reject the premise. It's the latter, I don't really hate hip singing or vocal fry.
21 January 2025
I have been a member of this group for a few years. I joined because I was tired of ill-informed, anti-scientific nonsense in our media especially stemming from our politicians. I am a 78 year old retired Orthopaedic Surgeon who has worked in science since my initial Zoology degree in 1967. I do not belong to any (anti)social media.
21 January 2025
As we ease into 2025, I thought it would be appropriate to give an update on topics I've covered over the past couple of years. There have been some significant changes or revelations that have happened in the MLM and cult space between late 2024 and now.
21 January 2025
_After 6 weeks of searching, the scammers gave to me…
21 January 2025
I saw a lot of anti-Māori disinformation on social media in the last few months before the 2023 New Zealand general elections. For clarity, disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people with a goal in mind, whereas misinformation is incorrect or misleading information that is spread without specific malicious intent. Such rhetoric can create a voting block large enough for politicians to pander to, and it would be tempting for MPs to then pledge to implement policies to attract these voters. It can also swing voters to vote for parties who are sympathetic to their newly formed views. The anti-Māori disinformation that was being spread on social media at the time largely took on two forms.
6 January 2025
What are the chances that we will make contact with an alien civilisation?
6 January 2025
In part 1 of this article, I explained how I ended up being compelled to book myself a totally unnecessary colonic irrigation a few weeks ago, just before Christmas. After years of procrastinating, I finally managed to book an appointment after a new clinic opened up in central Wellington in October. In the lead-up to my appointment, the day before I had swallowed a teaspoon of green food-dye in the morning, and a teaspoon of yellow food dye in the evening.
6 January 2025
A partial review of IMMINENT: INSIDE THE PENTAGON'S HUNT FOR UFOs by Luis Elizondo and William Morrow, August 2024
6 January 2025
Share International is an interesting offshoot of Theosophy, putting a space-age twist on the works of Alice Bailey and Helena Roerich. Established by Scottish painter Benjamin Creme in 1974, Share has many of the same goals as Bailey's Lucis Trust and associated organisations: pooling spiritual energy to help humanity, and receiving guidance from the Ascended Masters. What makes Share International unique amongst its neo-theosophical kin is its heavy focus on the emergence of a specific Ascended Master called Maitreya, who will supposedly resolve the world's various ills. The Ascended Masters are not alone in their work, as UFOs and crop circles are signs that various space brothers are assisting them in their rescue of Earth. Creme has made numerous statements and predictions on Maitreya's behalf, many about his full public emergence, and almost none of which came true. However, that has not stopped Share International from claiming that all and sundry weather phenomena and tricks of the light are evidence of his continued presence. I'll try to give a brief profile and history of Share International, one of the more spiritual UFO groups that exist today.
6 January 2025
Share International is an organisation that I've been interested in for quite a few years now. Whenever I see their stands at wellness events and local fairs, I make a beeline for them and have a chat about aliens, UFOs, crop circles and more. It's always seemed a little weird that their membership is predominantly retirees - I tend to associate UFO belief with younger people who have a passion for science and technology, but without the critical mindset or understanding of the complexities involved with interstellar travel to understand that their beliefs are implausible.
23 December 2024
A few weeks ago the following came up as a brief discussion on a facebook group:
23 December 2024
Okay, the title's a little crass, but it was suggested to me as something that would help to tie my article in with the Alien/Space theme of this week's newsletter, and I've not managed to think of anything smarter since.
23 December 2024
Originally published in the February 1994 issue of our journal, The New Zealand Skeptic
23 December 2024
If you are like me, you would have thought that Men in Black (MIB) was a delightful fictional creation appearing in Marvel comic books, as well as several television series which have embedded Men in Black characters, e.g. Section 31 (in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise), and the Silence (in Doctor Who). And we must not forget the two comedic films starring Will Smith as Agent J, with Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K; Protecting the Earth from the Scum of the Universe.
9 December 2024
It started innocently, with a late-night doom scroll through Instagram stories when the following reel, cross-posted from TikTok, appeared:
9 December 2024
In part one of my delve into obscure local cryptids we looked at the Kabagon, which bore more than a passing resemblance to an elephant seal, the Roa Roa, which was likely a case of mistaken identity of livestock, and the Rotomahana Saurian, which may well have been a floating tree. Here are three more cryptids I found that appear to have rational explanations:
9 December 2024
I'm sure many of you will have heard of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which formed in 2021 by registering as a Trade Union. They're a successor to the Free Speech Coalition, which formed in 2018 in response to problems Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux had with finding a venue in Auckland in which to spread their weird ideas on topics like immigration (I've watched a couple of Lauren's documentaries, and they're not exactly what I'd call factual).
9 December 2024
Tena koutou katoa. This is my first end-of-year report as Chair, and I want to begin by thanking the 2024 committee and acknowledge the contributions of those who left over the year: Sara Passmore, Josh Voorkamp, and Louise Richardson.
9 December 2024
Originally published in the November 2008 issue of our journal, The New Zealand Skeptic
25 November 2024
I'm taking a break from my post conference daze to write about something completely unserious – New Zealand Cryptids. Cryptids are animals whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster.
25 November 2024
I'm a fan of watching movies and documentaries that contain content that I, as a skeptic, disagree with. I like the idea of challenging myself to spend the time to give these pieces of media a fair shake, so that I can be more confident that I'm not just a skeptic because I haven't “seen the light”. Instead I like to stare directly into that light, watching anti-vaxx documentaries and trying out alternative medicine treatments.
25 November 2024
About a week ago (November 16th-17th 2024, for those reading way in the future) we held our annual NZ Skeptics conference, and for the first time the conference was a joint effort with the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH).
25 November 2024
In early August, MediaWatch in Australia released a segment about low-level laser therapy, an Autism treatment now available in Queensland, that had been profiled in local media as successful in helping non-speaking Autistic children speak.
11 November 2024
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published the AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 in 2023, which summarises five years of reports on global temperature changes, fossil fuel use and likely climate impacts.
11 November 2024
Our membership at the NZ Skeptics Society consists of an interesting mix of different kinds of people, and although we generally agree on a few core ideas about requiring evidence before making claims, there are members who hold a variety of views that other skeptics would consider fringe. One of these members, James (who has talked to us at one of our past conferences, and I'm Facebook friends with), posted on Facebook recently that he was running a paranormal investigation of one of Wellington's heritage buildings, Inverlochy House - which is currently used as an art school:
11 November 2024
The Go Green Expo is an annual weekend-long event that has been running for just over a decade. Starting in Wellington, the organisers have since spread to other cities in New Zealand, currently running events in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and the Hawke's Bay. Although the event is slated to be a “sustainable lifestyle” expo, there's very little that's sustainable or eco-friendly being promoted at the event.
11 November 2024
I've been watching LifeWave for a while. Along with the Olive Tree People, LightWave has been one of the MLMs many ex-consultants of Monat, a hair and skincare MLM, have been joining since several key leaders and consultants were expunged from that company a few months back. It's hard to beat talking Olive Trees when it comes to MLM concepts, but this one really takes the cake.
11 November 2024
I went to the Go Green Expo in Wellington on the 2nd of November, along with Mark, Bronwyn and my two tiny sidekicks. Mia had a great time having her own little disco on the power company's display, and they both enjoyed all the free samples. However I had to steer them clear of the booze, and there was a surprising amount of that. That and mushrooms. I think I must have missed a memo somewhere – when did mushrooms become a thing?
29 October 2024
As part of my recent delegation of the task of finding newsletter topics, where I've started asking my kids for ideas, I was given the topic of anti-ageing, or anti-wrinkle, straws. I guess with the popularity of Stanley cups and other new-fangled drinkware, it was only a matter of time before innovation came to straws.
29 October 2024
It has been a busy week for me, and today has been the first day I've been able to unwind and reflect on everything that has happened. It has been good, but it has been a week bookended by two conferences, a board meeting, and a UFO lecture where I've had to do a lot of code-switching from professional skeptic, to professional disabled/Autistic person, to skeptical UFO enthusiast, to midwifery PhD researcher and lecturer, and finally back to skeptic. I am unreserved in enjoying the DeCult conference, and am pretty happy that I got to see 95% of the talks I wanted to see.
29 October 2024
Equine Touch (ET) is a horse therapy modality started in 1997 by Scotsman Jock Ruddock. Ruddock, who passed away in 2011, was an interesting character. Here's a brief list of his past occupations:
29 October 2024
It appears to be common knowledge that the petrol with a higher octane rating means more power and better fuel economy. The purpose of this short article is to explain why this is a myth, and why both fuels will work as well in a car designed to run a particular fuel. So, spending extra money on premium fuels when your car's owners manual says 91 is suitable, will not give you better economy or more power.
29 October 2024
My eldest daughter is Spider-Man crazy. She has the shoes, bag, outfit, and our house has stickers......so many stickers....
14 October 2024
Hi Ken. Has anyone done a formal statistical analysis of your Weather Almanac comparing what the weather was like on those days predicted and if so, can you provide a link please?
14 October 2024
Halloween wasn't really a thing growing up in New Zealand over 40 years ago, but it seems to have taken off in the last few decades. No trick or treaters have been determined enough to find their way to the top of the hill where I live, and I've now stopped buying lollies to save our waistlines at home. If we do ever get one, we'll need to think of a really good trick - or worse, give them fruit.
14 October 2024
After finding out a couple of weeks ago that my kids were aware of “mewing” six months before I was, I jokingly berated them and asked them to let me know of any other nonsense they might come across online. This request was instantly met with a barrage of weirdness and nonsense, although one stood out immediately - Aura Points.
14 October 2024
I was thinking the other day about the lyrics of the Mark Knopfler song “Sailing to Philadelphia” . It's a gorgeous song, recorded as a duet by Knopfler and James Taylor. It's all about the chaps who surveyed the Mason-Dixon line. You should have a listen.
14 October 2024
It has been a while since I wrote about pseudoscience and scams around curing Autism, but that doesn't mean I haven't been collecting a whopper or two to share.
30 September 2024
During our “very special” episode of the Yeah…Nah podcast with Anke Richter, Anke referred to an anti-cult organisation that was taken over by Scientology. The group she was referring to was the Citizen's Freedom Foundation / Cult Awareness Network (CAN), which was founded by Ted Patrick in 1978. Although he had no formal education or training, Patrick was a pioneer of deprogramming, which he developed in response to the expansion of various cults and religion movements throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Deprogramming was always controversial, but seen as a necessary evil by many parents who paid Patrick and others like him to return their (often adult) children to them. Methods employed by Patrick and others included abduction, sleep and food deprivation, emotional abuse, desecration of symbols of the detainee's faith, and sometimes physical violence.
30 September 2024
I was sent a link to an article in the Independent the other day, and asked if I'd heard of a new thing the kids are doing called mewing. I quizzed my children about it, as they're young and hip, and they told me that this was old news - “so 6 months ago”, apparently. But the story of mewing was more interesting that I'd first suspected it would be, and involves a good deal that's of skeptical interest.
30 September 2024
As part of my postgraduate Psychology course, I had to take a course called Multivariate Data Analysis.
30 September 2024
A few days ago I tuned eight pianos in one day. That has nothing to do with this article. I just wanted to let you know that, because I think it's impressive. The pianos were all in one location, at a venue/arts complex in Queenstown, and all regulars, and of high quality, so maybe not that impressive I guess, but it was a long day. While there, a kind lady who worked in the complex handed me a bottle of Ārepa. Reading the label on the glass bottle, I instantly sensed that a deep dive might be in order.
30 September 2024
A few days ago I was scanning my spam folder, making sure nothing important had been accidentally classified as spam, when I noticed a cryptic email:
30 September 2024
Imagine the honour of being selected as one among the “10 Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs from New Zealand Accelerating the Growth of Economy in 2024” by Apac Entrepreneur, and featured in a Special Edition of their magazine.
16 September 2024
When Bronwyn said she was going to look into astrology software after getting a reading at a psychic fair the other day, I figured it'd be good to have a look into the software itself and see what I could find. So, with Bronwyn's help, I identified a few popular astrology programs and got to work installing them on my PC and poking around them.
16 September 2024
I stated on the podcast a few weeks ago that I think I could cover a different horse pseudoscience in each issue, and keep going for an entire year. That was before I looked into it…
16 September 2024
Are you desperately seeking a side hustle? Then consider the perennial growth industry of astrology. Projected to reach $22.8 billion by 2031, prognosticators thrive in times of uncertainty. As I wrote back in 2022, their reach has never been wider, with social media platforms providing a new audience with the promise of few or no regulations regarding health claims or disinformation.
16 September 2024
MDMA assisted psychotherapy is looking a little rocky lately. The Journal of Psychopharmacology has recently retracted three research papers supporting the treatment over data integrity concerns, and the FDA has rejected it as a treatment for PTSD.
16 September 2024
It has been reported that former supermodel Elle Macpherson refused to follow the medical advice of 32 doctors to have chemotherapy following a breast cancer diagnosis, instead opting for holistic alternative therapies.
2 September 2024
A recent paper on the overuse of spinal imaging (usually X-rays), titled “_An investigation into the chiropractic practice and communication of routine repetitive radiographic imaging for the location of postural misalignments_” and led by New Zealand researcher Brogan Williams (in collaboration with others from Australia and the US), has criticised the distributor of a chiropractic product called Denneroll. Denneroll is a US company, but their products are distributed in New Zealand and the contact given for distribution here is a Hawke's Bay Chiropractor – Rosina Walker.
2 September 2024
I realise this is pretty old news now, and I apologise for that, but just in case some of you missed it when it happened, or you didn't feel it was attention-worthy, I wanted to discuss this thing that happened a month ago.
2 September 2024
Watch it on Amazon Prime | Microsoft
2 September 2024
While looking into the prevalence of treasure seeking as a scam in the United States in the early 1800s (part of some preparation I did before talking to Mormon missionaries), I came across an update to a story that I first heard about a few years ago.
2 September 2024
A couple of weeks ago I was browsing Reddit images (I guess it's my old-school version of Tik Tok), when I came across a post extolling the virtues of the Throckmorton Sign as a diagnostic tool. This tool is named after Thomas Bentley Throckmorton, an early 20th century American neurologist.
19 August 2024
Recently two different mobile AI devices have been released, and given all the overhyping of AI these days they've fared about as well as you'd expect them to - which is not very well at all.
19 August 2024
On a recent visit to Honolulu I found myself with 45 minutes to kill in front of an inviting sign “_Free Movie starting every hour. Visitors are welcome. Church of Scientology._” Yes, please.
19 August 2024
Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow (2013) is a good starting point for thinking about the strengths and limitations of human thinking processes. There is no good substitute for the use of “educating gossip”, as Kahneman describes it, for training in effective judgement and in decision making.
19 August 2024
So… I was planning on writing about an Autism scam that did the rounds on Australia news networks this month. Instead, Mark unintentionally sent me down a rabbit hole when he asked for an article about the approaching 100th anniversary of the Spiritualist Church Of New Zealand Act 1924 next month. It's branded a National Spiritual Day, which I'm anticipating may cause confusion and upset in other religious circles.
5 August 2024
Recently I was listening to the Inner Cosmos podcast, which explores the human brain from a neuroscience perspective. One of the episodes was about intuition, and the host was interviewing an Australian scientist, Joel Pearson, about intuition. During the interview, the scientist mentioned Intuitive Eating. This was a new term for me, so I thought I'd look it up and see what it was all about.
5 August 2024
The first batch of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccinations hit New Zealand in February 2021. That means we have now had 3.5 years to study the side effects.
5 August 2024
There was a bit of a fuss this week with a scene of Greek gods being said to be blasphemous, poking fun at Da Vinci's last supper. The comparison has presumably been made because people were sitting at a table, in a row (although I note that it's quite difficult to do it any other way!)
5 August 2024
Paul Burns, a Catholic who sporadically emails us with inane arguments, wrote to us recently about our $100,000 challenge, in an email titled “_My own challenge_”:
5 August 2024
Those of you who have been skeptically-minded for a while now may remember an Irish company called Steorn who had been promising since the early 2000s that they could make free energy. Back in 2006 they even took out a full page advert in the Economist, which used the Galileo Gambit and said:
5 August 2024
At the end of Part 1 of this article, I did gloss over a fair bit of Premie lore once the schism happened between Prem and his family, and that's due to the absence of surviving or available objective sources.
22 July 2024
In 1215 the Catholic Church's Fourth Council of the Lateran, which had been announced two years prior and so was very well attended, introduced many new rules. Many of these were focused on fighting corruption within the clergy, by limiting when and how clergy could charge fees for their work (e.g. no fees for reversing someone's excommunication, consecrating a bishop, or offering “superfluous services”), and banning certain practices like getting drunk and nepotism (specifically, priests handing their job down to their sons).
22 July 2024
Recently, I've been researching an area in County Limerick, Ireland, for a genealogy project, and I came across a bog burst, one of the deadliest bog disasters in Ireland. If you try to look up the Castlegarde bog disaster in Ireland that killed 21 people, you will find conflicting information. This was one of the initial articles I found:
22 July 2024
Given that I had dusted off my copy of Stable Diffusion to generate an image of a 500m tall Jesus, I remembered that I don't think I've yet shared a project I did last year where I generated a set of QR Codes all pointing to the NZ Skeptics website. Using Stable Diffusion, Controlnet and some other software, I was able to produce some fun skeptically-themed images that all function as working QR codes - or at least, I managed to get my phone to successfully read each of them at least once. Your Mileage May Vary when trying to scan these yourself, but for what it's worth here they are.
22 July 2024
In February it was announced by researchers that non-verified cell lines and misidentified nucleotide sequences were cited in hundreds of papers. This got picked up by the media in May:
22 July 2024
The Divine Light Mission (DLM) is something of an oldie as far as cults go, but it attracted its fair share of controversy in the 1970s and 1980s with notable followers such as respected kiwi composer Jenny McLeod and Billy TK Senior. For me this article has been on the backburner almost as long as the Colin Amery articles, as the DLM often received cursory mention in other cults I have researched. I recall first coming across the group in a folio of personal letters at the National Library. I was looking for mentions of Scientology, but instead came upon the type of family update letter that one receives from distant relatives and friends at Christmas; One year in the 1970s, an especially unfortunate family had adult children variously working with Scientology and living in a DLM ashram.
8 July 2024
Originally published in Issue 26 of the NZ Skeptic, February 1993
8 July 2024
I've been in contact with a lawyer on and off over the last couple of years regarding one of our old members - old both in terms of when they joined the society, and in terms of their age. Jim Ring was a frequent contributor to our Journal, the NZ Skeptic, writing both articles on a wide range of topics and many Letters to the Editor. Sadly Jim passed away last year, and the conversations with the lawyer, who was a friend of Jim's in his later life, were about a collection of books of skeptical interest that he had collected over his lifetime and wanted to donate to the NZ Skeptics.
8 July 2024
Craig wrote a couple of weeks ago about a couple of strange ideas he was introduced to at a Matariki event he attended - the idea that Matariki's brightness can predict the future, and also an idea that the earth has apparently recently shifted on its axis by 20 degrees.
8 July 2024
Over a year ago my wife and I were on a cavalcade. Present on the same cavalcade was a woman who was an equine vet. While we were discussing various 'alternative' treatments and such she happened to say “but I'm a real believer in the power of placebo, though…”. I found that statement a little surprising, coming from (I assume) a qualified medical person, but perhaps in a way this is telling.
8 July 2024
At the end of part 2 of this series (which was published a month ago), it seemed that Colin Amery had started to settle down. He met his future wife, poet Yvonne Gatton, in 1986. Gatton seems to have been a stabilising influence for Amery; so much so that he would follow her spiritual practices, and be initiated into the Sant Mat spiritual movement. While the couple were mum about who their specific guru was to a Stuff reporter, he did tell Dominion Post reporter Kimberley Rothwell that he practised Surat Shabd Yoga.
8 July 2024
I managed to attend the Spiritual Expo in Dunedin last month. A week later, I also went along to a two hour long medium session at the Dunedin Spiritualist Church. I will be talking about the medium experience later in this article but, first, the Expo.
8 July 2024
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how we had one of our YouTube videos removed from YouTube, due to Google mistakenly deciding that it was promoting medical misinformation - a rookie mistake, given that it was critiquing medical misinformation. I expressed my doubt that an appeal would change the outcome, but I was pleasantly surprised just after we recorded our last podcast episode to receive an email from Google letting us know that they had reversed their decision:
24 June 2024
Our Skeptical Calendar, where we attempt to find at least one event of skeptical interest from New Zealand for each of the 366 days of the year, is nearly finished now, with just 20 or so days that we don't have an event for remaining. Here are the events that happened on this day in history for the next two weeks:
24 June 2024
Let me preface this article by stating, mustering my best Dr McCoy impression, that I'm a midwife and am certainly not a sports nutritionist, dietician, food scientist, government bureaucrat, etc. I profess total ignorance on this topic, and welcome any of our readers who do have the appropriate expertise to write in or join us on this week's podcast to share their knowledge.
24 June 2024
On Saturday afternoon I joined an old friend and fellow nonsense junkie, Tim Atkin, as we attended a creationist talk in Wellington, organised by Creation Ministries International (CMI - the group that run the creation.com website). Now, Tim has been spending a lot of time over the last few years learning mandarin, and this was to come in handy as the meeting was at the Wellington Chinese Methodist Church on Boulcott Street. We arrived just before the 4pm starting time, and were greeted by a large creation.com banner featuring one of CMI's favourite topics, dinosaurs (presumably this is seen as a way to capture the imagination of kids).
24 June 2024
In preparation for my article this week about my visit to a creationist talk, I logged into the NZ Skeptics' YouTube channel to upload some videos of the event I'd recorded. When I logged in, I was greeted with a warning about how we had violated one of YouTube's Guidelines:
24 June 2024
Most kiwis will be aware that this coming Friday is a statutory holiday, the recently introduced Matariki day - being on Friday June 28th.
24 June 2024
New Zealand had a remarkable number of quacks and fraudsters active in the early 20th Century. They travelled the length and breadth of the country promoting their curative gadgets. The Cotter Collection includes many of these devices, and even a completed phrenology chart. A medicine chest contains pills and potions thought to provide cures for many common complaints. The outright quacks, who invariably came via Australia, once exposed in New Zealand returned to cause further mayhem there.
10 June 2024
I've done a lot of book shopping recently, while working on our plagiarism project - and in this time I've found some real gems. And, by gems, I mean god-awful books. Thankfully my shopping has been done in charity shops and at book fairs, so these bad books have cost me just a dollar or two each - with the added twin bonuses that a) the money I've spent has gone to charity, and b) I've removed at least one copy of these books from circulation.
10 June 2024
This was the first time to a Spiritual Church for me, and I had no idea what to expect. The service started at 6pm on a Sunday, at their own facility in South Dunedin. When I arrived, I found a small room that could probably seat 50, along with a small tearoom that opened out to the main part of the church. It was clean and tidy, and looked very much like any other church - apart from the absence of any Christian paraphernalia.
10 June 2024
When I first became interested in skepticism back in the 90s, I started finding communities on the internet (little did I know that we had our own skeptical organisation here in Aotearoa/New Zealand), and one of the prominent people I encountered was Michael Shermer.
10 June 2024
This weekend my kids and I picked up a 5 pack of face masks from KMart - a bargain (I think) at $12. My family, who were coming on this journey of discovery with me, each picked a mask that suited their personalities, or star signs, or something - Mermaid Feels, Super Star, Magic Mask and Radiant Glow. I chose Pearl Princess; after all, who doesn't want to feel like a princess on a Sunday night.
10 June 2024
We last left the story of Colin Amery at the precipice of his 2nd attempt at immigration to the Pacific, this time following his pregnant girlfriend back to her home country of New Zealand. Before he departed the UK, he decided to stage a UFO 'talk-down' on Hampstead Heath. Amery fails to provide any further detail on what a UFO talk-down is exactly, but boy did it deliver.
27 May 2024
On Saturday (the 25th of May), our chair Bronwyn, long-time skeptic Tim Atkin and myself visited Practical Philosophy and Meditation, a group running out of a very nice building at the bottom of Aro Street in Aro Valley, Wellington. We were going there because, despite outwardly looking like an educational institution (until very recently the Wellington branch had been called the School of Practical Philosophy), a little investigation shows that the group runs “schools” around the world in a curiously cult-like fashion, offering cheap philosophy courses as the hook to attract adherents who can then be convinced to pour their money, time and devotion into the group.
27 May 2024
Forgive me this short item, as it's been a pretty busy weekend. I had good intentions, but today my wife and I decided that we needed some more shelving space in our garage. I'd mentioned putting in another shelf below one that I had already installed some time ago, but she managed to convince me that it would be better to extend the Elfa wire rack system that we already have in our garage. What was intended to be a half hour job turned into a couple of visits to Mitre 10, and several hours of moving stuff around and installing everything. Still, we're very pleased with the result and we now have considerably more space to store various garage essentials.
27 May 2024
In Wellington, the School of Practical Philosophy (SPP) is likely best known to most denizens by sight rather than by name or reputation. Situated midway up a steep hill in the neighbourhood of Te Aro, the SPP premises is quite impressive from the sidewalk; The facade is stately, and the ground floor chattels are well-maintained and tidy. However, there is a pervasive feeling of… well, not exactly a heyday long past, but maybe a heyday that was never fully realised.
27 May 2024
At the beginning of April I received a friend request from none other than Jason Momoa, star of the Aquaman movies, the Conan the Barbarian remake, and Jacques Villeneuve's recent version of Dune. Of course, this wasn't the real Jason Momoa - just another Facebook scam, something that's becoming more prevalent as Meta appears to have given up on even their half-hearted attempts to combat fraud on their platform.
27 May 2024
On May 10th, New Zealand First MP Tanya Unkovich lodged a proposal for the Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill (https://bills.parliament.nz/v/1/667c1a87-e8f8-4ea7-8ab9-08dc70a23431). This is similar to recent laws put forward both in the UK and across the US, in that it would require separate single sex male only, female only, and unisex toilets in new buildings.
13 May 2024
Over this past weekend, we've been treated to beautiful displays in the sky at night, courtesy of space weather, and the sun ejecting some mass towards us - known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME.
13 May 2024
We saw a few weird things come out of the Parliament protests, but one of the weirdest is the attempts to “save” Marsden Point. Some of the protestors, egged on by conspiracy agitators like Brad Flutey and Damien De Ment, travelled directly from the protest at parliament in Wellington when the police shut it down, all the way up to Marsden Point, half way between Auckland at the top of the North island and site of the country's only oil refinery, which was (and is) in the process of being decommissioned.
13 May 2024
We often connect satanic panic to the 1980s through to the early 1990s, but Australian brothers and screenwriting team Cameron and Colin Cairnes weave a tight narrative with a setting that feels authentic to its late 1970s setting, which teetered between occult curiosity and a fear of anything unseeable and unknowable. There is a sufficient commitment to the amount of brown in the costuming and set design, but the extent of their commitment to the bit is evident in the flairs of detail in both the exposition and side characters. There are the mundane references to sweeps week and more apropos callbacks (or should that be callouts…) to Anton LaVey and Ed and Lorraine Warren. If you want to know more about the deep-cut references, you can check out this article by Warped Perspective.
13 May 2024
As best as I can ascertain, Colin Amery has passed. I mean, I'm certain the British architectural historian named Colin Amery is dead, as he warranted multiple obituaries and “In Memoriam”s in 2018.
29 April 2024
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the demise of RCR - Reality Check Radio, Voices for Freedom's media outlet that specialises in content for conspiracy theorists.
29 April 2024
The MLM Olive Tree People came to my attention a year ago, and I've been keeping my ears open for any news of expansion because the conceit of the entire MLM at present is something to behold. At the time, I was more interested in following a different MLM called Elomir. Elomir sold oral film strips that can apparently assist in mental clarity and weight management, but operations quickly flamed out due to poor stock management and poor stock in general. Some Elomir reps landed in The Olive Tree People MLM, just as some Monat reps are attracted to it now.
29 April 2024
I saw a Facebook post from a friend that caught my interest. A weird thing happened to him on the morning of the 17th of April; he explained it as something from a horror movie. He had a doorbell where he had never put batteries in the ringer unit, but despite the lack of batteries at 6:30 am it started to ring, and continued to ring as he picked it up and shook it to double check it didn't have batteries. Indeed, it didn't.
29 April 2024
Despite the ribbing I get from Craig on the podcast about telling listeners to “Watch this space!”, Skeptics know that I can at least be relied upon to share any interesting updates that come my way about past articles. And boy, do I have an update for you all!
29 April 2024
Last week I went to Australia for a holiday. Although tourist traps are not my idea of a good holiday destination, I have a family, and when you're a parent, holidays tend to be more about the kids than your own preferences. And so off we went to the Gold Coast - a place that was both warm and had lots of theme parks.
15 April 2024
Recently there has been a bit of media coverage about the show 'Country House Hunters' New Zealand being faked. It has been proven that at least some of the house hunters were already the owners of the properties they were viewing.
15 April 2024
I bring a shorter contribution this week, inspired by a couple of requests I have received courtesy of the Culty Conversations Facebook page. One was a DM which notified me that archived versions of Ohad Pele's website, kabalove.org, were removed from the Wayback Machine, and asked if I could advocate for the website to be reinstated. Flattered though I am that others think I have that much sway with an American non-profit, I wasn't surprised that this happened. It's an easy enough process, and there are several websites and blog posts about how to have your website removed. I mean, even the Internet Archive itself provides instructions on how to submit such a request, albeit with the caveat that there are no guarantees.
15 April 2024
This past Tuesday the NZ internet was confronted with the sad news that Reality Check Radio - RCR as it's known - was “off the air”. On Tuesday morning, arriving in my mailbox that I use to monitor the thing, came this news:
15 April 2024
The NZ Skeptics were messaged last week by someone (no name given) who thinks they've found a paranormal event - a message in a piece of music from 1995 that predicted the 7.5 earthquake on New Year's Day this year in Noto, Japan:
15 April 2024
For those who were paying attention when reading the newsletter from two weeks ago, when I published a plea for help from an ex-member of the NZ Skeptics regarding a photo his mother had taken in Auckland, you may have noticed something odd. Despite claiming to be a skeptic, there was a strange sentence in the middle of the email we received. It read:
2 April 2024
It's April First, as I write this, which is normally a day where various pranks are played in the name of April Fool's Day. A quick look at the online newspapers doesn't reveal any obvious stories, and it would appear that, in the age of the internet, the day has lost its usefulness.
2 April 2024
In this long-awaited, and likely anti-climatic, final instalment, we'll look at the other business dealings of Yasmeen Clark and Jono Spark. Given that their “silent” partner is an alleged and non-existent Persian court bureaucrat, their non-Pascha branded ventures are unexpectantly… mundane?
2 April 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_of_Jesus
2 April 2024
Publisher: Te Herenga Waka University Press
2 April 2024
A few months ago Bronwyn wrote an article about Sex.Life, a New Zealand podcast by Morgan Penn, a “somatic sexologist”, and Hayley Sproull, a comedian. The first season of the podcast is of interest to skepticism, as it details Morgan's 10 day visit to Highden Temple (outside of Palmerston North), owned and run by Bruce Lyon. Bruce claims to channel the spirit of a long-dead spiritual master, and also runs Sex Magic classes - part of the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA).
2 April 2024
Have you noticed how in action movies, on any day of the year, at any time of the day, if you're running from someone you can always hide in a Saint Patrick's day parade? There must be something about St Patrick, that his legend is not even subject to the laws of physics, the space/time continuum bends around him. Seriously though, that's not how it works of course. There must be many cultural phenomena which are celebrated of which you could argue there's little or no way to tell how much of the story is historical truth and how much is just myth. So does it matter? Christmas is an example. A christian origin story fully laced with lots of extra-biblical and pagan stuff and for probably the majority of us, no 'spiritual' significance at all, but we all love it (unless you're the grinch). It's become purely culture and tradition. Most of us don't really believe a twelve year old Jewish girl got pregnant without the 'help' of a human man.
2 April 2024
We recently received an email from an ex-member who's now living in the UK, asking if our members might be able to help out identifying an optical anomaly in a photograph his mother took in Auckland recently:
18 March 2024
With the encouragement of Mark and Bronwyn from the NZ Skeptics committee, I attended a meeting about Effective Altruism at Rationalist House in Auckland on the evening of 13th March.
18 March 2024
Last week we received a request from the editor of the Katikati Advertiser asking for our response to a story that was being written about a psychic:
18 March 2024
A couple of months ago a friend messaged me with an article from Glamour magazine that extolled the virtues of jade rollers. Although I have no idea how he ended up reading the article in the first place, I think it piqued his interest because the byline mentioned “skeptics”. Our conversation went like this:
4 March 2024
In December 2020, a patient at the Mobile Infirmary Medical Centre in Alabama accessed or wandered into the hospital's fertility clinic through an unsecured door. Said patient then also accessed the cryogenic nursery, and removed several frozen embryos from containment.
4 March 2024
His grandmother Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, lived to the ripe old age of 101, his father Prince Philip was 99 when he died in 2021, and his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, reached 96 before her death in 2022, so King Charles, now 75, obviously has the benefit of good genes.
4 March 2024
In the news this past week has been the announcement of the potential closing of Newshub at the end of June this year.
4 March 2024
I'm a bit of a fan of internet drama - at least the kind where someone is accused of wrongdoing. The to and fro of accusations, rebuttals, evidence, and eventual apology video, with a backdrop of hundreds of eager new YouTubers hoping to gain followers by creating reaction videos, giving their own commentary, or even adding to the investigation, is fascinating to watch, and its online nature means that everything is easily accessible from the comfort of my living room. I can watch half a dozen videos, then go searching for background information, piecing together my own picture of who the main players are, how they're perceived within the online community, and just how screwed their internet “careers” are.
19 February 2024
You may or may not have heard the term “crank magnetism”. I had heard of the term, but I'd completely misunderstood its meaning. Yes, this item is going to be a bit of a laugh at myself as much as anything!
19 February 2024
For an island nation with a population of 5.3 million, I would hazard that we have more than our fair share of pākehā with a hotline to millenia-long dead Asians. And by more I sadly mean a non-zero number. While they won't use the word, they are modern day mediums, a paranormal practice/belief that has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy.
19 February 2024
Over the last couple of weeks we've received a few emails from members about our membership system, specifically the renewals process. We're happy to report that, if you see a charge on your card from the NZ Skeptics, it's not a scam - it's simply that your account is set to auto-renew each year.
19 February 2024
Those who know me well know that I have a thing for painful, uncomfortable experiences - I'm finally planning to redeem my colonic irrigation voucher in the next few weeks, I've enjoyed stabbing myself with acupuncture needles and joining interminably boring cult meetings. So for some it's no surprise that I'm a big fan of bad movies - some of my favourites are Twisted Pair (or anything really) by Neil Breen, Champagne and Bullets, Jurassic Shark, Dangerous Men, Dolemite, Tammy and the T-Rex, and Birdemic. Yep, these movies are so bad that The Room doesn't even make the list.
19 February 2024
Previously I wrote about the Therapeutic Products Act which was due to replace the Medicines Act 1981 and the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985. The NZ Skeptics Society made a written and oral submission.
19 February 2024
We recently had a member decide not to renew their membership, because of concerns about our submission to the Therapeutic Products Bill. They told us:
5 February 2024
Master DK and Bruce Lyon: Hopefully, the final instalment of a three part series
5 February 2024
This article is a brief introduction to facilitated communication (FC) - what it is, and what harm it can do for a person being facilitated. I will also give some guidance on what you can do to help.
5 February 2024
Making the news this past week was Elon Musk's announcement that his company, Neuralink, has performed its first implantation of their experimental Brain Computer Interface device (BCI) into a human.
5 February 2024
A lot of skepticism these days involves battling against wrong-heading beliefs related to topics that are important to us, and to our world: whether an all-powerful God created us, and wants us to follow his strict, perversely specific and often nonsensical rules about how to live our lives; if climate change is real, and how much of a risk it is to our continued existence on this planet; the merits (or lack thereof) of alternative medicine, and the dangers they can pose to a misinformed public.
23 January 2024
Thames-Coromandel mayor Len Salt
23 January 2024
Following up on my MMS piece in September 2023, and Lousie Richardson's update two weeks ago, it appears that this living man can't help but make the headlines.
23 January 2024
Dr. Emanuel Garcia, writing on Substack under the name NewZealandDoc, is a psychiatrist. Dr. Garcia received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1986. He had a successful career in psychiatry and psychoanalysis in the U.S. — and then, in 2006, he emigrated to New Zealand where he practiced medicine. When the Covid pandemic led to government rules to limit the spread of the disease that he disagreed with, Dr. Garcia found himself unable to acquiesce to these measures. This led to a suspension of his license to practise medicine.
23 January 2024
A few days ago the NZARH, an organisation based in Auckland that I help out with, received an email from someone looking to forge connections:
23 January 2024
I recently watched a debate on YouTube between Dr. Zachery Ardern and Stephen Woodford.
23 January 2024
A significant update came about this week, as ISTA and the Safer Sex-Positive & Spiritual Communities (3SC) issued a joint statement about the completion of the mediation process they had been working through.
8 January 2024
I recently read David McRaney's book (on Kindle, from Amazon) on the recommendation of Melanie Trecek-King - one of our international guests at last year's conference in Dunedin. I was interested to read the book to gain insights into how to change peoples' minds about things that they're wrong about - or perhaps change my own mind about things I'm wrong about!
8 January 2024
For an island nation with a population of 5.3 million, I would hazard that we have more than our fair share of pākehā with a hotline to millenia-long dead Asians. And by more I mean a non-zero number, because mediumship is a paranormal practice/belief that has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy.
8 January 2024
At the Society for Science Based Healthcare, we spend a lot of time looking at dodgy therapeutic claims. Most of these claims are made by practitioners of alternative therapies. A few months ago Mark Hanna, a colleague of mine at SBH, messaged me with a curious thought:
8 January 2024
Several years ago I poked my head above the parapet by writing a letter to the NZ Medical Journal about crank medical treatments that they were happy to publish (see the bottom of this newsletter for a copy of the letter). Since then my details have obviously found my way onto some dubious contact lists, and as such I've been receiving the occasional request to review scientific papers. It's obvious these requests are for predatory journals, given that they usually flatter me by mis-labelling me as Dr Honeychurch, talking about my “expertise”, and asking me to review a paper that is obviously nothing to do with my day job and actual expertise.
8 January 2024
Plissken Boon is attempting to warn the world of the catastrophe that is about to overtake the Covid vaccinated and unvaccinated. I can't find anything about him and he doesn't have a bio. He appears to live in NZ. A reasonably complete version of his jeremiad is on substack A Very, Very Clever Way ... To Kill You! (substack.com) dated 14th January 2023. His writing is awful...he uses ellipses frequently and unnecessarily, his screed is very long and disorganised, full of repetition and much belittling of those who cannot see the truth of his research.
25 December 2023
For an island nation with a population of 5.3 million, I would hazard that we have more than our fair share of pākehā with a hotline to millenia-long dead Asians. And by more I mean a non-zero number, because mediumship is a paranormal practice/belief that has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy.
25 December 2023
It's Christmas, so in the spirit of the season, 'living man' Roger William (née Roger William Blake), of Ngatea Water Gardens, staged another of his cantankerous one-person (if he currently is a person; it's so hard to keep track) pantomimes in front of long-suffering Judge, Brett Crawley at the Hamilton District Court on the 20th of December.
25 December 2023
Although most of my friends on Facebook are either skeptically-minded or at the very least have a respect for science and evidence, I do have some outliers. In the past I've sent or accepted friend requests from visiting Mormons, conspiracy theorists and others who are comfortable engaging with me. Additionally, a significant proportion of the time I spend on Facebook is spent browsing the facebook feeds of people who have a very different world view to mine.
25 December 2023
This is the cover image of one of NZ's own lightworkers, J. Lee Frisbee. He works at “Explore Daydreaming Inc”, and describes himself as “Multidimensional Navigator - I Am Light Zen Master”.
25 December 2023
I'm lying, they didn't actually say that - but they might as well have done. What they did do was run with a headline of “'Doughnut-shaped disc': Is this a UFO over Christchurch?”. As far as I'm concerned, if they'd seriously suggested that Father Christmas may have flown over Christchurch in a sleigh pulled by magical reindeer it would have been no less ridiculous than what they actually did, which was suggest that aliens decided to expend huge amounts of energy, effort and time crossing light years of space in order to very visibly visit New Zealand's South Island. This kind of credulous reporting is not the kind of content that serious news outlets should be generating!
25 December 2023
Publisher: Massey University Press
11 December 2023
Many of you, as skeptics, will have heard mention of 15 minute cities and, in our case, because New Zealand likes to be different, 20 minute cities. The 15 Minute City idea has joined Agenda 21, Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset in the pantheon of recent Big Ideas that actually exist, but have been converted by conspiracy theorists into grotesque versions of themselves where governments are supposedly trying to take away our rights and enslave us all. But, what is the idea of a 15/20 minute city, and how have the conspiracy theorists misrepresented the idea?
11 December 2023
You'll no doubt have heard about the supposed revelations of COVID vaccine deaths recently revealed by an IT employee of Te Whatu Ora - a government agency - the MInistry of Health.
11 December 2023
For an island nation with a population of 5.3 million, I would hazard that we have more than our fair share of pākehā with a hotline to millenia-long dead Asians. And by more I mean a non-zero number, because mediumship is a paranormal practice/belief that so far has failed to provide any empirical evidence for its efficacy, other than the ability to make money disappear out of the pockets of those seeking confirmation of the afterlife, or one last chance to speak with their loved one.
27 November 2023
Recently Facebook has been showing me AI generated fake images in posts from pages that appear to be designed to trick people into thinking the images they post are real. Since I keep interacting with these posts out of skeptical curiosity, I've found that there are now plenty of scammy AI posts in my FB feed. It's clear to me that they are AI-generated, but the worrying part is that many people are being fooled by them.
27 November 2023
In his introduction to the Newsletter in late July Craig mentioned the materials science news around the possibility of room temperature superconductivity, with a compound called LK-99 being announced out of a research team in South Korea. At the time there was a lot of skepticism about this claim.
27 November 2023
As it's an election year this year, there's been no lack of misinformation and nonsense being pushed at New Zealanders. Our runner up for the Bent Spoon award this year decided, apparently reluctantly, to start a new political party, called NZ Loyal. Liz Gunn, once a high-profile TV presenter, turned herself into a political leader and asked the conspiracy theorists of New Zealand to vote for her. Worryingly, given some of her extreme views, she received 1.2% of all votes, and she's already preparing her party for the next election. Next time round she might actually manage to submit the paperwork properly and have more than two candidates standing for election. We will be keeping a close eye on her.
27 November 2023
This weekend I hosted a Skeptical quiz at our annual conference in Dunedin. For those of you who missed out on the conference, here are my quiz questions so that you can play along at home. Feel free to look these things up if you can't figure out the answers but are curious to know. I'll be publishing the answers in my next newsletter.
20 November 2023
In honour of our upcoming conference, rather than giving a day-by-day recount of skeptical history, I pulled some Dunedin-specific events to share. While I wouldn't say Dunedin is the strangest place in New Zealand (that crown is currently held by Canterbury), its denizens are certainly trying their damnedest to convince us all about how haunted they are.
20 November 2023
I've recently become aware of a controversy surrounding the discovery of Homo naledi, which was the subject of a Netflix documentary film: Unknown: Cave of Bones
20 November 2023
As mentioned above, during the Sunday lunchtime of the conference we'll be holding our Annual General Meeting. If you're a member of NZ Skeptics you can come along (even if you're not attending the conference) and hear all about our business. We'll also be attempting to run a livestream of the meeting in case you can't attend in person.
20 November 2023
And speaking of documentaries, there's recently been not one, but two short documentary series on streaming platforms about the Twin Flames Universe cult, each with three episodes.
13 November 2023
If you follow NZ Skeptics or the Yeah…Nah! podcast on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, then you obviously know that we are still using that particular hellsite for promotional purposes. And every now and then, it springs a surprise on us. This time, it was an article by Dr. Saul Newman linking the existence of Supercentarians (who are over the age of 110 years) to pension fraud and administrative errors rather than other oft-touted markers of longevity such as social connections and diet (although both of these hopefully contribute to a better quality of life).
13 November 2023
This is the second part of an article detailing an online scam, which started when I accidentally accepted a friend request from a cloned Facebook account. This led to me talking to a second Facebook account named “Agent Patrick Smith”, and being offered up to $100,000 by Publisher's Clearing House in the US. At the end of part one, I showed off my 9 year old daughter's amazing forgery skills when I asked her to recreate my driver's licence so that I could send it to the scammers as proof of my identity:
13 November 2023
In the social media age the “Am I the A$@&@ole?” (AITA) post sub-genre provides a sincere 'check-yourself' calibration and a moment of schadenfreude. I think it originated in the Reddit dungeons, but has spread across many apps and an endless number of YouTube channels. A recent moral quandary of the AITA variety recently hit me and I thought I'd look for skeptical input.
6 November 2023
Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud
6 November 2023
I have a feeling we've written about Ārepa before, but as a refresher, it's a kiwi brand that produces “health drink” products that claims to make brains work better.
6 November 2023
In the past few months I've been watching a website that makes some quite extraordinary claims, at least in my opinion. It's immersioncosmetics.co.nz What has really piqued my interest is a new product recently advertised. It's Shungite, a relatively rare black stone with fairly high carbon content, usually 30-95% but often with many impurities and fullerenes, a spherical carbon molecule usually known as buckyballs. It was originally discovered in Shunga, in the Karelia region of Russia, but is more widespread than that,
30 October 2023
As a major fan of Fall and Hallowe'en, the sudden absence of the holiday from my calendar was one of the few points of culture shock I had when I migrated to New Zealand. I soon found out that nothing could unite the members of this fine nation more than a chorus of tut-tutting about how corporate and how American Hallowe'en was, how tacky it was to send your kids out begging for treats, how much the holiday glorified chocolate, and so on and so forth. It can get a little grinchy sometimes, especially in the comments section of the NZ Herald website.
30 October 2023
A couple of years ago, I was visited by a pair of kind, young Mormon missionaries. We spent a good hour or more chatting about their faith. Of course, being in the middle of a pandemic, missionaries had been unable to do their usual overseas stint, so the lads I had been visited by had come from Hamilton - not the most exciting.
30 October 2023
I recently received a friend request from Judy Eliassan, the office admin for the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists - an Auckland-based organisation I'm involved with that fights for secularisation of our country. This friend request was odd, as I was a little surprised that I wasn't already friends with her. But at first glance the account looked legitimate, as we already had a mutual friend. So, not thinking too much of it, I clicked the Accept button. A couple of hours later I realised that, no, I was already Facebook friends with the real Judy, and the account I had just friended was a cloned account (the cloned account is on the right below):
24 October 2023
In my newsletter article last week, one of the dates referred to the 2018 trial of Zholia Alemi, a former Auckland University medical student who was able to practise psychiatry across the NHS and evade discovery for two decades before being undone by her own greed. I was reminded about two other, peculiar cases of fraudster doctors in NZ and thought that it would make a good article and segment in the most recent episode of the Yeah...Nah podcast.
24 October 2023
We've reported previously on Liz Gunn, the former TV presenter, now turned conspiracy theorist, who was the leader of the NZ Loyal political party. Her party received just 1.2% of the party vote, therefore denying their representation in parliament.
24 October 2023
I trust you all voted in our recent fractious election, even if your vote was “None of the above”, as democracy is more precious than some people realise. Democracy is under fire in many parts of the world, as people become sceptical about its benefits, or as some awful leaders and their parties come to power, or (as is the case in the US) threaten to. But there is another way of looking at the purpose of democracy, as proposed by the eminent philosopher Karl Popper.
24 October 2023
As I've written before, we occasionally get people emailing the NZ Skeptics committee with their various “theories” about how things work.
24 October 2023
There are plenty of scam wellness products on the market, but the latest one to catch my attention is a fancy water bottle called LumiVitae CellPower. You can pre-order your very own in either Anthracite Gray or Champagne Gold for the bargain price of $845.
16 October 2023
2021: A group called Doctors Stand Up For Vaccination releases an open letter to the New Zealand public stressing the importance of vaccination. The letter is signed by 6535 registered doctors.
16 October 2023
Last week I wrote about how I had been texted asking if I would like a job earning US$6,100 (around NZ$10,000) per month for simply clicking on a few buttons every day in a mobile app that was apparently testing other mobile apps. Of course, no testing was actually going on, and the process I was walked through by Anna, my scammer, was just a way to hook me in and gain my confidence, before the scammers attempted to extract cash from me.
16 October 2023
For those who didn't manage to catch the Ms. Information movie about skeptic and scientist Siouxsie Wiles back when it was doing the Film Festival circuit a couple of months ago, the good news is that it's due for general release in cinemas from the 26th of October. Siouxsie has let me know that there's also a pre-release screening happening next week (on the 17th) at the Rialto cinema in Newmarket - you can book tickets for that showing at the cinema's website.
16 October 2023
By now most of us will know that we're facing a change in government in the near future, given that the National Party has likely secured enough seats with the help of ACT in order to form a majority. But, how close did we come to having our country run by conspiracy theorists who would have removed us from the UN and made other daft-sounding decisions that Al Blenney documented for us in the newsletter a few weeks ago?
9 October 2023
1980: Colin Gardener and his neighbour Helena Bradley see a lioness near Gardener's home in Wellington. Which is notable because New Zealand has no indigenous big cats. A police search around the Meadowcrofts property turns up nothing. A few days later, Gardener and another neighbour, Maurice Bradley, catch another glimpse of the creature and determine that it is not a lioness but just an unusually big ex-domestic cat.
9 October 2023
While shopping in KMart a few weeks ago, on Saturday afternoon, I received an unsolicited text message. This isn't unusual, as I take the bold move when it comes to privacy of not trying to hide my contact details at all. I'm a believer in the philosophy of almost inviting spam, and then dealing with it as it arrives by setting up spam filters and mailbox rules. A benefit of doing this, for me as a skeptic, is that I get to see all the weird and wonderful nonsense that spammers attempt to bombard people with. And so it was with this text message:
9 October 2023
Over the past week or two, I've been having email conversations with a person from the other side of the skeptical fence. This person I'll refer to as Mark - which is his real name, but I'll not give any more information about him. (By the way, our skeptical newsletter writer Mark Honeychurch has sworn he's not running some elaborate joke on me!)
2 October 2023
Crybully: “A person who engages in intimidation, harassment, or other abusive behaviour while claiming to be a victim” - Wiktionary
2 October 2023
Personal VPN services are all the rage now, and you may have watched or heard a lot of “host-read advertising” for them on YouTube and popular podcasts. They purport to provide fantastic advantages, while also making alarming claims about who is out to get your personal data on the internet. Today I'm going to analyse some of those claims, using my 20-something years of Internet Service Provider (ISP) industry experience.
2 October 2023
Part 2 - GcMAF (Group specific component protein Macrophage-activating factor)
25 September 2023
September has been an interesting month in ISTA land and its adjacent islands. Motivated by reports that the neo-tantric NGO was resuming activity in Israel and holding a workshop in an undisclosed location, the Israeli Centre for Cult Victims issued an official statement (available in Hebrew and English) on September 8th. The statement outlines, in explicit detail, the content of the first two levels of the ISTA programme and the multiple conduits for exploitative activity, in particular the lack of detailed information that students receive about the workshops (which was also indicated by Morgan Penn in the Sex.Life podcast). While it stops short of outright declaring ISTA a cult, the centre does state that it has taken an interest in ISTA activities and notes that in Israeli penal law, spiritual teachers are forbidden from having sexual relations with students.
25 September 2023
The more observant of you may have noticed that a national election is looming in NZ.
25 September 2023
There was a recent RNZ interview done as part of their Expert Feature series, which runs on Monday afternoons with host Jesse Mulligan.
25 September 2023
There's a few things I'd like to promote this week.
25 September 2023
We certainly live in exciting times. There's been recent news about some potentially exciting discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
18 September 2023
In the first part of this story from a couple of weeks ago, I described how I had accidentally made friends with a Chinese scammer on WeChat, the Chinese all-in-one social media app, before I was invited to move our conversation to Telegram, a secure encrypted chat app. In Telegram I was courted by a young Chinese “woman” (the quote marks are because I have a strong suspicion I was being catfished and was actually talking to a man most of the time) who proceeded to tell me about how rich she was, and how she could also make me rich by helping me to invest my money in crypto and precious metals. Her aunt had the inside scoop on when to buy and sell, and so long as we followed her instructions, we were guaranteed to make money. Under the guidance of my new friend, I made a practice transaction of “0.01” with fake money, just before the app crashed and we said good night.
18 September 2023
For Father's Day, my ever-loving family purchased me some interesting devices from Temu, including an anti-snoring chin strap. The strap is made from neoprene, and has velcro straps on the top and back, along with a harness that goes around your chin. The chin harness is meant to keep your mouth closed as you sleep, which apparently will stop you snoring.
18 September 2023
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.
18 September 2023
Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition that impacts behaviour, communication, and socialisation. The exact cause of Autism is unknown, and there is no single gene that is Autisticassociated with the condition. Almost 200 genes can increase the likelihood of Autism due to mutation or possible epigenetic causes. Autism presentation varies widely, and that ranges from Autistics who live independent lives with minimal support to Autistics who require significant support with communication and day-to-day living. It is not unusual for an Autistic to move along that spectrum depending on what emotional, societal, economic, or health pressures are placed on them.
11 September 2023
The Skeptical Calendar is 90% done and far be it for the Editors of this illustrious newsletter to even suggest its readers go out and be newsworthy, we might have a few days you want to aim for.
11 September 2023
The Therapeutic Products Act is the most significant shift in the regulation of medicines, medical devices and natural health products in almost 40 years. It will replace the Medicines Act 1981 and Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985 with a new regulatory regime.
11 September 2023
I might be behind the times (I usually am!) but this week, while doing some YouTube surfing, I came across a video on Fractal Wood Burning - specifically warning of the dangers of it. (And, of course, the YouTube algorithm, which I liken to a toddler, has now filled my page with other videos like it!)
11 September 2023
At the prompting of Mark and Bronwyn during last week's podcast episode, I attended a church meeting last evening. This was an event called “Lean In: Christianity and Politics - Meet the Candidates”. This was held at the Windsor Park Baptist Church - only a few kilometres away from my home. The venue itself was pretty un-chuchlike, in that it was previously the Windsor Park Tavern.
11 September 2023
Last week we saw a psychic spat between Sue Nicholson and Kelvin Cruickshank. These two alleged psychic mediums were once co-performers on the awful Sensing Murder TV show - you know the one that didn't solve any murders, despite running for 47 episodes over six seasons.
11 September 2023
4 September 2023
Abi Loeb, who went against the tide of the scientific community back when the asteroid Oumuamua passed earth, and claimed it was an alien artefact, has struck again. This time, YouTube alerted me (presumably because I've been watching the UAP nonsense unfold on credulous American news channel News Nation) to the existence of a News Nation interview with Avi about his recent discovery of small spherules of alien origin dredged up from the seabed.
4 September 2023
It all started with noodles. During a work call with a Chinese colleague of mine, Evelyn, I was asked what I would be having for lunch. I told her that I would be having instant noodles and she berated me, saying that I should make noodles from a Chinese recipe instead. A couple of minutes later, several links to YouTube videos appeared via SMS, all showing similar recipes being made, with English subtitles to accompany the Mandarin instructions.
4 September 2023
In the last two months, two of the non-religious organisations I volunteer for, the Humanists and the NZARH, have both been contacted by a young street preacher called Nic Blackie. Nic is looking for someone to interview on his Christian apologist podcast, called The Garrison. In order to figure out whether it's a good idea to have someone talk with Nic, I've spent several hours listening to most episodes of his podcast. I suffer, so you don't have to!
4 September 2023
Back in June I wrote about the sojourn Mark and I took to Prayers @ Parliament. With election season in full swing, I thought it would be a good time to return to the topic of Naisi Chen, Labour List MP. In my original editorial, it was clear Chen made an impression of sorts on us. Mark and I were both surprised and impressed with Chen's careful phrasing regarding the responsibility of religious leaders and representatives to repent on behalf of Christian brothers and sisters who harmed children; a positively ballsy move that appeared to be received well by the crowd.
28 August 2023
OK, so another item related to climate change. I've recently started listening to an entertaining podcast - The Climate Denier's Playbook.
28 August 2023
One of our members emailed us last week asking about a climate change denier's blog article.
28 August 2023
This weekend the Yeah… Nah! Podcast crew - that is me, Mark and Bronwyn recorded an interview with Melanie Trecek-King who is one of our international guests at our conference in November. (You can get tickets here!) We've released the podcast as a bonus episode.
28 August 2023
Country of Origin: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; now headquartered in Utah.
28 August 2023
I've mentioned the Voices for Freedom bunch a few times in this newsletter, but looking at the latest Reality Check Radio had me amused. From their email:
21 August 2023
After some false starts over the past three years, I finally had the opportunity to attend a Gnostic Mass. As far as Occult/Esoteric groups go, the Gnostic Mass is one of, if not THE, most accessible occult ritual for an outsider to observe and partake in. To understand why attending a Gnostic mass in New Zealand was on my to-do list, it's pertinent to understand what it is and who it was written for.
21 August 2023
Since the recent launch of Liz Gunn's new political party, NZ Loyal, I've been loyally watching all of her new party political videos, where she's been laying out her ideas for how she will run the country when she comes to power. They're extensive and disruptive, and although I'm not an expert I'd wager that they're totally unworkable. Her most recent video was the second of a two part series, where she talked about her idea of a 1% transaction tax that would allow the party to close down the Inland Revenue department. Although this video was full of ideas that deserve skeptical scrutiny, I want to have a brief look at the previous video, part 1 of Liz's economic vision for New Zealand, and a particular idea she has about a supposedly secret group who are, in tandem with others, running the world - the Fabian Society.
21 August 2023
Back in November last year, I wrote a critique of a Safe ICT questionnaire I picked up at the Go Green expo. We recently received a copy of Safe ICT's most recent newsletter where they responded to my criticisms. I'm not going to rebut their rebuttal, as this kind of to and fro rarely ends up being productive, but suffice it to say that Safe ICT's overly cautious advice for people using technology is not in alignment with our understanding of the science, and is not based on any scientific evidence of harm.
14 August 2023
It's been a little while since I've checked in on the antics of the Voices for Freedom bunch, but, checking my email I have set up to monitor their comms, and from others who do the same, there's been a bit of activity lately.
14 August 2023
Most kiwis will be aware that it's election year, with the general election only a few months away, scheduled for Saturday 14th October.
14 August 2023
I've already discussed in my previous articles about the Global Flourishing, or GloFlo/∑±, movement. A few months ago I joined this group, which was claiming to be rationalist and have the answers the world needs to survive. I had my doubts, and was there because of my concerns that the group was looking less like a social movement for positive change, and more like a cult. The group was run by Paul, who had changed his name online to Ui and then again to ∑±78c7e.
7 August 2023
I read Fake Believe by Dylan Reeve earlier this year, and intended to review it at the time for the newsletter. But typically for me, life got in the way and I never got around to actually putting my thoughts on the page. And as the book has been out for almost a year now, I felt I had missed the boat. However, as Dylan will be a contestant on The Traitors NZ (starting Monday August 7 on Three) perhaps now is a good time to strike while the iron is somewhat reheated.
7 August 2023
Okay, this one has me stumped, so I'm looking for some help. Robin Capper, from the Auckland Skeptics in the Pub group, messaged us recently to ask about a weird thing he'd seen on Google maps recently:
7 August 2023
As a reminder of what we covered in my last article on the Global Flourishing movement, also called ∑±, it's a new group setup in Auckland recently by a member of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists. The group claims to be aligned with skepticism, humanism and rationalism, but appears to have some concerning characteristics that make it look less like a group of skeptically-minded people, and more like a cult - at least to me.
7 August 2023
In part 2 of this study into the secretive group most commonly known as the Two-by-Twos (TBT), I'll give an overview of the current state of the sect and the numerous controversies it has faced in recent years.
31 July 2023
Recently on facebook a friend posted “Kambo, My first ceremony…” or some such, with an attached photo. Until then I'd not heard of this thing, but it seems it's been around in NZ at least since 2016. It's claimed to be at practice from Amazonian tribes (that's their feeble attempt at an appeal to antiquity). Although no doubt there's truth in that, Brazil banned the sale/marketing of the substance in 2004 so, if you have used genuine Amazonian giant monkey frog poison (yes that's what it is) just know that someone may have committed a crime in Brazil so you could poison yourself and purge though multiple orifaces…you're welcome.
31 July 2023
Last Sunday evening, my wife and I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of Ms. Information at the Auckland International Film Festival. OK, that sounds a little more grandiose than it was - we purchased tickets like most other people in the audience.
31 July 2023
As I've commented in previous issues of the newsletter, I listen to the excellent podcast Be Reasonable, hosted by Michael Marshall (Marsh, as he's colloquially known). In the latest episode (#083, released Wednesday 26th July), he interviewed Nyjon Eccles, a “functional medicine” doctor from the UK. He's a promoter of thermography, which is an Infra-red imaging technique used to scan women's breasts in an attempt to screen for differences in temperature from which, it is alleged, they can infer a possible tumour - that is, breast cancer.
31 July 2023
The TL;DR version of this story is that the Two-by-Twos (TBT) is an international Christian home church movement of the protestant kind founded in Ireland in 1897. Their name is inspired by their ministers, celibate and single men and women, who travel in same-sex pairs and stay for weeks or months at a time with members who live in their jurisdiction; they commonly refer to themselves as The Truth. The TBT is nontrinitarian, meaning that they eschew the Christian doctrine that the holy trinity (Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit) are coequal, coeternal, and united in a single being; readers will be familiar with larger nontrinitarian groups like the Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Unitarian and Unitarian Universalists Christians, and the Mormons. However, not all flavours of nontrinitarianism are the same, as the wikipedia page outlines and the TBT are unitarian in their outlook - The holy spirit is a force from God while Jesus is God's fully human son. Amongst other beliefs are that the TBT knows the true path to salvation while other churches and religions are false; salvation is not attainable through the bible alone but through "works" as well.
24 July 2023
In no way was I properly attired for a prolonged counter protest.
24 July 2023
Eastern Lightning began in 1991 as an offshoot of a Protestant church in Henan, China. In the late 80s and early 90s, other small independent Christian sects were sprouting up all over China that were warning that the apocalypse was coming, and claiming they possessed powers of healing and exorcism. In previous articles, Bronwyn has written on the history of the movement's leaders and presence in NZ, while Dan and Mark have both discussed their experiences within the group. This time round, I'm going to talk about how the Eastern Lightning church grew and survived in China. Most of the information is drawn from Emily Dunn's book Lightning from the East: Heterodoxy and Christianity in Contemporary China.
24 July 2023
On 18 July 2023, a squad of undercover skeptics attended one of Julian Batchelor's “Stop Co-Governance” rallies. The evening proved dramatic. We passed through a gauntlet of counter-protesters to reach the venue. One of us was stopped and questioned by a security guard at the door. When the talk began, protesters in the audience began shouting objections or slogans and disrupting the talk. In one case, there was even a scuffle. Batchelor spent the first half hour asking protesters to leave, declaring that he was “trespassing” them, and waiting for police intervention. The police officers seemed to take their time removing protesters one by one. Audience protest eventually died down, but resumed at the end of the talk, by which point Batchelor's supporters had become short-tempered and shouted insults. Leaving the talk, we then faced another gauntlet of counter-protesters chanting “go home racists.” Somebody even threw a rock at our car as we drove past. In my time with the skeptics, I've never attended an event where emotions ran so high.
24 July 2023
When I last wrote about Eastern Lightning, the strange Chinese cult I joined at the beginning of this year, I celebrated the fact that I had managed to get my hands on a couple of copies of one of their books. Little did I know how much trouble this would get me in!
24 July 2023
When we first arrived at Julian Batchelor's Stop Co-Governance talk, I was stopped at the door. The attendant blocked the doorway and asked why I was there. I was flustered and momentarily forgot the name of the person giving the talk. “I'm here for the co-governance talk” I stammered, and expected him to step aside.
17 July 2023
So, I'm a Diet Coke drinker. I don't drink hot drinks, and never have for my whole life. At least from my teenage years, when hot drinks were introduced in the form of tea, I always found them too hot and would burn my mouth. So, at least for the past few decades, I've consumed a reasonable* amount of Diet Coke.
17 July 2023
The goings on of the late “Bishop” Douglas Metcalf and the Full Gospel Mission/God Squad/Camp David have been on my list to profile for awhile. When I'm able to steer the conversation to my special interest (MLMs, Cults, New Religious Movements etc.,) it is truly touch-and-go whether my unsuspecting audience has even heard of this group. It isn't as if the shenanigans of The God Squad were ever under the radar or have fully faded from public consciousness; Christchurch newspaper The Press has always kept their finger on that pulse and publish updates on former members while ex-followers Serafina Tané and Rosina Claxton/Ngapaki Rose have made their stories available for Australasian news outlets in recent decades. Metcalf's group also draws comparison to a far better known Branch Davidian's and, albeit less frequently, is a topic for American podcasts.
17 July 2023
As I mentioned in my introduction, my wife Susan and I have been on a month-long holiday in the US and Canada. I thought I'd give a few of the highlights which relate to skepticism that we encountered on our trip.
17 July 2023
As I talked about in my introduction, I managed to catch an episode of Black Mirror on Netflix - an episode titled Joan is Awful. I'm going to discuss various plot elements, so SPOILER ALERT!
10 July 2023
Max, one of our regular podcast listeners, messaged us to let us know that Groundswell NZ has recently sponsored a visit by climate denier Dr Tom Sheahen.
10 July 2023
Back in early 2021, Paul (I won't give his last name), a member of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists in Auckland - known as the NZARH, or just the Rationalists - was entrusted with managing a Facebook group of around 500 members that was originally used for a University of Auckland group called the Reason and Science society. The group was renamed to SHARP - Student Humanists Agnostics Rationalists and Philosophers, and appears to have been re-purposed for students at Auckland University.
10 July 2023
It's been a couple of weeks since the final episode of this season's (!!) Sex.Life podcast aired with a less than revealing Q&A. The poor folks at the Culty Conversations facebook page have had to endure my stream of consciousness written but you, lucky skeptics, get to benefit from the cliff notes.
10 July 2023
Dan Ryan wrote an article a few weeks ago about our visit to a Freedoms NZ event, where Brian and Hannah Tamaki, Sue Grey and others extolled the virtues of their new umbrella political party. Currently Freedoms NZ consists of the member parties Vision NZ (Destiny Church's political wing), Rock the Vote, New Nation, Yes Aotearoa and almost the Outdoors and Freedoms Party (Sue just hasn't signed on the dotted line yet).
3 July 2023
Music is an amazing phenomenon. It's something probably every neurotypical person feels connected to. You rarely hear someone say “I hate music” or “that person hates music” and, if you do, I suspect it's not really true. I think it's more likely that that person dislikes loud music, or being in a crowd listening to music, or certain types of music they've been over-subjected to. Perhaps even it could be that they had a bad, maybe humiliating experience related to music when they were young. There are many reasons I can think of that someone might say “I hate music”, and that not actually being true. Music isn't unique to humans either. Many birds are amazing singers. Only I suppose when a bird is singing it's most likely interpreted as “who wants to get laid?”...so… not much different to humans then. All this to say that being such a ubiquitous thing, so universal, and yet how it works is so poorly understood by so many, you know that sooner or later someone will invoke magic or spirituality to define it, and cash in on ignorance to sell something.
3 July 2023
When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time hanging around at my best friend's house. His family were committed Christians, and I was a young atheist. This was a time before I converted to Christianity, as a 17 year old, and I enjoyed arguing with Christians about the age of the earth, the fossil record, etc. It's weird that so many evangelical Christians hang their hat on the idea that the earth is only 6,000 years old, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary that was so easy to grasp that even a clueless 15 year old like me could figure it out. Anyway, I digress…
3 July 2023
About 10 years ago a friend asked me about binaural beats. I had to admit at the time that I was oblivious, and had never heard of them. He proceeded to describe a fun audio effect, one that only works through a pair of headphones. If you play an audio tone (frequency) in each ear, and make the tone in each ear a little different, the difference between the frequencies of these two tones - their interference pattern - can be heard as a third audio tone that sounds like it's originating from somewhere between your ears. So, if you play a 550Hz tone in your left ear, and a 500Hz tone in your right ear, you will also “hear” a 50Hz tone between your ears: 550 - 500 = 50.
3 July 2023
For every Bill Gothard who terrorises his followers into believing that music with a fast beat will bring them closer to the devil, there is a Sri Chinmoy who is driven to play music, albeit atonally, in order to get closer to god.
3 July 2023
I was in JB HiFi the other day and noticed that vinyl records have made a comeback. There were rows and rows of new releases on vinyl LP, selling for between $50 and $60 a piece. It reminded me of an incident a few years ago, when a friend of mine moved from the US to New Zealand.
3 July 2023
As a skeptic I love a good mystery - the kind of puzzle that Arthur C Clarke would write a book or make a TV show about. A couple of weeks ago I found a set of YouTube videos about a contrived mystery - one that's been deliberately created, rather than many of life's “mysteries” that come about because of misunderstanding and a lack of scientific understanding - or real mysteries where there's nothing otherworldly, but just a lack of information that would explain the backstory to a situation.
26 June 2023
Amazon Prime released a 4-part docu series titled Shiny Happy People on June 2nd, 2023.
26 June 2023
Following on from my last article, I decided to see if I could ferret out more “light workers” in New Zealand – the sort of people who worship Trump, and who believe the golden age is “coming real soon now, and we'll be able to laugh at the sceptics”. For the sake of clarity I'll refer to these people henceforth as Light Warriors – you'll see why in a moment.
26 June 2023
Reading some of the latest research on chronic pain management led me down a rabbit hole of further reading, and the discovery of just how damn weird and counterintuitive pain is.
26 June 2023
After the legal troubles and tabloid journalism of the 1980s, as I documented in my last article about ZAP, the furor around ZAP died down to barely a whisper. While the group claimed membership in the thousands, it's estimated that true numbers were much lower and, if it is still even running, it is likely limited to just the most hardcore believers these days.
19 June 2023
I received a text from radio host Graeme Hill the other day, alerting me to a Newshub Nation piece on UAPs (Unidentified Aerial/Anomalous Phenomena) - the new, more “serious” name for UFOs. In the 10 minute video report, Rebecca Wright and Simon Shepherd interviewed Australian investigative reporter Ross Coulthart about his investigation into David Grusch. If Ross is to be believed, David Grusch is the most important whistleblower ever in the history of UFO/UAP revelations.
19 June 2023
A group of skeptical friends (Bronwyn Rideout, Mark Honeychurch and Tim Atkin) invited me to attend a political event, the “_Take Back Your Power Roadshow_”, last week. Freedom NZ, a new fringe political party that serves as an umbrella for five other parties, organised the event. The constituent parties are the New Nation Party, Vision New Zealand, the NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party, Yes Aotearoa, and Rock the Vote. They have been travelling around New Zealand spreading their message, asking for votes and donations.
19 June 2023
Bronwyn suggested I do a bit of psychology myth-busting. So here goes. There are so many I could write a book, so I've picked five. You will notice I haven't included any that relate to actual mental health disorders, I will leave that to the professionals.
19 June 2023
In last week's newsletter, I set as best of a scene as I could with regards to who John Dalhoff/Ultimate was up to the early years of ZAP. In short, Dalhoff was the only son in a very wealthy immigrant family. He went to Massey University in Palmerston North, and did a lot of work with their student publication Chaff. In his 20s Dalhoff joined Scientology, and allegedly was involved in coordinating the gathering of information against enemies of Scientology until 1972, when he himself was kicked out for “ethics violations”.
12 June 2023
A few weeks back I published an item that reviewed the book A Manual for Creating Atheists, by Peter Boghossian.
12 June 2023
No doubt everybody knows about the news of late last week about the indictment of former US president Donald Trump on various federal charges relating to his wilful retention of classified documents, hiding documents, and obstruction of justice. In my opinion, this is a cause for celebration, that they've finally built a case that they can prosecute.
12 June 2023
The last time I wrote the newsletter, I announced our NZ Skeptics conference happening in Dunedin on the weekend of 24th - 26th November, at Taito Otago Settlers Museum.
12 June 2023
The further I explore the rabbit hole of fringe groups, the more I find out about the kiwis who were a large part of the fabric of these organisations - men like William Chesterman (BOTA) and David Mayo (Scientology), who made significant contributions to their respective organisations. Or, the variety of kiwis who earned the appellation of first New Zealander to establish the first New Zealand branch of an overseas religion or spiritual group of their choosing
12 June 2023
We've ragged on “apostle” Brian Tamaki many times in the past, but this week has seen a new crusade emerge.
6 June 2023
On the 26th of May Elon Musk's brain chip firm, Neuralink, announced that they had received FDA approval to launch their first in-human clinical study of a brain implanted device.
6 June 2023
The 2023 remake of The Little Mermaid, recently released in cinemas, has sparked significant controversy and divided opinions on social media platforms. One particular point of contention revolves around the casting of Halle Bailey, a talented performer of colour, in the lead role. Some individuals have raised concerns about the legitimacy of the film's ratings on popular movie rating websites.
6 June 2023
Today I'd like to bring something slightly different to this august newsletter, by discussing crank economics - something that exists in abundance, but can be a little difficult to discuss in venues like this. For one thing, it falls outside the standard set of sceptical skills, and for another it is essentially impossible to discuss crank economic ideas without implicating political beliefs, and that's a fraught exercise at the best of times.
6 June 2023
“An auditor and client using an E-Meter”, or the longest running stitch up in New Zealand History - you decide.
29 May 2023
In the past, we've covered the Disinformation Dozen - a group of twelve people internationally who were/are responsible for promoting a lot of mis- and disinformation, who rose to particular prominence during the peak of the Covid pandemic.
29 May 2023
As many readers will know, NZ Skeptics hold an annual conference. We hold these in various locations around the country, and this year we're holding it in Dunedin.
29 May 2023
You'd have to have been living under a rock to not have noticed the rise of AI (artificial intelligence) technology recently. It seems that hardly a day goes by without some new announcement about it, or some controversy caused by it.
29 May 2023
Sierra Roberts is a New Zealand-based ambassador for the Galactic Federation of Light. She is a dedicated “light worker”, committed to helping humanity ascend from a 3-dimensional environment to a 5-dimensional one (they always seem to skip the 4th dimension!).
22 May 2023
Because it has been a hot second since I wrote about Highden/ISTA, I thought it was time to provide an update on what's been happening since RNZ published their piece on Sacred Sexuality in October 2022.
22 May 2023
Having published Al Blenney's article a few weeks ago about a local “School of Prophets”, and then talking with him on our podcast about how there are several groups in New Zealand that promote Christian prophecy and run annual conferences, I wasn't too surprised to read last week about “ReAwaken America”, a Christian event held in Miami at the Trump National Doral hotel. The story that caught my eye was about a “prophet” called Amanda Grace who warned the assembled crowd about mermaids. Specifically, she said:
22 May 2023
I was so pleased to hear on your latest podcast that you are interested in becoming a scrapbooker and/or card maker! It's a great way to preserve your memories rather than have them languish on your phone, to be lost at Google or Apple's whim.
15 May 2023
This week, we will look at how Franklin Jones led his followers through to the new millennium (including the legal tumult of the 80s), the New Zealand side of the story, and where the group and some of its ex-disciples are now.
15 May 2023
A Manual for Creating Atheists, Peter Boghossian, 2013, Pitchstone Press.
15 May 2023
Sorry, but I'm going to write again about Tesla cars…
15 May 2023
As I mentioned in my introduction, this week I was interviewed about superstitions on the RNZ Nights programme. You can listen to the item here.
8 May 2023
In the book that keeps on giving (to me at least), Robert Ellwood's Islands of the Dawn: The Story of Alternative Spirituality in New Zealand includes a two paragraph profile on the Johannine Daist Communion. I quickly became fascinated in trying to figure out why this group had a presence in New Zealand and why, as with soooooo many other groups I profile, the New Zealand branch of operations persists with an official centre of operations; a distinction that was as notable in its heyday as it is now. So, join me on yet another multi-part episode, as we explore the many names and lives of Johannine Daist/Adidam founder Franklin Jones, aka Avatar Adi Da Samraj, aka Bubba Free Love, aka…
8 May 2023
Having been a member for many years, I think it is about time that I made a confession, which I am told is good for the soul even if it is not very good for my continued membership. I am a committed church member, even though the word “committed” makes me think of mental institutions and prisons. I think of the scriptural stories as parabolic and written to guide one's behaviour, definitely not intended as a scientific text. Therefore when a story is physically impossible or extremely unlikely, I simply shrug my shoulders and think that it is a fable and the important part is the message it is portraying. I would never think of using the Bible as a physics or astronomy textbook any more than I would use the physical science texts as a moral guide. Interestingly, I note that many people who have no religious affiliation take great comfort in thinking that when they die they will meet up with old friends who have “gone before”. I think it would be churlish of me to tell them of my doubts in that regard. Also, I have enough humility to recognise that we are still very far from knowing everything about the physical world.
8 May 2023
I wrote an article a couple of years ago about a new group based on the Sovereign Citizen (or SovCit) movement. The group was planning to take ownership of Abel Tasman national park, using the Allodial Title legal “trick” that ex-lawyer Liz Lambert had been telling anyone who would listen, and create a new country called "New Freeland". Liz shared her trick far and wide; she's written in Facebook groups, told Kelvyn Alp of Counterspin Media on his online news channel, Counterspin, and talked on podcasts, etc. Here are some stills from Liz talking with Kelvyn on Counterspin, including a couple of pages detailing her deep understanding of the law.
1 May 2023
Since publishing Part 1 last week, I've had the opportunity to do further investigating into the backgrounds of Paul Foster Case and Ann Davies. Some parts became verifiable facts, while other elements of their lives remained obscured. So, before heading into the kiwi-side of the Builders of the Adytum (BOTA) story, let's confirm and correct some of the aspects of their biographies.
1 May 2023
Aleh Tsyvinski is a professor of economics at Yale who has been researching Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies over the last few years, in a bid to understand where the currencies sit within an economy, and figure out how to use them to make money.
1 May 2023
Curiosity is part of the human condition, and we are always seeking out information. We devour it. But the world is overflowing with information, and it is really hard to work out what is worth spending our time on and what is not.
1 May 2023
The ketogenic (keto) diet is based on reducing carbohydrate intake drastically, usually to less than 50g a day, and increasing protein and particularly fat intake.
24 April 2023
The perfect group for total introverts.
24 April 2023
I'm still a member of the Eastern Lightning, aka the Church of Almighty God religion, along with Mark Honeychurch, and it has been a fascinating experience learning how this religion ticks. We discussed the group on a recent episode of the NZ Skeptics' “Yeah…Nah!” podcast, and I mentioned that I was unsure if they're actually a cult, but I felt that they checked many of the cult checkboxes. Others agreed that they crossed the threshold, and are probably a full-blown cult. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also calls them a cult. But are they?
24 April 2023
The School of Prophets Aotearoa has this year's annual training school on 4th-6th May in Christchurch, and the fees are very reasonable ($180) - although you have to pay for dinners and accommodation. But before you rush to sign up, perhaps to find out the next month's Lotto numbers, be aware that (1) you'll need to have intermediate or senior level experience as a prophetic minister and (2) you'll need a pastor's reference to attend. The course is apparently not suitable for beginners.
24 April 2023
A New Zealand focused anti-vaccine “documentary” has recently been released, called Silenced. It focuses on broadcaster Peter Williams, as well as ex-GP Anne O'Reilly and sociologist Jodie Bruning, with much of the talk centering around COVID vaccination, the mainstream media and alternative treatments such as ivermectin. It also talks quite a bit about Dr Simon Thornley, past winner of our Bent Spoon award, although the footage the documentary makers shot of Thornley is not used in the documentary beyond a couple of silent clips, as apparently his lawyers recommended after filming that he shouldn't be a part of it.
24 April 2023
Jonny Grady, a long-time committee member, sent an image he'd taken of a “UFO” to the committee last week:
17 April 2023
The last time I wrote my newsletter, I wrote about the NZ Skeptics $100K challenge. We'd just launched it, in conjunction with the NZARH (New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists), who are putting up half of the prize money.
17 April 2023
While not quite in lock-step with Drumm, Cogle did work at Go Media at the same time as Drumm is currently employed at Beauty Book as a Business Development Manager and at Jolly Billboards as a National Sales Manager. She is also listed as the director of Ogle Media Limited (formerly called Jolly Media Limited) and Vegucate Limited. Both of these companies were registered in 2020 but the Registrar of Companies has initiated action to remove Vegucate from the companies register and having not received any objection so far, is proceeding with the removal process. Cogle came to New Zealand from the UK 17 years ago with her Kiwi husband to provide a better life for their children
17 April 2023
Of late I've been seeing some very scammy advertising online for a product that makes astounding weight loss claims. Yes, I know, there are a ton of them out there!
11 April 2023
Despite my regular attempts to unsubscribe from some of the more egregious nonsense I receive in my email, spam still gets through - at this point it seems there's a mailing list that I signed up to that is able to subscribe me to new lists quicker than I can unsubscribe from existing ones. And, to be honest, I don't mind that much. My spam filter is able to deal with most of the fluff, and the stuff that does get through is often great fodder for this newsletter. To that end, I recently received an email titled “The BUDDHA STONE Money Magnet Kit!” which intrigued me:
11 April 2023
In my previous articles about Eastern Lightning, the Chinese cult group that I've joined to get an insight into how they operate, I've talked about:
11 April 2023
It has been a while since I wrote about an MLM properly and, in some ways, Prüvit is both the best and worst MLM to dip into. The health and wellness claims it makes are of great interest to Skeptics, but despite the social media and YouTube furor that the organisation and its distributors create, Prüvit doesn't have a Wikipedia page. It can take a bit of work to get a sense of its history.
3 April 2023
Bronwyn, being the troll that she is, asked if I'd be writing about EV fires this week, after seeing news articles, here and here posted about a fire on the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which involved an EV.
3 April 2023
Ray Comfort's life seems quite blessed. His office in Regent Street survived a fire; footage confiscated from Comfort was not only returned but the police were happy to participate in a dramatic reshoot; and a job in America came the very same day he was fired from his pastoring job.
3 April 2023
Do you think that QAnon is not ambitious enough in its scope? Then you need NESARA.
3 April 2023
At the beginning of this month, we launched our $100K paranormal challenge. The idea is that if somebody can demonstrate a paranormal ability or product, they get to claim the $100,000.
27 March 2023
In my last two articles about Eastern Lightning, I've documented both the central tenets of the religion that they have been trying to teach New Zealanders over the last few months in their Level 1 and 2 fellowship groups, and some of the tactics, such as love bombing, that they've been using outside of the fellowship time to keep members invested in attending the group. Immediately after finishing in the Level 2 group, I was moved to a new Facebook chat group called “_NZ gathering in Almighty God-(10pm Mon/ Wed/ Fri)_”. As you can see from the title there was some blessed relief here, with a reduction from nightly meetings to just three a week. Thank God!
27 March 2023
Finally, we've reached the end of this series profiling major evangelical and fundamentalist Christians and their connection to New Zealand, whether they are home grown (like Nancy Campbell) or viewed New Zealand as an ideal place to extend their reach (like Gothard and Botkin). While I still stand by my claim that Nancy Campbell is one of, if not the most, influential New Zealand writer, Ray Comfort is without a doubt the most influential Kiwi connected Christian. Ever.
27 March 2023
It's only been a couple of weeks since the closing of the Health Committee accepting submissions on their Therapeutic Products Bill consultation, but the committee have already been running follow-up oral submissions. We know that there were 16,549 submissions to the bill, as with the help of a work colleague I've been able to scrape all of the submissions. This is a pretty high number for a bill, but still dwarfed by the number of submissions for the Conversion Therapy Bill a couple of years ago - over 107,000 of them! I'm currently in the middle of trying to run an analysis of all the Therapeutic Products Bill submissions, and if there's anything interesting in there I may write an article soon about what I find.
20 March 2023
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my experience of joining the Eastern Lightning group, a Chinese Christian sect that is currently trying to expand through spamming New Zealanders on Facebook, and running online fellowships to introduce new adherents to the religion. I detailed my first few days in the group, working through their “Level 1” lessons, and some of the conversations I had during the love bombing I received on the first few days from multiple church members.
20 March 2023
Due to circumstances outside of my control, the edition of the newsletter in which Part 1 was published had to be removed from MailChimp - there were issues with a different article in that edition. If you were unable to read/access Part 1, send us an email (at newsletter@skeptics.nz) and we'll either send you a copy or find an alternative format to share it.
20 March 2023
When we started the NZ Skeptics Calendar project last year, the first place Mark Honeychurch and I turned to was our own archive. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as fruitful as it could have been, as editors past had removed all references to dates and newspapers from the clippings published. Still, there was one story that intrigued me…
13 March 2023
I've written about Voices for Freedom many times in the past. For review, they're a group of anti-vaxxers and “freedom” lovers and generally anti-government agitators. They started back in 2020 during the first year of the pandemic. They claim to have quite a following, though of course, that's unverified.
13 March 2023
Due to a special request by chair Craig, I have delayed part 2 of my article on Geoff Botkin to write about a member of the Duggar family. I previously referenced the Duggar family in my article about Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles. They are an ultra-conservative, super-sized Christian family with 19 children that were z-grade reality television celebrities. But nowadays? They are best known for the notoriety of their eldest son, Josh Duggar.
13 March 2023
This is about my unexpected adventure in skepticism a very long time ago in a galaxy not so far away.
13 March 2023
There's been a recent hubbub around the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of infectious diseases, with Covid being the most obvious one.
6 March 2023
I received a company wide email at work recently from a colleague, where they were recommending an app to help people concentrate during work hours by minimising distractions. What caught my eye, though, was a justification given for the need for this app. Apparently if you've been distracted at work, it takes people on average 23 minutes - or, to be precise, 23 minutes and 15 seconds - to fully regain your focus and get back to your work properly. Now, as a skeptic, the specificity of that number alerted me that this was probably nonsense. On top of the unlikely nature of that number, I wondered what relevance “fully” regaining your focus is. If your focus (however that may be measured) is 95% recovered in the first 60 seconds after a disruption, and the rest of the time is a slow crawl to 100%, I imagine that's not so bad. If it's a linear recovery, then it's not so great.
6 March 2023
I visited your admirable monument to early astronomy today as one of a party. You may remember that someone asked if you could source your comment that at some time since Christianity was introduced to England, some of its adherents had tried to destroy Stonehenge, given its pagan origins. As that visitor, I regarded your comment as quite plausible in principle but I had my doubts. If this was true, it would likely have featured prominently in many of the documents, films, videos and TV programs that have covered Stonehenge in recent decades. I had never heard this idea before today and given the coverage just mentioned, I was sceptical. You stated that you believed some contemporary accounts of such destruction exist and we agreed that I should be able to find some documentary evidence with suitable internet searches.
6 March 2023
Having been a follower of Byron Clark since I became aware of his work exploring Aotearoa New Zealand's far-right and alt-right extremism landscape, I have had this book on pre-order for a few months, and have been looking forward to cracking the spine and getting stuck in. While Aotearoa has a long history of far-right groups operating at the edges, what was new, that emerged following the horrific Christchurch terrorist attacks at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre and during the COVID-19 response, was something that we'd not seen before in our country. Fringe groups coordinating with each other, increased reach through online channels, faster cycles of the widespread adoption of conspiratorial ideas, and increased media attention as the movement created its local “influencers”.
6 March 2023
First, a disclaimer. The Church of Almighty God (全能神教会) aka Eastern Lightning (东方闪电; EL) has made a big enemy out of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).While it initially avoided the official xiéjiào/邪教/cults list, EL was identified as a heterodox teaching organisation) in 1995 before receiving its official designation as a dangerous organisation in 2017.
6 March 2023
In late January this year, committee member Katrina Borthwick messaged our NZ Skeptics committee chat channel about a spam message she received on Facebook inviting her to join a fellowship meeting:
6 March 2023
Have you ever received spam messages from an obscure Christian church on Facebook? I did, and it led me down a rabbit hole into the mysterious world of Eastern Lightning. I started investigating Eastern Lightning, aka the Fellowship, aka The Church of the Almighty God, at the end of January. A cult-like, doomsday Christian church, I joined the religion on the 1st of February. It's been a long and gruelling month. I have lots to share, but for this week I'll try to analyse what I've managed to find out about their local membership.
27 February 2023
Last Friday I attended a service for Robert Woolf. Long time members of NZ Skeptics would recognise Robert's name as a committee member, and conference attendee. He also attended Skeptics in the Pub in Auckland back when it was first running.
27 February 2023
If you live in Aotearoa/New Zealand, which most of our readers do, it's time for the 5 yearly census.
27 February 2023
Geoff Botkin is a man with many titles, labels, and accolades you could attach to his name. With a significant portion of his career lost to the pre- and early-internet times, his various biographies have, strangely enough, become more vague and even benign with time compared to the increasingly conservative and right-wing projects he either develops or becomes involved in.
27 February 2023
We've written about Liz Gunn before. For a refresher, she's a former lawyer, then broadcaster/presenter on Television New Zealand (Breakfast and Good Morning shows) and Radio New Zealand. She disappeared from view for a long time, but recently popped up as an anti-vax conspiracy theorist.
27 February 2023
We've been promoting making submissions to the Therapeutic Products Bill. The NZ Skeptics committee has met and put together its official submission, and I've put in a personal submission.
20 February 2023
If you listened to the February 8th episode of the Yeah…Nah Podcast, then this profile should not come as a surprise.
20 February 2023
The proposed Therapeutic Products Bill is currently at the Select Committee stage in parliament, and the committee is looking for feedback via its submissions process. For the first time maybe since the repealed Quackery Prevention Act of 1908, this legislation will attempt to police “alternative medicine”. Almost everything about regulating Natural Health Products (abbreviated to NHPs in this legislation) is new territory. The main issue with this bill, at least from our reading of it, seems to be that the government considers evidence of historical use of an NHP treatment for a condition to be “substantiation” of any health claims about it. So, basically, if a natural health product has been used in the past for treating a medical condition, whether it actually helps or not, the government will just assume that it is effective. This, to my mind, is reckless and dangerous.
20 February 2023
P-hacking is a data analysis technique that can be used to present patterns as statistically significant when there is really no underlying effect. It is a misuse of statistics and a misrepresentation, plain and simple, and disappointingly it's usually perpetrated by scientists.
20 February 2023
The NZ Skeptic's committee has been busy working on our submission for the new Therapeutic Products Bill introduced last year. This new bill aims to regulate therapeutic products in New Zealand, including medicines, medical devices, natural health products, and active pharmaceutical ingredients, to ensure their safety, quality, and efficacy. The Bill will replace the current Medicines Act 1981, Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985, and other minor acts like the Sunscreen Act 2022. The purpose of the Bill is to protect and improve the health of all New Zealanders by regulating therapeutic products across their lifecycle. The Bill will require therapeutic products to receive market authorisation before they can be imported, exported, or supplied in New Zealand. The Bill also regulates controlled activities related to therapeutic products, including manufacturing, supply, exporting, clinical trials, and advertising restrictions. A Therapeutic Products Regulator will be established to oversee these regulatory matters.
13 February 2023
It's 12th February as I write this. Happy Darwin Day! (And, a day before my birthday)
13 February 2023
I began my weekend on Friday night with a trip into the Auckland CBD to try to catch roving fundamentalist evangelical preacher Lincoln Russ.
13 February 2023
Part of the fun of being on the NZ Skeptics committee is that we get sent emails from folk with some “interesting” views. In many instances the emails we get are provocative trolling messages, or sent from overseas accounts and blasted out to multiple skeptical organisations around the world.
7 February 2023
I was in 9th grade in Canada when Columbine occurred, and alongside that tragedy came a burst of energy in Christian youth culture that arrived to save us poor sinners and goths. It also meant an uptick in documentaries that examined this modern iteration of the youth counter-counter culture (leaving us to perpetually wonder what the kids of Jesus Camp are doing). I missed out on youth group hijinx, as the lure of Christian rock and rounds of chubby bunny was not that strong, and I was that sort of teenage atheist jerk that even my most devoted Sally Anne friends knew I was a lost cause.
7 February 2023
I was frustrated and disappointed last year when Samsung refused to repair my Note 20 Ultra 5G under warranty. Despite my efforts to fight for what I believed was a just cause, Samsung gave me the cold shoulder. As a long-time Samsung user (and I still own one now, even after my bad experience), I know the brand can produce great products, but I'm concerned that my recent experience with their practices could be breaching the law.
7 February 2023
No, I'm not talking Skynet here or robots overrunning the earth. I'm talking about the more subtle tools in the background that tend to do a bunch of boring administration. You probably haven't even thought of them overly much. But they might be responsible for what your doctor decided to prescribe you on your last visit, that job you never got shortlisted for, your acceptance into a programme of study, or the reason your bag was searched at the airport.
30 January 2023
As most readers will know, I live in Auckland, which has been subject to torrential rain this weekend, resulting in wide-spread flooding, and three people dead, so far. It was certainly a record-setting event, with close to 300 mm of rain recorded over a 36 hour period at one site, and nearly 250 mm of rain at Auckland Airport (which was closed due to the resulting flooding). It's fairly safe to say that the amount of rain we got can be attributed, at least partly, to climate change. Expect more of the same in coming years.
30 January 2023
One of the most frequent questions I encounter, whether serious or not, is about driving an EV in the rain, or through a carwash. Of course, EVs are well built, and the normal expectation of driving is that they encounter wet weather all the time. Of what use would windscreen wipers be otherwise?
30 January 2023
Over the past couple of weeks, people have been reporting getting unsolicited messages via Facebook Messenger from various religious accounts. I got one myself, and thinking it was just ridiculous, immediately blocked the account. Here's a couple:
30 January 2023
This past week has been quite sad for me. We had to say goodbye to our dog Darwin. I hope you'll indulge me in some reflections on the experience.
30 January 2023
For years, my hobby has been to walk the streets and collect up religious propaganda – most commonly, multicoloured 'Free Tickets to Heaven'.
30 January 2023
Henry VIII was the sixteenth century Tudor king famously known for having six wives with mainly scandalous fates - divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, and survived. It is less known that he also had an interest in amateur medicine. This interest went further than most, fuelled in particular by a painful and persistent ulcerous sore on his leg that came upon him early in his reign, and what appears to be some sort of unpleasant sexually transmitted infection.
30 January 2023
Content warning: This article will include links to Rama Ranson's blogs which include language, themes, or imagery which can be triggering or upsetting.
24 January 2023
An article in Stuff yesterday, reprinted from the Telegraph, showcased the efforts of a scientist to bring statistics to bear on the problem of cryptids. Floe Foxen has supposedly written a couple of papers, yet to be peer reviewed, that look at the “probability” of Bigfoot and Loch Ness monster sightings being something more mundane than a hominid and plesiosaur respectively.
24 January 2023
I was listening to Steve Hassan speaking on a podcast recently, A Little Bit Culty - hosted by ex NXIVM cult members Sarah Edmondson and her husband Anthony Ames. Steve is well known by now for his BITE model of control in cults, and I've written about this model and its usefulness before.
24 January 2023
In his book, Islands of the Dawn: The story of alternative spiritualities in New Zealand, Robert Ellwood explores why New Zealand is attractive to fringe religious groups/alternative spiritualities, and why early settlers and guru seekers of the 1960s-70s loved those groups right back. However, not all groups caused the same level of headaches for the government like the Ananda Marga and Scientology did, or had the same cultural profile as the sannyasins of Rajneesh movement; Ellwood had a sizable list of secret societies that had gone defunct by the 90s.
16 January 2023
“Jock's a Scotsman, and he doesna' like whusky.”
16 January 2023
Today I satisfied one of my pleasures - watching horror movies - and viewed M3GAN (obviously pronounced Megan) which opened late last week. I'd categorise the movie as science-fiction horror with a lot of camp and comedy (mostly intentional, but some unintentional), and social commentary thrown in.
16 January 2023
As Mark and I continue to chip away at the NZ Skeptical Calendar project, my search for fringe groups in the Papers Past database introduced me to Ānanda Mārga (The Path of Bliss or officially,Ānanda Mārga Pracāraka Saṃgha). The groups had an absolutely wild time in New Zealand and Australia throughout the 1970s before they disappeared from the archives, resurfacing intermittently when their humanitarian efforts were being promoted. Ānanda Mārga came to New Zealand in 1974 and soon there were groups in each major New Zealand city; they even operated a health food shop in Nelson.
16 January 2023
There's a new bill being introduced to parliament that is intended to replace our Medicines Act 1981 and the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985. The bill is the Therapeutic Products Bill (TPB) and it's currently at Select Committee stage, meaning that the public is able to provide submissions on it (currently 30 days left as this is published). This presents a rare opportunity to provide input on legislation directly linked to our interests as a society, and we are unlikely to be involved in a legislative change of this magnitude encompassing therapeutic products again for quite some time.
9 January 2023
To restate the question in a way that may make more sense to some, does the new conversational Artificial Intelligence chat bot from OpenAI qualify as an Artificial General Intelligence, able to perform a wide range of tasks as well as a human can - and could it even be self aware, or sentient?
9 January 2023
Skeptics, rationalists, atheists, freethinkers and other secular folk often encounter an annoying rhetorical device when discussing politics, ethics or history with religious people. If conversation turns to some atrocity or scandal committed by adherents of some religion, members of religion often deny that it has anything to do with their “real” religion. Pedophile priests are “not real Catholics,” suicide bombers are “not real Muslims,” and so on.
9 January 2023
It was a relatively well known practice in WW2 (and possibly before) that if your torch/flashlight battery was getting a little flat, a few quick touches to a vehicle battery would restore a fair bit of charge. This information became more public knowledge in the UK, post WW2 when times were tough, and a number of articles were published on it. I cannot now find any, but the earliest article I have read was a 1953 one in "Wireless World" by R W Hallows with some designs and an analysis of these simple methods.
9 January 2023
I spend a lot of time on Youtube and I often opine, as others in the anti-MLM sphere do, that the Youtube algorithm loves to show me ads that are not reflective of my viewing habits. I've seen more than my fair share of business gurus using their outdoor voices to sell me limited time offers for unmissable business opportunities. Maybe it is due to being in the Antipodes, but instead of seeing Grant Cardone or Tony Robbins shilling their seminars, I get an affable kiwi who does her darndest to convince me that I too can make tens of thousands of dollars a month selling on Amazon, with the New Zealand mountains serving big “playground of the rich” vibes.
19 December 2022
In the good news department, Billy Te Kahika and Vinny Eastwood, professional conspiracy theory grifters, who organised protests during the Covid lockdowns in August last year, have now been found guilty of intentionally failing to comply with the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act.
19 December 2022
It's been a while since I've written about the former president of the US, Donald J Trump, but he's recently announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections, likely in an attempt to shield himself from potential legal consequences of investigations into his involvement with the January 6th insurrection, and the Mar-a-Lago classified and top-secret documents case (and likely many other crimes).
19 December 2022
Last Monday (12th December) there was a tragic incident in Wieambilla, Queensland, leaving six people shot dead.
19 December 2022
You would have to have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks to not have heard about the case of the 4 month old baby at Starship Hospital needing heart surgery and, as part of that, donated blood products.
19 December 2022
Until relatively recently Christian protestants had no problems with abortion. The only reference to it in the Christian Bible indicates that an abortion should be attempted if a woman becomes pregnant as a result of adultery (Numbers 5:27) There isn't much wriggle-room in this verse, so latterly fundagelical Christians would rather pretend it doesn't exist, because a bunch of money-grubbing racists decided abortion made an excellent stalking horse.
12 December 2022
I have a friend who I've written about before who, although she's always had pseudoscientific ideas (like giving her children homeopathic remedies), since the pandemic has fallen down the rabbit hole and is currently at the bottom of said hole, picking up more and more daft ideas as she sits there, wallowing. I haven't seen her in a while now - not since I bumped into her at the parliament protest in February - but I do hear about her recent high jinks, and I see her Facebook posts which suggest that she's given up any effort to think critically.
12 December 2022
I, along with some other electric vehicle enthusiasts, attended the Wai Wheels Featherston fundraising event for our son's school. There were 7 electric cars; a Tesla 3 Performance, a Tesla X, two Minis in British Racing Green, two Kia EV6s and my little Nissan Leaf. Some had attended many events like this, and had just been to the Go Green Expo the weekend before. We happily paid the small show fee, as it was fundraising for the school, but when we arrived we weren't lined up with the other cars on display. Instead we were placed adjacent to the other cars, far away in the back corner, because of some nonsense about EVs catching fire. I was initially taken aback; surely they were joking.
12 December 2022
At this very moment, there is a war going on in my body.
5 December 2022
Our year in NZ Skeptical History is still moving along, with the goal of getting it finished (or as close as possible) by the end of 2022. December 5th to December 11th is surprisingly full of interesting skeptical events.
5 December 2022
Recently I received an email that purported to be from the anti-virus company Norton that was blatantly a scam, but I decided to follow through as much as I could to see what the scammers were trying to do. There's often a side effect of doing this, which is that I can waste the time of the scammers - the more time they're on the phone to me, the less time they'll have for scamming people who are at risk of falling for the scam. Plus maybe, just maybe, the scammers will start to question their career choice if many of their potential marks end up making their life a frustrating misery. Below is a series of events that, all in, might have taken about an hour from start to end.
5 December 2022
In her “purest form”, a traditional wife (or the more hashtaggable Tradwife) is a woman who takes a traditional gender role in their marriage and household, and forgoes a career to focus on their family and raising children. One could be forgiven for wondering what makes tradwives different from housewives, for which the answer is the emphasis placed by tradwives on submission to their husband, as well as a heavy dose of 1950s aesthetics or rural landscapes, along with a variety of homey and benign hashtags like #homemaker or #cooking, and the occasional scripture if Jesus is on your speed dial.
5 December 2022
Back in the distant past of … checks calendar… March 2022, I first wrote of a long running scheme of Scottish souvenir plots. In brief, you pay a bit of cash for a square-foot of land, and in return you get a certificate declaring you a laird or lady and the dubious privilege of buying branded kitsch. You can read more about the loopholes that companies that sell souvenir plots exploit in that original newsletter.
28 November 2022
This article was written by one of our conference attendees. He blogs at Atheist Addiction. If you like his work, please visit his site. He'd appreciate a follow!
28 November 2022
2022 has been a hell of a year on the skeptical front.
21 November 2022
On Wednesday evening I attended the Wellington leg of Franklin Graham's God Loves You tour at the TSB Arena. If the name sounds familiar, it's probably because Franklin is the son of Billy Graham, who was quite possibly the most famous Christian evangelical preacher of the 20th century. Billy Graham was well known for his large revival rallies (known as Crusades), with claims of bringing millions of people to the religion. Bronwyn has previously written for us about one of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's projects, the Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes.
21 November 2022
Craig wrote last week about his experience at the Auckland Go Green Expo, and I also mentioned that myself and Bronwyn, along with Daniel Ryan, attended the Wellington Go Green Expo a couple of weeks ago. As I mentioned briefly on last week's podcast episode, apart from the frustration of the fact that the vast majority of stalls have nothing to do with going green, one particular stall annoyed me more than any other.
14 November 2022
Many skeptics will be familiar with the practice of some Christian fundamentalists to stand on street corners warning the public of their impending doom in hell should they fail to repent and believe in Jesus as they do. Usually, these are reserved for inner cities where they can target vulnerable young people (at least, that's what I've seen happen).
14 November 2022
This past weekend I visited the Go Green Expo, which is a show with the general theme of “green” or being ecologically mindful. Such things are usually a magnet for companies promoting bogus products in addition to those with genuine solutions to becoming “greener”.
14 November 2022
Last week we found out about a new short documentary that has been produced - Believing is Seeing.
14 November 2022
As I am in the early- to middle-part of my COVID infection, I've decided that my contribution this week is essentially a redirection to a New York Times Opinion piece by Dr. Elisabeth Bik. Dr. Bik is a microbiologist at Stanford University and the Dutch National Institute for Health with a better-than-average ability to detect patterns. While the NYT article makes it seem that she is the sort who reads scientific papers for fun, her special talent has not made her popular with some of her peers. Her particular skill is identifying image manipulation, whereby photos of blots, agar plates, bacteria from one experiment are flipped, stretched, or cropped to give the appearance of a proven hypothesis or novel finding. Admittedly, Bik doesn't just rely on her eyes for this task. Like other sleuths she utilises software to do some of the work for her, specifically the freely available 29a.ch, but argues that human eyes are still needed to weed out the false positives.
7 November 2022
Ok, the title doesn't really reflect this article as you think it does…
7 November 2022
I went for my walk a different way recently and came across a sign advertising the services of an Accredited Love Teacher offering “Loving angels close to you”. Thinking that sounded promising, if expensive, I read on, only to discover what was really on offer was - among other things - “healing within”, “inner peace” and a “more loving home”. Those, apparently, are what I'd get from the teachings of Caeayaron.
7 November 2022
A couple of weeks ago I went to the Upper Hutt “Mind, Body, Spirit” Fair with Bronwyn, as well as Skeptics in the Pub regulars Alexander and Tim. We were there to gawk at the weird and wonderful stalls, and all that they offered.
7 November 2022
Skeptic Steven Novella recently published an interesting open letter to cranks. In it he speaks in a very forthright, honest way about people who email him and pronounce that they have figured out something that overturns science, or have single-handedly solved one of science's many unsolved puzzles. Steven explains in the letter about the importance of peer review, and talks of the arrogance of those who think they're smarter than the combined wisdom of the world's experts. He makes a really good point that the proper route to making your claims public, and ensuring they are properly vetted and tested, is a lot of hard work - and it's this hard work that cranks are keen to bypass, often preferring to instead jump straight to making claims without designing experiments, and publishing books rather than writing scholarly articles.
7 November 2022
It seems like the answer should be pretty simple - Anne Frank, of course. But sadly not everyone seems to accept this. After a brief hiatus, I've returned to watching the god-awful series Europa, a pro-nazi “documentary” series about World War 2. Last time I wrote about a claim that the voice actor for Winnie the Pooh had secretly recorded most of Churchill's wartime speeches because he was too drunk to do it himself. This time the claim is that Anne Frank couldn't have written the diaries attributed to her because, among other things, much of it is written in ballpoint pen, and that type of pen wasn't invented until the 1950s. I've transcribed what the documentary had to say:
31 October 2022
In depressing (but expected) news this week, it seems that it's highly unlikely we'll be able to constrain global warming to 1.5C, and that we're on a path of irreversible damage to the climate which may well lead to catastrophic failure of the climate and likely extinction of vast numbers of species including humanity. It may not happen in my lifetime, but I do worry for the future young people today.
31 October 2022
Our annual NZ Skeptics Conference, being held in Wellington on 25th - 27th November is just weeks away now.
31 October 2022
Happy Halloween! Today, as this newsletter goes out, it's officially the day of Halloween, or All Hallow's Eve, though, as I write this, in my neighbourhood, children are expected at my door this evening (Sunday).
31 October 2022
The last time I wrote about Highden Temple, I noted that Bruce Lyon had been able to escape public and media scrutiny despite Highden's association with the controversial International School of the Temple Arts (ISTA) organisation.
31 October 2022
This week the social media landscape changed. Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter, after a rather interesting historical timeline around the deal:
25 October 2022
In just a few days a curious annual internet event will begin: No Nut November (NNN). For those not in the know, nutting is a colloquial term for a man ejaculating - and No Nut November is the idea that it's good for people to take time off from ejaculating during November. At places like Reddit's “NoFap” group (fapping is a slang word for masturbating), people talk through November about how well they're doing with the challenge, which has somehow morphed from being an internet joke to something that many young men are taking seriously.
25 October 2022
A notorious religious group from South Korea called Shincheonji (also known as Mount Zion) has apparently been actively recruiting in Auckland recently. Shincheonji has a long history in New Zealand, with underhanded recruiting techniques used to pull people into the cult group. Many years ago, the church in Wellington was using university students to lure people in. I also found a warning from a popular evangelical church here in Wellington from last year, letting people know that a group member had been attending church services and attempting to convince people to jump ship and join Shincheonji. Apparently this process can start as “an invite for coffee” followed by an invite to a Bible Study, from where attempts are made to convince the mark that Shincheonji is the one true religion.
25 October 2022
The brilliant successes of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica inspired scholars in other fields to methodological contemplation. Newtonian physics emphasised, among other things, mathematical laws, empirical measurements and quantification: after all, the full title of Newton's great work translates to “mathematical principles of natural philosophy.” Subsequent scholars attempted to apply similar mathematical methods to other fields. The obsession with numerical quantification had unfortunate results when European anatomists started measuring human racial diversity. They projected their personal prejudices onto essentially meaningless data. A diverse array of harmful pseudosciences resulted. One such pseudoscience was craniometry.
17 October 2022
We've covered Alex Jones many times in the past. Alex Jones is a fairly well-known far-right radio show host and conspiracy theorist. Most skeptics will be aware of his InfoWars website, which promotes conspiracy theories and certified-real fake news.
17 October 2022
In Part 1, I hoped to have painted a picture of Dr. Bronner as an Ideas man above all else. Sure, he had the skills necessary to make a decent soap product but it was secondary to his message. His family came a distant third to that same message while operational requirements of running the whole Dr. Bronner's magic soap outfit came fourth.
17 October 2022
We've talked about the local body elections over the past couple of months, and now the results are in. Local freedom, anti-vax and conspiracy theory group Voices for Freedom tried to sway the elections by encouraging their members and supporters to stand but hide their affiliations.
17 October 2022
I'm encouraged by news from the Center for Inquiry (CFI), a skeptical organisation in the US. They are suing the CVS and Walmart pharmacies for their placement of homeopathic products alongside real efficacious medical products.CFI refers to Homeopathy as “Fake Medicine”, which it surely is.
10 October 2022
Newsletter readers and podcast listeners have probably picked up by now that my errand run takes me into stores and up aisles that many skeptics wouldn't tread (unless you are Mark Honeychurch). For every bit of silliness, such as ceremonial cacao and at-home hormonal tests, the local organic shop has also been a reliable stockist of feminine hygiene products and long-lasting cleaning products that, until recently, were unavailable in normie New Zealand supermarkets. One such product that I've always kept under the bathroom sink is a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Soap. If the name doesn't sound familiar, then maybe you know its infamous blue and white label:
10 October 2022
This week brings a welcome decision from the Supreme Court, in a case that the NZ Skeptics have been
10 October 2022
In preparation for our next podcast episode, where we plan to talk about Bronwyn's articles on Dr Bronner, I watched a documentary the other day called Dr Bronner's Magic Soapbox. The documentary used footage from another, much older documentary called Rainbow Bridge - a weird piece of experimental film about a hippie community in Hawaii. The end of the documentary contains footage of a live gig Jimi Hendrix performed in Hawaii soon before his death.
3 October 2022
3 October 2022
Hey, I know that there are some skeptics in Auckland. We're holding our first regular (monthly) Skeptics in the Pub this Tuesday night (4th October, 7pm) at Dice & Fork at Victoria Park Market. We'd love to see you there.
3 October 2022
The NZ Skeptics Conference 2022 is being held in Wellington on the weekend of 26th and 27th of November. We'd love to see you there, in person. We've got some great speakers lined up, and it will be great to see everybody again.
3 October 2022
This past week has been replete with stories related to climate change. Firstly, there's Hurricane Ian which has wreaked havoc and destruction and loss of life in Florida most recently, but previously in Cuba and Puerto Rico. It's fairly obvious that extreme weather events are exacerbated by climate change, and that living near the coast is going to be an increasingly risky proposition for large numbers of people.
3 October 2022
One of our readers from the other side of the world, a Kiwi living in Ireland has told us about a Destiny Church in the UK.
3 October 2022
In my last newsletter I mentioned the local body elections which are currently underway. The elections have some candidates standing who are aligned with various “freedom” and anti-vax groups. The media has done a fairly good job of identifying at least some of the candidates representing dodgy positions.
27 September 2022
In October 2021 Monat launched in Australia, to much internal fanfare and not much else. Engagement on their facebook page is meagre, and their Instagram is only marginally better. One of the incentives offered to potential distributors (or market partners, in Monat parlance), if they registered early, was a chance to earn shares through the Asia Pacific Founders Pool. The company had been incorporated in NZ as a branch of Monat Australia, and I was curious if anything would come of it.
27 September 2022
In this day and age, with the internet as a handy tool, it doesn't take long for an offhand comment on Twitter or Facebook to become a rumour, and from there to mutate into a conspiracy. Sadly, much of the time these rumours are both extremely unlikely and very boring. However, the recent story about a stoush between veteran chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and teenage newcomer Hans Niemann had me laughing when it was relayed to me at a recent Skeptics in the Pub event, so I figured I'd glance my skeptical eye over it. And now you all get to read my musings.
27 September 2022
On the 28th of April 2020 Dr. Yan Limeng, a virologist from China, arrived in the United States requesting asylum and claiming to have evidence that COVID-19 was deliberately engineered and released by the Chinese government. She was a legitimate scientist working in the field, having published articles on coronaviruses in reputable journals like The Lancet and Nature. The FBI interrogated her for several hours, and she was then permitted to stay in the US. Her safe passage out of Hong Kong was arranged and paid for by Chinese dissidents in the US allied with Steve Bannon (Breitbart news founder and former chief strategist to President Trump).
19 September 2022
Finally this week, I received my local body elections pack. I have the opportunity to vote for candidates for the Mayor of Auckland, and members of the Auckland Council, for a local board, and also a liquor licensing trust (where I live in Auckland, we're a “dry” area - where we can only purchase alcohol from licensing-trust-run businesses).
19 September 2022
At-home testing is not a new concept. More than likely you or someone you know tests their blood sugar levels regularly and needs to treat a low blood sugar at some point. Home pregnancy and ovulation tests are also ubiquitous.
19 September 2022
One of our skeptical operatives informed us of a Voices for Freedom flyer that's been turning up in mailboxes across the country. This one concerns masking.
19 September 2022
So, as I've mentioned Mark, Bronwyn and I paid a visit to the Mormon Temple in Hamilton, or as it's more formally known, the temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
12 September 2022
For anyone who wants to groan about how bad our local press can be, there's an article from the Telegraph, reprinted by the Herald and titled "Scientists discover humans produce invisible aura of air-cleansing molecules", that talks about the idea of the existence of an “aura” around our bodies. The article uses a recent study that looks into a small amount of “free radicals” that are generated by our skin to argue that, technically, these chemicals could be considered to be an aura.
12 September 2022
How much would you pay to be led in a chant before drinking a bitter cup of cacao?
12 September 2022
The condition Irlen Syndrome is a popular diagnosis for children with learning issues, and is described as a perceptual processing disorder rather than an optical problem. It has failed in rigorous evaluation time after time and is basically a medical zombie. It was first described by an Auckland teacher, Olive Meares, in 1980.
12 September 2022
I'm English by birth, and in my youth had something of an unusual connection to the British royal family because of where I grew up, the Isles of Scilly. The islands are owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, which means they're the property of the Prince of Wales. As such, as a teenager I was not so much used to seeing Charles, Diana or the Queen (although they did visit the islands regularly) as I was used to seeing paparazzi photographers turning up with their ridiculously long telephoto lens to get that exclusive photo of Charles and Diana relaxing on holiday.
12 September 2022
In the latest of my weird and wonderful ideas for websites that are fun and a little quirky, I've recently put together a page that has one simple purpose - to help you choose which god you should pray to when you next need something to turn out in your favour:
12 September 2022
It's been a while since the Auckland skeptics met for an evening of socialising, but at long last there's an event happening this Friday. As Bronwyn and myself are hoping to be in Auckland on Friday after our visit, with Craig, to the Mormon temple in Hamilton, we figured it'd be good to meet in a pub afterwards and decompress over a beer or two.
5 September 2022
Back in the March 21, 2022 edition of the Skeptics Newsletter, I wrote about the scheme/scam of becoming a fake Scottish Lord (or Laird as the case may be). One of the new sales tactics is to take on a conservation mission to your purchase, the promise that you are saving some wildcats, creating a nature reserve, or having a tree dedicated in your honour. The impact of these add-ons is questionable, subject to lawsuits and allegation of funny financial dealings. Even more concerning is the lack of transparency about who is advising these companies about the reintroduction of nativa trees and the deforestation of invasive ones.
5 September 2022
This last week has been pretty astounding on the topic of conspiracy theorists.
5 September 2022
Popping up on my various social media feeds over the past year or so have been ads for “THE Interview”. I'm going to take a look at this and the movement behind it.
5 September 2022
Stuff.co.nz: The Tupperware Party is over
29 August 2022
At The Society for Science Based Healthcare we believe that public health measures in New Zealand should have a clear basis in science and evidence, and we work to counter misinformation in New Zealand. Over the years, our complaints had made many a few people unhappy, especially people from alternative medicine organisations. We've had people throw insults at us, rant against us, call us racists, personally target us on social media and threaten us with a lawsuit, all because we asked: "where is the evidence?".
29 August 2022
Work on the NZ Skeptical calendar (our attempt to find a New Zealand skeptical event for every day of the year) continues apace, with 346 individual events recorded and now only 140 days remaining to be filled. This month has been especially busy, with Brian Tamaki and the rest of the anti-mandate, anti-vax pundits making headlines with one debacle or another.
29 August 2022
On Tuesday, Freedoms and Rights Coalition members converged on Wellington for another protest about our “freedoms”, and of course I was there to see what was going on.
22 August 2022
And now that I've just written about Chantelle Baker, the latest news is that her page, where she shared a lot of her content, has been removed from Facebook for violating community standards. It's gone the same way as other prominent pages, such as Voices for Freedom. That will affect her ability to spread her message as Facebook is often a gateway to pulling people into these movements, though she's planning on moving to other platforms such as YouTube, and likely more niche platforms such as Rumble and Odysee.
22 August 2022
Last week Stuff Circuit, part of the Stuff media organisation, released their Fire and Fury documentary.
22 August 2022
Back in April's newsletter, Craig talked about David Farrier's investigative work uncovering alleged harms that happened within Arise Church.
22 August 2022
So in a couple of months we're all going to have the opportunity of voting in the local body elections, for our city, district and regional councils. And in some areas, there are elections for local and community boards too.
15 August 2022
One of the more controversial treatments the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) currently pays out for is acupuncture. This is controversial partly because of the lack of clinical evidence for acupuncture's efficacy, a fact that ACC has admitted in a past meeting.
15 August 2022
By which I mean I recommend watching a new documentary called “Gloriavale”, which focuses on the infamous religious group. I most definitely don't recommend converting to their religion and moving to the Gloriavale compound on the South Island. I went to a Film Festival viewing of the documentary yesterday, before general release to cinemas next week, and there was also a fascinating Question and Answer session afterwards with some of the filmmakers and subjects of the documentary. Here's the trailer:
15 August 2022
Before you read further, I want to make it clear that this article is in no way an indictment about the sexual activities of consenting adults, or casting any aspersions or judgement on sex work. Instead, I am taking a surface view of some current controversies where the absence of effective mechanisms to address accusations levelled at ISTA are embedded in its foundation.
15 August 2022
NASA recently held a press teleconference where they announced that they will be investigating UAPs - Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. This is a new term being used instead of UFOs, given that UFO suffers from both not being very descriptive (Unidentified things people see in the sky might not be Flying, and they might not be Objects - planets, clouds and aurora are often mistakenly thought to be mysterious objects, but none of them are flying; and the Northern and Southern aurora aren't objects, just cool light shows caused by solar particles), and having a lot of baggage attached to it - when people read UFO, they instantly think aliens. Here's NASA announcing their project:
8 August 2022
Alex Jones has been sued by parents for his claims on his TV show that the Sandy Hook school massacre was faked by the government as a way to take away people's gun rights. These parents are suing because, as a result of Jones' rhetoric, they have spent years dealing with abuse up to and including death threats - and this is after they lost their children in a massacre that Jones has been telling people never happened.
8 August 2022
It's nice to occasionally be able to talk about nonsense outside of New Zealand. In this case, the Sydney Morning Herald recently printed - and then retracted - an article about a supposed new form of water called hexagonal water, made up of H3O2 molecules.
8 August 2022
Highden Manor House (Source)
8 August 2022
New Zealand introduced community water fluoridation (CWF) in the 1950s, expanded its coverage rapidly in the 60s, and has been relatively stable until recently.
1 August 2022
Over the last couple of weeks I've been watching a documentary series called Europa: The Last Battle. It covers the history of Jewish communities around the world, and of the rise of Hitler. It's described on IMDB as “Historical Truth Setting”, with quite a high average rating of 7.3 out of 10 and some positive reviews, saying things such as:
1 August 2022
I've always been interested in IQ tests and how they work. There's an interesting, and deep, conversation to be had about the issues with IQ tests. Without going into too much detail, although IQ tests appear to have some utility, there are problems for example when it comes to cultural differences among the people being tested. If an IQ test has been written from a single cultural perspective, and makes assumptions based on that culture, people who haven't been brought up in that culture can do badly on tests because of their differences in understanding of the questions being asked.
1 August 2022
Online news outlet Vice reported recently about a growing problem of witches, psychics and tarot card readers having their online profiles copied as a way to steal their business. I also found an episode of the “Your Magic” podcast where host Michelle Tea talks with Sarah Potter, Sabrina Scott and others about the problem:
1 August 2022
I've been interested in the mention of “12,000m tonnes of water” to be shipped out every day. The figure is clearly ridiculous, but it is interesting to think of the logistics if it was to be true. When assessing a figure spat out by someone, I like to try to put it into some kind of perspective and see if it passes the “sniff test". Below are some figures that might instantly put this one to bed.
25 July 2022
This past week has seen the alarming heat waves in Europe, with the UK seeing highest ever temperatures, exceeding 40C.
25 July 2022
Regular readers of our newsletter will have seen the “adverts” for our official podcast - Yeah... Nah!, which we record on a fortnightly basis. Mark, Bronwyn and I discuss recent skeptical topics, usually in a sort-of pub chat format. We enjoy recording it, and we hope that listeners enjoy hearing it.
25 July 2022
Just a friendly reminder that the Covid pandemic is not over. We continue to see cases and an alarmingly high daily death rate, which had an all time high of 32 people dying one day last week.
25 July 2022
Last week some of our media engaged in an attack on Dr Siouxsie Wiles. Siouxsie, with her iconic pink hair, has been a leading voice globally, but certainly here in NZ/Aotearoa for a sensible, science and evidence-based approach to handling the Covid pandemic. (And, of course, Siouxsie will be familiar to many NZ Skeptics, having MC'd and spoken at our conferences in the past.)
25 July 2022
I know my contributions tend to call back to the prehistoric time of 2002 to 2006, when I was completing my first of three (and in three years, fingers crossed, four) degrees. This time, rather than being a ploy to justify my continuing procrastination on the next instalment of the MLM series, my inspiration came from the recent skeptics in cyberspace meetup. Discussion arose around Mensa and whether they were a viable, alternative audience for persons unsuccessful in promoting their pseudoscience via NZ Skeptics. As with any topic where I have a personal stake and Mark Honeychurch, like a moth to a flame, is drawn to its more absurdist elements, anyone on that Zoom call was treated to an awkward, albeit brief, verbal tussle about who was going to write about what.
18 July 2022
In 2016, I made an Advertising Standards Authority(ASA) complaint against Weleda Arnica Cream and other arnica products about their misleading health claims on HealthPost's website.
18 July 2022
There's something about bracelets that seems to attract pseudoscience.
18 July 2022
Has anyone noticed that NZ stoner supplies mainstay, Cosmic Corner, has been taking a more witchy route as of late? Increasing its stores of tarot cards, smudge sticks, and crystals? The answer for why may lie in how magic and witchcraft have rapidly dominated TikTok, currently one of the world's most popular social media platforms.
18 July 2022
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I went to parliament to pray with a group of Christians recently. Simeon Brown was the only MP at this event, and he asked us to pray for Three Waters. He said that although he would not say what his stance was on Three Waters, as the prayer event is meant to be non-partisan, he has a very strong stance (to be clear, Simeon isn't a fan of Three Waters - and the National Party has pledged to repeal it when they are next elected).
11 July 2022
In my last newsletter, I put a call out for people to help with a project investigating pharmacies and the pseudoscientific products they had on their shelves. We got a good response, with several people coming on board to help with the project.
11 July 2022
As one of the oldest treatises on medical ethics, The Hippocratic Oath is understood to be a reflection of the beliefs and practices of the ancient Greek physicians for whom it was intended. The attention that the Oath has gained over the centuries has allowed it to assume a sort of authority in today's ethical debates and amongst modern doctors. However, the contradictions that arise between the oath and the remainder of the corpus show that the oath brings into question the appropriateness of that authority; its principles are presented as being based on ancient societal norms rather than fringe beliefs. It may be that the oath was as inapplicable and irrelevant to the lives of the ancient Greeks as it is today but you wouldn't know it from social media outrage.
11 July 2022
If you've been around skeptical circles for a while, you'll have no doubt heard of the Georgia Guidestones - a granite monument that was constructed back in 1980 in a rural area in the US state of Georgia.
11 July 2022
I regret to inform you that the psychics have won. They've clearly demonstrated their abilities and the $100,000 challenge at Puzzling World in Wanaka is now over.
11 July 2022
I got into a conversation with some people on Twitter over this past weekend, after commenting on an article about people overdosing on vitamin D.
4 July 2022
Warning: The subject matter of this article may be distressing to some due to discussions about children, death, and handling of dead bodies.
4 July 2022
One of the ways that I monitor unskeptical groups is by signing up for their newsletters - at the moment I receive regular emails from Voices for Freedom, Scientology, Eckankar, Freedom Village, Transformation Into The New Paradigm and more. The titles of some of the recent emails I've received include such gems as:
4 July 2022
Last week Craig mentioned a website I've built recently - weak.link. I figured I should probably talk a little about what the site is, why we think it's needed, and how to use it. I'll also geek out a little about how it's built, for those who may be interested.
27 June 2022
This weekend we saw the first official celebration and statutory holiday for the Māori new year - Matariki.
27 June 2022
This weekend I took a look at the FutureFit website. This site is designed to make people aware of their carbon footprint - the amount that their household is contributing to climate change through Greenhouse gas emissions.
27 June 2022
NZ Skeptics has been running a project that investigates products sold in pharmacies that are based on pseudoscience - you know the sort of stuff - homeopathy, and various herbal remedies with scant evidence of efficacy.
27 June 2022
Last week it was announced that the US Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade - the landmark case from 1973 that protected the rights of pregnant people in the US to have abortions. The ruling set out rules around what states could regulate depending on the trimester stage of the pregnancy.
27 June 2022
I like to keep an eye on some of the more weird and wacky conspiracy theorists in New Zealand, as well as some of the more dangerous ones - I'm not sure why, but it feels like a disproportionate number of them come from overseas. Whether it be Lee Williams from the UK, who is ironically worried about immigrants coming to this country and the UN's secret agenda, or Damien De Ment from America, who thinks we should overthrow the government, these are some of the most vocal “alternative” voices in New Zealand.
20 June 2022
The title of this one's a mouthful, and it's an interesting one to pick apart - it includes some of my favourite technologies, one that I think is going to be an important part of our future and the other which I think is a storm in a teacup, and unlikely to disrupt anything of note.
20 June 2022
One of the types of AI that is progressing at speed at the moment, in places like Google's AI labs and at a company called OpenAI, is Natural Language Processing algorithms. These deep learning algorithms are pieces of software that are “trained” by getting them to process (read) lots and lots of human written text, and try to infer a set of rules for how to create new text like it's been reading. This source text is usually documents from the internet (using software that crawls through websites, linking to new sites and saving all the text it finds). Once the AI has been trained, when given a new piece of text, like a sentence, it will try to guess which word is most likely to come next. When it does this repeatedly, it can form entire sentences and paragraphs, guessing as it goes - and because its learning algorithm has figured out not only the rules of grammar but also the ways in which humans usually communicate (which words are relevant to a topic, etc), the most recent NLP algorithms do a really good job of coming across as human. They can also use this same technique to draw pictures - Dall-E 2 is amazing at creating unique images given a prompt like “a cat dressed as Napoleon holding cheese” - with the phrase “a propaganda poster depicting a cat dressed as french emperor napoleon holding a piece of cheese” giving this result:
20 June 2022
On Friday, June 2nd 2022, homophobic and antisemetic slurs were grafittied on both sides of Glora of Greymouth, with a burned rainbow flagged staked to the ground out front while the owner/operator slept inside. The deconsecrated church is a performing arts venue/arts project which hosts events for the rainbow community.
20 June 2022
On Friday night just over a week ago I went to a Save Our Children meeting. Now, most people will read that and think I've been a civic-minded citizen, going along to a charity meeting. Save Our Children is a good thing, right? To which the answer is no, because Save OUR Children is not the same thing as the established charity “Save THE Children”.
13 June 2022
Louise Wallace is a reality TV actor, most recently having appeared on The Real Housewives of Auckland - a show I've not seen, but the title of which puts me off immediately. She's also previously appeared on various current affairs shows, and also worked as host of The Weakest Link, a TV quiz show from the early 2000s..
13 June 2022
Country of Origin: Doral, Florida, United States
13 June 2022
We've covered the Peter Ellis case before, and indeed, it was a particular focus of NZ Skeptics activity in the 1990s.
13 June 2022
I continue to monitor the emails sent out by the Voices for Freedom crowd. My reaction is usually a combination of disbelief and despair. My impression is that they're struggling to remain relevant. Now that the vaccine mandates have disappeared, they seem to be concentrating on all manner of whacky stances.
7 June 2022
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my visit to Counterspin's travelling roadshow (maybe circus is a better term?), but I figured that everyone might want some background - and an update on how their tour's going.
7 June 2022
Founded by: Bjørn Nicolaisen
7 June 2022
There are two theories about the nature of hypnosis – one that it is an altered state of consciousness (ASC) and the other that it isn't. Prof. Charles Spanos of Carlton University (Canada) conducted a large number of hypnotic regressions – the induction of an experience of an apparent previous lifetime – on students at Carlton. He would subtly prime a subject on what to expect in such an experience. For example, he might suggest to subjects that children were generally mistreated in the old days, and that was what a significant number of his subjects found, For another group of subjects he would suggest that children were well-treated and this is what was reported. He'd ask his hypnotised subject simple questions about where and when they found themselves, what the currency looked like, who the country's leader was and whether the country was at war. These answers – as any sceptic might expect – were usually wrong. He also primed one group to expect past-life experiences under hypnosis and another that such experiences were rare. And the two groups largely delivered what they had been primed to expect. On the basis of his work Spanos concluded (agreeing with previous academics) that his subjects were involved in a kind of play-acting and that hypnosis was, indeed, not an altered state of consciousness. From Wikipedia:
7 June 2022
I received an email last week with a stern warning:
30 May 2022
I'd like to draw attention to the work done by Te Pūna Matatini. They have released an initial report on mis- and dis-information in Aotearoa New Zealand.
30 May 2022
The Ishango Bone - photo by Joeykentin
30 May 2022
It cannot have escaped anybody's notice that this week there was yet another mass shooting at a school in the USA - this time in Uvalde, Texas.
30 May 2022
Over the past few months, I've been contacted a few times by one of our members sending information about Covid from the popular podcast TWiV - This Week in Virology. The podcast is hosted by Dr Vincent Racaniello with a number of co-hosts. Dr Racaniello has spent 40 years in virus research at Columbia University.
23 May 2022
Accelerated Christian Education (known as A-C-E or ACE) is in the news, and for all the wrong reasons. ACE is a homeschooling curriculum from the US (Texas) which is accredited in New Zealand, and covers children from age 5 through to college level. Here's Duane Howard, Vice President of ACE, talking about what he thinks education should be for (check out some particularly icky stuff he says around 32 minutes in):
23 May 2022
I watched a great video on YouTube the other day, the latest in a series of videos by Mark Rober where he uses glitter bombs to surprise scammers. His project started off using a device that targets people who steal packages from people's porches. A fake package was built that would activate when opened, with a glitter throwing disc, a mechanism to press down on a fart spray nozzle, and cameras to record and upload thieves' reactions when they opened the packages in their homes or cars.
23 May 2022
Yesterday evening I attended an interesting Counterspin Media event in Wellington. Counterspin, for those not in the know, is an “alternative” media organisation in NZ run by Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer. They have a small studio from which they create long videos about conspiracy ideas, and post these videos to places like Rumble, Telegram and GTV (because they keep getting banned from more moderate platforms such as YouTube and Facebook).
23 May 2022
Country of Origin: Gilbert, Arizona, United States
23 May 2022
Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, which I recently bought from a charity shop and have been reading before bed, contains a chapter on cosmology. Explaining the evidence for the Big Bang, it discusses, among other things, how Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson inadvertently discovered the cosmic microwave background. In 1962, adapting an obsolete satellite transmission antenna for radio astronomy, they detected an unexpected noise. They pointed their antenna at various astronomical objects, and at New York City, but the signal came from all directions. They examined their instrument and ruled out possible radiation from the antenna itself. Eventually they reached out to Princeton University, where a team led by Robert Dicke had been making theoretical calculations that explained the signal. For their discovery, Penzias and Wilson shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics.
16 May 2022
On May 17th, 1894, news of an arrest made in Petone the previous night hit the broadsheets and started spreading across the country and even over the ditch. While it wasn't a case of murder, there was certainly no small amount of mayhem and mystery which left reporters hoping for some scandalous revelations to be made.
16 May 2022
Late last week saw some carnage in crypto markets - dubbed the crypto crash. We've covered cryptocurrencies and their associated technologies, such as NFTs many times.
16 May 2022
I was interested to read an article about the unexpected death of babies. This used to be called Cot Death, but is now referred to as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). There's also a broader term Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI) - which encompasses SIDS but also includes sleeping accidents.
16 May 2022
Now for a bit of an amusing item.
9 May 2022
Country of Origin: Michigan, United States
9 May 2022
Most of us will know Ken Ring both for his claim that he can predict the weather by looking at the moon, and his supposed ability to predict earthquakes. Here's Ken talking about how you can supposedly also use rainbows to predict the weather:
9 May 2022
I received an email the other day from Joanne O'Brien, who according to her website is a Professional Organiser, Image Consultant and Health Coach. Now, I'm not going to deny that I am probably in need of all three of these services, but despite that I have no idea why I received this email from her (although I accept that I may well have signed up for a newsletter at some point). The email was advertising the health aspect of Joanne's repertoire, promoting an “amazing treatment” called Rife Therapy. It said:
2 May 2022
Country of Origin: Orem, Utah, United States
2 May 2022
Recently there's been a flurry of activity from a group in New Zealand who believe that they are Sovereign Citizens - that they have disconnected themselves legally from the laws of our country. Sovereign Citizens believe that the government is an illegitimate corporation with which they have no contract - that they can therefore exempt themselves from our country's laws, and pick and choose which laws they want to obey, which they describe as common law.
2 May 2022
Late last year Dr Nikki Turner appeared on TVNZ's Seven Sharp current affairs program to talk about the number of people who would be expected to have medical problems from being given the Pfizer COVID vaccine.
25 April 2022
A friend (Gaylene Middleton from the New Zealand Humanists) contacted me on the weekend as she had been messaged by one of her Facebook friends about a Government Grants assistance program she is apparently eligible to receive funds from. She immediately looked up the name of the program - Federal Grant For Family Home And Care Support (FGHS) - and found an article warning that it was a scam, and then she messaged me to double check and because she thought I may be interested in it. Here are the messages she received from her FB friend, which she passed on to me (apologies for the really bad grammar):
25 April 2022
Country of Origin: Pleasant Grove, Utah, United States
25 April 2022
I heard something interesting from my teenage daughter the other day, a story about some of her friends who have suddenly picked up a tic - a type of involuntary physical movement. I'd heard about this before, a couple of years ago, so I went looking online for any articles to confirm what I'd remembered from before; the idea that this is a mass psychogenic illness.
25 April 2022
I've written before about how impressed I've been with the good work The Satanic Temple has been doing in the US and other countries, using the irrational fear of Satanism many Christians hold as a tool to push for secularism, and showing that the ability to do good things is not something that is exclusive to Christianity. Sometimes Christians in the US ignore the idea of the separation of church and state, and start up after-school Christian clubs or offer prayers at the opening of legislative sessions. The Satanic Temple will often counter these breaches by demanding the right to equal treatment - asking to open local government meetings with a Satanist prayer, or applying to run an after school Satanic club for kids.
18 April 2022
As I write this on the Sunday of Easter weekend, it was announced on Saturday evening that John Cameron, lead pastor at Arise church, had resigned his position on the board, though remains as an employee of the organisation. Additionally, his brother Brent had also resigned from the board. This was announced through a statement on their website.
18 April 2022
I might well be stealing Mark's thunder here, as he has written extensively on NFTs in the past.
18 April 2022
Trigger warnings: Mentions of Suicide and infant death
18 April 2022
It would be hard to miss that there has been some controversy in the science community in Aotearoa/New Zealand around the role of Mātauranga Māori (translated as Māori knowledge) in the school curricula.
11 April 2022
We're currently putting together a calendar of historical skeptical events relevant to New Zealand - and we're aiming to have at least one event for every day of the year. It's been a lot of fun so far, and we've found a lot of fascinating stories about New Zealand that I'd never heard before, like:
11 April 2022
This evening I attended a meditation session with the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis - an occult group made famous by Aleister Crowley). I'm not sure what I expected, but the session was advertised as a welcoming environment where it was okay to attend but not participate. This sentiment was echoed by the host when myself, Bronwyn Rideout and others arrived at the event. We were walked through several meditation techniques, starting with singing a song accompanied by a live guitar - Kiss the Earth by Ajeet Kaur (you can have a listen at the top of this article).
11 April 2022
Arise church is near to my heart - when I first arrived in New Zealand back in 2005, my wife joined the church while it was still small, and before it was even called Arise. Since then it has grown to be a behemoth - every so often I check on Arise's annual returns, and it seemed that each year they would expand enough to make about $1 million more than the previous year. At the moment that number stands at $13 million in income for the last year. They also own several properties worth a combined $21 million, including a church building in Wellington worth $10 million or more.
11 April 2022
I recently had a clear out of my email inbox, as I'd reached about 20,000 unread emails. As a part of this onerous task, I unsubscribed from a large number of mailing lists. Many of them were from online stores where I'd never agreed to be emailed in the first place, but a bunch of them were from conspiracy groups where I'd signed up for more information, or filled in a form to get access to a series of nonsense videos (like “_The Truth About Cancer_” and “_GMOs Revealed_”, two truly awful video series). It was obvious that several of these mailing lists I hadn't even signed up for, so I assume there's some crossover and sharing of mailing lists between these groups. There are also some groups that I've decided to still receive emails from, such as Family First and Voices for Freedom, because I think it's important to keep an eye on them.
11 April 2022
There's a new convoy driving through the country at the moment, and this time it's heading not for parliament, but to Marsden Point. Yep, a bunch of cars (and, from what I can tell, no actual trucks) are heading to Marsden Point for Operation Gaslight. The last report in their Facebook group stated that they've amassed 16 cars, two horse floats and a motorbike.
11 April 2022
April is Autism acceptance month, and amidst the annual articles reminding everyone that lack of eye contact and an inclination for stimming isn't the worst thing in the world, the ghost of Andrew Wakefield's deception rears its head again.
4 April 2022
I've previously revealed that I keep an eye on Voices for Freedom by subscribing to their email newsletter, where they send out communications to their flock. I don't pretend that they're not aware they have “moles” who subscribe - and so it's likely that their newsletter only contains the most sanitised versions of their thoughts. I don't have the personal free time or inclination to subscribe to their Telegram channels to see what's really being discussed behind the scenes.
4 April 2022
4 April 2022
Has Putin come under the Rasputin-like spell of some mystic philosopher(s)?
4 April 2022
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a catastrophe for Ukraine. Casualty figures at time of writing are in the tens of thousands, nearly four million people have fled to other countries, and over six million more have been internally displaced. It's an outrageous act of military aggression that demands a sharp response. The Russian nuclear arsenal makes a direct military confrontation between NATO allies and Russia unwise, but the countries of the NATO alliance are right to impose the harshest sanctions against Russia, and to generously supply Ukraine with arms and munitions.
4 April 2022
As a professional software developer, I'm aware of various ways in which websites can be hacked - and it's a constant battle keeping up with the latest knowledge and techniques to ensure safety.
28 March 2022
While current geopolitical matters might have some Finns wishing they were a tad more invisible, at first pass this is hardly a skeptical topic. But this modern conspiracy is worth a chuckle, especially given the exasperated sighs you'll get from that one friend who has more than a passing knowledge of statistics.
28 March 2022
What do Avon, Tupperware, Doterra, and Arbonne have in common? They are all businesses in New Zealand that utilise multi-level marketing (MLM) strategies. If you aren't familiar with the names or the products, ranging from hair care and makeup to herbal supplements, you might at least have come across the sales and recruitment gimmicks they employ. Maybe your Mom was a frequent invitee or hostess for a friend's sex toy party (Pure Romance) or cooking utensil business (Pampered Chef); maybe your favourite Uncle loved to talk about the conventions and seminars he was attending (Amway). Regardless, the fact remains that they are a controversial marketing model that exploits millions of people worldwide with promises of financial freedom that are only available to those who are placed at the tippy top of the MLMs' pyramid-like structures.
28 March 2022
I've recently been seeing mentions of NESARA and GESARA online, in conspiracy groups, and also on a badly painted sign at at least one local protest. So I did a little bit of reading to find out what it's all about. So, if you've seen these terms being used and, like me, have no idea what they mean, here's a quick description of their real world meaning and what the conspiracy theorists wrongly think they're all about.
28 March 2022
Last week I had a couple of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) Missionaries visit me. They called me a few days in advance to ask if it was okay to come round, and then I totally forgot about our meeting until I received a call saying they were having problems finding my house on the street.
21 March 2022
No true Scotsman…buys souvenir plots
21 March 2022
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, propaganda raises its head. Propaganda has always been a tool of war (and peace) but we're seeing escalation to new levels.
21 March 2022
There are several key provisions which allow Kiwi's to determine whether the claim one makes to being a health care practitioner is valid.
14 March 2022
Over the last few months or so, while I've been perusing the crazier corners of the internet, I've seen occasional mentions of a really interesting conspiracy theory - in Facebook feeds of COVID deniers, screenshots from private conspiracy Telegram groups, and videos from various protests and marches. The rumour that Jacinda Ardern's partner, Clarke Gayford, is secretly either under arrest, released on bail or imprisoned, and that this is for a drug related offence.
14 March 2022
On March 13th Dr. Darren Saunders (Associate Professor of Medicine at UNSW, Cancer Biologist) made international headlines for his takedown of a new trend hitting social media: Methylene Blue.
14 March 2022
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a video from a YouTube channel I keep an eye on for its coverage of cryptocurrency scams that looked interesting - the tale of Pixelmon, an NFT project that had recently sold over 7,000 NFTs for a grand total of around NZ$100 million. By the end of the week, Stuff and 1News had covered the story. Why did this project make the news here in NZ? Because the NFTs had been unveiled, and they were abysmal. And why did this story pique my interest? Because the person in charge of the project had been “doxxed” (had their identity revealed), and a screenshot of their LinkedIn profile in the video I watched showed that he had recently graduated from the University of Waikato - so it appeared he was one of our own, a Kiwi.
14 March 2022
Last October, I reported here on Thames Coromandel Mayor Sandra Goudie and her anti-mandate stance.
7 March 2022
The population of New Zealand is changing – and not just because there are more of us, including many new immigrants, or because people are living longer. The other great change is that fewer people are religious and New Zealand is increasingly secular.
7 March 2022
Just what are freedoms that the protest groups are saying are being trampled on and restricted? Two senior lecturers in Psychology at the University of Canterbury wrote a good piece on The Conversation, defining what is meant by freedom - the concepts of negative and positive liberty.
7 March 2022
Speaking of Voices for Freedom, last weekend investigative journalist Melanie Reid from Newsroom did a video piece on the protest - Visit to Freedom Village - which featured the Voices for Freedom leaders in a very positive light.
7 March 2022
I've written about Liz Gunn before. She used to be a respected broadcaster on TVNZ's One News, but has now gone well down the rabbit hole. Last year she claimed that an earthquake was Mother Nature's response to Jacinda Adern's Covid-19 response . She announced her FreeNZ movement, which appears to have political aspirations.
7 March 2022
Last Wednesday, the “anti-mandate” protest at the Parliament Grounds in Wellington, which had lasted for 23 days, came to an end. It was not an end that the protestors wanted, but was forced on them by police action.
7 March 2022
We don't often cover sports stories in our newsletter, and I'm certainly not one for writing them, but yesterday we heard the news of the untimely death of Shane Warne, the Australian Cricketer. Warne was only 52 and died of a heart attack.
28 February 2022
Despite the impromptu music festival happening on its front lawn, the New Zealand Parliament passed The Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill, colloquially known as the Conversion Therapy Bill, on its final reading on February 15th. This occurred with 112 voices in favour across all parties - and with the exception of just 8 National MPs:
28 February 2022
Although Bronwyn's put together this week's newsletter, I couldn't help myself and wrote a small piece about the protesters' obsession with Nuremberg.
28 February 2022
In Part 1, Sri Chinmoy (whose full name was Chinmoy Kumar Ghose, and who will herein be referred to by his initials: CKG) left his job at the consulate to seize an opportunity that awaited him amidst the growing appetite in America for eastern religions. He opened his first meditation centre in Puerto Rico, then one back at his home-base in Queens, New York.
21 February 2022
This week, Gordon Hewitt, one of NZ Skeptics' founding members tells us why he's a skeptic. Take it away, Gordon…
21 February 2022
And now for something completely different…
21 February 2022
Adventures of a Psychologist by Michael Corballis 2021 published by Routledge. Available on Amazon.
14 February 2022
I'm sure everyone is aware of the convoy that headed to Wellington on Tuesday. This collection of cars, campervans and the occasional truck has descended on our capital, supposedly as a protest against the vaccine mandates that our government has put into place over the last few months. On my way into work in Wellington on Tuesday I hit the motorway a little before the first of the groups of vehicles did, and was greeted with the depressing sight of a hundred or more supporters on the bridges between Porirua and Wellington, many of them holding signs created by Voices for Freedom.
14 February 2022
The other day I noticed that the medical misinformation site NZDSOS - where a few anti-vaccine doctors promote their “alternative” COVID ideas - had changed its look. This is an issue for me, as a few months ago I created a spoof site called NZD-SOS which I made to look like the original site. My site pointed out that there are more doctors called Sarah, Michael or Kate, for example, that have signed an open letter in support of COVID vaccination, than there are doctors who have signed the NZDSOS open letter warning against vaccination.
14 February 2022
It's funny how things come around. Last week I watched a fascinating documentary on the Bogdanoff brothers. For those not in the know, the Bogdanoffs are a fascinating case study - two brothers who became celebrities via a TV show promoting science, and then somehow bluffed their way into receiving PhDs in physics despite their theses being nonsensical in places. Many of you might recognise the brothers from their later years, where they used extreme plastic surgery to radically alter their look.
7 February 2022
I've written in the past about NFTs - Non-Fungible Tokens, as they're called, and Mark has written about cryptocurrencies and the scams that surround them.
7 February 2022
Bronwyn Rideout investigates the connection between the Lotus Heart restaurant in Christchurch and Sri Chinmoy.
7 February 2022
Another person I've written about in the past is Dr Sam Bailey. To refresh your memory, she's a doctor, previously practising as a GP, based in Christchurch. She appeared on a TVNZ medical show - The Check Up.
7 February 2022
In another topic I've written about before, a Voices for Freedom spinoff group The 'Hood NZ were taking a case to the High Court to attempt to stop the rollout of the COVID vaccine, specifically for 5 - 11 year olds.
7 February 2022
…It Just Tells Dirty Great Big Fat Whoppers!
7 February 2022
Sue Grey and Dr Matt Shelton have made some astounding claims about contamination of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. The specific claims are that there are undeclared nanoparticles in the vaccine.
7 February 2022
This week, long time skeptic Felicity Goodyear-Smith tells us her story...
31 January 2022
I'm sitting here writing this week's newsletter with music playing in the background - I've just listened to tracks by (and I'm name-dropping here) Malcolm Middleton, the Flashbulb, Madvillain, PJ Harvey, Mogwai and 65daysofstatic. I'm enjoying this music being played from Plex on my Chromecast, through my TV, via a Sony home theatre amp, to my in-wall 7.1 surround sound speakers. The entire setup might have cost me $1,200, if we exclude the cost of the TV (another $1,500). But could I be enjoying my music more if I'd spent more money buying reference equipment from high-end specialist companies?
31 January 2022
I'm not normally one for jumping on bandwagons, but when I saw friends posting on Facebook over the last few days that they were cancelling their Spotify subscriptions, I figured this was one cause I could get behind.
31 January 2022
What do the Brontosaurus, Harry Houdini, and a phrenology bust have in common?
24 January 2022
So, back to COVID vaccines. This past week has seen a huge amount of activity in anti-vax circles.
24 January 2022
Amidst a global pandemic it's sometimes easy to miss science news. But this one really piqued my interest.
24 January 2022
As you read this you'll know that the country is now back into the red traffic light setting. The Omicron variant of COVID is now out in the community and, given its transmissibility, expected to spread widely and quickly. In the press conference yesterday it was acknowledged that there is likely undetected transmission of Omicron in the community. Omicron has likely been transmitted by flights around the country (a flight attendant was infected with Omicron) and people also have attended a wedding and visited various venues.
24 January 2022
Ending on a positive note (no pun intended) this week, NZ Skeptics committee member Brad MacClure was featured in an article on Stuff about piano tuning, and skepticism. There's a nice write-up and associated video.
24 January 2022
A week seems like a very long time at the moment! But just over a week ago, the island nation of Tonga experienced a huge volcanic eruption and resulting tsunami. The effect of the tsunami was made worse by the fact that the islands are low-lying so seeking high ground is all but impossible.
24 January 2022
If you spend any time on social media you'll have no doubt seen fairly enigmatic posts with a grid of yellow and green squares in various combinations. This is Wordle - a daily word guessing game that has taken the world by storm (or at least, that seems to be what I've been seeing!)
17 January 2022
Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova, more commonly known as Baba Vanga, was a Bulgarian psychic. Although she died back in 1996, she was kind enough to leave behind some predictions that may or may not actually be about potential future events. Honestly, the Wikipedia Page for Baba Vanga leaves me suspicious about how much of what is attributed to her she actually said, and how much is just being made up by others (and it's also one of the worst Wikipedia pages I've ever seen grammatically - presumably it's mainly been written by people for whom English is not a fluent language).
17 January 2022
I'm not a fan of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin, the original and most "successful" of them, has not followed its creator's vision of being a decentralised currency that allows people to make payments to each other without having to go through traditional banking systems. Rather, instead of Bitcoin being used as a digital currency for purchasing online, people are using it as an investment, speculating on its price and hoping for “massive gains”. This is evidenced by both its high price per coin and its volatility. Hardly any Bitcoin transactions are actually involved in buying or selling goods, and the high price of Bitcoin these days means that the Proof of Work idea for securing the Blockchain (the shared list of transactions that records all transfers of Bitcoin) ends up using over 1,000kwh of electricity for each transaction. The promised decentralisation of Bitcoin is also mostly a myth these days. What Bitcoin has become is a way for greedy people to make money from other greedy people. Its creator, the enigmatic “Satoshi”, is probably despairing of what happened to his creation - if he's still alive.
17 January 2022
I was scrolling through my emails today, looking to see if I had received any Why Are You A Skeptic responses from any of you. Sadly there was nothing I'd missed; no stories of how you'd found skepticism after an all-night bender where you'd snorted ketamine and met God, or how you've always been skeptical since the age of two.
10 January 2022
If you're a Netflix subscriber, you'll be able to watch a movie that's been the topic of some discussion in science circles. That is Don't Look Up - a satirical look at science communication. The movie's been out for a little while now, so I feel justified in discussing the plot - so SPOILER ALERT!
10 January 2022
Over the past week or so we've seen headlines separately related to the magnitude of the holiday road toll, and high number of summer drownings.
10 January 2022
In my last newsletter I wrote about the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Post launch there were many operations that it had to go through to be successfully deployed, the most major of which included its unfolding.
10 January 2022
This week it's been reported that University of Auckland scientists Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles and Professor Sean Hendy have taken a case to the Employment Relations Authority. They're claiming that their employer - the university - hasn't done enough to protect them from attack by people upset with their science communication and public comment on COVID-related issues. They describe their attackers as “a small but venomous sector of the public”.
10 January 2022
If you're a member of NZ Skeptics you should receive a reminder to renew your subs soon. If you're not currently a member, you can join us for a very reasonable cost.
3 January 2022
A surprising endorsement of COVID vaccines came out recently - from none other than Donald Trump. Trump has a spotty history when it comes to supporting good science, and he's well known to skeptics for touting several unproven cures (including that particularly confusing press conference where he talked about bleach and an internal UV light).
3 January 2022
The Lotus-Heart restaurant in Christchurch has chosen to take a stand against vaccine mandates, by refusing to let customers know if they require a vaccine pass, not promoting use of their COVID Tracer QR Code, and not having any system in place to check vaccine passes. As a result they have been fined $20,000 dollars by WorkSafe.
3 January 2022
As a programmer, I love a good story about buggy software. Maybe it makes me feel better about my own mistakes! So when I recently heard about a fun bug in the strategy game Civilisation, from way back in 1991, I was intrigued. Apparently the fallout from this particular code error (no pun intended) was that the peaceful world leader Mahatma Gandhi would suddenly become very fond of amassing and using nuclear weapons - a quirk that has been named Nuclear Gandhi.
3 January 2022
I can blame my skepticism on George Adamski.
27 December 2021
I think we have cause to celebrate. Despite not knowing what 2022 will bring, Aotearoa/New Zealand has a pretty high rate of vaccination - with over 91% of the eligible population having received two doses, though with Maori still under 80%.
27 December 2021
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has successfully launched!
27 December 2021
Continuing on from Mark's item last week, long-time skeptic and former committee member Barry Lennox gives us his views…
20 December 2021
But what is it, who's behind it, and does it work? Well, it turns out the answers to the first two questions will help us to figure out the third one.
20 December 2021
A couple of weeks ago I attended an online sermon from Destiny Church with a few friends. The sermon started off fairly tame, with Brian joking about viewers eating popcorn - so I went and grabbed a bag of popcorn for us to eat while we watched. I figured it was the least a group of heathens could do.
20 December 2021
Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital made the news last week, with an 89 year old man being charged for his part in the abuse of children who were under the hospital's care in the 1970s. Dr Selwyn Leeks, who was the lead psychiatrist at the centre, has been charged with “wilful ill treatment of a child”, but due to his ill health will not be prosecuted.
20 December 2021
I'm sure most people know the story of the Tiger King, a documentary series which became required viewing last year around the world when many countries went into lockdown. The series followed Joe Exotic, a flamboyant character who ran a big cat attraction and ended up behind bars for some of his questionable life decisions.
20 December 2021
Last week Craig introduced a new section to our newsletter, which he's named Why Are You A Skeptic. We're keen to hear from each of you about why you're a skeptic, and to publish your stories in the newsletter. If you're up for it, please send your story to newsletter@skeptics.nz. For now, here's my story of how I came to skepticism, and why I'm involved with the NZ Skeptics:
15 December 2021
The Australian Skeptics have spent the last few years working hard on an amazing project, led by Richard Saunders, to find and analyse as many psychic predictions as they could find.
13 December 2021
Our recent Skepticon saw Richard Saunders, from the Australian Skeptics, present the results of The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project.
13 December 2021
No doubt this week you will have seen the “sting” executed by Paddy Gower from Newshub.
13 December 2021
It has emerged that there's a man who's been showing up to receive the COVID vaccine on behalf of other people (for which he's being paid), having up to 10 vaccinations in a single day.
13 December 2021
NZ Skeptics occasionally received email asking about skeptical topics:
13 December 2021
We love getting feedback on the newsletter, and hearing others' perspectives. And, we think that others would like this too.
6 December 2021
I was talking to a friend last weekend who works as a tradesman. He asked me, as a skeptic, what I thought of the coronavirus vaccine - did I think it was dangerous? And was COVID real? He's pretty sure the scientists aren't lying to him, but he's talked with a lot of colleagues who aren't so sure. Most of my friends are fairly skeptical, and a lot of the time I breathe the rarefied air of skepticism, so it was interesting to hear a perspective that I don't really come in contact with in my daily life - a friend who's intelligent, but has heard enough misinformation from the anti-vaccine crowd that he's becoming a little unsure.
6 December 2021
The 96-hour fireworks industry is both a source of joy and dread for New Zealanders nationwide. Fireworks can only be sold privately in this country between November 2nd and November 5th, and while this period is an ideal lead-in to Guy Fawkes Night, those of us living near pyrotechnic enthusiasts know all too well that amateur backyard displays will be a feature of our lives until late into the summer.
6 December 2021
Rex Warwood sadly died late last week. He was a long time reporter, and later editor, for the Franklin County News, and was apparently well liked. However in recent years he appears to have succumbed to conspiratorial thinking, and he became a vocal critic of vaccination against COVID, saying things online such as:
6 December 2021
I was sent a funny article the other day about the benefits of aluminium foil on a website called Tips and Tricks. The website appears to be a prolific source of clickbait - articles with catchy titles that are designed to suck you in and get you to click the link to read more. This is because the company wants to take you away from social media sites and onto their website, to show you adverts and make money from them.
29 November 2021
NZ Skeptics has its Annual General Meeting on Sunday 12th December. We'll be holding this online, and we'd encourage any interested members to come along.
29 November 2021
If you've been reading the newsletter for any time you'll be aware of the joint conference we ran with the Australian Skeptics last weekend. I hope you had a chance to attend and to view the talks. If not, you can still purchase a ticket.
29 November 2021
As I write this there's news breaking about a new variant of concern of the COVID virus, now named as Omicron.
29 November 2021
Dr Sam Bailey has been in the news this week, which involved in a court case petitioning the High Court to stop the New Zealand Medical Council from investigating her.
29 November 2021
For those readers who are members of NZ Skeptics (as off 1st April 2021 - that was our cut-off date), you will have, by now, (hopefully) received your Skeptic Card in the mail, along with a couple of stickers.
29 November 2021
Back on YouTube channels again - you may have heard of the YouTube channel Veritasium. This one is a generally good science channel which has nearly 11 million subscribers.
29 November 2021
It's been revealed this week that you can wash disposable masks, and reuse them. The current advice from the Ministry of Health is that disposable masks should be used once then thrown away.
24 November 2021
So I want to talk about an interesting arrest that happened yesterday, but not the arrest of Brian and Hannah Tamaki.
24 November 2021
Last night at about 1am a friend of mine sent me a link to a brand new COVID website called Wanaka Health Bridge. I clicked on the link, and saw that the site talks about the risks resulting from Wanaka being three and half hours from a major hospital, and what that means for COVID-19 treatment. The website says:
22 November 2021
This weekend was our joint Australian and New Zealand conference, Skepticon 2021. Thank you so much to those of you who joined us, it was an amazing weekend with fascinating talks and I hope you enjoyed it all as much as I did.
22 November 2021
Hot off the press, International Law lecturer Amy Benjamin has resigned from Auckland University of Technology this week. I wrote about Amy back in August, at the beginning of our second national lockdown, when she started up her YouTube channel called “American Spirit” where she posted videos about COVID and lockdowns. Her opinions seemed somewhat fringe, and she talked about how the threat to people's mental health in lockdown was worse than that of COVID, that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine could treat COVID, and that the government had criminalised peaceful protest.
22 November 2021
For those who use Facebook - you may have seen a video advert recently using Jacinda Ardern as a way to promote a cryptocurrency. Obviously this is fake - Jacinda does not want you to “invest” your money in any crypto currency, and it's very likely that there's not even a real crypto currency or crypto company - just a website that will get you to transfer your hard earned money to scammers. Even if there was a real cryptocurrency involved, you would likely lose most or all of the money you risked. I saw people talking about this scam on Facebook, but I have enough layers of ad blocking at home that it proved too hard to get Facebook to show me any adverts at all, so I don't have a copy of the video.
22 November 2021
Craig Shearer announced the winners of our annual awards at the beginning of the second day of our conference, and it was accompanied by the following press release:
22 November 2021
Astroworld is an annual music festival run by rapper Travis Scott in Texas. There was a tragedy at this year's festival, a few weeks ago, when a crowd surge caused a crush and resulted in the deaths of 10 people - the latest being a 9 year old boy who died a few days ago from his injuries.
15 November 2021
In a recent Nature article, some researchers of Chinese origin describe their research into the effects of stimulation at various acupuncture points on the induction of inflammation by bacterial endotoxins (toxic proteins released by some bacteria when they disintegrate). They found that this stimulation has beneficial effects at some acupuncture sites and not others. Despite the use of the word “electroacupuncture” in the title, their abstract in the Nature paper ends with “Our studies provide a neuroanatomical basis for the selectivity and specificity of acupoints in driving specific autonomic pathways.” a normal reading of which strongly suggests that the authors believe that acupuncture is a real phenomenon and is based upon specific neurological pathways which they are claiming to have identified.
15 November 2021
About a year ago Daniel Ryan and I wrote to Givealittle, an organisation in NZ that runs an online platform which allows people to fundraise for needy causes. We expressed our concerns about misuse of the platform:
15 November 2021
The BBC (in its travel section) has an interesting article on the Skirvin hotel in Oklahoma, supposedly the most haunted hotel in the US. The article talks a little about the hotel and the ghosts that supposedly haunt it, and then details how the journalist paid for a ghost hunting couple to come and see if the hotel was really haunted. Things have changed in the ghost hunting world - where historically ghost hunters have used physical devices to record “anomalies” such as temperature changes, Electromagnetic Frequency (EMF) fluctuations and the like, these modern day ghost hunters have an app for that - or rather several apps, of which they mention the names of two of them in the article. So I figured that, as a skeptic, I really should take them for a test drive and see what they can do.
15 November 2021
QAnon is the recent conspiracy theory in the US that refuses to go away. Someone has been using the name QAnon, short for an Anonymous person with Q Level Security Clearance, since 2017 to post cryptic messages to the internet, pretending to be a government insider leaking secrets.
15 November 2021
There's a rumour going around in conspiracy circles that the UN, and/or Italian soldiers, are due to come to New Zealand at the end of November, or that they might already be here.
15 November 2021
21th-21st November, Online
10 November 2021
I'm sure everyone is aware of the protests that happened yesterday. I watched them from the comfort of my home, and didn't feel the need to visit this particular march on Parliament. There was one thing at yesterday's protests that really struck me. The protesters, under the banner of the Freedoms and Rights Coalition created by "Apostle" Brian Tamaki, have been asking for our best protections against people dying of COVID to be removed - lockdowns, vaccine mandates, MIQ, and all other restrictions. A frequent message throughout the day was about the government needing to listen to the public - the speakers outside parliament talked about how a government should heed the people.
8 November 2021
Covid-19 The Pandemic That Should Never Have Happened - by Debra MacKenzie 2020 (available on Amazon)
8 November 2021
It continues to amaze me the lengths science deniers and anti-vaxxers will go to to try to convince people of vaccine harm. This week, Daniel published some pictures from an anti-vax group on our Facebook page, purporting to show extreme bruising after the COVID vaccine. You can take a look at Daniel's post here but here's a taste of the claimed bruising
8 November 2021
Over the past couple of weeks, I've seen articles about Dominic Bowden on a new podcast about “wellbeing” called WellBeings. Dominic Bowden is a bit of a celebrity - having appeared on The Bachelor NZ amongst other shows.
8 November 2021
This coming week has the threat of action against the government with yet another protest organised by Destiny Church and its leaders Brian (variously adorned with the title of Bishop, or Apostle) and Hannah Tamaki.
8 November 2021
Last week Mark published an item from Stuart Landsborough, from Wanaka's Puzzling World about his recent epiphany about how we can deal with climate change. I found Stuart's item contained some great points, and it resonated with me. I'm worried about whether we'll be able to prevent catastrophic climate change.
8 November 2021
In my last newsletter from two weeks ago, I wrote about the vaccine exemptions that anti-vaxxers wanted to use. They intended to use the wording of section 7A of the COVID response act to exempt themselves from the requirements to be vaccinated for work in professions where the vaccination has been mandated - teaching, healthcare, etc.
8 November 2021
Our fantastic online conference - Skepticon 2021 - in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics is fast approaching.
1 November 2021
One of the many effects of climate change is that the oceans are rising. This is going to be an increasing problem for coastal settlements and island nations. But one American political candidate who has worked for Trump in the past, Scott Pio, thinks he's figured out an answer to the problem, and posted his idea on Twitter:
1 November 2021
I was scrolling through my Instagram feed when a post by a favourite local café stopped me mid-swipe. The words “Christmas” and “shoebox” in the same sentence caused a brief moment of dread to call upon me because, while I loved their date scones, I was not going to support a business that championed Operation Christmas Child (OCC).
1 November 2021
Whether I am good at getting epiphanies, I am not sure, but the question is: are the epiphanies sensible or stupid? I shall leave it up to you to decide.
1 November 2021
Last week Craig told you all about a parody website I'd built, NZD-SOS, which copied the look and feel of an anti-vaccine site called New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science but changed the wording to point out that there are more doctors called Sarah (or David, Sue, Kate, Michael or Catherine) in NZ who support vaccination than all the doctors who have spoken out publicly about being distrustful of the Pfizer COVID vaccine.
1 November 2021
21th-21st November, Online
27 October 2021
Last week we talked about how the Doctors Stand Up For Vaccination group had released its list of names of six and a half thousand doctors who have signed a letter in support of COVID vaccination. This letter was in response to a declaration created by Voices for Freedom, casting doubt on vaccination, that was signed by 56 doctors.
26 October 2021
A recent article on the Ars Technica site details the story of a so-called ethical hacker who was employed by a company to build a pro-Trump fake news empire. (Note, this is the real fake news, as in news that isn't true - compared to the “fake news” that Trump infamously categorised unfavourable coverage of him as.)
26 October 2021
Our Prime Minister has quite a reputation around the world, but did you know she's also able to cause earthquakes?
26 October 2021
Late last week NZ Skeptics published a spoof website built (NZ Skeptics Secretary and past Chair, and alternating newsletter author).
26 October 2021
I'll preface this by saying that this is a topic I'm certainly not qualified to talk about.
26 October 2021
If you're a regular reader of our weekly newsletter you'll know by now that we're running a conference in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics. Because of COVID-19 restrictions we made the decision to run it entirely online.
26 October 2021
This week has seen the introduction of the Traffic Light System to replace the COVID lockdown levels currently in place. This will take effect once all of the country's DHB's achieve a 90% fully vaccinated rate for their populations.
26 October 2021
Last week Sue Grey (lawyer) was back at the High Court challenging a “no jab, no job” order on behalf of aviation security workers who lost their jobs at the end of September for refusing the vaccine.
20 October 2021
Mike Adams is well known to skeptics. For many years he's run the Natural News website, which started out as a source of medical misinformation paired with a shop selling expensive, useless supplements. Some of his sillier posts included using a microscope to take zoomed-in photos of McDonald's chicken nuggets as a way to make them look unappealing.
20 October 2021
One of the signatories to the NZD SOS declaration, Dr Matt Shelton, is an interesting case - he made the news a few weeks ago when he sent a text message to his patients saying:
18 October 2021
It seems ridiculous, but a man in the US is suing a psychic he asked for life advice. The psychic, Sophia Adams, told customer Mauro Restrepo that his marriage was at risk because of a “mala suerte” (bad luck) curse placed on him by an ex-girlfriend. For only US$5,000, she was willing to lift the curse and save his marriage.
18 October 2021
Sandra Goudie is the Thames Coromandel Mayor who has been in the news for refusing the Pfizer vaccine, saying she will wait until she can receive the Novavax vaccine. Goudie is quoted in the NZ Herald as saying she “believes it is "absolutely wrong" that some people should be mandated to have the vaccine…”
18 October 2021
The government is really pushing the COVID vaccine at the moment, including with this weekend's Super Saturday - where around 130,000 vaccines were administered in a single day.
18 October 2021
I naively thought that the whole QAnon movement would fall apart after Trump lost his bid for re-election. For those who have somehow not heard about QAnon before, it's a conspiracy that started in the US a few years ago, and is supposed to be the writings of a high-level government insider who leaks secrets via hidden meaning and codes in his messages. However, it's been obvious since the start that QAnon is not an insider, but just a made up persona used to promote right wing ideas and Donald Trump in particular. As Wikipedia says:
18 October 2021
There are many kinds, and some are, frankly, full of bulldust! So what am I, and what are the members of the NZ Skeptics?
18 October 2021
Rumours have been circulating in the US that President Biden plans to fix the debt ceiling issue by minting a one trillion dollar coin. Although this sounds patently absurd, there's some logic behind this.
11 October 2021
In the last newsletter I wrote, I discussed an open letter, penned by Mary Hobbs. Since publishing one of our contacts wrote to supply some more details. It appears that Mary and her husband are Scientologists, and deeply involved in that organisation, even making regular trips to Sydney to clear out a few Thetans, or whatever it is that they do. They even hosted Tom Cruise some time ago on a visit to NZ.
11 October 2021
Back to COVID seriousness now. It's been a frustrating week where we've seen the Delta variant now escape Auckland and head out to other parts of the country.
11 October 2021
This past week has seen an appeal of the Peter Ellis child sex abuse case being heard in the Supreme Court.
11 October 2021
We've been promoting the up-coming conference in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics for a few months now.
6 October 2021
Last week I attended an I Ching meeting online, where I learned how to use the I Ching to help me to make life decisions. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is a book of 64 different sayings which are meant to be used for divination.
4 October 2021
I'm sure Alex Jones is no stranger to most skeptics. The Info Wars host has an illustrious history of pushing nonsense ideas about the US - from the ridiculous (chemicals in the water supply are turning the frogs gay) to the downright dangerous (restriction of gun rights will cause a second revolution in the US). And somewhere in the midst of all that nonsense, Alex Jones decided to start pushing the ridiculous theory that the Sandy Hook massacre of school children in the US was a false flag operation, secretly organised by the government as a way to push for tighter gun controls.
4 October 2021
Thankfully there have been some who have been willing to critique this paper and its conclusions. Mark Boslough, who wrote a paper on asteroid air bursts that this Sodom paper references, had a lot to say about the legitimacy of this paper, especially as it's been published in a journal owned by the prestigious Nature.
4 October 2021
The church was irresponsible with their recent protest, held during a level 3 lockdown in Auckland. The majority of those attending were without masks, and were not following physical distancing guidelines. When the media pointed out that most people were not wearing masks, the church's leader, Brian Tamaki, said: "I saw everyone wearing masks."
27 September 2021
This week I came across an article about a COVID anti-viral pill. There's some hope that an antiviral (similar to the well-known Tamiflu) could work that would be used to treat people with COVID. The action of the pill would work to reduce the viral load.
27 September 2021
As everybody will know, the COVID pandemic is still here. This week we've seen the number of active cases continue to fall, and Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau has moved down into alert level 3.
27 September 2021
As I write this on Sunday morning, we've now switched over to New Zealand Daylight Time, putting our clocks forward by one hour until early April next year. The touted benefits are that we can enjoy more time in the evenings outside when it's still light, and the sun isn't rising so early in the morning.
27 September 2021
As mentioned in the Mary Hobbs response above, there's now a group of doctors in NZ standing up for vaccinations, mostly it would seem in response to the handful of those who are against them.
27 September 2021
And speaking of anti-vaxxers, there's another one that's emerged from the woodwork.
27 September 2021
Dr Samantha Murton, president of the Royal NZ College of GPs, has spoken out about the problems of social media "influencers" who spread wellness misinformation online. Although many influential people on social media are followed because they have celebrity status - sports stats, TV celebrities, etc - many influencers have built their following purely based on their social media work, posting on topics that people want to read about, and pushing for people to "like and subscribe" using a variety of often dubious tactics.
20 September 2021
Following on from our submission to the Justice Select Committee a couple of weeks ago on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill (outlawing conversion therapy), myself and Bronwyn Rideout from the NZ Skeptics committee gave an oral submission to some of the Justice Select Committee last week. I was surprised that oral submissions started so quickly after the deadline for written submissions, but thankfully in very little time we were able to put together an oral submission that was complementary to our written one, but different enough that we weren't just boring the MPs with the same information they'd already read from us.
20 September 2021
I feel impelled to comment on Mike Alder's "While the Newtonian insistence on ensuring that any statement is testable by observation (or has logical consequences which are so testable) undoubtedly cuts out the crap, it also seems to cut out almost everything else as well. Newton's Laser Sword should therefore be used very cautiously.”
20 September 2021
I have three school age kids, and so I'm no stranger to Blue's Clues. I've watched many episodes with both Steve (Steve Burns) and Joe (Donovan Patton) hosting the show alongside the animated dog Blue, following the clues each week. Steve left the show back in 2002, but he made the news recently when he released a feel-good video:
20 September 2021
In 2008, the This Week In Tech podcasting network had been going for three years and a number of related topic podcasts started up on the network including one called Futures in Biotech. Modelled on the idea of having a weekly podcast on a specialist subject, a new podcast split away by Professor Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University called This Week In Virology (TWIV). It was inspired by this Week In Tech and given virus is also used in technology, the new podcast developed the tagline “the podcast about viruses – the kind that make you sick”. The first episode was on West Nile Virus and as someone who had no previous interest in viruses, the show fascinated me and fourteen years later I'm still a regular listener as I both enjoy science as well as having gotten to know the team well over the years.
13 September 2021
Saturday this weekend marked the 20th Anniversary of 9/11 in the US. Of course, because of time zones it was Wednesday 12th September here in New Zealand when it happened, just after midnight.
13 September 2021
Our annual conference is coming up in November, on the weekend of the 19th - 21. As we've previously publicised, we're holding it in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics. COVID willing, we'll be having an in-person conference in Wellington, and they'll have theirs in Sydney.
13 September 2021
Billy Te Hakiha is in the news again. You'll recall that he was recently arrested, with his “partner in crime” Vinny Eastwood, for violating the lockdown, and holding a protest. Billy and Vinny spent some time in jail, but are now out on bail awaiting trial.
13 September 2021
In the good news department this week, it was announced that there's been a shakeup at the Magic Talk network - a radio station that specialised in talkback.
13 September 2021
This week NZ Skeptics submitted our view on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. This bill proposes prohibiting so-called conversion therapies which aim to change a person's sexuality, gender identity or gender expression. Curiously, the direction of conversion seems to be exclusively in the direction of becoming “straight” or identifying with and expressing the gender which aligns with the genitals you were born with.
13 September 2021
I've written in the past about Sue Grey, the lawyer and past candidate for The Outdoors Party. She's an out and out conspiracy theorist and her Facebook page is a magnet for the most rabid anti-vaxxers.
13 September 2021
As I've written in the past, NZ Skeptics often receive comments in our inbox and people often criticise us for parroting the mainstream media (usually abbreviated to MSM). Recent commenters have criticised us for sharing articles from the BBC, amongst others.
6 September 2021
Obviously as skeptics we're pretty clued up on the idea of not using unproven therapies, especially when there's positive evidence that they don't work. It's been apparent for a while now that the evidence for Ivermectin as a COVID treatment or preventative is not very good, and it's been sad to see how many people don't seem to care about the lack of evidence and are taking it anyway.
6 September 2021
We're currently looking for nominations for our annual awards. Specifically, we have a Bent Spoon award for whoever has “has shown the most egregious gullibility or lack of critical thinking” over the last year, Bravo awards for journalists who have done good skeptical work, and a Skeptic of the Year award for someone in New Zealand who's been active in skepticism and fighting the good fight against nonsense.
6 September 2021
Texas has recently introduced a draconian new abortion law, one that feels not only perverse (in that it allows for civil lawsuits where anyone can sue those who are involved in providing abortion services), but also seems to be yet another attempt to test the Supreme Court's willingness to overturn Roe v Wade (the landmark Supreme Court decision on abortion that has allowed for legal abortions in the US for many years). And, so far, it seems that the Supreme Court, with its conservative majority, is willing to court this kind of testing of the waters.
30 August 2021
The COVID Delta outbreak in Aotearoa New Zealand continues, with Auckland (where I live) and Northland being remaining in level 4 and the rest of the country moving to level 3 from Wednesday 1st September.
30 August 2021
Finally this week, and related to the Streisand Effect above, comes the tale from David Farrier, of the popular Webworm blog.
30 August 2021
Most skeptics will be aware of the Steisand Effect - so called because of the unintended consequence of trying to suppress information - which happened to Barbara Streisand back in 2003 when she tried to suppress pictures of her Malibu mansion.
23 August 2021
Of all the people who spoke publicly about this week's arrest, Amy Benjamin, a senior lecturer of international law at AUT, was the most surprising to me.
23 August 2021
This one's a little light hearted, and not overly surprising - Kelvin Cruickshank, one of our most famous local psychics, appears to have failed to have been warned by the spirits about the impending lockdown. Kelvyn had booked a live event for Thursday in New Plymouth, in what turned out to be the second day of our national lockdown. David Chisholm, a member of our Facebook group, managed to take a great screenshot of the event being advertised under a large banner warning of event date changes due to our COVID lockdown.
23 August 2021
The not totally surprising result of these protests is that the police have been arresting protestors. However, they've not tried to arrest everyone, or to pick up just those who are the loudest or the most aggressive. Instead they have been carting away key members of the conspiracy/fringe movement.
16 August 2021
Last weekend I got my first shot of the COVID vaccine. Given my advanced age of 55 years, I became eligible to book a vaccine, which is done through the “book my vaccine” website. I found the process to be pretty smooth, and they allowed my wife (who is younger than me) to ride my coattails and also receive her vaccine.
16 August 2021
This past week has seen the release of the IPCC's 6th assessment report on climate change. The report is issued every seven years. It's become increasingly obvious with successive reports, that the world is in danger of severe consequences of climate change, and it's increasingly certain (to the point of virtual certainty) that humans are the cause of it.
16 August 2021
On a lighter note, this week there were two earth-shattering events that were meant to happen. The first was the Global Prayer to End Atheism, and the second with the prediction of Trump's reinstatement as president on Friday 13th.
9 August 2021
One idea I've been given is to find a large set of Deepak Chopra quotes, and use that to train an algorithm to create nonsense quotes talking about quantum realities and the collapse of the wave function. All I need to do now is find a bunch of quotes in a format I can feed to the algorithm.
9 August 2021
A couple of weeks ago I talked about the NZ Skeptics putting together a submission for the Ministry of Justice in response to their new Hate Speech proposals. You can read our submission on our website, but I thought it would be fun to use EleutherAI's free online GPT-J-6G deep learning model to write a submission for us. I gave the software the first few paragraphs of our real submission, and then clicked the button to guess the next hundred or so words. I then fed the result back into the algorithm so that it could create the next block of text, and so on.
9 August 2021
Using an older algorithm, GPT-2, with a fairly small data set that it had been pre-trained on, I fine tuned this particular piece of software on the entire back catalogue of QAnon posts. Below are 6 QAnon posts - three are the genuine article, and three are fakes created by GPT-2. Can you figure out which is which?
9 August 2021
This one surprised me a little. I fed GPT-2 about a dozen holy texts, with the intention of generating some text that was their distilled, combined wisdom. Instead, what I received each time I ran the generator was an attempt to recreate text from just one of the books I'd trained it on. The results are impressive - although the text generated by deep learning doesn't always make a huge amount of sense, I think it could be reasonably argued that the same is the case for genuine holy texts!
2 August 2021
One of the interesting aspects of being part of NZ Skeptics is that we often get contacted by people to espouse views and theories that diverge from the mainstream, evidence-based views on things.
2 August 2021
Speaking of COVID grifters, an amusing take-down has emerged from the UK.Piers Corbyn is an anti-vax activist, and elder brother of the former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
2 August 2021
We've talked about purported psychic medium Thomas John before. He's a shady character whose real name is Thomas John Flannagan. Previously convicted of stealing security deposits from renters after posting bogus apartment ads on Craigslist, and having also worked as a drag queen, he's moved on to being a celebrity psychic medium.
2 August 2021
In good news this week, Facebook has finally shut down the anti-vax, conspiracy-theory-mongering group Voices for Freedom's page. They're upset:
26 July 2021
Okay, so I'm joking here - I actually know how to pronounce the name (it's said "Nexium"). But it's obviously a pretentious looking name, chosen for a pretentious, and dangerous, cult. One that thankfully has now been (mostly) shut down. I have a fascination with cults, as they are a particularly dangerous form of erroneous thinking. People can lose their money, friends and even their lives at the hands of an unscrupulous guru or spiritual master. It's important that the NZ Skeptics, and others, speak out when we see groups taking advantage of individuals in this way.
26 July 2021
Allison Mack was once famous for her role in the TV show Smallville, a spin-off show about Superman. However, a few years ago she joined a group called NXIVM who promised to help her on the path to enlightenment and happiness. The group pulled in more famous people, including other TV celebrities, the director of What the Bleep Do We Know, and the Bronfman sisters, heirs to the Seagram fortune.
26 July 2021
Sensing Murder psychic Kelvin Cruickshank is currently touring the country. He's been down in the South Island recently, visiting Christchurch and a lot of smaller towns, and selling tickets at $65 a pop. Next month he'll be touring the North Island.
26 July 2021
Mahin Khatami looks at first blush to be a respectable scientist - she has a long history as a scientist spanning decades, she used to work for the NIH (National Institutes for Health) in the US as a program director, and has not only been published in respectable peer reviewed journals, but has also been a journal editor.
21 July 2021
There is an increasingly vocal sub-set of farmers around the country who are buying into conspiracy theories. A group called the Agricultural Action Group - AAG - have been touring the country in recent months warning people about what they consider to be the real issues facing not just farmers but all citizens of our country:
19 July 2021
Over the past few weeks there have been various extreme weather events that are now being attributed to climate change, whereas once scientists were more cagey on the issue - saying that it's never possible to blame any one event on climate change. But the evidence is stacking up, and we see temperature records being broken - 2020 was one of the three warmest years on record.
19 July 2021
Yes, the pandemic is still with us, and alarmingly new strains are emerging. Evolution does what evolution does.
19 July 2021
Sticking with the COVID theme, I reported in a previous newsletter about the website set up to allow medical professionals and “concerned citizens” to sign their name to the statement:
19 July 2021
So, on the back of increasing effects of climate change this week saw the “Howl of a Protest” event run by Groundswell NZ - a group that purportedly represents farmers and tradies and ute owners who protested against new government regulations they say are unworkable.In particular, they're concerned about the Clean Car Discount programme, dubiously dubbed the “ute tax” as it will penalise those who drive vehicles which spew excessive CO2 emissions.
19 July 2021
The drug Ivermectin is an anti-parasite drug (used on worms and head-lice), and has been touted as a treatment for COVID-19. On the anti-vaxx Facebook groups I monitor, it's frequently cited as the favoured treatment for COVID-19, along the same lines as Hydroxychloroquine - though that seems to have faded a little now.
19 July 2021
As I've written before, one of the main purveyors of vaccine misinformation is the anti-vax, conspiracy theory group Voices for Freedom. You will have seen their distinctive branding with their blue, teal and green signs and professionally printed placards.
12 July 2021
I recently learned about the absolutely fun conspiracy that is “birds aren't real”. According to the theory, the CIA in the 1950s were trying to solve two hard problems. Firstly, they wanted to be able to secretly spy on the entire population of the United States. Secondly, they needed to stop birds pooping on their cars in the CIA headquarters car park. These two seemingly disconnected problems gave birth to the genius idea to replace all the birds in America with flying camera drones that look just like birds. As the Birds Aren't Real twitter account states:
12 July 2021
Last weekend I visited the Home Show in Christchurch. All the usual suspects were there, Bioptron, Shuzi and the Magnetic and Titanium healer. This was surprising as I had scanned the exhibitor list in the morning and they did not appear. So I suspect they are on some hidden/covert/backdoor list.
12 July 2021
I enjoy playing computer games, and own both a gaming PC (RTX 3060 Ti, i5-10400) and a VR headset (Quest). So when I heard about an ambitious new game for PCs, VR and phones, it piqued my interest. The game is called Earth2, and is pipped to be a 1:1 copy of earth, with a faithful reproduction of the entire planet in software. Their website makes comparisons to the movies The Matrix and Ready Player One, both of which feature VR environments that are indistinguishable from reality. This sounds pretty ambitious... maybe too ambitious.
12 July 2021
While trawling conspiracy websites and videos, as I tend to do for fun, I stumbled across a recommendation for a local kiwi numerologist. But the recommendation said that, unlike the usual mystical nonsense, this particular numerologist uses science and maths to find real patterns that are actually useful.
5 July 2021
An anti-vax paper was published recently in the open access Vaccines journal. “The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations - We Should Rethink the Policy”. The paper has now been retracted, though just getting it published is likely to fuel anti-vax misinformation.
5 July 2021
Did you know that NZ Skeptics is running an in-person conference again this year (after not running one last year because of COVID).
5 July 2021
In the good news department, YouTube has de-platformed local misinformant Vinny Eastwood, also joining another local, Damien De Ment, also banned. Vinny Eastwood was king of promoting conspiracy theories, but it seems that various complaints have seen his channel now removed.
5 July 2021
You may be aware that there's currently a bill before parliament to change the way that fluoridation of our drinking water is handled. Presently District Health Boards have the individual power to decide whether the water for the populations they serve is fluoridated or not. The bill would take that power away from the DHBs and give it to the Director-General of Health.
5 July 2021
This past week saw the release of a report on misinformation, on research conducted by the Classification Office Te Mana Whakaatu. The Classification Office is traditionally responsible for classifying media, such as films and assessing whether material may need to be restricted.
5 July 2021
It is with great sadness that I have to report that Russell Tomes, a NZ Skeptics committee member died last week. Russell unfortunately had an undiagnosed heart condition and died of a heart attack.
30 June 2021
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about lawyer Liz Lambert's effort to claim a small part of New Zealand - the Abel Tasman National Park - as her own property, which she's called New Freeland. Well, it turns out that she's worried about an organisation who have not just claimed Allodial Title over a piece of land, but have claimed sovereignty over the entirety of New Zealand. Liz has been warning anyone who will listen that this rival group, the Crown of the Mauri Nation, have secretly entered into an agreement with the government to hand over the keys to our country.
28 June 2021
(In)famous German psychic Michael Schneider made the news recently when he claimed to know the exact coordinates of Madeleine McCann's body. Madeleine, aged 3, went missing in 2007 while she was on holiday in Spain with her family. Despite several leads over the years (and many psychics making predictions), there's been no definitive answer so far as to what happened to Madeleine - although there is one likely suspect.
28 June 2021
Obviously India has been through the wringer recently with a huge increase in the number of COVID cases, and deaths, in the country. Thankfully the number of active cases is dropping, but at its peak around four and a half thousand people were dying per day, and there have been almost four hundred thousand reported deaths so far - although many experts fear the real total is likely to be much higher.
28 June 2021
There's a lawyer in New Zealand called Liz Lambert who thinks she has hit upon a legal loophole that allows people to claim any piece of land as their own. As background, there are two main forms of land ownership in many countries - Fee Simple and Allodial. Fee simple is the type of land ownership you or I have access to. As archaic legal terms, Fee in this case means ownership, and Simple means without any kind of time limit (freehold rather than leasehold). Governments, on the other hand, usually have Allodial ownership of land, which is more of an absolute ownership without a requirement to pay anyone rates, etc (although in some cases there may be private allodial ownership, such as church land in some european countries). So, in New Zealand's case, the Crown has Allodial Title over New Zealand, and we citizens can then purchase a Fee Simple Title to part of that land. It still belongs to the Crown under their allodial title, but we've purchased a right to live on it forever (barring certain circumstances like compulsory acquisition).
23 June 2021
Someone called Daryl Trask has recently placed a petition on change.org asking people to sign their support for an overthrow of our government. The petition says:
23 June 2021
Now that I've found out about Rebel Wisdom, I'm hooked. I usually have to go hunting for my nonsense, but the Rebel Wisdom website has everything in one place: Rupert Sheldrake (who has silly ideas about supernatural mental powers), Alan Watts (who has silly ideas about religion and philosophy) and Jordan Peterson (who has silly ideas about all sorts of things) are all featured.
23 June 2021
US Senator Louie Gohmert, from Texas, has recently asked the country's Forestry Service if they can look into a thought he's had about how to combat climate change:
21 June 2021
Speaking of anti-vaxxers, they've recently set up a website which allows people, including doctors, nurses and allied health professionals (including alt-med practitioners) to register themselves as objecting to the COVID vaccine rollout. They claim to have 33 doctors, 123 nurses, 244 allied health practitioners (gee, I wonder why this number is so large compared to the number of doctors!) and over 3,300 NZ “concerned citizens”.
21 June 2021
Last weekend saw the release of a new policy by the government called the Clean Car Discount.
21 June 2021
We're still in the COVID pandemic but last week I had some cause for cheer. I've previously reported on the actions of anti-vaxxer groups, who seem to be made up largely of privileged (and entitled) middle-aged people (Boomers and Karens, to be derogatory).
21 June 2021
Finally this week, in the bizarre category, I read an article by Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis infamy - the arch-creationist and science-denying anti-evolution propagandist.
14 June 2021
By Robert Bartholomew and Peter Hassall
14 June 2021
I've watched a few videos online from a recent panic where people show themselves sticking a magnet to their arm at the injection site of their COVID vaccine. The same magnet pushed against other parts of the arm will fall off and not stick. Could this be proof that there's a metallic microchip in the vaccine?
14 June 2021
As promised, myself and another couple of skeptics recently visited the Theosophical Society's building in Wellington to hear their National President, John Vorstermans, give a talk titled “_The Ageless Wisdom_”. The Society has a great little building on Marion Street, with a comfortable library of esoteric mystical books at the front, and a large main room with lots of wood and painted mystical symbols. It has a particularly Masonic feel to it.
14 June 2021
I've seen adverts pop up recently on news sites, such as NewsHub and YouTube, that are selling a device which claims to be able to cut your power bill by 90%. Now, wouldn't that be nice - if it were true!
8 June 2021
I rarely watch broadcast TV, but on Wednesday night I happened to see a little of TVNZ's Seven Sharp programme. They featured a segment on acupuncture as an alternative to botox for reducing facial wrinkles.
8 June 2021
Sorry to harp on about anti-vaxxers, but there's another story this week that has emerged about prominent American anti-vaxxer Del Bigtree. Bigtree runs ICAN - the Informed Consent Action Network, and has a slickly produced video podcast called The Highwire.
8 June 2021
We should be worried about the consequences of far-right conspiracy theories. In Belgium, Professor Marc Van Ranst has been the public face of science related to the COVID pandemic and the Belgian government's response.
8 June 2021
We've mentioned Sue Grey in the past. She's the Nelson-based lawyer and co-leader of the NZ Outdoors party, and full on conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer.
31 May 2021
For a long time now I've been promising to take a friend of mine to a Christian Science church service. He's been interested in doing this because he was brought up in the church in America, but hasn't been back since he was a child. Finally, last weekend, the stars aligned and we managed to arrange a visit.
31 May 2021
I've watched a few videos from a recent panic where people show themselves sticking a magnet to their arm at the injection site of their COVID vaccine. The same magnet pushed against other parts of the arm will fall off and not stick. Could this be proof that there's a metallic microchip in the vaccine?
31 May 2021
Over the next couple of months I'm hoping to visit a few interesting religious groups, to get a feel for them - what they believe, how they act, who attends their events. So, all being well, after this week's report into Christian Science you can expect to hear about the Theosophical Society, Druids, and maybe more!
31 May 2021
Apparently a UFO was seen in Hawkes Bay late last week. Several people reported seeing a large rectangular shaped object in the sky at dusk, with green and red lights, moving strangely.
24 May 2021
If you've spent any time on the internet you'll likely have encountered Wikipedia - the community-edited encyclopaedia. Wikipedia gets a bad rap as it's possible for anybody to edit the content and put misinformation on a page.
24 May 2021
Yet another anti-hero of the COVID story is Dr Simon Thornley, of the COVID Plan B group who we've mentioned many times in the past.
24 May 2021
The week before last we saw Sue Grey, a Nelson-based lawyer and co-leader of the NZ Outdoors party, bringing a case against the NZ Government claiming that the rollout of the COVID vaccine was illegal under the Section 23 of the Medicines Act.
24 May 2021
I have a super-secret email account that I use to sign up to various mailing lists, including the Voices for Freedom mailing list. Boy do they put out some propaganda!
24 May 2021
From the hard to believe it's real category, we found out about a revolutionary product being offered in New Zealand - Vortex Water!
19 May 2021
A recent major report into herbs and supplements for weight loss has concluded that they don't work, and that not enough is known about their safety. Erica Bessell, the lead author from the University of Sydney, points out that in many countries no evidence is needed that these products actually work, and of course many companies are happy to exploit that failing and sell a wide variety of unproven products to buyers who hope for a simple solution to the hard problem of controlling their weight.
19 May 2021
Sue Grey, Nelson lawyer and co-leader of The Outdoors Party (an anti-vax, anti-5g, anti-1080 political party), had her day in court last week, taking the government to court over their COVID vaccine rollout. Although I was not able to spare the time to spend the day in court, I did manage to briefly visit the outside of the High Court in the morning, and when I got there Billy TK, who had decided to join the circus, was arguing outside with security guards. It turns out he had been kicked out of the court foyer for filming in a prohibited area, and of course his being removed was just proof that the system is corrupt. Go Billy!
19 May 2021
There's a website in New Zealand promoting "Vortex Water". The front page of the site starts by saying:
17 May 2021
The website of an organisation called the Maori Ranger Security Division is currently selling ID cards that they claim can help you avoid being arrested by police, protect you from Child Services, make you exempt from fisheries quotas, and may even let you travel without a passport - and all for the low, low price of $50.
17 May 2021
A week ago I opened the LinkedIn app on my phone, and noticed a comment on a post that was made by someone in NZ who was an “EvoRich Consultant”. His profile didn't seem to match what I'd expect from a corporate consultant, so I quickly searched Google for EvoRich to see what it was all about - with the suspicion that it might be some kind of Multi Level Marketing scheme.
17 May 2021
A video from “LADbible” has been doing the rounds recently, showing members of a Russian fitness group performing feats of amazing speed. The video shows several clips of them punching something or someone so quickly that you barely see any movement, punching in circles in front of their body with a speed that makes their arms blur, and repeatedly punching something in front of them at an unbelievable rate.
12 May 2021
On Monday night I visited parliament, where a group called Jesus for NZ had been invited by National MP Simon Bridges to hold a church service called the Power of One.
10 May 2021
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the situation in India with COVID and how bad it was there. It turns out that it's not the worst place in the world to be (though certainly not anywhere near the best either!). There's an interactive map hosted by the New York Times that shows, per country, the rates of infection per capita.
10 May 2021
The Chinese launch vehicle - Long March 5B has been in the news over the past week. The rocket was launched at the end of last month to carry the living quarters of China's independent space station into orbit.
10 May 2021
I've been watching the Facebook page of Voices For Freedom. To me it's staggering the output of their page, with their frequent posts. often several a day. They have over 7,000 people following the page.
10 May 2021
NZ Skeptics were recently contacted by a journalist in response to an Official Information Act request which revealed the numbers of people and their occupations entering the country under the guise of being a critical health worker.
5 May 2021
A recent article from Radio NZ did a great job of pointing out just how useless online polls are, and raising concerns about how often New Zealand media outlets, including Newshub, the AM Show and the Herald, rely on them as source material for news articles.
3 May 2021
A.C.E., or Accelerated Christian Education, is a Christian based curriculum used in New Zealand - both in some Christian schools, and by parents who homeschool their children. The curriculum boasts that it covers from kindergarten to year 13, and that it is recognised by New Zealand universities.
3 May 2021
An “alternative” health clinic in Christchurch, which specialises in colonic irrigation and coffee enemas, has announced online that it will not treat anyone who has been vaccinated within the last 30 days.
3 May 2021
I've noticed an interesting, and worrying, shift with some of the more extreme online communities recently. On the one hand it's great to finally, and belatedly, see social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google hold people and organisations to account when they spread nonsense such as COVID vaccine misinformation. For example, just this week Advance NZ's Facebook page has been temporarily removed. Local conspiracy theorists such as Damien DeMent, Lee Williams, Vinny Eastwood and Karen Brewer are currently concerned over suspension of their social media profiles, because they are perpetuating dangerous untruths.
3 May 2021
Normally I would be excited to hear that a prominent biologist is in New Zealand, but in this case the biologist in question is Dr Bruce Lipton - a figure who is well known to skeptics.
28 April 2021
Essential oils are concentrated extracted plant chemicals that have a strong smell of the plant they were extracted from - their "essence". These oils are often heated in a diffuser, or evaporated via a wick, in order to spread their smell. Of course, if nice smells were all these oils were about, there wouldn't be much for me to be skeptical about.
28 April 2021
The Centner Academy in Miami, Florida has barred its teachers from being able to see students if they've been given the COVID vaccine, and will not be employing new teachers who have already been vaccinated. They argue that because the vaccines have not yet been fully tested, there is a risk that they could have unknown issues that may affect other people.
28 April 2021
TV psychic Maurice Amdur, in the UK, has a video featured on his public Facebook page - Maurice's Psychic World - where he performs a psychic reading of a car salesman while he's picking up a brand new Jaguar XKS convertible, worth eighty thousand pounds:
27 April 2021
Essential oils are one of those trendy products that seem to be very popular at the moment, and they seem to be a great money-maker for their manufacturers and retailers, with the estimated market size of over $17 Billion dollars globally in 2017.
27 April 2021
An interesting video has appeared on YouTube which gives a rational explanation for a UFO video taken by US Navy personnel.
27 April 2021
TV psychic Maurice Amdur, star of UK TV shows Maurice's Psychic World and Four Rooms has been left to pay £100,000 in legal costs after attempting to sue an insurance company for his loss of his psychic powers after a car crash.
21 April 2021
An article was published by Stuff the other day about cosmetic acupuncture - a discredited idea that sticking needles in your face can be an alternative to paying for a face lift. Half way through reading the article it started to feel really familiar, like I'd already read it but on the topic of a different unproven therapy. Sure enough, a quick search for the reporter's previous work turned up a recent article in stuff about reiki - a "therapy" where someone heals you by holding their hands near you.
21 April 2021
A friend sent me an article about a paper published recently in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called:
21 April 2021
There's been a lot of talk recently in "alternative" circles about vaccine deaths. This has been prompted by the massive global rollout of several different types of COVID vaccines - mRNA (Pfizer, Moderna), Viral Vector (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson), Inactivated (CoronaVac, Covaxin), and others.
21 April 2021
The Exclusive Brethren is a "high control" church run from Sydney by Bruce Hales, the "Elect Vessel". "High control" is a term used to describe groups where the leadership exert a high degree of control over members' private lives, including their finances, friendships and sex lives.
19 April 2021
Honestly, I don't think I could make up something this daft if I tried. Thanks to an astute member of our NZ Skeptics Facebook group, I now know about a New Zealand company - Hippo Health - who are marketing a fascinating sun block for animals.
19 April 2021
After chatting with Graeme Hill on Magic Talk recently about Sue Grey, co-leader of the conspiracy minded Outdoors Party, and her threat to sue the government, I found out that Sue was planning to give a talk on the steps of parliament the next day. So, during my lunch break, I wandered up to the Beehive to see more about why Sue thinks the government's rollout of the COVID vaccine needs to be stopped.
19 April 2021
I'm a bit late to the party with this one, but there is footage on YouTube from last year where the pope gives a blessing from an upper floor window. After the blessing the pope turns around and starts walking away from the window. After a couple of steps, he suddenly just pops out of existence - disappears into thin air. Some people have taken this as evidence that the pope was never actually physically at the window, but instead had been replaced with a hologram - and that this hologram had been turned off prematurely, before it had moved out of sight. Maybe a decision was taken not to risk the pope's health during a pandemic. Maybe the pope is a lie? It does look pretty weird.
19 April 2021
Thankfully the claims in this pamphlet are pretty easy to debunk:
14 April 2021
A work colleague reached out to me the other day with an interesting question. One of his close family members has fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole, and now spends a lot of time talking about QAnon, the "Deep State", etc. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with these kinds of rabbit holes, it's not entirely benign - the family member has now branched into COVID vaccine denial, which has a real chance of negatively impacting on their health.
14 April 2021
After talking about Sue Grey's threat to sue the government last week, I found out that Sue was planning to give a talk on the steps of parliament the next day. So during my lunch break last Thursday I wandered up to the Beehive, to see more about why Sue thinks the government's rollout of the COVID vaccine needs to be stopped.
14 April 2021
On the news of Prince Philip's death, my thoughts go out not just to the British Royal Family, but also to the members of the Prince Philip Movement in Vanuatu. This movement, a very small religious group, believe that Prince Philip is the son of a local mountain god who traveled overseas and married a powerful woman. The group has been described as a cargo cult, and there's even a suggestion that Philip was John Frum's brother - John Frum is a mythical American military man, around which a cargo cult religion started in the late 1930s.
14 April 2021
Disappointingly, despite the excitement, I'm sure many listeners will already have figured out what the rational explanation for this string of lights in the sky over Melbourne was: Elon Musk's Starlink, a company that is providing satellite based internet - with a few tens of thousands of satellites planned to be deployed over the next few years. There are valid questions about whether these devices are damaging to astronomy, and have the potential to clutter earth's orbit, but they're definitely not visiting aliens. If you are able to get out and see these satellites as they maneuver themselves into their operational orbits, I'd definitely recommend it. I saw them late last year, and it was an impressive sight - a real testament to modern technology.
12 April 2021
One of our contacts noticed an item on TVNZ news on the 7th March detailing a product being developed by the University of Otago for prevention treatment of type 2 Diabetes. A complaint was made to TVNZ but they have not upheld the complaint.
12 April 2021
Research by the American Center for Countering Digital Hate has revealed that almost two-thirds of all misinformation about vaccines being spread on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter arose from just twelve individuals and their associated organisations. And on Facebook they account for 73% of all anti-vax content.
12 April 2021
Many thanks to the people who have paid their 2021 membership subs. This is a final reminder to members who paid subs in 2020, but have yet to pay 2021 subs, that the 2021 subs are now due. Memberful have streamlined the payment process (it is no longer necessary to set a password), and this is reflected in the instructions that follow:
12 April 2021
Last week Mark wrote an interesting item in the newsletter around Scientologists using deceptive means to lure people in to their “courses”. We got some feedback from a reader in the US - we love getting feedback! - so I thought I'd share it. Ray from Philadelphia writes:
7 April 2021
The Secular Education Network, a group of parents and others who are passionate about ensuring the Education Act's promise of secular education in schools is realised, have just released a document reminding schools of their new obligations after the law was changed last year:
7 April 2021
The Outdoors Party's health spokesperson recently shared a video clip from the TV show Dexter, showing a scene where the serial killer protagonist of the show remembers being rescued as a child from a shipping container - and, as you might have guessed, the container has EVERGREEN written down the side. Coincidence? Apparently not, if you're one of the many people who believe that the Ever Given, which was recently freed from the Suez Canal, was transporting children as part of a child sex trade run by Hillary Clinton.
5 April 2021
A new group called FACT (Fight Against Conspiracy Theories) has published an open letter to Plan B about their connection with Voices for Freedom. The letter calls on Plan B to distance themselves from Voices for Freedom and the group's anti-science stance on COVID related issues.
5 April 2021
I recently heard about someone who signed up on the MeetUp website for a conversational English course in Auckland, and when they arrived they found out that the course was being run by Scientologists. This type of bait and switch sneakiness is about what we'd expect from Scientology, so I decided to search google and find the course in question.
5 April 2021
Stuff published an article recently about the dangers of LED light bulbs, arguing that the blue light from LED bulbs disturbs our circadian rhythm and disrupts our sleep, with wide ranging knock-on effects to our health. My skeptical radar beeped at reading this, as I've looked into this issue in the past and found much speculation and very little actual science.
29 March 2021
Thanks to some wonderful help from Susan Gerbic, we've now got a few of the 2019 conference talk videos up on our YouTube channel.
29 March 2021
If you're in or around Christchurch, you may be interested in attending the Christchurch Skeptics in the Pub. One of our NZ Skeptics committee members, Jonathan Harper, is giving a talk about skepticism. It's at the Pegasus Arms, 6pm on Thursday 8th April. You can register your RSVP on the group's meetup page.
29 March 2021
A couple of weeks ago, I spent an enjoyable weekend away with some friends up in Russell, in the Bay of Islands. A couple of points from a skeptical perspective; firstly, one of my friends told me about an interview he heard with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand, which I've since listened to (detailed below), and the second was a conversation I overheard which illustrated to me how “fake news” and misinformation is innocently spread.
29 March 2021
Apparently, back in 2016 dozens of American Embassy diplomats in Cuba felt sick, and this has been dubbed Havana Syndrome. I'd never heard of this, but it came to my attention through an article written by local skeptic Robert Bartholemew.
29 March 2021
This week has seen the news of the ship (the Ever Given) that's been stuck for days in the Suez Canal. Interestingly, having glanced at the headlines and pictures, in my mind the ship was called the Evergreen, but that's the name of the company that runs it (Evergreen Marine).
24 March 2021
A UK company, Football Index, has financially collapsed over the last as its users have realised that the entire thing is nothing more than a pack of cards.
24 March 2021
On Saturday I attended one of several Freedom Rallies around the country. In Wellington, the rally was set for midday at the train station. It was a fairly low key affair, with flyers being handed out saying that masks and the vaccine are both ineffective.
24 March 2021
A new astronomy paper suggests that the strange object named Oumuamua that passed through our solar system a couple of years ago was probably a thin disc of planetary matter, and not a piece of alien technology.
24 March 2021
On Thursday evening last week I visited Parliament to pray for the future of our country. Now I'm not a Christian, so I'm pretty sure my prayers aren't going to make a difference, but it's interesting to see what influential Christians think about what is wrong with our country and how it should be fixed.
22 March 2021
A few weeks ago I wrote about big cats reported sighted in Canterbury, and opined that what had been seen was likely a feral cat.
22 March 2021
Big news this week is that the government is taking water fluoridation powers off local councils and giving it to the director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield.
22 March 2021
NDEs were in the media this week. Radio New Zealand did an interview with Professor Bruce Greyson who has a book out After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond.
22 March 2021
I read a very good article today in The Atlantic explaining some of the subtleties around the COVID vaccine. In particular we shouldn't be surprised when vaccinated people get infected.
17 March 2021
We've just had the second anniversary of the horrific Christchurch massacre, and as skeptics it's sad to have seen over the last two years those in our country who have posted content denying that the attack was real, or claiming that it was a "false flag" operation. It's been hard enough over the last 20 years watching high profile conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, engage in denial in the US for events such as the Sandy Hook massacre and the 9/11 attacks. But to see this kind of wrong headed thinking at home somehow feels worse. I guess we've been able to rest on our laurels watching America suffer from a spread of the conspiracy mindset, and at least for me it seemed implausible that the problem would ever reach our fair shores. I guess I was just too naive.
17 March 2021
A group who monitor extreme Right Wing groups, Hope Not Hate, have published an article detailing a weird attempt to hijack the QAnon conspiracy. The new conspiracy theory, called Sabmyk, has been creating new channels on Telegram, Gab and BitChute in an attempt to entice those who have become disillusioned with QAnon since Trump left office and the promises of QAnon fell through. Why not Facebook and Twitter? Probably because many right wing activists have been driven off of those platforms in the last few months as admins have removed thousands of accounts for posting hate and misinformation. Telegram offers a modicum of anonymity, and Gab and Bitchute are a social network and video hosting site respectively that are less regulated and more welcoming to extreme views than the mainstream social media sites, claiming that they're pro free speech.
17 March 2021
The AstraZeneca vaccine has made the news recently, as several European countries have halted its rollout temporarily due to reports of blood clots. These issues are real, but it's important to look at how many incidences of this issue there are, and how that compares to other vaccines. It turns out that not only is the incidence of reported clotting similar to that seen with other COVID vaccines, but it's also similar to what you'd expect from a population that haven't received any medical interventions. Both deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism levels for the millions of people who have taken the vaccine are about what would be expected of a random selection of people in their day to day lives. Sadly some people just get blood clots at times, and people can have exacerbating medical conditions that mean they're more susceptible to this issue.
15 March 2021
Today I finally made it to the Builders Of The Adytum, a strange group whose beliefs combine Kabbalah and Tarot into an unusual, but enjoyable, philosophy.
15 March 2021
Graeme Hill, longtime broadcaster and a good friend of science, skepticism and common sense thinking, now has an evening slot on MagicTalk radio. As part of his show, Graeme usually interviews knowledgeable people about a wide range of fascinating topics. A few years ago I was lucky enough to have been invited to join Siouxsie Wiles as a regular guest to talk about skeptical issues, and I'm now privileged to have been asked back to talk on Graeme's new show as he hosts Magic Nights.
15 March 2021
Following on from last week's stories about the Tamakis saying they won't be getting vaccinated, and Ken Ring saying he predicted our recent earthquake, there have been a couple of interesting developments.
15 March 2021
Rebecca Booth, from Fairlie in the South Island, recently found a seven leaf clover. The Stuff article about this find mentioned that this is not the first clover-related find Rebecca has had. Apparently earlier this year, in January, she found both four and five leaf clovers.
15 March 2021
Today is the second anniversary of the horrific Christchurch massacre, and as skeptics it's sad to have seen over the last two years those in our country who have posted content denying that the attack was real, or claiming that it was a “false flag” operation. It's been hard enough over the last 20 years watching high profile conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, engage in denial in the US for events such as the Sandy Hook massacre and the 9/11 attacks. But to see this kind of wrong headed thinking at home somehow feels worse. I guess we've been able to rest on our laurels watching America suffer from a spread of the conspiracy mindset, and at least for me it seemed implausible that the problem would ever reach our fair shores. I guess I was just too naïve.
8 March 2021
I've recently read calls for high profile figures in New Zealand to endorse the new COVID vaccines, as a way to reassure the portion of the public who currently feel unsure about the vaccines' safety. It's been suggested that public figures such as Jacinda Ardern, Ashley Bloomfield and others might want to allow the media to record them being immunised against COVID. Personally I think that, at least for those who are conspiracy minded, watching those who are supposedly a part of the conspiracy be injected is probably not going to be very convincing.
8 March 2021
After last week's nocturnal earthquake, Ken Ring has been on Facebook proving how right he is. He's pointed out that he predicted the earthquake in his 2021 almanac:
8 March 2021
I'm guessing that Jami-Lee Ross, head of the failed conspiracy themed political party Advance NZ, has run out of money. Why else would he be planning to flog useless anti-5G pills to us?
1 March 2021
As everybody no doubt knows we're back in lockdown again - level 3 for Auckland and level 2 for the rest of the country.
1 March 2021
I can't say we'll be having this every week, but I found this amusing little joke on social media this week:
1 March 2021
Ken Ring is back selling his unproven weather, gardening, and best fishing predictions. You can also get his books on the global warming hoax, anxiety therapy, better parenting, and more on his predict weather website.
1 March 2021
Mark Honeychurch recently covered a Newshub story by Sarah Templeton in our newsletter (Reiki is Here To Save Us All) about a visit to a Reiki person by the reporter. (Practitioner, in my humble opinion, is probably the wrong word).
1 March 2021
If you're a regular reader of our newsletter, you'll know that we're publicising annual membership of NZ Skeptics, which is extremely attractively priced being only $40, or $20 if you're unwaged.
1 March 2021
After some investigation it seems that this magazine (it's a stretch to call it a journal, a title which should be reserved for scientific publications) is being purchased by at least one public library (Titirangi).
22 February 2021
Lockdown timing predictions from a Hamilton based psychic, Sarah King, have been unearthed and posted to our Facebook group this week:
22 February 2021
Or, at the very least he's apparently quit politics. This one was a bit of a surprise to me, as the conspiracy minded Billy had only just announced that he was re-naming his Public Party to the Freedom Party. Maybe he quit because he realised that there had already been a Freedom Party in NZ, and that all of the most obvious domain names had already been taken? Alternatively, it might be that recent accusations of financial mis-management and fraud are making life in the limelight a little too uncomfortable for Billy at the moment.
22 February 2021
A member emailed us this week to share an unaddressed letter she received in her mailbox. Thankfully the anonymous author of the document has put in the hard work of joining all the unconnected dots of some of the conspiracies I've mentioned above, and more, and has figured out that the overall aim of the New Zealand government is transhumanism - apparently we're going to be converted to Human 2.0 via the COVID vaccine. As a technology enthusiast I'm having a hard time seeing the downside to being upgraded, although I have to admit to being worried that, given Bill Gates' involvement, my new nanobots may be running a Windows based OS. Hopefully I'll be able to flash them to a more stable BSD or Linux OS, just as soon as I figure out where my serial port is.
22 February 2021
MP Grant Robertson was on Peter Williams' Magic Talk radio show this week when he was asked about the “Great Reset”. His immediate reaction was to quit the interview early, and he's subsequently let Magic Talk know that he won't be returning for his regular weekly slot with Williams. So, what's going on in this drama that's of interest to skeptics?
22 February 2021
The controversial conservative US radio host Rush Limbaugh died this week. Although this isn't something that the NZ Skeptics feel is okay to celebrate, we do acknowledge that Limbaugh was responsible for the spreading of many damaging and harmful conspiracy theories, and was very mean spirited to people he saw as the enemies of the US, including those who were black, gay, liberal, female and/or atheist. Unsurprisingly, the work Rush Limbaugh undertook spreading his divisive message was recently rewarded with America's Medal of Freedom. Rather than going into more details of Limbaugh's life, I will leave it to the (hopefully impartial) BBC's obituary if you would like to know more.
22 February 2021
For those of you who like the work we do enough that you want to support us financially, it's that time of the year when membership subscriptions are due. Membership is only $40, or $20 if you're unwaged, and the money we receive will be spent on worthy causes, allowing us to help make New Zealand a more skeptical place.
15 February 2021
Creationism is what drew me into skepticism. Back in the 90s when I was lecturing in software development, I had a work colleague who was a young earth creationist. Seemingly rational in other areas of his life, and very intelligent, he was nevertheless hooked on “creation science”. It showed to me how even smart people can be taken in when they have an emotional stake in the topic.
15 February 2021
NZ Skeptics membership runs on a calendar year basis and we're about to switch to a new system for collecting subs. If you're enjoying these newsletters and you're not a member, we encourage you to join us - it's a very reasonable $40/year for individuals and only $20/year if you're unwaged.
15 February 2021
One of the joys or risks (depending on your perspective) of writing these newsletters is that we sometimes receive negative feedback. A few weeks ago I wrote about QAnon and the realisations that believers were having that the predictions of Q hadn't panned out. From this I received the following feedback. My comments in [red].
15 February 2021
As no doubt everyone will be aware by now, there's been community transmission of COVID-19 in Auckland. Back to Level 3 for Auckland, and Level 2 for the rest of the country. Let's hope this is over with quickly, and doesn't get out of hand. Best wishes to everyone involved, and keep scanning and checking in!
15 February 2021
In recent weeks there's been a bit of controversy on the airwaves in the form of talkback radio. Talkback radio's an interesting format - where else (apart from letters to the editor) do you get to voice your opinion on any matter to such a big audience? A few weeks ago we saw the removal of John Banks from the Magic Talk radio network after his abhorrent racist remarks (and not shutting down those of a caller).
9 February 2021
Late last year we were contacted by Sina Nasiri, who had written a heart-felt article about his journey to atheism while growing up in Iran. His article explored the risky business of finding people to trust and confide in, in a society where being an atheist is no trivial thing – where apostacy from Islam is punishable by death.
1 February 2021
Last week I attended, online, the funeral of Ngaire McCarthy, who died just over a week ago from cancer. Ngaire was an outspoken Māori atheist, humanist and rationalist who spoke to the NZ Skeptics at our 2014 conference in Auckland. She told us about how the census shows comparable rates of dis-belief amongst Māori and Pākehā in New Zealand, and how Christianity had imposed itself on Māori culture, merging in a way that makes it hard to pick them apart today.
1 February 2021
I wish I was making this news story up - partially because it's getting a little bit tiresome writing about US politics. However, the recently elected Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who likes to ride on the QAnon conspiracy carriage of the Trump Train, has been put through the wringer in the last week. Journalists have been poring over her social media history and documenting her words, shares and likes - some of which are so weird and wonderful it doesn't take much to debunk them.
1 February 2021
Or at least that's what NewsHub would have us believe, with an article published on Tuesday about the benefits of Reiki, an energy healing technique that involves the practitioner manipulating your “energy field” by waving their hands around your body.
25 January 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage with close to 100 million cases over 2 million deaths worldwide. As I've said before we can be thankful that we pursued an elimination strategy here in New Zealand. Still, we can't afford to become complacent, particularly with the emergence of more virulent strains of the virus. (Keep using the COVID app and scanning in!)
18 January 2021
The author of my Bible – The Vagina Bible, Gynaecologist, columnist and author Dr. Jen Gunter was on Twitter recently, again, to educate people about how a vagina is able to self-clean, without any help from the wellness industry which is doing its best to make money out of people by shaming them into thinking they have to fix a problem that isn't there.
18 January 2021
There were many false claims made on 14th January, by Billy Te Kahika and his supporters outside the Beehive in Wellington. The most dangerous claim was that Covid-19 is no more deadly than the flu (2 million people have died worldwide at the time of writing). Among other strange things, they claimed that Jacinda Ardern is a communist who wants to keep putting New Zealand into lockdown, including organising one again on 15th January, the day after the protest.
18 January 2021
In a win for skeptics everywhere, On 11 January 2021, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) in the U.K. moved to suspend accreditation of the Society of Homeopaths (SoH), because they found that the SoH “did not appear to have prioritised public protection over professional interests in its handling of complaints or governance processes, which undermined confidence in its ability to ensure its registrants were compliant with its own Code of Ethics and position statements.”
11 January 2021
On the popular tech news YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips, Linus has evaluated a couple of small faraday cages that are sold in the US as a way to protect home users from the harmful radiation coming from their WiFi base stations. At around NZ$120 a piece I'm not sure which of the findings I think is the funnier - that they do a really bad job of blocking WiFi, or that they turn out to just be repurposed wire paper trays with a couple of modifications to allow wires to be inserted, and that they cost less than NZ$10 each to buy from China.
11 January 2021
Billy TK held an anti-lockdown rally in Auckland on Saturday. The rally was accompanied by a variety of interesting flags, signs and chants:
11 January 2021
I'm sure many skeptics have enjoyed JP Sears' parody videos of the wellness industry, such as How to Become Gluten Intolerant and How to be Ultra Spiritual. It was a surprise to me, just before Christmas, to read that despite poking fun, JP Sears has for a long time been a seller of nonsense. An article from the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Canada details JP Sears' history of selling unregulated therapy sessions and useless supplements, and sadly also his recent descent into COVID-19 science denial.
11 January 2021
An image that has been making its way round the internet recently purports to be a circuit diagram for a 5G chip which is inside COVID vaccines. However, those who are technically musical minded have pointed out that the image is actually that of a guitar effects pedal called Metal Zone from company Boss.
4 January 2021
As you'll no doubt know, 2020 ended seeing the successful and record-setting development of a range of vaccines for COVID-19 from various companies.
4 January 2021
Around this time of the year it's common to be spending time with extended family and friends.
4 January 2021
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4 January 2021
At the start of each year, it's common for psychics and mediums to put out a bunch of predictions for the coming year. These predictions generally fall flat, although a common strategy for some psychics is to put out so many, often vaguely worded, so that there's a chance that some of them will actually come true, at which point they capitalise on this, claiming to be the World's Most Accurate Psychic™!
4 January 2021
We're written about the Advance NZ political party in the past, and about their conspiracy-theory-driven policies and public statements.
28 December 2020
In the very first verse of The Grinch, we learn that the Grinch hated Christmas, and then Dr. Seuss writes “Now please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason”. My young self always wondered about that. Why couldn't I ask? Was I supposed to not ask questions so I wouldn't feel guilty about parcelling him up in my mind as the bad guy? That advice always seemed very sinister to me. I'm instinctively deeply skeptical when someone tells me not to question something.
28 December 2020
In other news, Australian ex-celebrity chef Pete Evans has finally been kicked off Facebook for spreading conspiracy theories about Covid-19. He had previously been fined $25,000 for trying to sell a 'Bio Charger' device as a fake coronavirus cure via a livestream on the platform.
28 December 2020
Dr. Siouxsie Wiles wrote on twitter recently about a NZ Herald article which wondered if New Zealand's response to the pandemic was an overreaction. While pointing out that she hadn't read the article (it was pay-walled) she said “But if the answer isn't a resounding NO WE DIDNT then the piece is insulting, ridiculous, disappointing, & dangerous”.
28 December 2020
What's the harm in viral conspiracy theories? This bbc.co.uk blog investigated the people who had been affected by and involved in the spread of misinformation in 2020. The piece touches on Covid-19-deniers who ended up contracting the illness, people who became internet sensations and ended up speaking to thousands about their conflicting and nonsensical notions, and the hurt of having newly estranged family members.
21 December 2020
In one of our Facebook groups this week there was a recent discussion started by Donald Pettitt about his visit to a “crystal healer” to help with issues he's been having with his balance:
21 December 2020
Retraction Watch have written a nice summary of the year in retractions for The Scientist magazine. Unsurprisingly many of the scientific articles that have been retracted this year are on the topic of COVID-19, but there was one that caught my eye from the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences titled:
21 December 2020
As Skeptics we're not very fond of scammers, and we often try to protect the public from those who would rip them off with dodgy devices and ineffective products. The video below documents a feat of engineering, a device that targets the problem in the US of people who steal people's parcels - and it targets them in a pretty funny way. Although theft is not really a scam, it's still enjoyable to see unethical people get their comeuppance - and it's mentioned later on in the video that this device has also recently been used against scammers. And to be honest, I needed a good excuse to share this video!
21 December 2020
In the news this morning, it's been reported that our very own New Zealand monolith has appeared at Adventure Park in Christchurch. I'd love to think that this monolith could stay until I get a chance to visit it, but given that the original monolith mysteriously disappeared, and that a bunch of young Christians destroyed a similar monolith in California and replaced it with a cross, I worry that our version may not last long.
14 December 2020
Renowned Otago researcher, Jim Flynn has died, aged 86. He discovered a very interesting effect - now named after him - the Flynn Effect, which states that IQ scores are increasing decade by decade. Basically, people are scoring better on IQ tests than they did in the past. This has had the effect of moving the 100 score - which is, by definition, the average IQ score upwards. There is speculation on the reasons for the Flynn effect, but nothing completely conclusive. But it is interesting to ponder.
14 December 2020
There was an interesting item this week on research by Kiwi scientists showing that Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, is a real thing and not psychosomatic.
14 December 2020
A few weeks back a monolith was discovered, in the desert in the state of Utah in the USA. Since then they've been popping up in various places around the world. The famous monolith from Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey (based on Arthur C. Clarke's novels) would appear to be the inspiration for these.
14 December 2020
Last week (December 10th) TVNZ's Seven Sharp programme had an item featuring a Ponsonby-based psychic medium by the name of Kimberly Stewart. The story was based on the premise that because 2020 has been such a stressful year, that people have been seeking the services of psychics more. Business is booming! As is typical of these items, they offered a psychologist's opinion for balance.
7 December 2020
Scoop.co.nz published a survey looking at New Zealanders perceptions of misinformation. One finding was “The majority of New Zealanders surveyed agree that disinformation has the ability to greatly influence someone's opinion (91 percent), but far less (53 percent) acknowledge that disinformation could influence them.” This hubris is something we need to work on. That belief that it can't happen to you is the very reason wrong ideas may be lurking untouched and untested in your belief system.
7 December 2020
Unfortunately, those same algorithms aren't smart enough to detect the baby in the soiled bathwater, and seem to be defenestrating the lot, blocking misinformation as well as videos debunking anti-vaccination misinformation. YouTuber Stephen Woodford was one who found himself scooped up in the cleansing. He recently posted a video to his YouTube channel Rationality Rules called 'The Covid-5G Conspiracy – Debunked'. It was taken down and he was sent a letter explaining why. Woodford made the letter he received from YouTube public, highlighting the reasoning given; “we think it violates our medical misinformation policy”. You can see Woodford's response here.
7 December 2020
The ABC News website published a story about a keto pill scam using a famous (in Australia) NZ born TV Doctor (Dr Brad McKay) to promote their nonsense without his knowledge. Dr McKay was not happy with the fact they had stolen his identity to promote their products, but is still struggling to get the posts removed as Facebook has given him the equivalent of a sorry-about-that shrug and taken no action. He has approached multiple authorities and agencies in Australia but (at the time of writing) is still waiting to hear back from them.
7 December 2020
Understanding marketing tactics is a good way to learn how to be more skeptical about them. Knowledge can help you take off that wool you didn't know had been pulled over your eyes, and see the truth behind the lies, and hopefully be able to make a better decision about where and how to spend your hard earned cash.
30 November 2020
I'm sure most people saw the intriguing news that a tall prism shaped metal structure, now known as the Utah Monolith, had been found by conservationists in the desert in the US, sticking out from the rock floor of a canyon. It's been great to see sleuths figure out where the monolith is located, using flight plans and google maps satellite view (in a slot canyon in Lockhart Basin in San Juan County, Utah), approximately when it was placed, using historical satellite photos (between August 2015 and October 2016) and how it was made, with several people visiting the site (it's hollow and made from riveted stainless steel sheets). However, the mystery of who put it there has still not been solved.
30 November 2020
There's an interesting article published by Dr Deane Galbraithe this week about Billy Te Kakiha's evangelical influence, and how this may explain his adoption of so many conspiracy theories in his talks. For those who don't remember, Billy TK started a political party earlier this year, the Public Party, with a platform based on conspiracies and other unscientific nonsense. Deane has been talking in our Facebook group about his article, and, although it's not mentioned in the article itself, on Facebook he's talked about someone who has messaged him to let him know that Billy TK has a history with the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement.
30 November 2020
For those who followed Craig's link last week to a colour therapy site, you may have thought that some of the claims on the site were pretty egregious - including such gems as “incurable means curable from within” and “synthetic fibres have a frequency that is detrimental to our health and well being”.
30 November 2020
The amazing members of the GSoW (Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia) group have struck again. In recent years the group have done some amazing work creating new Wikipedia articles and rewriting existing ones on topics of importance to skepticism, including quite a few that are related to New Zealand - including pages for skeptic Siouxsie Wiles, psychic Jeanette Wilson and even our organisation, the NZ Skeptics. We've also had Susan Gerbic, head of the project, come to New Zealand twice in the last few years to talk to us at our conferences about both the GSoW project and her work using sting operations to bust psychics.
30 November 2020
Thank you Mark Fletcher for letting us know that you had a copy of the video of James Randi's 1993 Christchurch talk. He'd even transcoded the video from VHS to DVD several years ago, which made it a lot easier for me to get it onto YouTube. Thanks Mark, I owe you a beer!
23 November 2020
This week saw Dr Siouxsie Wiles take the supreme winner award at the Stuff-Westpac NZ 2020 Women of Influence Awards.
23 November 2020
The world continues to be gripped by the COVID pandemic. Given that most of us are unable to travel internationally it's difficult to experience first-hand exactly how the rest of the world is operating. Cases continue to rise at an alarming rate. My favourite site for watching the stats is the Worldometers site.
23 November 2020
In recent weeks we've reported several times on election outcomes - and, of course the recent US election continues to dominate the news. Far from it being over with a clear victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Trump continues to deny the outcome and fight against it in every way possible.
23 November 2020
This week Richard Saunders, from the Australian Skeptics pinged me online with a video of relevance to NZ Skeptics. Back in the 1990s Australian journalist Mike Willesee did a piece on a New Zealander Don Brooker who ran a colour therapy clinic in Cambridge, Waikato.
23 November 2020
This past week has seen the news of development of successful vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. The vaccines have a claimed efficacy of nearly 95%. This is good news, and a triumph for science and medical technology that they've been able to be developed so quickly. There are other companies that have vaccines in the pipeline so it's likely that there will be several more vaccines available in the coming months and years.
23 November 2020
My personal journey into skepticism began back in the early 90s before the internet was publicly available, but podcasts now form a significant chunk of the skeptical content that I consume. My particular favourites are The Skeptics Guide to the Universe (a great weekly roundup of science and skepticism), Oh No, Ross and Carrie (weird and often humorous investigations into fringe groups and claims of the paranormal), and Sawbones (fascinating medical history of dubious devices and cures, but firmly science-based). But there are many others, and tastes vary.
16 November 2020
I've been binging on Netflix again and am looking forward to the next series of Ratched, a psychological thriller based on a character from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a book by Ken Kesey. Be warned, the fashions may be fabulous, but the skull crunching gore is pretty grim.
16 November 2020
You probably already heard that Exxon knew about climate change back in the 70s and 80s, and chose to double down on the misinformation, but now, as an EV driver myself I was interested to learn the latest news to come out about climate change denial relating to big Auto, specifically Ford and GM. In the first part of an investigation by E&E News, we find out that the automakers were well aware that car emissions caused climate change 50 years ago. Their own scientists were telling top executives that emissions from the vehicles they were producing would lead to climate change.
16 November 2020
On 6th November this year, after the US president used the word 'hereby' to claim, without any evidence whatsoever, that he had won the state of Michigan in the US election, NZ Skeptics thought, to heck with empirical data, hereby is a magical word, how can we exploit its power?! The answer, a boldly worded tweet by @NZSkeptics: “I hereby declare the NZ Skeptics Society is the most skeptical society”.
16 November 2020
Good news! We have found someone who has a copy of the video (VHS tape) taken of James Randi speaking at Canterbury University back in 1993. Next steps will be to check if it's good to digitise, and if so, we'll look to publish it to our YouTube channel. Keep posted.
16 November 2020
In Homeopathy news, Edzard Ernst, retired academic physician and specialist in complementary and alternative medicine (and skeptic hero) has created a “challenge for all homeopaths of the world”. In a similar way to the James Randi Educational Foundation's one million dollar paranormal challenge, Ernst has come up with a scientific way for homeopaths to “prove” their worth. What entrants need to do is identify the contents of 6 homeopathic solutions that they have chosen, but that have been transferred into containers marked 1 – 6 by a notary and sent back to them.
9 November 2020
The above title is my paraphrasing of a recent paper published in an Elsevier-owned scientific journal, Science of The Total Environment. The paper's actual title is:
9 November 2020
Last week Craig promised that we would give you a link to a video Haunted NZ were producing about their recent investigation at a house in Pukekohe. We have now been sent a copy of the video that you can watch on YouTube. Craig also gave a good account to the NZ Herald of why the video, although slickly put together, contains no substantive evidence backing up Haunted NZ's claims that the house was ever haunted. Good work Craig!
9 November 2020
If the US election hasn't caused you enough stress, you could read a recent “take down” of James Randi titled The man who destroyed skepticism, published soon after his death on the popular Boing Boing blog, that is sure to make your blood boil. I for one was very surprised and disappointed to see the Boing Boing website, which normally has a reputation for good quality reporting, hosting this hit piece written by Mitch Horowitz. Mitch is a believer in the spiritual realm, and his own website describes him as “a historian of alternative spirituality and one of today's most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult”. The article includes such gems as:
9 November 2020
The Luminate festival, held each year outside of Nelson, has always been a little out of touch with science. But, as David Farrier shows, things appear to be getting worse. The festival has been flirting with conspiracy theories and woo peddlers, in a list they published on the Luminate website called the “13 Crystal Seeds of Positive Change”. The list included the names of people who have inspired the festival's organisers. You get one point for each of the following names you recognise:
9 November 2020
I'm sure most skeptics will have heard of QAnon by now - the anonymously named Q who posts online about shadowy organisations, and talks about how president Trump is fighting dark forces in the US. QAnon tends to use lots of code names and obscure references, including the oft used acronym used as the title of this section - it means Where We Go 1, We Go All. Here are a couple of examples of QAnon messages:
19 October 2020
I've been keeping a close eye on some of the more fringe political parties in New Zealand's election, and it's been great to see that not many kiwis have been swayed by their radical ideas. In case you were too focused on whether the Greens were going to get a seat at the table, or if this is the last we'll see of Winston Peters, here's a summary of three of the more extreme parties, all of whom appear to have little respect for evidence:
18 August 2020
Here are some common medical myths that are easy to dispel:
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 February 2020
Skeptic summary: The kiwis who are taking a stand against vaccination misinformation. We salute you.
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 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 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 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".
16 December 2018
Cocksy, a celebrity builder on New Zealand TV, has cancer and is currently on an experimental new treatment.
16 December 2018
The Crimes Amendment Bill passed its second reading in parliament this week, and it now looks likely that our blasphemy law will be repealed in the near future. This is great news, and is being mirrored in other countries.
16 December 2018
SleepDrops is a New Zealand based company offering herbal/homeopathic products that are supposed to help you to sleep, although there's absolutely no evidence that they work.
2 December 2018
On Wednesday a group of us skeptics visited the Ark Man, Rod Walsh, who has been over in New Zealand from Australia on tour. Rod's schtick is that god told him in the '90s to build a scale model of Noah's Ark from Genesis. Apparently the day after he was told this by god, he turned on the radio and two people were having a conversation about the ark - which proved to him that god's voice had been real. Rod has now built 6 scale replicas of Noah's Ark over the last 20 years, and has been touring the world with his scale models since the '90s.
2 December 2018
A few weeks ago the Wellington Skeptics made their annual pilgrimage to the Go Green Expo. Billed as a Green Living and Sustainable Lifestyle Show, in reality the majority of stands push nonsense alternative therapies, making illegal medical claims about cherry juice, magnetic bracelets and turmeric shakes and scaring people about the dangers of dirty electricity, blue light, toxins and chemicals. There are also talks with titles such as:
2 December 2018
The Ministry of Education are finally getting close to publishing guidelines for schools about allowing Religious Instruction classes.
4 November 2018
Asia Bibi, who has been on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy for nearly 10 years, has been acquitted this week. Unsurprisingly, this is far from the end of her troubles.
4 November 2018
There were hundreds of Christians at Parliament on Tuesday calling for the reinstatement of the name of Jesus in parliament's prayer. There were people wearing Make America Great Again hats, bikers in leathers proclaiming the lord, and some pretty horrendous banners - including one calling Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard a "dishonourable Judas".
4 November 2018
A friend sent me a video the other day about a fuel saving device for your car. The video was quite well done, and like so many videos on FB had no voice over - instead having a soundtrack, along with large subtitles telling the story:
4 November 2018
SleepDrops is a New Zealand company which sells small vials of liquid drops which are supposed to help you get to sleep and stay asleep. Their ingredients are a mixture of small doses of herbs and very small (homeopathic) doses of herbs. A look at the Scientific Research page on their website shows that there's a dearth of research for any of the ingredients in the SleepDrops products, and absolutely no research on the SleepDrops formulation.
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.
28 October 2018
Ireland has had a bit of a rocky history with its blasphemy law, with a complaint made against a local comedian for calling the Catholic communion wafer "haunted bread", and Stephen Fry being threatened with legal action for an interview he gave on Irish TV a few years ago.
28 October 2018
Herbal remedies are very popular these days, with many pharmacies in New Zealand happy to promote products that don't work as treatments for medical conditions, or even just as a preventative measure - a way of keeping healthy.
28 October 2018
HRV has had to pay out $400k for bad claims it made about its water filters. The interesting thing about this case, in my opinion, is that the fine was given because it was shown that HRV didn't have the evidence for its claims when it made them.
14 October 2018
The Aussies have just had their skeptics conference, and have given out a Bent Spoon award to Sarah Stevenson, for her Sarah's Day brand of nonsense.
14 October 2018
The other day I received an ominous email telling me that I have malware installed on my PC as a result of visiting porn sites, and that I need to cough up £850 so that my sordid life isn't made public:
14 October 2018
Last week a friend let me know that someone in my area was giving away kangen water for free - presumably in an effort to get people to sign up to buy a water filter.
14 October 2018
Pakistanis are threatening to strike nationwide if leniency is shown to Asia Bibi [Ah-seea Beebee], a woman who has been sentenced to death for a blasphemy charge. The charge was related to the fact that she is Christian, and in 2009 she drank water with the same cup some Muslims at her workplace had been drinking with, and then made comments defending her religious belief when challenged about her actions and told that she was unclean.
30 September 2018
Yesterday afternoon I met with a group of ex Jehovah's Witnesses.
30 September 2018
In a frankly scary move, the WHO are legitimising unproven medical therapies by including them in the new edition of its "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems" - ICD11.
30 September 2018
At the end of last year I went along to an occult ceremony, the OTO's Gnostic Mass. I tried to return in June for the Winter Solstice, but the venue was changed on me at the last minute - apparently they had an issue with the normal venue.
16 September 2018
Alex Jones, who runs the website InfoWars, seems to be coming apart at the seams.
16 September 2018
This morning I went along to two church services with a visiting academic, Hamed, who is over in New Zealand from Iran. He had never seen a Christian service before, and had been told to ask me about taking him along to a service. I decided to show him two extremes of what church can be. We started at the Cathedral of St Paul, and then went to Arise evangelical church.
16 September 2018
In my time I've heard a few arguments against use of the poison, and there doesn't seem to be any new claims this time round. The kind of arguments I've seen in the media are that it:
16 September 2018
I had a phone call this week from "Spark". I spoke to a couple of Indian gentlemen who explained that my private IP address had been made public, and that this meant that my internet connection was compromised.
2 September 2018
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro released a report last week, detailing credible accusations of child abuse against over 300 priests in the state, with over 1,000 victims. Shapiro doesn't think they found all instances of abuse.
2 September 2018
An upcoming edition of the Watchtower from the Jehovah's Witnesses is recommending that church members should consider staying with an abusive partner, even if they feel their life is in danger. Of course, this flies in the face of recommendations from professional organisations the world over who deal with victims of spousal abuse.
2 September 2018
On Friday afternoon I headed out to Khandallah School in Wellington as part of the Secular Education Network. SEN believes that schools should be secular, and that there is no place in our school system for Religious Instruction.
2 September 2018
Yesterday I went to an "Allergy Free and Healthy Living Show" in Porirua. Sadly there were very few stands at the expo that were about allergies - there was Allergy NZ and Coeliac New Zealand. Most of the stands were selling fake cures for big bucks.
19 August 2018
I've spent this weekend at the Jehovah's Witnesses convention, titled "Be Courageous", in Porirua. There were estimated to be 2,000 attendees. I ended up going this year because a couple of local Jehovah's Witnesses, both of which have come to my door over the last few years, made a point of visiting me earlier this week to invite me.
5 August 2018
This weekend was the Humanist Conference in Auckland, with some great international and local speakers.
5 August 2018
BBC
1 August 2018
Who: Unknown When: 05/04/2018
22 July 2018
Sellers of alternative therapies usually say publicly that they always recommend their patients continue normal therapy while they also use acupuncture, herbal remedies, etc for their medical conditions. This is especially important in the case of people who have life threatening medical conditions that can be successfully treated with conventional medicine, such as cancer. However, there are many stories in the news of people who have enough faith in their choice of alternative medicine that they decide not to use conventional therapy, or turn down some proven conventional therapies on offer - and in the worst cases, the alternative therapy practitioners actively dissuade their patients from using modern medicine.
22 July 2018
We talked about a court case a while ago involving Johnson & Johnson, and a claim that asbestos in their talcum powder has been giving people cancer. A new decision in the US has seen a court award damages of nearly NZ$7 billion to 22 people who claim to have been affected by this issue.
22 July 2018
BBC
22 July 2018
Stuff wrote an article today about the issues the Humanist Society have been having with international conference delegates and speakers visiting New Zealand next month.
8 July 2018
A seller of magic charms in Nigeria has been killed this week while demonstrating a bullet repelling charm. The sale of charms and potions is commonplace in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, and the charms are very popular.
8 July 2018
Mark Hanna has written a great blog post detailing the issues the Chiropractic Board has had getting their members to abide by their codes and New Zealand law. While I'm not surprised to hear about Chiropractors' efforts to circumvent laws designed to protect patients, it is disappointing to hear. The Chair of the board wrote in their newsletter about a worrying experience she had:
8 July 2018
HRV have plead guilty to 11 counts of misleading customers about their water filters. They were charged with making untrue claims about the levels of chemicals in New Zealand tap water, as well as their filter's ability to soften the water and help with eczema and dermatitis.
8 July 2018
There have been promising results from a recent trial of an HIV vaccine. An effective vaccine would be a useful part of our fight against AIDS related deaths. The new vaccine needs further trials, but in the study showed an 80% immune response, which is much better than previous attempts to create a vaccine. In brief, as I'm sure everyone knows, the HIV virus causes AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - and it's this compromised immune system that can be fatal.
24 June 2018
The NZ Herald has published a story about a woman whose terminal cancer was cured after she took cannabis oil. Of course, there's more to this story - isn't there always. In this case, the woman used both cannabis oil and chemotherapy to fight her cancer - no prizes for guessing which of those two will have helped her more. It also turns out that cancer was only "terminal" if the woman had not received any treatment. This is not what is normally considered to be a diagnosis of terminal cancer - terminal usually means that the cancer is not treatable with medicine, not that the cancer is not treatable without medicine.
24 June 2018
You may ask what blasphemy has to do with skepticism - often I've talked with people about the intersection of skepticism and religious belief. I feel that religion should never be above skeptical scrutiny. A common question asked of the Skeptics Society is whether someone can be both an atheist and a skeptic - I always say that yes, someone can be both, but that I believe it requires the person to avoid shining a skeptical light on their belief. Skeptics usually stand by the idea that nothing is above questioning, and so a skeptic who isn't willing to scrutinise their religious beliefs seems to be a strange case to me. We should have no sacred cows.
24 June 2018
In Canada, a man has been selling bottles of medicinal hot dog water for $38. The organic beef hot dogs were boiled before being added to unfiltered water and poured into a vial shaped like a test tube. The seller, Douglas Bevans, said that the water would:
24 June 2018
It seems that every new advance in technology is accompanied by people who are willing to warn the world of made up dangers. Anti-vaccine advocates have been around since the beginning of vaccine use over a hundred years ago. People have warned others about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, GM foods and the LHC - all of which have a very low risk profile, and confer major benefits to society.
10 June 2018
Dr Oz is up to his usual nonsense, promoting an author who claims that astrology can predict your health. Rebecca Gordon believes that the Vitruvian Man may hold the key to how the signs of the zodiac map to parts of our body and indicate health issues, and has a new book: "Your Body and the Stars: The Zodiac As Your Wellness Guide".
10 June 2018
The NHS recently decided to stop funding homeopathy. Until recently, taxpayers' money was used in the UK to fund homeopathic hospitals (in London, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and Tunbridge Wells) and prescriptions for homeopathy. In part of a suite of changes in an effort to avoid paying for ineffective treatments (including herbal remedies and fish oil), the NHS decided to stop paying money for these pseudoscientific medicines that don't work.
10 June 2018
It's always good to see people who aren't known to me in the skeptical community making complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. Dr Holmes complained to the ASA recently about a Sanitarium Weet-Bix advert for their new gluten free product. In the advert a woman says:
10 June 2018
Breakfast on 1 recently hosted a physiotherapist advertising the Shakti Mat - a yoga mat covered in plastic circles, with each circle consisting of 20 or more sharp spikes. The mat is supposed to work like a bed of nails, activating acupressure points. I've seen the mat sold at shows such as the Go Green Expo, and have stood on one - the points are really sharp, and without socks it was especially painful.
27 May 2018
President Trump will be promoting Dr Mehmet Oz to the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition, which is a little worrying. Trump's no stranger to making what look like very bad staffing decisions, and this one is no exception. Dr Oz is well known in the US, having risen from the Oprah show to having his own show. On his show, the Dr Oz Show, he's promoted so many nonsense treatments that he's been told off by the FTC and summoned to talk in front of a senate sub-committee.
27 May 2018
New Zealand's first flat earth conference has just been hosted, last Saturday in Auckland. Around 30 "flat mates" crowded into the Backyard Bar's function room to listen to conversations about how the earth is flat, including live streaming of speakers from overseas.
27 May 2018
As we talked about at the end of last year, there's been a real push to sell Kangen Water devices in NZ recently. An article in the Herald recently has detailed Ainsley Brunton's efforts to sell the water in Whanganui to unsuspecting customers. Her water devices are selling for $4,000, with promises that the water can help with cancer, diabetes and other serious diseases. Enagic in Australia is selling the machines to New Zealanders who are passing them on, and Enagic's prices for a machine that does nothing useful to water vary between $2,300 and $6,500.
27 May 2018
In the past, searches have been conducted for Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, using technologies ranging from men with binoculars to underwater video cameras and sonar.
27 May 2018
A Napier based psychic has been convicted of indecent assault. Craig Wright, called the Spirit Whisperer, has been offering his services in NZ for several years, and has even worked on a pilot for a TV show with Sue Nicholson. Now he's been found guilty of indecent assault of a teenager after performing a "ritual cleansing". Craig's defence was that he puts his finger in someone's belly button to find out if they are possessed by an entity. When he asserted that the victim had this problem, he took him to another room to rid him of the spiritual attachment and that is when the assault took place.
13 May 2018
Dawkins has been talking to audiences in NZ, and a local pastor took to Stuff to complain about him in an article. Now, I'm not saying that Dawkins is without flaws - it's common knowledge that he often opens his mouth on Twitter before thinking about what he's saying, and he's no stranger to controversy. But pastor Geoff Robson seems to have gone overboard in trying to protect his belief.
13 May 2018
13 May 2018
Healing crystals have become very popular recently, with people buying many different crystals to either wear or place in their homes and help with physical and mental health issues, monetary problems and any other problem you could imagine. There are even water bottles with crystals in that are supposed to somehow "energise" the water you drink.
13 May 2018
Stuff had an article this week about personalised vitamins. Companies who require you to talk to a dietician before being recommended vitamins have been around in NZ for a while, but two companies have started up in New Zealand recently that recommend which of their vitamins you should take based on online questionnaires.
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.
29 April 2018
There's been some interesting local research on people with health conditions doing their own research. The Southern Cross Health Society has looked into whether people look up their symptoms on google before visiting their GP. They talked to GPs about their patients, and found out that an increasing number of them are coming into their practices with knowledge taken from the internet of what is wrong with them.
29 April 2018
An organised group of homeopaths offering bogus treatments for autism has been written about in the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The article talks about how more than 120 homeopaths in the UK are part of this group, called CEASE (Complete Elimination of Autistic Spectrum Expression), and the therapies they are offering are supposed to remove "toxins" that are apparently causing autism in children, and many of these toxins are meant to have come from vaccines.
29 April 2018
I was contacted by a journalist for the Sunday Star times a few days ago with some questions about Ken Ring. He's predicting an earthquake for June or July the 13th to 15th.
29 April 2018
I've found another fun conspiracy theory - V2K. Weirdly, it stands for "Voice to Skull" and is a technology where voices can be beamed directly to your head. This is another conspiracy theory that until recently was new to me. The idea is based on the fact that microwaves can be used to create a clicking noise inside someone's head. This is known as the microwave auditory effect, and was discovered in World War Two by people who worked near radar devices. The likely mechanism for the clicking is that parts of the inner ear are being rapidly heated up by the radio waves. The microwaves can be varied to create what sounds like a human voice inside someone's head, which is pretty cool.
15 April 2018
The NZ Herald seems to think so, republishing a Daily Mail article this week about a lie detector test that Buzz Aldrin apparently took recently to prove that he believes he saw an alien craft on his way to the moon in 1969.
15 April 2018
A while ago I was contacted by an older gentleman, Cedric, who told me over the phone that he'd heard me on the show and wanted to know if I was interested in a theory he has about the origins of the Māori race. Of course I was, I said, and after a while I received a self-published 32 page book about the theory.
15 April 2018
A recent poll in the US showed an alarming amount of disbelief about whether our world is round. The survey of 8,000 Americans showed that whereas the vast majority of over 55s are happy accepting that we live on a round planet, like all the other planets we see, only two thirds of eighteen to twenty four year olds are sure. The others either don't know either way, are not totally sure or believe in a flat earth.
15 April 2018
There's a new fad to put mushroom in your coffee. Claims are being made that these powdered mushrooms can help your health and wellbeing.
8 April 2018
Tanya Filia, who has beaten the odds and outlived doctors' estimates of her life expectancy, is now pushing for the government to subsidise natural treatments.
8 April 2018
Brittany Kara, from the US, is apparently a Christian author, NLP practitioner, hypnotherapist and nutrition coach. She's also an anti-vaxxer, and records herself speaking for a YouTube channel where she talks about her views.
8 April 2018
A new locally made diet pill has gone on sale in NZ, and will soon be available in the US as well. Its makers are promoting the product at the moment
8 April 2018
A fraudster has conned a clairvoyant, Maureen Smith, in the UK by pretending to be her on Facebook and charging people money for online readings. The scammer sent messages to all of Maureen's friends through an account that was a copy of the real Maureen's account. Things were going well for the scammer until they sent an invite to Maureen's husband.
18 March 2018
7 Sharp have interviewed Marta Fisch on Waiheke Island, who has built an ugly looking metal box - three side walls - in her garden, to keep out "radiation". Radiation in this sense is the kind of electromagnetic energy that is used to send TV signals and offer WiFi, and also background radiation from nature.
18 March 2018
The Regent Theatre in Dunedin is in the news again, as it's been flooded. This is unfortunate, as it appears that someone accidentally left a tap on that has caused damage to carpets and the ceiling. However, the staff at the theatre believe that this wasn't negligence, it was a ghost!
18 March 2018
Kelvin Cruickshank, one of our famous local psychics who has appeared on Sensing Murder, has "helped" a family to locate the body of "Curly" - an elderly gentleman called Raymond Stirling who went missing in Hamilton in January. A police search had been halted after 11 days with no luck, and then Curly's daughter in law ended up at one of Kelvin's paid shows (at $65 a ticket).
18 March 2018
A quack Chinese doctor from Australia has opened up a clinic in Auckland, to better serve his kiwi patients. Shuquan Liu will likely be selling his weight loss herbal diet in NZ, which consists of getting people to consume nothing but Chinese herbs for two weeks. The diet is an extreme calorie restriction diet (< 200 calories a day), which is likely to be dangerous to those who follow it.
11 March 2018
In an article on the NZ Herald, reprinted from the Washington Post, Christopher Mellon argues that there is solid evidence for UFOs, and that the US are not doing enough to investigate.
11 March 2018
The field of Artificial Intelligence is blooming at the moment, with companies like Google and Alexa delivering small, inexpensive devices to your living room for $75 that can listen to you talk and tell you the weather, order pizza and turn your TV on.
11 March 2018
A Reiki meeting has been deemed newsworthy by the Taranaki Daily News.
25 February 2018
The conspiracy theorists are out in force already after the recent school shooting tragedy. One of the survivors, 17 year old David Hogg, has gone on national TV in the US to publicly state that he's not a "crisis actor".
25 February 2018
The UK Mirror recently carried a weird story claiming that there are numbers so big that they would create a black hole in your brain if you could memorise them. The title of the article is:
25 February 2018
Liza Schneider has written an article for the BoP Times, printed online in the Herald, which promotes nonsense therapies for animals.
25 February 2018
The teen, from Pakuranga College, wanted to wear the colander as he claimed it was his right, as it's religious headgear. This follows from the religion receiving recognition in NZ through people having driving licenses wearing a colander, wearing a colander during a citizenship ceremony, someone registering as an FSM marriage celebrant and a pastafarian wedding.
25 February 2018
An Indonesian teenager has apparently "baffled" doctors by laying eggs. He's laid about 20 eggs over the last 2 years, and x-ray images show an egg inside him before he lays it. The x-ray image makes it unlikely that sleight of hand is involved - he's probably not pretending to produce an egg from internally, but actually just making it appear in his hand at the right time.
11 February 2018
An Australian woman, Shona Leigh, has publicly spoken about how she supposedly cured herself of cervical cancer with cannabis oil. This story seems to be popular in NZ because of the new Labour government's recent efforts to relax our laws on medicinal cannabis use.
11 February 2018
Elon Musk's company SpaceX successfully launched their first Falcon Heavy rocket this week, after a recent successful launch in New Zealand by RocketLab. It's been a good time for private space companies.
11 February 2018
Georgian College in Toronto has cancelled a course in homeopathy, due to negative feedback.
11 February 2018
Companies in the US are selling "raw" water, which means the water has been untreated. At $50 for 9 litres, it seems pretty expensive for something that's likely to leave you sick.
11 February 2018
The ASA have had issues recently with the amount of complaints us skeptics have been submitting to them for dodgy medical claims. It appears that as a result of a particular complaint about an acupuncturist they've decided to write a guideline for healthcare related complaints.
1 February 2018
Skeptic summary: Happy day! Climate change denier quits radio
28 January 2018
Frank Hoogerbeets from the Netherlands has predicted a major earthquake of 8 or 9 in the first week of March. His predictions says that "electromagnetic amplifications caused by planetary alignments" will increase seismic activity, and that this will be caused by the alignment of 6 planets.
28 January 2018
This story starts back in 2002. The winner of the NZ Skeptics' Bent Spoon award that year was Green MP Jeanette Fitzsimons. She won the award for supporting the idea of using Possum Peppering to rid NZ of possums.
28 January 2018
Scientology has been trying to get the public to buy into its anti-psychiatry ideas in NZ recently. The religion's branch called the Citizens' Commission for Human Rights has been visiting shopping malls around Auckland and setting up displays that seek to teach people that psychiatry is evil.
28 January 2018
"The results argue for more trials of the fish skins for burns", the vets said.
28 January 2018
As if people not vaccinating their kids isn't enough nonsense to deal with, there's an increasing trend for pet owners to not vaccinate their pets as well. This appears to be due to silly concerns such as that their pets might suffer from autism, despite the fact that autism hasn't been observed in animals.
21 January 2018
Britt Hermes used to be a naturopath. She graduated and treated patients in the US, before realising that naturopathy was all bluster and no substance, and she wasn't helping anyone with their medical issues.
21 January 2018
I'm in Nelson on holiday at the moment, and at a market today I saw a lot of nonsense - many bad medical claims being made about honey, jewellery, etc.
21 January 2018
One of the issues with fundraising sites like IndieGogo and Kickstarter is that there's a lack of adequate oversight to ensure that the products being offered are actually plausible. Sometimes things end up on my radar that look too good to be true, and at other times they're just plain ridiculous.
17 December 2017
Adding legitimacy to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the first citizenship has just taken place with a new citizen wearing a colander on his head. Bjorn Oback, from Germany, wore a colander in Hamilton recently.
17 December 2017
A friend recently contacted the OTO to ask about us attending one of their services, and last night we went to their Gnostic Mass in Wellington.
17 December 2017
A new pharmacy called Wellworks, focussing on natural health products, is due to open in Wellington in January.
17 December 2017
In September, a 70 year old man apparently burst into flames in London. It's a sad event, and a horrible way to die. The press have started calling it a case of Spontaneous Human Combustion - the idea that people sometimes just randomly burn.
17 December 2017
18 classes of health product are being de-funded by the NHS in the UK, including 7 that are blacklisted:
3 December 2017
Daniel Ryan from the Society for Science Based Healthcare wrote a study looking at acupuncture advertising in NZ. He ran a targeted search for New Zealand websites making claims about being able to treat a list of conditions for which advertising claims are restricted by the Medicines Act.
3 December 2017
Sir Peter Gluckman, the PM's Science Advisor, says that NZ has a science denial problem, but that it's no worse than the rest of the world. Peter thinks that social media bubbles are contributing to this issue, by allowing people to get their news only from places that agree with their existing views on topics. He points out that traditional media is becoming more likely to be polarised as well, which is not good.
3 December 2017
In a recent article Cracked dot com has pointed out flaws in several popular conspiracy theories.
3 December 2017
The NZ Skeptics conference was a great success, with a quiz on the Friday night and a weekend of fascinating talks. We gave all the attendees a bag of alternative medicine nonsense.
12 November 2017
Dr Libby is a nutritional biochemist, not a medical doctor, who regularly posts alternative medicine articles in Stuff. She sells books, goes on speaking tours, has promoted a Multi Level Marketing scheme - USANA over-priced vitamins - and now sells her own alt-med products
12 November 2017
After a ghost was spotted in a picture of a mirror being sold in a TradeMe auction, Wendy McCawe from Wellington Photographic Supplies quickly spotted that the "ghost" in question was actually a picture of the lead character from TV show Outlander. I'm impressed that she spotted it - I put the image through online forensic image tool Forensically, and couldn't see anything.
12 November 2017
There's lots of nonsense at this year's Go Green expo, and I'll be there today sampling the weird and wonderful.
12 November 2017
Republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore has been accused of sexually assaulting a 14 girl when he was 14. He has a worrying track record - as well as other accusations of sexual harassment of young girls, he's twice been promoted to the Supreme Court and then removed because of his refusal to follow church/state separation laws. He was suspended for trying to stop legal gay marriages from being performed.
5 November 2017
Auckland council are "revisiting" their decision to use popular weedkiller glyphosate, more commonly known as RoundUp. Auckland councillor Wayne Walker seems to be pushing a move to stop using the weedkiller, despite the fact that Federated Farmers and New Zealand's EPA say that it is safe.
5 November 2017
My kids went out trick or treating the other day for halloween, and came back with more than just chocolate and lollies. Religious pamphlets were being handed out at some of the local houses, and my 10 year old daughter knew that I'd be interested to see them.
5 November 2017
This year's NZ Skeptics conference is in Wellington in 3 weeks. We have speakers such as Cara Santa Maria from the USA, and an ex naturopath, Britt Marie Hermes. We're hoping to officially announce our $100,000 prize for evidence of the supernatural, and it will be interesting to see what kinds of applicants we see over the next few months.
5 November 2017
Two women in a yacht were rescued this week, adrift a long way off the coast of Japan. Their story is that they left Honolulu for Tahiti, and immediately hit a storm which damaged their boat. After drifting for 6 months at sea, and being attacked by sharks, they were eventually rescued by the US Navy.
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.
15 October 2017
A company is making claims about their soap made out of breast milk.
15 October 2017
The prevailing scientific opinion on lie detector tests is that they don't work well enough to be relied on in courts as evidence - in fact, they're probably not even a good way of discerning the truth. Unfortunately a Christchurch based private detective is selling tests to couples as a way of finding out whether a partner has cheated.
15 October 2017
Doterra is a successful multinational company which sells innovative medical treatments - or at least that's what they'd have you believe. In reality, it appears to be a Multi Level Marketing scheme, based on Essential Oils, which preys on vulnerable people and makes dangerous untrue claims about their products.
8 October 2017
These days, with modern technology, it only takes a matter of days after most tragic events before conspiracy theorists have converged on an "alternative narrative". For the Sandy Hook massacre, there are people who claim it was a "false flag" operation where no children were actually killed. For missing flight MH370, the aeroplane was apparently re-routed to a secret military base.
8 October 2017
A couple of years ago I went along to a talk in Wellington about a new device called the QTB (Quantum TrailBlazer), now rebranded as a QSB - Quantum Scalar Box. Back then the device was made from a piece of sewage pipe spray painted black, with several blue LEDs around the top. We were told to believe that the device was emitting "scalar waves" (a pseudo-scientific idea) on the Solfeggio frequencies. I sat there for half an hour while the device went through a range of these frequencies, supposedly healing areas of my life.
8 October 2017
NZ now has its second ingested product for sun protection being sold. The first hit the market a few years ago, and is from a company called Osmosis Skincare. Their product contains "harmonised" water, which is described as:
1 October 2017
The Pharmacy Council recently ran a consultation about a new proposed Code of Ethics, after they tried to weaken their code a couple of years ago to remove the requirement that pharmacists could only sell alternative medicines where there was evidence that they work.
1 October 2017
David Meade, who I spoke about last month as predicting the end of the world around the 20th of September, has given us all a reprieve. Obviously the world didn't end, but he now says that October the 21st is the real end of the world.
1 October 2017
I recently found out that a movement which is popular in America has reached our shores. The Freeman movement, otherwise known as Sovereign Citizens, consists of people who believe that it is possible to declare yourself no longer beholden to the laws of your country, and not liable to pay taxes. Normally the process involves filling in obscure government forms, opting out of government forms of ID such as driving licenses and passports and writing signed declarations using lots of very big legal sounding words.
3 September 2017
Another crazy conspiracy theory I'd never heard of - that Saddam Hussein owned a Stargate, and that the US had to invade to take it from him.
3 September 2017
Newshub published an article about an 80 year old picture showing a native american man holding something rectangular with flat edges. Although it conceivably looks like an iPhone 5, as the article concedes it's much more likely to be a mirror or blade.
3 September 2017
The Herald published an article about someone's prediction that the world will end in a few weeks. David Meade, described as a Christian numerologist, claims that on or just after September the 20th (my birthday!), the world will meet a fiery end.
3 September 2017
Last week an article was published on Stuff talking about how a young New Zealand woman who has had cancer (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) since she was 14 is going to spend $20,000 on an alternative treatment for her cancer - Ozone Therapy. The clinic says about this therapy:
27 August 2017
Stuff has a great article about a Naturopath who has been involved in treating the cancer of two patients who have died recently. The patients have both spoken out about how they think they made a mistake in trusting the naturopath.
27 August 2017
It looks like the book has finally been closed on one of the most famous Satanic Panic cases in the US - that of the Kellers.
6 August 2017
Lori Harris from the UK has sold all her belongings to pay for treatment for her mother, Lisa, who has stage 4 ovarian cancer. The Go Fund Me page for the fundraising effort for this treatment, which asks for £200,000, talks of needing money for immunotherapy in Germany, and links to a great article describing how this new therapy has the potential to allow us to treat some cancers in a novel way.
6 August 2017
There was a nice story about the 30th anniversary of the Lotto this week from Stuff. The article talked about how the fact some numbers come up more often than others is likely chance (Lotto take this seriously, and apparently regularly wash and weigh the balls to ensure there's no bias). The difference in frequency between the most drawn ball, number 1 (16.91%) and the least drawn ball number 34 (13.97%) is not huge, and I suspect the number frequency draws a bell curve.
6 August 2017
Debbie Merrick bought a doll for £5 and then placed the doll on eBay, after making international news by talking about the doll being haunted. Apparently the doll scratched Debbie's husband, although the doll was not seen causing the scratches - the husband simply woke up with scratches on himself. The determination that the doll caused the scratches came from a psychic friend.
6 August 2017
Vinny Eastwood has suggested that the new head of the Labour Party is in league with the Freemasons:
30 July 2017
There's a lack of rural doctors in NZ, and one doctor has spoken on Radio NZ this week about the trials and tribulations he's suffered trying to renew his visa to stay in the country. Dr Feller is a GP at Mountainview Medical Centre in Hawera, and the medical centre is badly in need of the service he provides. Losing him would not be good for the local community.
30 July 2017
Emails have been released about the show Sensing Murder from OIA requests, and have brought to light (unsurprisingly) that the show has not materially helped the Police, and in some circumstances is considered to be a potential problem for ongoing cases.
30 July 2017
Last week I learned about a new conspiracy theory from Weather Wars International, a Facebook group dedicated to spreading nonsense about government control of the weather. A video posted to the group shows a field and trees, along with a light halo and what appears to be a rotating planet in the background.
16 July 2017
Women's gifting circles have made the news again this week as they are now officially considered a pyramid scheme by the Commerce Commission.
16 July 2017
I'm hoping that the anti-GMO crowd don't sink the new GMO banana before it has a chance to be properly tested. The banana has had genes inserted that allow it to create alpha and beta carotenes, which allow our bodies to create vitamin A, which should help some of the quarter of a million children who die every year due to a lack of the vitamin.
16 July 2017
The Spinoff did a great job of looking into Hamilton Councillor Siggi Henry's views on a variety of topics. It turns out that she's anti fluoride, anti-fat (she recently said that obesity was a risk to others as fat people could fall on you and hurt you) and anti-vaccine.
16 July 2017
The group responsible for bringing Vaxxed, an anti-vaccine movie, to Australia and New Zealand is still causing issues in our country. There are more screenings of Vaxxed coming up, including one in Wellington that I will try to attend:
2 July 2017
A mother in the US was found by doctors to be causing her child to fall ill because she was taking pills made from her own placenta. A company in the US makes the pills from dried placenta, and you supply them with your placenta after your child's birth.
2 July 2017
Since I attended the opening of the new Scientology building in January, I have been called occasionally by a church member called Will who has been inviting me to Auckland Scientology events. However, I'm in Wellington and so I've been waiting patiently for a local event to be announced.
2 July 2017
Alex Jones, anchor man of the news outlet InfoWars in the US, hosted Robert David Steele on his show this week, and talked about Robert's theory that NASA are holding slave children on Mars. This has led to NASA officially denying the accusation, along with another recent claim that there are no active rovers on Mars.
18 June 2017
The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God has been handing out cross shaped vials of a "holy oil" which it says have been blessed in Jerusalem and can "activate people's faith" in order to treat medical conditions such as depression, addiction, heart problems and chronic pain.
18 June 2017
A breatharian couple, Camila Castello and Akahi Ricardo, have publicly claimed that they live on "cosmic nourishment" from the "energy that exists in the universe and in themselves". They claim that they didn't eat at all for a period of 3 years, and that they hardly ever eat. When they do eat, it's a piece of fruit or some broth.
18 June 2017
The Jehovah's Witnesses came around for an hour or more yesterday, having previously chatted with me last week.
18 June 2017
An article in the Herald this week talked about several innovations that were showcased at the Hamilton Fieldays event. Unfortunately, one of the products, DermaShield, appears to be very much pseudo-scientific.
11 June 2017
Nigel Antony Gray is a Scientologist who believes he can predict earthquakes and that the weather is controlled by the government - and recently that fidget spinners send out harmful "frequencies". Nigel has decided that he will allow skeptics to join his secretive Facebook group - Spiritual Awareness New Zealand - as long as they follow his instructions.
11 June 2017
Since a letter of mine was published in the New Zealand Medical Journal recently, I've started receiving occasional emails inviting me to send in a paper to a new journal for publication. It's immediately obvious that these are sham journals, as they call me Dr Honeychurch and are for topics that are unrelated to my area of interest (and not even expertise!), alternative medicine:
11 June 2017
Radio NZ published an article this week that seemed to accept, without evidence, claims that traditional Maori medicine can help with medical conditions including cancer.
4 June 2017
A new alternative therapy has become popular recently - grinding up oak galls and putting the paste in your vagina. Oak galls are woody balls created when a wasp larva grows inside an oak tree's leaf bud. It is being claimed by sellers of this remedy that it can tighten and clean your vagina and improve your sex life.
4 June 2017
Dave Hansford from Nelson has written a book - called "Protecting Paradise: 1080 and the Fight to Save New Zealand's Wildlife" - about New Zealand's use of the poison 1080. The name appears to be a play on the Graf Boys' documentary Poisoning Paradise, which tried to paint a picture that 1080 is not as safe as the government says it is.
4 June 2017
Robert Bigelow is convinced that aliens are not only real, but they have visited earth and are living on our planet. He believes that his grandparents were visited by an alien craft, and says that he has spent millions gathering evidence that aliens are among us. People have pointed out that his company Bigelow Aerospace's logo looks a lot like the head of a "gray" - the most popular depiction of an alien, with big almond shaped eyes and a teardrop face.
4 June 2017
Although there is a history in skepticism of people being "skeptical" of climate change, modern skepticism understands that there is a broad consensus amongst scientists that climate change is both real and caused by humans.
21 May 2017
After incidents with Stephen Fry and Jakarta's mayor, blasphemy made the news and there has finally been a push in government to repeal our archaic blasphemy law. Bill English expressed his surprise that we have a blasphemy law (which is funny, given that he's Catholic and the Catholic church have unsuccessfully tried to use the law in this country in the past), and David Seymour attempted to introduce a private member's bill to parliament to repeal the law (section 123 of the Crimes Act).
21 May 2017
Someone in the US recently flew on a plane with a spirit level to prove that the earth is flat. Instead he demonstrated a misunderstanding of physics.
21 May 2017
A claim has been made by Noel Hilliam that European settlers beat Maori to settling NZ, and that reconstruction of skulls from a woman and man have shown that they originated in Wales and the Mediterranean, respectively. The woman had blue eyes and blonde hair, and the
7 May 2017
Nigel Antony Gray, who shot to infamy last November when he "predicted" an earthquake, gave a talk in Petone last night.
7 May 2017
On April 11th I submitted a complaint to Medsafe about Te Kiri Gold, a bleach made by farmer Vernon Coxhead which he is selling as a cancer cure.
23 April 2017
Last Sunday I went to church - not once, but twice. Arise is a large evangelical church that started in Wellington about 15 years ago, and has grown and spread to several other cities.
23 April 2017
Kelvin Cruickshank has made the news because he's promoting a new book - "Surrounded by Spirit". In the book he claims he talked with the spirit of Jonah Lomu at a show last year, apparently unaware that Jonah's brother John was in the audience:
9 April 2017
Otago University have defended their decision to allow a screening of Vaxxed, citing free speech and a need to controversial topics to be discussed.
9 April 2017
We talked about Te Kiri Gold last year, when Sir Colin Meads was in the news endorsing it as a treatment for cancer. Although it wasn't on sale back then, and Vernon had been promising to run proper scientific trials of the product before putting it on the market, this seems to have now been forgotten.
2 April 2017
I received an email earlier this week about a new Citizen Science Project called Planet 9.
2 April 2017
formulating a "Christian response" to scientific studies on morality
2 April 2017
26 March 2017
The NZ Census asks a question of respondents about Religious Affiliation. Historically, the only response available for non-believers has been "No Religion". NZ Stats have now added several categories in time for the next Census in 2018.
26 March 2017
Mark Hanna of the Society for Science Based Healthcare and I had an exchange over IM a few months ago, where we realised that there are so many bad claims being made for alternative therapies that if you picked a random combination of condition and treatment, chances are high that someone in NZ is making illegal claims that the treatment can successfully treat the condition.
26 March 2017
Shaquille O'Neal gave his support to the flat earth conspiracy movement on a podcast recently. However, although many websites were quick to jump on this, it turns out that Shaq was just joking:
19 March 2017
Back in 2009 Belle Gibson claimed she had cancer, and that she was treating it with "natural" remedies. She released a cookbook and iPhone app (called The Whole Pantry) helping others to use diet to treat medical conditions.
19 March 2017
"I have no evidence of whether it is real or not real"
5 March 2017
Six of us skeptics went along to Father John Rea's healing event on Tuesday in Tawa, Wellington. John is a well known healer in New Zealand, and he's appeared on my skeptical radar in the past for making claims about being able to treat cancer.
19 February 2017
Homeopathic products are made by diluting a substance that causes similar symptoms to the condition they're meant to treat. In the case of Hyland's Teething Tablets, that substance is belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade. Wikipedia says that it's "one of the most toxic plants found in the Eastern Hemisphere".
19 February 2017
A man from Nelson won $100,000 recently when his numbers came up in the lottery, and he'd purchased 12 tickets with the same numbers. Although this is touted as a lottery tactic, in the long run, on average, people using this method to play the lottery will win less than others, as any wins they have will result in a lower payout per ticket.
19 February 2017
Anti-vaccination advocates in New Zealand have raised enough money to bring a screening of Vaxxed, a movie created by disgraced ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield and promoted by Robert de Niro, to New Zealand. The movie is an attempt to sow doubt about vaccines, and makes extensive use of secret audio recordings of CDC employee and "whistleblower" William Thompson.
19 February 2017
5 February 2017
Vicki Latele, who was jailed for mortgage fraud, has had a tough time. She has cancer, and has had her stomach removed. It appears that the standard treatments, such as chemotherapy, have not helped her, and she's been released from prison on compassionate grounds.
5 February 2017
This is an argument I've never heard before against an idea I occasionally hear - that belief in science is just like religion, because it requires faith. In fact, I last heard this argument only a couple of weeks ago.
5 February 2017
I was messaged this week by someone who works near the new Scientology centre in Auckland. They told me that there are lots of Scientologists out on the streets at the moment, including outside the nearby hospital, trying to bring people into the church. The way they do this is quite disingenuous, normally starting with offering a free personality test - the Oxford Capacity Analysis test (nothing to do with Oxford University)
29 January 2017
Robert Hunt spoke on behalf of Creation Ministries International this morning at Upper Hutt Baptist Church.
22 January 2017
Scientology are pushing to open new "Ideal Orgs" around the world, and Auckland's old Whitecliffe Art school building has been converted to a new Org. It was purchased in 2007 with a $10 million loan from Scientology central, but recently local Scientologists borrowed a further $6 million to restore and modernise the building.
18 December 2016
The Society for Science Based Healthcare were asked about Applied Kinesiology this week and I helped to write this response to questions:
18 December 2016
I was contacted by a journalist about a local cancer "cure", Te Kiri Gold, and sent a response (with a little help from ex-chair of the NZ Skeptics, Vicki Hyde):
18 December 2016
Nigel Antony Gray, who "predicted" last month's earthquake on Facebook, has recently shown just how daft, and dangerous, he is.
18 December 2016
Fijian government representatives, including leader Frank Bainimarama, were at a lavish launch event a couple of weeks ago to announce the launch of a new app which is set to revolutionise our mobile phone use.
18 December 2016
In the scheme invested money receives a return of 30% profit after a month. It works as a classic Ponzi scheme, where the incoming money from new members is used to pay members whose investment is withdrawn. These schemes work while they gain in popularity, but stop working as soon as they stop growing. The most famous example of this is the Bernie Madoff fraud, where it's estimated that $65 billion was lost.
4 December 2016
Here are my notes from this year's NZ Skeptics conference:
27 November 2016
After last Sunday's show, when I talked about Bioptron at the Go Green Expo, a Bioptron rep called up RadioLive and asked for me to contact them. I called, and was then contacted the next day by a Division Manager for Bioptron - David.
27 November 2016
There have been a few stories in the news recently about earthquakes that have left me feeling skeptical:
27 November 2016
We have some great speakers for this year's Skeptics Conference, including Susan Gerbic who runs the Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia project. Her team put a lot of work into adding a skeptical angle to Wikipedia pages and fleshing out pages of interest to skeptics, such as those of famous scientists.
13 November 2016
I went to the Go Green Expo yesterday, along with other skeptics. The expo is meant to showcase green products and services, but many of the stalls promote alternative health.
13 November 2016
Obviously people around the world are painfully aware of the many crazy beliefs held by president-elect Donald Trump. However, what's less well known is the range of nonsense that Mike Pence, America's future Vice President, believes.
21 October 2016
A Chinese man appears to have invented a novel way to tell the future. He puts his hand down a woman's top, feels her breast, and presumably uses the information he gleans to work out what is in store for the woman. Of course, by using cold reading a fortune teller
21 October 2016
As usual, it's blurry footage from far away that is most likely a human. It appears to be a tall figure, dark, with a big stride and holding something white swinging in its hand. The white object could be a carrier bag. Of course, as the footage is taken from far away so our brains end up doing a lot of guesswork to try to make sense of what we're seeing.
21 October 2016
Here's a press release that was sent out recently about a complaint I'd made to the ASA. As a result of the complaint, we uncovered the fact that Medsafe "grandfathered" in over a thousand of Weleda's homeopathic products. Medsafe registered these products as medicines without checking if there was evidence that they work, and despite a general understanding within science that homeopathy is ineffective. All they checked for is that there were no records of the products being unsafe, and given that homeopathy is normally nothing more than sugar pills or sugar water there were unlikely to have been any safety issues.
21 October 2016
An incident at the Hawke's Bay Better Home and Living Show has made the news because it made the courtroom. There were sellers of two different brands of health bracelet at the show, Shuzi and Zenteq.
25 September 2016
There is currently a bill working its way through parliament which proposes moving the decision to fluoridate water supplies away from local councils and into the hands of DHBs. This appears to be a very good move, as fluoridation is a health issue and DHBs are much better suited to weighing up the pros and cons than local councils are. Councils in NZ have historically been bamboozled by Fluoride Free NZ, our local anti fluoride group, and have in some cases made decisions to remove fluoride.
25 September 2016
The infamous Brio clinic in Thailand has sucked in unsuspecting kiwis, promising to treat them with unconventional therapies for cancer. One unfortunate victim, Holly Devine, died after raising $55,000 on Givealittle for treatment at the clinic, but before attending the clinic.
25 September 2016
Mark Hanna at the Society for Science Based Healthcare has complained recently about the Napier Courier's column written by a local homeopathy business, called "Homeopathy Hub". the weekly column made many daft claims about the effectiveness of homeopathy, such as:
25 September 2016
Despite much criticism of both the original broadcasts and the recent reruns, it appears that TVNZ are recording a new episode of Sensing Murder. The episode focuses on a murder in Napier in 2008.
18 September 2016
Chris Johnson created a coffee table book a few years ago, quoting atheists talking about their life without god. The book was titled A Better Life, and the strap line explains exactly what the book is about - "100 Atheists Speak Out on Joy & Meaning in a World Without God".
18 September 2016
The Effective Altruism movement is becoming popular in New Zealand. The basic idea is that logic and critical thinking can be applied to charity giving, and that charities range from being great at helping people to being as good as useless, or even detrimental.
18 September 2016
Mark Hanna at the Society for Science Based Healthcare has complained recently about the Napier Courier's column written by a local homeopathy business, called "Homeopathy Hub". the weekly column made many daft claims about the effectiveness of homeopathy, such as:
18 September 2016
Stuff have reprinted another article from Juice Daily, which claims that garlic, pineapple, a salt water gargle and chicken soup can help with allergies. Of course, this is all unproven tosh and certainly not good medical advice. Thomas Lumley at Stats Chat does a good job of deconstructing the article, going through all the links in the article and checking out the evidence for the claims. Unsurprisingly, the given evidence is very thin:
18 September 2016
As part of the US presidential election circus, and given that both candidates are two of the oldest candidates ever, health records have become a part of the debate.
28 August 2016
Julia Rucklidge from Canterbury University has suggested that processed food may be a cause of a mental illness epidemic.
28 August 2016
A woman has made the news today because she has been denied treatment for a medical condition, symphysis pubis dysfunction, related to her pregnancy. Southern Cross Insurance have said that the reason for not paying for treatment is that pregnant women in New Zealand are eligible for free healthcare, and so their policies don't cover pregnancy.
28 August 2016
The Society for Science Based Healthcare has recently submitted complaints about articles in two newspapers.
28 August 2016
The NZ Herald reports that "a leading scientist" (Dr Poikolainen) has said a bottle of wine a day would do no harm to your health, and that drinking more than the current recommended daily amount of alcohol is more beneficial than not drinking at all. Dr Poikolainen has also written a book on the subject - "Perfect Drinking and its Enemies":
21 August 2016
Brian Cox argued with Australian senator Malcolm Roberts on TV show Q&A about climate change, accusing NASA and other organisations of "corrupting" temperature data.
21 August 2016
I totally agree that people should not be allowed to talk about treating health conditions if they have not received approval, and hopefully the upcoming Natural Health Products bill will be a step in the right direction in New Zealand for ensuring claims can't be made without good evidence.
21 August 2016
After a recent second campylobacter issue in Havelock North, it turns out that the Hastings water supply is not treated with chlorine to kill bacteria.
21 August 2016
Superfoods are foods that are touted as having high levels of one or more nutrients, with claims made that these nutrients can heal the body. These superfoods, such as kale, goji berries and chia seeds, are often sold at very high prices.
21 August 2016
There were several witch doctors in Auckland last year, and they eventually left the country after efforts were made to clamp down on them, including some successful ASA complaints.
7 August 2016
Here are my bullet points and photos from David Icke's recent 12 hour talk given in Auckland:
17 July 2016
FYI is a great website for making Official Information Act requests. You can submit a request to a government department through the site and all correspondence is made public on the site.
17 July 2016
A leaflet has been shared in several british towns purporting to be from an unknown Muslim organisation, "For Public Purity", asking for locals to refrain from taking their dogs out in public as it is an affront to Islam. However, Muslim groups deny that there is any effort on their part to ban dogs and that the leaflets are likely a hoax designed to foment unrest in England.
17 July 2016
A couple of weeks ago Rachel Hoover from Illinois was allowed to use a photo with her wearing a colander for her driver's license, as it is the usual headgear for pastafarians. This week she has been asked by the Secretary of State, John Kerry, to submit a new driver's license photo without the colander.
17 July 2016
Somebody asked Sandra Clair from Artemis, who writes for the Herald and sells natural remedies:
17 July 2016
Pokemon Go is a new game where people have to use their phones and walk around their neighbourhood catching Pokemon (little animals) and visiting pokestops. Many churches are pokestops, as places of worship have been registered.
10 July 2016
Yet another infomercial style article has been published on the NZ Herald, this time talking about the benefits of bee venom. Abeeco are a major seller of bee products in New Zealand, and they have several successful ASA complaints against them. Abeeco talks in the article about their products, but all they are able to produce in support of them is anecdotes - no proper data. The article even has an 0800 number at the bottom, and although it just says to call the number for "more information", nowhere does it state that the number is Abeeco's sales line!
10 July 2016
Australian Ken Ham's Creation "Museum" has opened its newest attraction, the Ark Encounter, on Thursday.
10 July 2016
I was asked for my thoughts about the most recent Sensing Murder re-run last week, and an article was published on Monday talking about the program. I talked with journalist Carly Gooch about how there are only around 60 unsolved murders from the last 100 years, and that it wouldn't take much for a "psychic" to memorise some of the details of each of these cases. I also managed to find an article online from 5 years before the program was filmed which detailed most or all of the facts that the psychics were able to produce.
10 July 2016
This weekend's lottery Powerball jackpot was worth $40 million, with 3 winners. The NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB reported on Richard Lustig, a US man who has won several prizes and written a book explaining how to win the lottery.
3 July 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/
3 July 2016
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/81470129/Christchurch-City-Council-to-reduce-use-of-potentially-dangerous-weedkiller
3 July 2016
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/health/judge-to-sentence-parents-whose-little-boy-died-of-bacterial-meningitis-384237241.html
3 July 2016
A recent article on Ken Ring's Predict Weather website, presumably written by Ken, has told people not to trust anything they read in the media. In a particularly conspiratorial tone, the article says that you should not trust politicians and you should consider not taking a cancer treatment that the medical profession recommends to you.
26 June 2016
A petition on change.org has been signed by 1,000 vets asking for the UK to blacklist homeopathy as a treatment that vets can prescribe for animals. Over 2,500 people have signed it in all.
26 June 2016
Tom DeLonge, the guitarist of a rock band in the US which was popular in the early 2000s has denied rumours that he's quit the band to focus on research into UFOs and aliens.
26 June 2016
A dermatologist at a recent anti-ageing conference has said that regularly exposing the face to the light and electromagnetic radiation from smartphones can speed up ageing and wrinkles. Doctors even claim they can tell which hand a person holds their phone in just by looking at which side of the face is most damaged.
26 June 2016
Stuff published an advertorial article last week claiming that colloidal silver - small particles of silver in a cream or spray - could treat a variety of medical conditions. The article was written by a sales representative from Skybright Natural Health, a company which sells colloidal silver products. She said:
26 June 2016
Tony Robbins is a very popular motivational speaker, and charges US$1,000 or more for a high energy day of talks. Events have names such as "Date with Destiny", "Life and Wealth Mastery" and "Unleash the Power Within". Tony's website has testimonials from famous celebrities, such as Hugh Jackman, Bill Clinton and Serena Williams. Video of Tony Robbins events look a lot like evangelical christian sunday services - lots of music, jumping around and highly emotional sermons.
19 June 2016
Consumer NZ used secret shoppers to visit 46 NZ beauty clinics with a raised skin spot. The issue was such that the undercover person should have been referred to a GP, but 7 of the 46 clinics said that they were able to treat the problem themselves, with lasers, electrocution, needling or cutting.
19 June 2016
The Bilderberg Group met last week, and there were protests by the usual conspiracy crowd.
19 June 2016
Chris Hyde from the Timaru Herald received a response to an OIA request to CYF this week. There was a recent case where a man was convicted for child abuse of CYF kids in Timaru, and he was used by CYF as an EFT practitioner.
19 June 2016
A young woman died this week, while she was trying to raise $70k to fund and alternative cancer treatment at the Brio Clinic in Thailand. Amanda Ferreira also died last month from cancer. She had been to the Brio clinic once, and had been raising money to have further treatment there. Common treatments are heat therapy, ultrasound and pH transformation (probably alkaline).
19 June 2016
There have been multiple sightings of UFOs in Christchurch this week, prompted by footage recorded by Oisin Lavelle. The footage shows a coloured blob moving erratically.
12 June 2016
Chris Savage, an ex police officer from Australia, has a long history of being outright dangerous. He's anti-vaccine, and claims to be able to treat autism and cancer with magnesium (chloride) and DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) infusions. He's currently in New Zealand, and has been treating people while claiming he's a doctor.
12 June 2016
There is now a second panel that has been convened to review Christchurch Council's "Tonkin Taylor" coastal erosion report. The panel has been instructed to:
12 June 2016
The most plausible benefits probably occur from the mixture fermenting, producing heat. It's pretty unlikely that anything else in the spa is helping your body.
12 June 2016
Maureen is the newest member of parliament, a National Party MP who seems to have a few pseudoscientific beliefs.
12 June 2016
Bobby brown has spoken out about having sex with a ghost!
5 June 2016
An image of dozens of dead kiwis was recently used by an anti 1080 Facebook activist group, New Zealand's Not Clean Green, to show that the poison is harming local wildlife.
5 June 2016
Family first have confused correlation and causation in a recent report, and stated that unmarried couples are a major cause of child poverty.
5 June 2016
Valerie Todd, an osteopath, has been found guilty by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal of performing acupuncture on three patients in Nelson in 2014 without the required qualifications, and will likely be fined $1,500 and a portion of the trial costs.
5 June 2016
Rush Limbaugh, US radio talk show host, has used a conversation about Harambe the gorilla to argue that evolution does not work.
17 April 2016
Mark Hanna and I wrote a letter to the New Zealand Medical Journal about research we had completed showing that the majority of chiropractors break the Chiropractic Board policy on advertising. The policy states:
17 April 2016
Family First may be de-registered as a charity soon. They have been sent a notice of de-registration from Charities Services, but plan to fight it in court. They have previously defended against an attempt to be de-registered last year.
17 April 2016
An Australian woman with a newborn has passed whooping cough onto her daughter, and now wishes she'd taken the vaccine she was offered:
17 April 2016
The NZ Herald published a list of the top 5 luckiest stores, and went so far as to claim that your chances of winning the lottery would increase if you visit one of these stores!
17 April 2016
A group of 9 skeptics visited the Mind Body Spirit fair in Taita, Wellington yesterday. We had a good time, and saw lots of weird and wonderful things on offer.
17 April 2016
The Health Minister (Jonathan Coleman) and Associate Health Minister (Peter Dunne) are proposing to move the decision about water fluoridation out of the hands of local councils, and giving the responsibility to DHBs.
13 March 2016
A Christian blogger has warned that mandalas in adult colouring in books could be dangerous. She suggests that the magical new age claims made about mandalas are true, that they have the ability to heal if you meditate on them and that a good way to do this is to colour them in. Of course, as these magical claims are not Christian, they must be bad and Christians should stay away from them.
13 March 2016
Christchurch council has voted 12-1 to look into ceasing use of glyphosate to kill weeds. The decision seems to have been made based on a recent International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report which labels glyphosate as "probably carcinogenic". Many other products come under a similar classification, such as coffee, alcohol and bacon. The important question isn't "is it carcinogenic?", but "how carcinogenic is it?". (Paracelsus)
13 March 2016
An article on Stuff makes a lot of claims about these herbs and spices, but makes sure to qualify their claims with phrases such as:
13 March 2016
The Mandela Effect is where people have false memories of past events, and decide that there's been a jump to an alternative universe where history is different.
28 February 2016
On Thursday I went to Cafe Scientifique, a regular meeting in Wellington where talks are given about a scientific topic.
28 February 2016
Jacqueline Fox, who died last year, had used Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder for 35 years on her genitals.
28 February 2016
After the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster successfully applied for the ability to register marriage celebrants last year, their first celebrant has now been approved. Karen Martyn is willing to travel to anywhere in the country to perform a pastafarian wedding ceremony.
28 February 2016
Submissions are closing next week for the Natural Health and Supplementary Products bill, which seeks to regulate alternative medicine. Although there are several issues, such as the use of "historical evidence" being allowed, the bill in general is positive. People are encouraged to read the bill and make a submission.
28 February 2016
A new trend started recently, when IV "hydration" clinics opened in Australia late last year, called iv.me and the Hangover Clinic. The clinics offer customers a range of treatments, consisting of IV drips with various mixes of saline, vitamins, painkillers and oxygen.
21 February 2016
Last year professor Paul Glasziou from Bond University in Australia headed up a team that wrote a systematic review of systematic reviews on homeopathy as part of a report for Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
21 February 2016
Antonin Scalia, a conservative Supreme Court judge in the US, died this week at age 79. Scalia took some strange legal views in his time, such as this one on evolution:
21 February 2016
Yet another sea monster has been found, this time in Swansea, NSW, Australia. Ethan Tipper posted the photo on Facebook, asking "What the f*** is this?".
21 February 2016
Shane Warne is currently appearing on Australia's version of I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!. He announced on the show that he thinks aliens created the pyramids in Egypt, and that they also engineered humans:
21 February 2016
In the United States, the Texas board of education is very important because the state is so large. This means that the board has a large sway over which textbooks are used nationwide in schools. Historically Texas has been a battleground for creationism, with efforts to get as many fundamentalist Christians onto the board of education as possible.
14 February 2016
Hang bags of water around to keep flies away. Coins or bits of tin foil can be used inside the bags.
14 February 2016
David Icke was last in NZ in 2011. He'll talk in Auckland about his new book (surprise, surprise!), lizards, the illuminati and many other nonsense subjects.
14 February 2016
A couple of stories about fast food that set off my skeptical alarm bells this week.
14 February 2016
There is a one second shaky video of a Yeti, along with a higher resolution picture.
14 February 2016
The Whakatane council voted to remove fluoride from its water supply a couple of weeks ago, and reversed the decision this week.
7 February 2016
Research is coming to light that antioxidants in food and drinks are not useful to aid health, and may actually be damaging to us.
7 February 2016
Someone has put Mr Trump forward for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Supporters said in the submission that Mr. Trump deserved the prize for:
7 February 2016
I went to see Creation Ministries International speaker Jonathan Sarfati give a couple of talks in Wellington last week. Jonathan was brought up in New Zealand, and was once the national chess champion.
7 February 2016
(Although we all know that fast food is not generally a great nutritional choice, there's a lot of nonsense out there about how bad fast food is. The most pernicious is about how fast food doesn't rot, and people have shown this by keeping McDonalds burgers for years, with only minimal breakdown of the food. Of course, it's been shown that in the same conditions where McDonalds burgers don't rot, organic home-made burgers don't rot either)
7 February 2016
Matthew Mills believes that the Sandy Hook school massacre in the US didn't happen. Unfortunately he's taken his belief to an extreme, publicly harassing the sister of one of the victims, a school teacher called Victoria Soto. Victoria has been hailed as a hero for her efforts to protect the children under her care, and lost her life in the process. Matthew believes that Victoria never existed, and has been harassing her sister in an effort to get her to admit this.
7 February 2016
"The prime origin and cause of cancerous tissue is the over-acidification of the tissues then the blood due to lifestyle and dietary choices. A cancerous tissue begins with our choices of what we eat, what we drink, what we think and how we live. Cancer is a liquid and this liquid is a toxic acidic waste product of metabolism or energy consumption."
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.
13 December 2015
Australian Anti-vaccination activist's 11 week old daughter hospitalised for whooping cough, which kills 1 in 200 children who pick up the infection.
13 December 2015
A Bronx priest stole more than $1M from two NYC churches, and used the cash on a wild S&M romance with his beefy boyfriend
13 December 2015
An osteopath in Christchurch has been disciplined for treating a patient's toothache by touching her breast.
13 December 2015
Up to 80 kids - 1 in 4 - at Brunswick North West Primary School in Melbourne have contracted chicken pox. The school is tolerant or even welcoming of parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids. Newsletters have reiterated this view:
13 December 2015
Rod Parsley of the World Harvest church isn't relying on his healing abilities to treat his throat cancer but is seeking actual medical treatments.
13 December 2015
Former accountant turned psychic took $250 thousand from an elderly couple in a rest home who had been friends with him for 30 years. The money was taken over a period of 12 years.
13 December 2015
The Wellington Astrology centre, a drop-in office in central Wellington, is struggling to make ends meet and has turned to Pledge Me to raise funds. It's been running since 2011, but now needs $3,000 to cover the next 3 months of bills.
15 November 2015
There has been a major end of the world prediction about every 100 years or so from 66AD onwards. Then from 1500AD (16th Century) every 10 years, then by the 1970s pretty much every year.
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.
11 October 2015
MagneSleep lost an ASA complaint about a magnetic bracelet they sell, and they don't like me
11 October 2015
The NHS are advertising for a spiritual healer.
11 October 2015
Houses can sell for up to 20% less than market value, and twice as hard to sell, if they're thought to be haunted. I wonder how much less it can be when they're not haunted?
11 October 2015
He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate's sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.
11 October 2015
During the recent visit of Pope Francis to the United States, in every city he visited, (Washington DC, New York City and Philadelphia,) there were people at the fringes of the largest crowds wearing bright yellow shirts, often carrying large yellow signs, handing out literature proclaiming the end of the world for October 7, 2015 from eBible Fellowship, led by Chris McCann.
11 October 2015
Shepherd Bushiri has claimed in a video that he is walking on air.
4 October 2015
A crew member felt their trousers being tugged, the bottom of someone's seat was kicked, a chandelier prop worked intermittently, and a hat was knocked off
4 October 2015
The Pharmacy Council is trying to change part of its Code of Ethics: Here is the old code:
4 October 2015
A silly article on Stuff recently talked about the benefits of a haka before playing rugby:
4 October 2015
One in 13 men will develop prostate cancer before the age of 75.
4 October 2015
seasonal hydrated salts detected when above -23c, would lower the freezing point of a liquid brine
27 September 2015
A blood moon is a new name for a lunar eclipse, where the earth travels between the sun and the moon. The full moon turns red.
27 September 2015
Dane Wigington, lead researcher for GeoEngineering Watch says:
27 September 2015
The Dalai Lama has spoken about his successor, and suggested that if it's a woman, they would have to be attractive.
27 September 2015
Stuff published an article last week about Tamaha McDonald, from Blenheim, who is currently living in Mexico. Tamaha's wife, Jennifer, suffers from a lung condition which means that she needs a double lung transplant. They are currently raising money to help with this.
27 September 2015
Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, from Auckland was in Peru and took part in a cleansing ceremony.
20 September 2015
A Southern Cross survey suggested some 1.56m New Zealanders regularly took the products. About 750,000 had done so for at least five years.
20 September 2015
There was a Republican candidate debate on Wednesday, and I thought it would be good to look at the wrong-headed thinking of some of the candidates regarding vaccines.
20 September 2015
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people laugh, and then think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.
16 August 2015
16 August 2015
A bravo was awarded at last year's conference to Graeme Hill for his ongoing promotion of science and challenging of pseudoscience on Radio Live.
16 August 2015
He is a nuclear physicist, whose PhD focussed on nuclear decay. He worked in electronics for the military for nearly 40 years, and argues that the earth is only 6,000 years old.
16 August 2015
Martin Harris is a previous winner of Best Complementary Healthcare Campaign, in 2012:
16 August 2015
Most of the serious claims have already been removed, after I talked to them on the phone, but Resene still talk about crystal energy and other nonsense concepts.
16 August 2015
Waisake Naholo's miracle healing
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 November 2012
Vicki Hyde announces the Bent Spoon and Bravo Awards for 2012.
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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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
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 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 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
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 November 2009
Vicki Hyde presents the chair-entity's report for 2009.
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 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 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 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
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 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
Vicki Hyde dishes out this year's Bent Spoon Award.
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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 May 2006
Nessie's an elephant, says a leading British palaeontologist (Dominion Post, 7 March).
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
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 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
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 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 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 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 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
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 May 2004
Two fortune tellers apparently failed to foresee the end of their alleged scam in Christchurch (The Press, January 29).
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 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 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
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
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 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 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
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
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
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 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 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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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 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
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
Once again the financial figures are presented in the format required by the Registrar of Incorporated Societies.
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
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 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
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 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
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
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 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
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 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
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
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 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 February 2000
A respected member of Skeptics passed away at the Hampton Court Rest Home at Taradale, napier, on 29 September last year.
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
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
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
From a medical member, recently moved to a rural practice:
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 February 1999
by Gavin East, from Top of the Morning Book of Epitaphs, ed Brian Edwards, Tandem Press, Auckland, 1998.
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 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
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
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 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
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 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
Some problems cannot be resolved by just "getting it all out of your system", reports Nigel Hawkes.
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 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 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 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 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
A conversation off the Skeptics newsgroup.
1 February 1997
Alcohol makes complex astronomical concepts very difficult to comprehend. Alcohol makes complex astrological concepts much easier to comprehend.
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
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
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 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
Sorry -- not a 50% price reduction on BMWs, not even gratis cases of Bernkastler Beerenauslese. But:
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 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
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
An article in the Tucson Citizen, May 18, 1994, about a teacher in Chicago tells a frightening cautionary tale. An extract follows:
1 February 1995
I once was cool, but now I flame
1 February 1995
must give way to "test and see".
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 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
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
The following message from James Randi was posted to the Usenet newsgroup sci.skeptic on February 4th by Jim Kutz.
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 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
John Jewel was Bishop of Salisbury during the reign of Elizabeth I.
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
A selection of the song competition entries presented at the Skeptics Conference.
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
Continued from last issue. Prices are US dollars.
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 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
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
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
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
The New Zealand Skeptics lost one of its founders with the recent death of Dr Jim Woolnough, aged 77.
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
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
Irreproducible achievements finally get what they deserve
1 May 1992
A scale replica of the Great Pyramid of Egypt has been built in Coromandel as a chapel and healing centre.
1 August 1991
By KINGSLEY FIELD and FIONA BARBER