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.
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:
28 April 2025
Committee member Hamish Dickson posted the above image to our committee chat the other day, along with the question:
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)
25 November 2024
Last weekend we held our annual conference in Auckland - this time co-organised with the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists (NZARH). We started off the weekend on Friday evening at Rationalist House, the NZARH's building on Symonds street. The first event was a Skeptical quiz, hosted by me, as usual featuring some pretty tough questions:
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 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
I would like to start this issue of the newsletter with an apology. In the last newsletter in my brief editorial I mistakenly attributed the proposed Bathroom Bill to David Seymour's political party, ACT, but of course it's been proposed by another coalition partner, Winston Peter's New Zealand First party. Thank you to the readers who were quick to point out my mistake!
2 April 2024
I hope everyone's had a good long weekend, and was able to spend it doing the things they love. I was able to spend a day hanging out with friends, put some finishing touches to a fake tourism plaque I've been making for a prank in Wellington, and spent some time sorting and photographing my vintage necktie collection. As part of doing this I learned more than I ever needed to know about the history of tie manufacturers in New Zealand, including Parisian, John Webster, Klipper, Sander and Eskay.
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!
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.
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.
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”.
31 October 2022
Our annual NZ Skeptics Conference, being held in Wellington on 25th - 27th November is just weeks away now.
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.
21 February 2022
Adventures of a Psychologist by Michael Corballis 2021 published by Routledge. Available on Amazon.
14 June 2021
By Robert Bartholomew and Peter Hassall
1 August 2018
In the last issue of this publication it was mentioned some skeptics were pulling out of this talk due to the nature of the allegations against Lawrence Krauss. He was accused of sexually assaulting a number of women. That case continues, and his name persists in the link to the show at the Isaac Theatre Royal.
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.
1 November 2017
Reviewed by Jessica Macfarlane, Editor
1 August 2017
An exploration of joy and meaning in a world without God
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.
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
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:
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.
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".
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":
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.
1 November 2015
HOW TO FIND THE APOLLO LANDING SITES
1 February 2014
Janelle Wallace reviews_ Salt Sugar Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us, _by Michael Moss. Random House Publishing, 2013.
1 May 2011
The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values. Sam Harris. 2010. Free Press, New York. ISBN 978-1-4391-7121-9 Reviewed by Martin Wallace.
1 August 2010
Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre. ISBN 978-0-00-728487-0. Fourth Estate, London. $26.99. Reviewed by Feike de Bock.
1 May 2009
Evolution - What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters. Donald R Prothero, Columbia University Press. Reviewed by Louette McInnes.
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 August 2008
Mike Palin queries the judging criteria in a recent high school science video competition.
1 February 2008
Religion Gone Bad, by Mel White, Penguin, 2006. Reviewed by Bob Metcalfe.
1 November 2007
The Plausibility of Life-resolving Darwin's dilemma, by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-300-10865-6. Reviewed by Louette McInnes.
1 May 2007
There is no point in being gullible. What is so special about believing things that it is more righteous than questioning things?
1 February 2007
How to Poison Your Spouse the Natural Way: A Kiwi Guide to Safer Food offers an interesting, non-technical, easy-to-read description of the risks we face at the dinner table. Reviewers and readers have been enthusiastic. This book has a recommended retail price of $24.95 but is now available for a limited time to members of the Skeptics for only $15, post-paid.
1 February 2007
Garfield was right-there's nothing like a piping hot lasagne on a winter's night. Especially when eaten with good wine and fine people.
1 November 2006
Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin, by Robert M Hazen. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, USA. Reviewed by Bernard Howard.
1 February 2006
The leading medical journal The Lancet recently published yet another analysis of trials of homeopathy. After examining 110 such trials, the Swiss researchers concluded that there was no convincing evidence that homeopathy was any more effective than placebo. In the accompanying editorial, the editor, Dr Richard Horton, made a comment which has an uncanny, and no doubt intentional parallel with the views of the founder of homeopathy over two hundred years ago:-
1 November 2005
The Mormon church: anti-science and pro-repression. Still.
1 May 2004
Like scientists, historians use a dependable methodology to ensure their findings are reliable. Assertions of historical fact can properly be based only on empirical evidence. Historians then use their critical thinking skills to assess the trustworthiness of this data.
1 February 2004
Hokum Locum talks with one of the unsung victims of the Christchurch Civic Crèche
1 May 2003
We Dawkins fans have been waiting since "Unweaving the Rainbow" in 1998 for this. Unlike its predecessors, it is not written around a single theme, but is a collection of Dawkins's comments and reviews of the past 25 years, on a variety of topics, reflecting his wide-ranging interests and passions. His editor, Latha Menon, has arranged 32 of these into six groups and a final letter to his ten-year-old daughter on "Belief". In addition to a general Preface, Dawkins has written a short introduction to each group.
1 November 2002
Mind the Gap! The book title is intended to remind all who have waited on curved London Underground railway platforms of the risk a careless step poses. The risks Dr Trask warns of are those which can label the writer as illiterate, ignorant of the nuances of English usage, or at least possessed of cloth ears. In offering this review to New Zealand Skeptic I do not imply that readers are particularly in need of the author's advice; rather, his comments have a distinctly skeptical slant, which should be music to skeptical ears (see entry: cliches). Consider the following entries in his alphabetical list.
1 November 2002
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 May 2002
Snake Oil And Other Preoccupations, by John Diamond. Vintage, 2001, $29.95
1 February 2002
It was sad to see - two shelves of Lynley Hood's A City Possessed, heavily discounted at Whitcoulls.
1 February 2002
When Raymond Richards included a lecture on the Mormon Church in his course on American history he ran foul of not only the Mormon community but also the University of Waikato heirarchy. He told his story at the NZ 2001 Skeptics' conference in Hamilton.
1 August 2001
Because Cowards get Cancer too, by John Diamond, Random House, 1998
1 May 2001
A new book on alternative medicine has little to add
1 November 2000
Vicki Hyde presents the year 2000 chair-entity's Report
1 May 2000
I just wanted to make a comment on the clipping from the Christchurch Star concerning "nuclear extinction" which appeared on p.9 of the NZ Skeptic periodical. In the clipping, a refutation of this possibility was based on some writings of one Bruce Cathie who is claimed therein to be a mathematician among other things.
1 February 2000
Sceptics have put up $100,000 in a bid to make a controversial Australian spiritualist eat her words over claims she does not need food.
1 February 1999
by Gavin East, from Top of the Morning Book of Epitaphs, ed Brian Edwards, Tandem Press, Auckland, 1998.
1 November 1998
IT'S BEEN a busy year on many fronts for the Skeptics, with a number of major firsts:
1 November 1998
SKEPTICS conferences are always a bag of allsorts. Having piped up at last year's AGM and suggested the next conference should be in Wellington, I was landed with organising it. Thankfully, I had the Wellington Cabal to help: Cynthia Shakespeare, Tony Vignaux, Richard Sadleir, Mike Clear, Bob Brockie and Wayne Hennessey.
1 November 1997
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, by Carl Sagan. Headline, $29.95.
1 August 1996
DARK NATURE -- A NATURAL HISTORY OF EVIL, by Lyall Watson; Hodder & Stoughton, 1995; $19.95
1 August 1996
**RIVER OUT OF EDEN: A DARWINIAN VIEW OF LIFE by Richard Dawkins.
1 February 1996
Australian creationist Peter Sparrow toured New Zealand recently.
1 November 1995
A sceptical mini-history of the crashed flying saucer saga
1 August 1995
When author Arthur Koestler and his wife died, they left money to found a university Chair in Parapsychology. Edinburgh University accepted this gift after some hesitation, and Robert L. Morris has occupied the Chair since 1985. In a university hundreds of kilometres to the south, and some hundreds of years younger, Dr Richard Wiseman has also turned a scholarly eye on the subject. This book is a result of their collaboration.
1 May 1995
Everyone will enjoy this book. Well, everyone except paranormalists, ecological alarmists, pseudo-scientists, feminists, left-wingers, the entire New Age community, and of course those eternally doom-ridden types who seem determined to drag everyone else down to their own level of self-imposed suffering.
1 May 1994
Richard Milton has written this book as a "hang on a minute" reservation about Darwinism and its apparent unquestioned acceptance by mainstream science from geology through to biology (and in one chapter political science) in the manner of the small boy who questioned the reality of the Emperor's new clothes -- "Look Mummy, all those university professors, all those Nobel Prize winners, have got no actual proof to cover their hypotheses with".
1 February 1994
The Indian Skeptics sometimes seem to be up against some very big opponents. Our Chair recently received the following letter:
1 February 1994
This book explains an approach to interpreting the French "prophet" Nostradamus's predictions. It is the culmination of 16 years research by an English woman, V.J. Hewitt. She has invented a system of decoding his quatrains using anagrams -- and not just the sort that you get in cryptic crosswords, but huge, French ones. She takes a Nostradamus quatrain, mixes up all the letters, removes the letters of the subject she is interested in (and it could be anything from soccer hooliganism to an air traffic controllers' strike), adds the date, and then rearranges the remaining letters to produce the prophecy that Nostradamus had clearly intended. What's more she does it in French.
1 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 November 1991
by D R Selkirk & F J Burrows; NSW University Press, 1987; 158 pp
1 November 1991
by Howard Blum; Simon & Schuster 1990
1 May 1991
by David Fasold. Sidgwick and Jackson, 1990. 331pp.
1 February 1991
Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of New York, 1985.
1 November 1990
With immigration a topical issue, some New Zealanders may be interested in an article in a recent Omni (January 1990) which looks at apocalyptic prophecies. In it Mark Harwell of Cornell University's Global Environment Program offers cheer to those fearful of nuclear winter: "Move to New Zealand. It's way the hell south and has 30 sheep per capita. You can survive on lamb chops until the smoke clears out of the stratosphere."
1 May 1990
According to the Otago Daily Times, 19 June 1989:
1 November 1989
MAGNETIC HEALING AND OTHER REALITIES, by Colin Lambert (Moana Press, $24. 35), Reviewed by David Riddell.
1 November 1989
Published by the author. $169.00 (inc GST and packing & postage within New Zealand).
1 February 1989
Radio Clairvoyant: Mary Fry's Own Story (Grantham House, $14.95).
1 November 1988
Nostradamus and the Millenium. By John Hogue. Bloomsbury/Roulston Greene. 1987. 209 pp. Illustrations. $45,
1 November 1988
Doris Stokes, the medium superstar, was a fraud, says a British author, Ian Wilson, in his book, "The After Death Experience."
1 August 1988
"Critical thinking" is the name given to a way of reasoning, in everyday language, which is a great benefit to everybody who uses it. It is a tool which can be used to improve our understanding of other people's arguments, to improve our own reasoning, to improve decision making, and to aid communication. It is especially useful for skeptics and debunkers. It is also a new idea, since in the past people have never been taught how to reason properly using everyday language, which is how most of us reason most of the time. Most of us could improve our thinking considerably by using critical thinking methods. I would like to see the Skeptics involved in the promotion of this subject.
1 August 1988
Acommon failure of the imagination and of intellectual rigour is the belief that these two qualities cannot co-exist. In fact one is indispensable to the other if art and intelligence are not to be separated and trivialised.
1 November 1987
New York may be the slickest and sharpest of cities, but its smartest citizens are turning to tarot cards, psychics and inter-species communicators to solve their problems. Shirley Lowe has tuned in.
1 February 1987
Police are dumbfounded at an extraordinary claim by internationally famed medium Doris Stokes that she pointed them to the grave of a New Zealand murder victim.