Janelle Wallace reviews Salt Sugar Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us, by Michael Moss. Random House Publishing, 2013. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss' book takes a ... (182 words)

The Believing Brain: how we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths by Michael Shermer. Times books, New York. 386pp. ISBN 978-0-8050-9125-0. Reviewed by Martin Wallace. Aa a member of NZ ... (456 words)

Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre. ISBN 978-0-00-728487-0. Fourth Estate, London. $26.99. Reviewed by Feike de Bock. For those who have not yet heard of Ben Goldacre, his latest book Bad Science is an ... (537 words)

When Richard Dawkins made a flying visit to New Zealand in March he attracted people from all over the country - including three from this household. Tickets to all events were quickly snapped up, ... (441 words)

Alison Campbell looks at some words that cause scientific misunderstandings. I suspect that for many of my first-year Biology students, the sheer weight of new terms they come across is perhaps the ... (647 words)

The dire predictions of the Club of Rome's 1972 report on The Limits to Growth have supposedly been refuted by subsequent studies, but the refutations have serious shortcomings. This article is based ... (1968 words)

Evolution - What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters. Donald R Prothero, Columbia University Press. Reviewed by Louette McInnes. If your local library doesn't have this book, go out right now and ... (414 words)

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. In total, the book was sent ... (280 words)

More bad news for homeopaths The leading medical journal The Lancet recently published yet another analysis of trials of homeopathy. After examining 110 such trials, the Swiss researchers concluded ... (558 words)

How to Poison your Spouse the Natural Way: A Kiwi Guide to Safe Eating, by Jay D Mann. JDM & Associates, $24.95. Reviewed by David Riddell. A Christchurch mother who fed her five-year-old son raw ... (329 words)

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE FOR DUMMIES, by James Dillard and Terra Diane Ziporyn. Hungry Minds, Inc. These books are all subtitled "A Reference for the Rest of Us!". Perhaps I'm prejudiced but as far as ... (783 words)

A DEVIL'S CHAPLAIN: Selected Essays. Richard Dawkins. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003. ISBN 0 297 82973 4. We Dawkins fans have been waiting since "Unweaving the Rainbow" in 1998 for this. Unlike its ... (344 words)

1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED THE WORLD, by Gavin Menzies. Bantam, $54.95. Zheng He is not a name that is well known in the west. However, his seven voyages from China, through the Indian Ocean to ... (538 words)

In Darwin's Shadow: The life and science of Alfred Russel Wallace, by Michael Shermer. Oxford University Press. Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer of perhaps the most revolutionary idea in ... (447 words)

Mind the Gaffe, by RL Trask. Penguin, 2002. $24.95. 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 ... (398 words)

Snake Oil And Other Preoccupations, by John Diamond. Vintage, 2001, $29.95 I recently reviewed for NZ Skeptic this author's previous book (C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too), which described his ... (377 words)

The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry; Arrow Books Ltd, 1995; xi + 356 pp; $19.95 pbk Readers familiar with Stephen Fry only for his TV comic appearances (A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, ... (467 words)

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

All the Trouble in the World, by P.J. O'Rourke; Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 1994; 340 pages; $20.00 paperback Everyone will enjoy this book. Well, everyone except paranormalists, ecological ... (471 words)

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

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 ... (212 words)

Award-winning author and long-time Skeptic Margaret Mahy delivered the after-dinner speech at the 1993 Skeptics Conference. This is an abridged version of her talk. I was a sceptic with a "c", before ... (3605 words)

Letter from India The Indian Skeptics sometimes seem to be up against some very big opponents. Our Chair recently received the following letter: Dear Friend, [There have been] 6 murders in the ... (704 words)

Continued from last issue. Prices are US dollars. UFOs Billig, Otto, Flying Saucers: Magic in the Skies, Schenkman Books, 1982, H-$19.95, ISBN 0-87073-833-X; P-$11.95, ISBN 0-87073940-9. Klass, ... (210 words)

This is an excerpt from Thomas and Rusk's lengthy bibliography of works with skeptical viewpoints. Prices noted are in US dollars. General Abell, George and Barry Singer, eds., Science and the ... (391 words)

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 ... (207 words)