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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
14 March 2022
Last October, I reported here on Thames Coromandel Mayor Sandra Goudie and her anti-mandate stance.
13 December 2021
We love getting feedback on the newsletter, and hearing others' perspectives. And, we think that others would like this too.
11 October 2021
Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.
11 October 2021
This past week has seen an appeal of the Peter Ellis child sex abuse case being heard in the Supreme Court.
4 October 2021
When talking with people about skepticism, I've often used a convenient classification to separate what I see as two main camps of skeptics. In my oversimplified model there are a) those who are skeptical because they consider themselves to have read enough to be experts themselves on a wide range of topics, and b) those who defer to people who are the experts on any given topic - people who have relevant qualifications, decades of experience, and the respect of their peers and the wider academic community.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
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.
17 December 2017
A new pharmacy called Wellworks, focussing on natural health products, is due to open in Wellington in January.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 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":
28 February 2016
On Thursday I went to Cafe Scientifique, a regular meeting in Wellington where talks are given about a scientific topic.
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:
1 February 2016
How the standards of skeptical thinking can be used to reject ineffective charities in favour of effective charities.
1 November 2015
In early October the NZ Skeptics submitted a response to the Pharmacy Council's consultation on a proposed change to their Code of Ethics. It had recently been pointed out to the Pharmacy Council (by the Society for Science Based Healthcare) that many pharmacies sell unproven health products, in breach of their current Code of Ethics. The Pharmacy Council's proposed solution is to alter their code to remove the part of the clause that is being breached.
16 August 2015
Martin Harris is a previous winner of Best Complementary Healthcare Campaign, in 2012:
1 May 2015
Why do individuals who read the same information react differently? To some extent, beliefs affect individuals' reactions. While this is normal, it can be problematic if beliefs interfere with objective reasoning.
1 February 2015
How much does the ACC spend on acupuncture? Mark Hanna investigates.
1 February 2015
Dr. Steven Novella breaks down the latest environmental factor that apparently causes autism.
1 May 2014
1 May 2013
Real science operates by collecting data, inventing theories, developing models and making predictions that can be tested. If predictions fail, theories must be modified or discarded.
1 February 2013
Making a submission to a parliamentary committee proved to be a worthwhile exercise.
1 August 2012
Renee Maunder (Forum, NZ Skeptic 103) laments that I failed to supply a detailed list of references in my article on ACC and sexual abuse claims (NZ Skeptic 102). In my copy, I saw the Health Practitioners Competency Assurance Act 2003, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ACC legislation, public utterances by the NZ Association of Counsellors and similar organisations, ACC Press Releases, ACC's Best Practice Guidelines, the pseudo-research by Massey University (paid for by ACC) and the Crimes Act. She mocks my comments about syndromes.
1 May 2012
I've just been reading my Summer 2012 edition of New Zealand Skeptic, but I think there is a piece missing from my version.
1 February 2012
The Believing Brain: how we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths by Michael Shermer. Times books, New York. 386pp. ISBN 978-0-8050-9125-0. Reviewed by Martin Wallace.
1 November 2011
The NZ Skeptics cast the net wide for the 2011 Bent Spoon.
1 November 2011
Proponents of alternative therapies often throw around charges of vested interest when challenged. But often their own interests don't bear scrutiny.
1 February 2011
Chiropractic has had a colourful history since its invention in the 19th Century.
1 May 2009
Ian Luxmoore investigates the claims for BioMag underlays.
1 February 2008
Despite a series of studies showing it to be ineffective, ultrasound continues to be widely used by physiotherapists.
1 February 2007
Claims about pre-Maori colonisation of New Zealand refuse to go away.
1 February 2006
This is the text of a letter sent to new Minister of Health Pete Hodgson in November 2005 by Keith Garratt, as a follow-up to his submission to the MACCAH committee in 2003.
1 February 2006
The leading medical journal The Lancet recently published yet another analysis of trials of homeopathy. After examining 110 such trials, the Swiss researchers concluded that there was no convincing evidence that homeopathy was any more effective than placebo. In the accompanying editorial, the editor, Dr Richard Horton, made a comment which has an uncanny, and no doubt intentional parallel with the views of the founder of homeopathy over two hundred years ago:-
1 February 2006
Demands for equal time cut both ways.
1 February 2005
SCIENCE has not "progressed only by slow cautious steps" as Piers McLaren claims (Forum, Spring 2004), but by great bold ones. Scientists should resist new ideas but it is a myth that they do so irrationally. Contrary to Maclaren's letter, quantum theory rapidly won the day. Planck published in 1900, Einstein in 1905, in 1913 Bohr produced a quantum structure for an atom. By 1922 all three had won Nobel prizes for work on quantum theory.
1 February 2004
Although I have been receiving free email alerts for a long time, I am a (very) new member. Among the goodies which I received a couple of days ago was the Spring, 2003 newsletter, number 69. Obviously, free speech is the first requisite of such an organ, but I was rather taken aback by contribution in Forum from Lance Kennedy of Tantec, an organisation in the biocide industry, on the subject of global warming. Its content is highly selective, and it contravenes all the principles outlined in the Skeptics Guide to Critical Thinking. He writes of a "sound and healthy reluctance to subscribe to anthropogenic greenhouse... warming". He says that the Scientific American is committed to "greenie (a pejorative term which has no place in a serious discussion) nonsense".
1 August 2003
The Word-based submission to the CAM discussion document which was sent out in our (NZCSICOP) name is now available for you to read at http://skeptics.org.nz/cam
1 August 2003
Ancient Phoenicians in New Zealand? A recent book makes the claim, but the evidence doesn't bear scrutiny.
1 May 2003
Estimates of world poverty are grossly exaggerated
1 February 2003
In New Zealand Skeptic No. 64, Warwick Don critiqued Ian Wishart's article Walking with Beasts, published in Investigate, June 2002. This is Wishart's response.
1 February 2003
In this issue Ian Wishart responds to Warwick Don's critique of his article on Intelligent Design.
1 November 2002
Skeptics - always in two minds about something…
1 November 2002
The year round suntan, carnation in the button hole, silk tie, Armani suit and tongue should all be equally smooth. Sartorial elegance and verbal eloquence are powerful substitutes for evidence.
1 November 2002
This article is based on an address to the Skeptics Conference 2002. A condensed version has also been produced for the NZ Listener.
1 August 2002
Hamilton is a progressive place where the difficult issues are tackled. Rather than being a cow town (we're not! we're not!), we sit around of a Friday evening and debate the Big Questions.
1 May 2002
Damian Thompson argues that a tangle of folklore and urban legend, allied to a particular horror of paedophilia, has blinded many to the scientific facts
1 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 August 2001
Skepticism is very much concerned with assessing the quality of evidence in support of a particular claim. But evidence means different things to different people. In the first of a two-part series, Jim Ring examines the legal profession's view of the matter.
1 November 2000
This year's Bent Spoon Award from the NZ Skeptics has been won by Wellington Hospital for encouraging their nursing staff to claim special healing powers through the laying on of hands.
1 November 2000
A news item that Australian skeptics are considering video evidence of a "Bigfoot" sighting for a $100,000 prize should alarm all who have offered money for evidence of paranormal activity. I urge all NZ skeptics who have risked part of their fortune; if you have not already done so, insert a clause insisting that photographs, films or video will not be considered as evidence.
1 May 2000
Readers of NZ Skeptic will have seen R.E. Bartholomew's article "The Great Zeppelin Scare of 1909" in last autumn's issue, no 47. This covered the same event as one of the chapters in this book. Several other chapters describe similar episodes which occurred in other times and other places, and in a final section all these are woven into a coherent story. Each chapter is supported by a copious list of references, most of them newspaper reports pubished during the development and decay of the case concerned.
1 August 1999
READERS of NZ Skeptic will have seen R.E. Bartholomew's article "The Great Zeppelin Scare of 1909" in last autumn's issue (No. 47). This covered the same event as one of the chapters in this book. Several other chapters describe similar episodes which occurred in other times and other places, and in a final section all these are woven into a coherent story.
1 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
Some problems cannot be resolved by just "getting it all out of your system", reports Nigel Hawkes.
1 August 1996
The Mysterious Origins of Man showed earlier this year on TV3 as a "documentary". It is likely to be a contender for this year's Bent Spoon Award.
1 August 1996
Some police are still guilty of scepticism, but retraining is on its way
1 November 1995
This is a copy of a presentation given to the New Zealand Skeptics 1995 Conference in Auckland
1 November 1995
The Skeptics began in simpler times. Some of us recall when the burning issues of Skeptical enquiry were whether Uri Geller bent spoons, whether Russians were using telepaths to communicate with submarines and whether Lyall Watson had stumbled on a Philosopher's Stone called Supernature. He certainly seemed to be turning something into gold.
1 November 1994
In a landmark case on September 30, a 59-year-old man, Bill1, was acquitted by a jury in the Auckland High Court on charges of sexually abusing three of his daughters about 20 years ago. The complainants alleged sodomy and rape, and indecent acts such as the insertion of a coat hanger in the vagina causing bleeding and loss of consciousness. The women claimed they had suppressed the memories which had only resurfaced in later life. All three daughters had attended therapy and made claims for damages from the ACC before they laid the criminal charges against their father. Two of the daughters reported memories of events happening in their cots when aged one year old or less. Bill was defended by Mr Peter Williams, QC, who dismissed evidence based on "recovered memories" as dangerous and fallacious.
1 August 1993
On open access computer bulletin boards, any entity with a theory can expound on it at length. Many do -- usually to a very unappreciative audience. A seemingly-large proportion of such expositions are surprisingly similar in style. The following scale (tentatively attributed to John Baez of Usenet sci.physics) will help readers establish just how crackpotted something is...
1 February 1991
NEW research dismissing the role of tinted lenses in treating reading difficulties has sparked an angry reaction from special education experts.
1 February 1990
Grant Duncan in his letter in the June 1989 N.Z. Skeptic has I feel been unfair to me in what I wrote about homeopathy; and he seems bent on being unfair to himself too.
1 February 1988
Evidence of the Shroud. By lan Wilson. Macmillan, 1986. 158 pp. $46.15.
1 May 1987
Pseudoscience in its various manifestations is now enjoying enormous popularity, is increasingly well organised and politically powerful. We can not identify pseudoscience by its errors. Seven hundred years ago Astrology was as wrong as now but was not pseudoscience, we might call it protoscience. The discovery of Polywater and the rush of confirming experiments was not pseudoscience. We know now that it was due to contaminated apparatus and wishful thinking and no one now has any evidence for it, so eventually its errors became known,
1 November 1986
To investigate scientifically and with an open mind, claims and events of an apparently paranormal nature.
1 November 1986
Carison, S. A double-blind test of the astrology hypothesis. Nature, December 5, 1985, 318, 419-425. Two double-blind tests were made of the thesis that astrological 'natal charts' can be used to describe accurately personality traits of test subjects. Despite using highly regarded astrologers, despite incorporating their suggestions into the design, and despite the fact that they approved the design, astrology failed to perform at a level better than chance. The astrological hypothesis was clearly refuted.