A 'Wellness Festival' provides a couple of hours' entertainment, if not much more The stallholders at Porirua's inaugural Wellfest in August were a mixed bunch. Among the 50 or so displaying their ... (973 words)

Alison Campbell reviews Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam, by Pope Brock. Three Rivers Press, New York. Goat glands, greed, and the ... (757 words)

In the first of a new series of columns, Matthew Willey catches up with what celebrity medium Kelvin Cruickshank is up to these days. The dead talk to no-one. Kelvin Cruickshank is either ... (1002 words)

Clairvoyants agree on missing man By CORINNE AMBLER Police Reporter Police will join friends of missing Wellington man Michael Kelly today in a search of an area where clairvoyants think he might be ... (437 words)

A heartstring-tugging appeal in the NZ Herald doesn't tell the full story. Jesse Bessant is a little boy from Auckland with a very rare brain tumour. He has a ganglioglioma, a tumour that arises from ... (765 words)

Gold takes local action against PowerBalance, with encouraging results. PowerBalance Bands are hideously expensive silicon rubber wristbands with a mylar hologram in them. PowerBalance, an American ... (469 words)

Many people lost a lot of money investing in non-existent data compression software because well:established principles of information theory were ignored. This article is based on a presentation to ... (3162 words)

Noel Townsley continues our series on the psychic roadshows touring New Zealand. From a website to which I subscribe came an email notice of two upcoming events with "well-known psychic" Jeanette ... (3087 words)

This excerpt from an NZ Skeptic article of 20 years ago reviewed an evening with self-styled New Zealand 'magnetic healer' Colin Lambert. Presumably the pseudonym 'Alpha Beta' was used to minimise ... (475 words)

Loretta Marron exposes an Australian Australian alternative cancer therapist. On 26 February this year, trailers were run every hour throughout the day in Australia advertising the Channel Nine ... (638 words)

Breast-pill maker busted 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 ... (1219 words)

While we were in Fiji recently there was a dengue fever alert. This unpleasant virus is carried by mosquitoes and naturally we were careful to use insect repellent. We stayed in a Suva hotel; in the ... (125 words)

Mexican cancer clinics continue to do a roaring trade, despite their poor track record. When civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, the world lost a voice for decency and ... (744 words)

The Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce has launched a trans-Tasman campaign to inform consumers about the most common types of scams and how to recognise whether an offer is genuine or false. ... (407 words)

Early in 2005 Professor Kaye Ibbertson, the relentless grand vizier of the Marion Davis Library and Museum, asked David Cole to offer the Medical Historical Society some comments about the history of ... (2970 words)

Psychic scammer Maria Duval failed to foresee trouble over 'her' misleading advertisements. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is funded by the advertising and media industries, and has the ... (572 words)

On 14 June 2005 the Advertising Standards Complaints Board met to consider Complaint 05/116, filed by Martin Craig for the Consumers' Institute, concerning the Maria Duval psychic services ... (1539 words)

The Break Free tour will be coming soon to a city near you. The week-long tour of lectures and book selling will start in Christchurch at the end of November and proceed to Wellington, Taupo, ... (792 words)

A French test of a therapeutic touch practitioner generates sympathy, but no positive results We have recently received a message from OZ. Not transtasman Big Brother, but the cousins in France. OZ ... (569 words)

Dying is Bad for Business 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 ... (1267 words)

It may be time to expand the principles of the Hippocratic Oath First do no harm. That's the major principle of the doctor's Hippocratic Oath. For the most part, the public are well-served by that ... (735 words)

Your Future is not in the Stars 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). More than 2000 people, ... (1369 words)

Biokinetic Horror Show 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 ... (1131 words)

Justice at Last 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 ... (723 words)

John Riddell learns to his cost that fishermen can be as easy to catch as the creatures they pursue I have a confession to make. I've been taken in by a scam. Normally this shouldn't be cause for ... (1385 words)

This Bravo Award-winning item originally appeared as the editorial in the March 23 issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal Is it time for the government to investigate a glaring anomaly in our ... (1677 words)

Bernard Howard reports from the Skeptics' World Convention, Sydney, 10-12 November 2000 John Clarke's gaze had been mercifully averted, so we were spared a TV series "The Congress", showing all that ... (990 words)

Quack Aids Remedies The Prevalence of HIV disease has continued to increase across the African continent and is a major public health concern due to cultural attitudes to sexuality and a degree of ... (1169 words)

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 ... (1180 words)

John Welch started writing for the magazine in Issue 16, but a posting with UNSCOM to Iraq meant he had to relinquish responsibility for the column. He is delighted to once again have the opportunity ... (1233 words)

As Professor Cole explained at the last Skeptics' Conference, "Quantum Booster"-like devices have been around a long time. If you include the Roman physician, Scribonius, who treated patients with ... (2166 words)

Cathie Comments 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 ... (369 words)

Here's an idea that WINZ have yet to suggest -- but it may not be far off! According to a recent report in the New York Times, the Big Apple's city welfare department has been recruiting welfare ... (795 words)

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. The New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists has ... (360 words)

ONCE again the medical profession has made a mess of its relations with the public, and I'm not talking about Gisborne smear takers. Little Liam's folks have made a right monkey out of the doctors. ... (554 words)

In which we look at another easy way to make money from home. No training or prior experience required! DID YOU hear that the Oxford English Dictionary has removed the word "gullible" from its latest ... (657 words)

A lucrative new career option! If you have a look through the TV Guide during any week, you will find nestled tastefully beside ads for X-rated products a whole host of 0900 psychic phone ... (991 words)

Soft Targets Like Noel O'Hare, I attended the September Skeptics' conference. Noel, winner of an NZ Skeptics Bravo Award "for critical analysis and common sense for his health column throughout ... (760 words)

Often Overacting Syndrome A ruse by any other name smells just as fishy, and it seems RSI, OOS and OOI are good examples, if a UK surgeon is to be believed. According to Murray Matthewson, the ... (915 words)

Quack Croaks Perhaps it's a coincidence, but many experts in non-proven schemes fall on their own swords. For example, Hoxsey died of cancer, and recently a Lower Hutt clairvoyant went bankrupt (due ... (1089 words)

Annette Taylor spends an afternoon checking out the alternatives. IF THERE was any doubt as to whether we'd found the right place, the music drifting on the wind guaranteed we were approaching ... (844 words)

Have you ever had a go at water divining? You wander around with a forked stick until it points to water. It's good fun, but you have to watch for passing clouds or you might poke your eye out. Or at ... (1193 words)

I have just visited another universe; it seems a much more interesting place than the dull old world we are forced to inhabit. "What is it like?" you ask eagerly, "and how did you get there?" ... (464 words)

Yes, it is frustrating, even positively nauseating. There you are struggling day in day out, doing your best and striving for the real breakthrough in science. Yet the real breakthrough never comes. ... (898 words)

When I received through the mail a coloured brochure from Time/Life advertising a series of videos and cassettes titled "Growing Younger", I was surprised to see that I could learn from Time/Life via ... (616 words)

When Brian Edwards interviewed Uri Geller some years ago, Dr David Marks of Otago University used the printed transcript to demonstrate that Brian had been the victim of highly skilled "cold ... (767 words)

The Skeptics began in simpler times. Some of us recall when the burning issues of Skeptical enquiry were whether Uri Geller bent spoons, whether Russians were using telepaths to communicate with ... (893 words)

At the Festival of Possibilities in Nelson, all the usual New Age paraphernalia were on display. A current vogue is "pulsing" which is already available in at least two varieties, holistic and ... (656 words)

This is a Feynman Commencement Address given by Richard Feynman at Caltech in 1974. This message is as relevant today as it was 20 years ago, especially for those who add their committed "science" to ... (3640 words)

The following message from James Randi was posted to the Usenet newsgroup sci.skeptic on February 4th by Jim Kutz. A few years back, Philadelphia "psychic" Judith Richardson Haimes was awarded US$1.6 ... (529 words)

The sting Following his own empirical observations that bee "treatments" helped his arthritis, a Levin bee-keeper is claiming that he is being ignored by the medical profession. (Press 3/8/93) Not ... (1336 words)

Skin Lighteners The pop star Michael Jackson has denied that he uses chemicals to lighten his skin and claimed to be suffering from a disorder called "vitiligo," which is a spontaneous loss of skin ... (1528 words)

In the medical magazine Patient Management, Denis Dutton last year presented a tongue-in-cheek account of how GPs might incorporate alternative techniques into their practices. The article generated ... (910 words)

More on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome An American study reported in the GP Weekly (2 Sep 1992) found that chronic fatigue syndrome was indistinguishable from depressive disorders. (Refer also Skeptic 21) ... (2202 words)

Vitamins One of the techniques used by quacks is to attack conventional medicine as being a conspiracy against the laiety. For example, in an article entitled "GP says vitamins wrongly dismissed as ... (1416 words)