When creationists try to harmonise their worldview with certain inescapable facts of geology, the result is chaos. Recently I had forwarded to me a document bearing the title Debunking Evolution: ... (2256 words)

Annette Taylor learns it's not enough to have your cake, you have to test it too. The Yuletide has well and truly washed up at our place, much food has been eaten and we are still in recovery mode, ... (520 words)

Consumer response to the outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy has involved a complex balancing of risk and price Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) has officially been recognised in the ... (1458 words)

Nervousness based medicine Fear of litigation is a powerful stimulus to over-investigation and over treatment. In an atmosphere of litigation phobia, the only bad test is the test you didn't think of ... (1181 words)

Insecurities about water quality have led to a boom in sales of bottled water. But the health benefits of the phenomenon are probably minimal. We were surprised to hear recently that sales of ... (976 words)

John Riddell learns about some dangerous chemicals From the TV3 News website: CHIPS COULD CAUSE CANCER UPDATED: 05:56PM WEDNESDAY 26 JUNE The World Health Organisation has begun a three-day emergency ... (677 words)

Another Alternative to Evidence Based Medicine Vehemence based medicine: The substitution of volume for evidence is an effective technique for brow-beating your more timorous colleagues and for ... (1058 words)

Owen McShane examines last year's Great Soya Sauce Scare There's a lot of Budget Science going on. Budget Science is not low cost science. It's certainly not amateur science driven solely by the ... (786 words)

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 ... (163 words)

False Memory re Subs? In the latest NZ Skeptic, beside the chair-entity's report, there is a false history of subscriptions. From written records: the sub was $10 for '86 to '88, then $20 for '89 to ... (703 words)

Jim Ring's article on sodium chloride in Skeptic number 60 didn't mention a classic case. Red Seal markets a range of 12 remedies in tablet form called Dr Scheussler's Biochemic Tissue Salts. Among ... (118 words)

Scientific studies suggest "organic" foods are neither healthier nor safer than genetically modified products or those grown conventionally. InterNutrition, the Swiss Association for Research and ... (281 words)

The Misinformation Age has arrived at last How many times in the last month were you conned or approached by a con? Maybe this con took the form of a weight loss product described in an ad in the ... (489 words)

The marketing of sodium chloride should be taken with a pinch of salt Sodium chloride is a very simple chemical and cannot decay. Excess is harmful though it is an essential part of our diet. These ... (1138 words)

Howard Bezar and Denis Curtain Scientific support for organic farming isn't all it seems An article appeared in the Canterbury Digest in December, 2000, claiming organic foods have 'superior ... (827 words)

There are plenty of things which are better to drink than distilled water, says John Riddell. But then, most of you probably knew that anyway. Eight is Enough Unless you have been tied up in a cave ... (1118 words)

At last year's conference, John Scott spoke on the problems of mixing misinformation and medicine. Early in my medical career I became aware of the enormous distorting forces which operate upon ... (2506 words)

The Swedish chemist Berzelius coined the term "organic" for substances that could only be made by living organisms and not synthesised by humans. His German friend Wöhler synthesised urea in 1828 ... (2659 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)

There are three types of people in this country. Those that can count and those that can't. It is common to blame the education system for this. One of the consequences of a poor education is we end ... (1061 words)

Jay Mann delivered this address with accompanying liquid refreshment (with and without MSG) at last year's conference. A large number of food manufacturers seem to be selling their food on the basis ... (2072 words)

No Medical Ghetto In the last issue I warned of the dangers of a medical ghetto developing on the Auckland North Shore. Fifty new doctors set up practice in Auckland last year and even more overseas ... (1361 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)

MSG Myth Laid to Rest Another sacred cow from my medical school days has been laid to rest. A letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 triggered a rash of anecdotal reports about facial ... (1690 words)

A Menu of Dietary Delusions Neither Nutrasweet nor sugar-rich diets produce any change in children's behaviour. (New England Journal of Medicine 330:301-307, 1994) The subjects were tested in a ... (1871 words)

_Where'er you be Don't drink comfree For drinking such tea Could be the death of thee!_ John R. L. Walker Our everyday "cuppa" comes from the plant Camellia sinensis and it, together with a number ... (742 words)