6 January 2025
Happy New Year! We had so many articles come in for our Alien special that I had to split them up into two separate newsletter issues, and even then this issue is probably our longest newsletter yet. We'll be back to our normal programming in a couple of weeks, hopefully looking at the Honey browser extension scam, the phenomena of vocal fry and indie voice/cursive singing in modern music, the potential resurgence of an unusual group I covered last year, a review of the recent movie Heretic, and more.
6 January 2025
Share International is an organisation that I've been interested in for quite a few years now. Whenever I see their stands at wellness events and local fairs, I make a beeline for them and have a chat about aliens, UFOs, crop circles and more. It's always seemed a little weird that their membership is predominantly retirees - I tend to associate UFO belief with younger people who have a passion for science and technology, but without the critical mindset or understanding of the complexities involved with interstellar travel to understand that their beliefs are implausible.
11 November 2024
Our membership at the NZ Skeptics Society consists of an interesting mix of different kinds of people, and although we generally agree on a few core ideas about requiring evidence before making claims, there are members who hold a variety of views that other skeptics would consider fringe. One of these members, James (who has talked to us at one of our past conferences, and I'm Facebook friends with), posted on Facebook recently that he was running a paranormal investigation of one of Wellington's heritage buildings, Inverlochy House - which is currently used as an art school:
29 October 2024
It has been a busy week for me, and today has been the first day I've been able to unwind and reflect on everything that has happened. It has been good, but it has been a week bookended by two conferences, a board meeting, and a UFO lecture where I've had to do a lot of code-switching from professional skeptic, to professional disabled/Autistic person, to skeptical UFO enthusiast, to midwifery PhD researcher and lecturer, and finally back to skeptic. I am unreserved in enjoying the DeCult conference, and am pretty happy that I got to see 95% of the talks I wanted to see.
30 September 2024
During our “very special” episode of the Yeah…Nah podcast with Anke Richter, Anke referred to an anti-cult organisation that was taken over by Scientology. The group she was referring to was the Citizen's Freedom Foundation / Cult Awareness Network (CAN), which was founded by Ted Patrick in 1978. Although he had no formal education or training, Patrick was a pioneer of deprogramming, which he developed in response to the expansion of various cults and religion movements throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Deprogramming was always controversial, but seen as a necessary evil by many parents who paid Patrick and others like him to return their (often adult) children to them. Methods employed by Patrick and others included abduction, sleep and food deprivation, emotional abuse, desecration of symbols of the detainee's faith, and sometimes physical violence.
30 September 2024
A few days ago I tuned eight pianos in one day. That has nothing to do with this article. I just wanted to let you know that, because I think it's impressive. The pianos were all in one location, at a venue/arts complex in Queenstown, and all regulars, and of high quality, so maybe not that impressive I guess, but it was a long day. While there, a kind lady who worked in the complex handed me a bottle of Ārepa. Reading the label on the glass bottle, I instantly sensed that a deep dive might be in order.
27 May 2024
On Saturday (the 25th of May), our chair Bronwyn, long-time skeptic Tim Atkin and myself visited Practical Philosophy and Meditation, a group running out of a very nice building at the bottom of Aro Street in Aro Valley, Wellington. We were going there because, despite outwardly looking like an educational institution (until very recently the Wellington branch had been called the School of Practical Philosophy), a little investigation shows that the group runs “schools” around the world in a curiously cult-like fashion, offering cheap philosophy courses as the hook to attract adherents who can then be convinced to pour their money, time and devotion into the group.
5 February 2024
After many months of radio silence, the odd Global Flourishing group that I wrote about last year briefly stirred before going quiet again. Rest assured, if anything comes of this, I'll be watching it closely and writing about it. Here are the messages that appeared on the group's Discord channel last week:
23 January 2024
A few days ago the NZARH, an organisation based in Auckland that I help out with, received an email from someone looking to forge connections:
21 August 2023
Over the last week or so I've been approached online by two scammers and, I guess because of the amount of free time I have now that I'm not attending Eastern Lightning fellowship meetings, I decided to play ball with both of them and see where the scam leads. Neither has reached the point yet where I've been asked to give them my money, but in both cases it didn't take long to see where the con would eventually come. Once we get to that point, which is likely to be in the next day or two for both, I will have a couple of fun articles to write - I've already been meticulously copy/pasting all of my chat sessions with the scammers in documents, so that I have a record of everything that goes on. As a taster, here's a fun preview of one of the incidental conversations I had with a “Customer Care” representative for a company I'm now apparently working for:
7 August 2023
As a reminder of what we covered in my last article on the Global Flourishing movement, also called ∑±, it's a new group setup in Auckland recently by a member of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists. The group claims to be aligned with skepticism, humanism and rationalism, but appears to have some concerning characteristics that make it look less like a group of skeptically-minded people, and more like a cult - at least to me.
24 July 2023
When I last wrote about Eastern Lightning, the strange Chinese cult I joined at the beginning of this year, I celebrated the fact that I had managed to get my hands on a couple of copies of one of their books. Little did I know how much trouble this would get me in!
17 July 2023
The goings on of the late “Bishop” Douglas Metcalf and the Full Gospel Mission/God Squad/Camp David have been on my list to profile for awhile. When I'm able to steer the conversation to my special interest (MLMs, Cults, New Religious Movements etc.,) it is truly touch-and-go whether my unsuspecting audience has even heard of this group. It isn't as if the shenanigans of The God Squad were ever under the radar or have fully faded from public consciousness; Christchurch newspaper The Press has always kept their finger on that pulse and publish updates on former members while ex-followers Serafina Tané and Rosina Claxton/Ngapaki Rose have made their stories available for Australasian news outlets in recent decades. Metcalf's group also draws comparison to a far better known Branch Davidian's and, albeit less frequently, is a topic for American podcasts.
10 July 2023
We have some fun articles coming up in the next few weeks. Firstly, my time in the Church of Almighty God (Eastern Lightning) has come to an end, and not through my choosing. I'll be writing one final article about the group, as well as publishing a piece from Wellington Skeptics in the Pub member Tim Atkin about how the church managed to spread so widely under strict communist rule in China. Dan Ryan talked with me the other day about some spammy Facebook ads he's been getting recently for a hair analysis service, and as we looked into it at our regular Skeptical Activism meeting, we realised that not only could we have a little fun with this (I have a friend who works for Auckland Zoo who's on board for some interesting testing), but also digging deeper we realised some interesting information about the people running the scam. More on that soon, hopefully!
10 July 2023
Back in early 2021, Paul (I won't give his last name), a member of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists in Auckland - known as the NZARH, or just the Rationalists - was entrusted with managing a Facebook group of around 500 members that was originally used for a University of Auckland group called the Reason and Science society. The group was renamed to SHARP - Student Humanists Agnostics Rationalists and Philosophers, and appears to have been re-purposed for students at Auckland University.
15 May 2023
This week, we will look at how Franklin Jones led his followers through to the new millennium (including the legal tumult of the 80s), the New Zealand side of the story, and where the group and some of its ex-disciples are now.
8 May 2023
I wrote an article a couple of years ago about a new group based on the Sovereign Citizen (or SovCit) movement. The group was planning to take ownership of Abel Tasman national park, using the Allodial Title legal “trick” that ex-lawyer Liz Lambert had been telling anyone who would listen, and create a new country called "New Freeland". Liz shared her trick far and wide; she's written in Facebook groups, told Kelvyn Alp of Counterspin Media on his online news channel, Counterspin, and talked on podcasts, etc. Here are some stills from Liz talking with Kelvyn on Counterspin, including a couple of pages detailing her deep understanding of the law.
24 April 2023
I'm still a member of the Eastern Lightning, aka the Church of Almighty God religion, along with Mark Honeychurch, and it has been a fascinating experience learning how this religion ticks. We discussed the group on a recent episode of the NZ Skeptics' “Yeah…Nah!” podcast, and I mentioned that I was unsure if they're actually a cult, but I felt that they checked many of the cult checkboxes. Others agreed that they crossed the threshold, and are probably a full-blown cult. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also calls them a cult. But are they?
24 April 2023
The NZ Skeptics held an SGM (Special General Meeting) on the weekend to go over our proposed new constitution and vote on its adoption. We're doing this because there's an upcoming change in the law that will require Societies' constitutions to be aligned with the new law's requirements. Thankfully we have an active committee, and several members were willing to give up several hours in their weekends to go through the new constitution recommended by Companies Office (who administer Societies) and integrate the key parts of our old constitution with the new one. We also injected a few skeptically-themed easter eggs into our new constitution, so that it's not an entirely boring read. Thanks to everyone who turned up to our SGM and voted to accept our new constitution, and to those who suggested changes.
11 April 2023
In my previous articles about Eastern Lightning, the Chinese cult group that I've joined to get an insight into how they operate, I've talked about:
20 March 2023
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my experience of joining the Eastern Lightning group, a Chinese Christian sect that is currently trying to expand through spamming New Zealanders on Facebook, and running online fellowships to introduce new adherents to the religion. I detailed my first few days in the group, working through their “Level 1” lessons, and some of the conversations I had during the love bombing I received on the first few days from multiple church members.
6 March 2023
It's a bumper issue today, but I make no apologies for bringing you a ridiculously long email! If you're using a web based client like GMail, you may need to click the “View entire message” link or similar to read the whole newsletter this week, or click the “Read this in your browser” button at the top of the email to open the newsletter as a web page in your browser.
6 March 2023
In late January this year, committee member Katrina Borthwick messaged our NZ Skeptics committee chat channel about a spam message she received on Facebook inviting her to join a fellowship meeting:
7 February 2023
This week's newsletter will feature no articles from me - and this makes me very happy. Why have I not written anything, you may ask, and why am I happy about it. Well, because I'm blessed - and not just once, but twice. Let me explain…
25 October 2022
In just a few days a curious annual internet event will begin: No Nut November (NNN). For those not in the know, nutting is a colloquial term for a man ejaculating - and No Nut November is the idea that it's good for people to take time off from ejaculating during November. At places like Reddit's “NoFap” group (fapping is a slang word for masturbating), people talk through November about how well they're doing with the challenge, which has somehow morphed from being an internet joke to something that many young men are taking seriously.
25 October 2022
November is fast approaching, which means that our annual conference is not far away - just 5 weeks to go! We're currently gathering the bios and talk abstracts of our speakers for this year, so check out the website if you're tempted to join us for the weekend. Early bird prices finish at the end of October, so book soon if you want to save a few dollars!
25 October 2022
A notorious religious group from South Korea called Shincheonji (also known as Mount Zion) has apparently been actively recruiting in Auckland recently. Shincheonji has a long history in New Zealand, with underhanded recruiting techniques used to pull people into the cult group. Many years ago, the church in Wellington was using university students to lure people in. I also found a warning from a popular evangelical church here in Wellington from last year, letting people know that a group member had been attending church services and attempting to convince people to jump ship and join Shincheonji. Apparently this process can start as “an invite for coffee” followed by an invite to a Bible Study, from where attempts are made to convince the mark that Shincheonji is the one true religion.
15 August 2022
By which I mean I recommend watching a new documentary called “Gloriavale”, which focuses on the infamous religious group. I most definitely don't recommend converting to their religion and moving to the Gloriavale compound on the South Island. I went to a Film Festival viewing of the documentary yesterday, before general release to cinemas next week, and there was also a fascinating Question and Answer session afterwards with some of the filmmakers and subjects of the documentary. Here's the trailer:
11 April 2022
There's a new convoy driving through the country at the moment, and this time it's heading not for parliament, but to Marsden Point. Yep, a bunch of cars (and, from what I can tell, no actual trucks) are heading to Marsden Point for Operation Gaslight. The last report in their Facebook group stated that they've amassed 16 cars, two horse floats and a motorbike.
7 February 2022
In another topic I've written about before, a Voices for Freedom spinoff group The 'Hood NZ were taking a case to the High Court to attempt to stop the rollout of the COVID vaccine, specifically for 5 - 11 year olds.
20 December 2021
Last week Craig introduced a new section to our newsletter, which he's named Why Are You A Skeptic. We're keen to hear from each of you about why you're a skeptic, and to publish your stories in the newsletter. If you're up for it, please send your story to newsletter@skeptics.nz. For now, here's my story of how I came to skepticism, and why I'm involved with the NZ Skeptics:
29 November 2021
It's been revealed this week that you can wash disposable masks, and reuse them. The current advice from the Ministry of Health is that disposable masks should be used once then thrown away.
8 November 2021
It continues to amaze me the lengths science deniers and anti-vaxxers will go to to try to convince people of vaccine harm. This week, Daniel published some pictures from an anti-vax group on our Facebook page, purporting to show extreme bruising after the COVID vaccine. You can take a look at Daniel's post here but here's a taste of the claimed bruising
18 October 2021
On Friday evening we had a national online Skeptics in the Pub meeting (Skeptics in Cyberspace), which going forward will be happening every four weeks. If you're interested in joining us, check your local Skeptics in the Pub's MeetUp group, or the Wellington group if you don't live somewhere with an active Skeptics in the Pub group. Although we usually talk about a lot of skeptical topics, because of our shared interest in science and skepticism we often end up recommending TV shows and movies to each other as well. We're not 100% agreed on what's good and what's not, but there's definitely a lot of cross-over. Documentaries and science fiction are both frequently recommended.
6 September 2021
During lockdown, the Wellington Skeptics in the Pub group have been meeting online every week. It's been great to be able to continue our social meetings, but I also think it's a good way to keep us all sane! That connection of being able to chat and have a fun social time with others seems to be really good at helping with the feelings of isolation and worry that lockdown can bring to some of us.
23 August 2021
This one's a little light hearted, and not overly surprising - Kelvin Cruickshank, one of our most famous local psychics, appears to have failed to have been warned by the spirits about the impending lockdown. Kelvyn had booked a live event for Thursday in New Plymouth, in what turned out to be the second day of our national lockdown. David Chisholm, a member of our Facebook group, managed to take a great screenshot of the event being advertised under a large banner warning of event date changes due to our COVID lockdown.
2 August 2021
In good news this week, Facebook has finally shut down the anti-vax, conspiracy-theory-mongering group Voices for Freedom's page. They're upset:
26 July 2021
Allison Mack was once famous for her role in the TV show Smallville, a spin-off show about Superman. However, a few years ago she joined a group called NXIVM who promised to help her on the path to enlightenment and happiness. The group pulled in more famous people, including other TV celebrities, the director of What the Bleep Do We Know, and the Bronfman sisters, heirs to the Seagram fortune.
21 July 2021
There is an increasingly vocal sub-set of farmers around the country who are buying into conspiracy theories. A group called the Agricultural Action Group - AAG - have been touring the country in recent months warning people about what they consider to be the real issues facing not just farmers but all citizens of our country:
28 June 2021
Sadly the Druids cancelled on us last week due to the bad weather here in Wellington, so I was unable to attend their winter solstice event. However we (a small group of Skeptics in the Pub regulars) have been invited to the spring equinox event instead, so expect an update in 3 months.
5 April 2021
I recently heard about someone who signed up on the MeetUp website for a conversational English course in Auckland, and when they arrived they found out that the course was being run by Scientologists. This type of bait and switch sneakiness is about what we'd expect from Scientology, so I decided to search google and find the course in question.
17 March 2021
A group who monitor extreme Right Wing groups, Hope Not Hate, have published an article detailing a weird attempt to hijack the QAnon conspiracy. The new conspiracy theory, called Sabmyk, has been creating new channels on Telegram, Gab and BitChute in an attempt to entice those who have become disillusioned with QAnon since Trump left office and the promises of QAnon fell through. Why not Facebook and Twitter? Probably because many right wing activists have been driven off of those platforms in the last few months as admins have removed thousands of accounts for posting hate and misinformation. Telegram offers a modicum of anonymity, and Gab and Bitchute are a social network and video hosting site respectively that are less regulated and more welcoming to extreme views than the mainstream social media sites, claiming that they're pro free speech.
15 March 2021
Today I finally made it to the Builders Of The Adytum, a strange group whose beliefs combine Kabbalah and Tarot into an unusual, but enjoyable, philosophy.
22 February 2021
Lockdown timing predictions from a Hamilton based psychic, Sarah King, have been unearthed and posted to our Facebook group this week:
17 December 2017
A friend recently contacted the OTO to ask about us attending one of their services, and last night we went to their Gnostic Mass in Wellington.
16 July 2017
Women's gifting circles have made the news again this week as they are now officially considered a pyramid scheme by the Commerce Commission.
16 July 2017
The group responsible for bringing Vaxxed, an anti-vaccine movie, to Australia and New Zealand is still causing issues in our country. There are more screenings of Vaxxed coming up, including one in Wellington that I will try to attend:
7 May 2017
Nigel Antony Gray, who shot to infamy last November when he "predicted" an earthquake, gave a talk in Petone last night.
9 April 2017
We talked about Te Kiri Gold last year, when Sir Colin Meads was in the news endorsing it as a treatment for cancer. Although it wasn't on sale back then, and Vernon had been promising to run proper scientific trials of the product before putting it on the market, this seems to have now been forgotten.
27 November 2016
There have been a few stories in the news recently about earthquakes that have left me feeling skeptical:
19 June 2016
The Bilderberg Group met last week, and there were protests by the usual conspiracy crowd.
12 June 2016
There is now a second panel that has been convened to review Christchurch Council's "Tonkin Taylor" coastal erosion report. The panel has been instructed to:
5 June 2016
An image of dozens of dead kiwis was recently used by an anti 1080 Facebook activist group, New Zealand's Not Clean Green, to show that the poison is harming local wildlife.
17 April 2016
A group of 9 skeptics visited the Mind Body Spirit fair in Taita, Wellington yesterday. We had a good time, and saw lots of weird and wonderful things on offer.
1 February 2016
The Christchurch Skeptics in the Pub, (or Skeptics Lite, as I like to call it) has had a very good year being skeptical, currently having 285 members, and around 50 active ones.
1 November 2015
With its scenic miniature railway, the National Rugby Museum and the country's second-largest ball of string, Palmerston North is often wrongly described as “the Armpit of New Zealand”.
11 October 2015
MagneSleep lost an ASA complaint about a magnetic bracelet they sell, and they don't like me
27 September 2015
A blood moon is a new name for a lunar eclipse, where the earth travels between the sun and the moon. The full moon turns red.
1 August 2015
Every second Thursday in Wellington a group of eager skeptics meet in a local pub and work on Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) complaints and other skeptical activism topics.
1 November 2014
A new group set up to counter ritual abuse and satanic worship has applied for almost $40,000 from the Government and the Lottery Grants Board to set up an office and send members to a conference in the United States.
1 November 2012
… then there's little hope for the world, says Alison Campbell, who attends far too many meetings. Fortunately however, that may not be the case.
1 February 2011
Linda Bryder responds to an article in our last issue.
1 November 2010
After 17 years as chair-entity of the NZ Skeptics, Vicki Hyde has stepped down. Annette Taylor talks to her about life, the universe and taniwhas.
1 November 2010
This article is a response to_ 'Truth is the daughter of time, and not of authority': Aspects of the Cartwright Affair _by Martin Wallace, NZ Skeptic 96.
1 August 2010
The 'Unfortunate Experiment' at National Women's Hospital has entered the national folklore as a notorious case of medical misconduct. But there is still disagreement about what actually happened.
1 February 2010
The nzskeptics Yahoo discussion group has been very busy of late, with December 2009 registering more than 300 new messages - the largest number in the almost five years of the group's existence. In large measure this has been thanks to contributions from a couple of participants who hold views which I would assume most of our members don't share.
1 November 2009
Gold gives the inside story of the beginnings of Skeptics in the Pub meetings in New Zealand.
1 May 2008
A strange transformation has overtaken the murky world of the creationists. This article is based on a presentation to the 2007 NZ Skeptics Conference.
1 November 2007
Elizabeth Rata's article Ethnic Fundamentalism in New Zealand is a series of extraordinary assertions, supported not with reason and evidence but emotionalism and error.
1 November 2007
The call for UFO sightings from the Tauranga-based UFOCUS group caught the attention of the Waikato Times (July 28) which ran a two-page feature on alien visitations in this country.
1 August 2007
Ethnic fundamentalism is a form of 'secular religion', an oxymoron that resists criticism. This article, originally presented at the NZ Skeptics conference in Auckland, September 2006, interrogates the beliefs of those who insist that ethnicity plays the primary and determining in creating the person. Are such beliefs merely old-fashioned and discredited racism in a new guise?
1 November 2006
Jim Ring's article, Lamarck's ghost rises again (NZ Skeptic 80) does an excellent job in laying Lamarck's ghost, and its recent revival, but it is bitterly unfair to Darwin and to one of the fundamental concepts of evolution when he attacks group selection and sociobiology. He is also wrong when he claims that social behaviour does not influence genetics.
1 February 2003
The Painted Apple Moth spraying programme in the western suburbs of Auckland has generated considerable controversy. An alternative programme was evaluated at last year's Skeptics
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 1996
Skeptics can take an active stance in their daily lives, according to this abridged version of the Chair-entity's after-dinner speech from the Conference.
1 November 1995
TV3 on 20/20 at 8.30pm on Monday 19/06/95 screened an American story titled "A State of Mind". Extravagant claims were made about the medical significance of hypnosis and its therapeutic uses. One doctor claimed that up to 50% of her patients could be cured by hypnosis. I have just completed a course in rehabilitation studies at Massey University. The course text book had an interesting summary on hypnosis.
1 August 1995
Surprising results from a US study of the effectiveness of counselling on reducing juvenile crime.
1 August 1990
I was first conscious that I had met Procrustes about 20 years ago, though I did not at that time know his name. At the beginning of a course of instruction on how to examine medical patients the clinical tutor had us don headphones plugged into an amplifier while his stethoscope wandered over the chest of a lady who each year donated her time to the greater glory of Medicine. She had a diseased mitral heart valve and we were invited to identify the "low pitched rumbling diastolic murmur" and "There! Listen carefully!
1 November 1989
Keith Lockett, our hard-pressed and indefatigable Editor, has particular difficulty in getting good material for the NZ Skeptic and it turns out that he is not alone in his editorial problems. One overseas skeptics group editor has offered a free subscription to the US Skeptical Inquirer to anyone who agrees to write a regular column. Another editorial, from the Iowa group, complains that "material was in short supply, as was time" and that "sometimes the time involved in putting together a newsletter like this can become large". These problems, which Keith will recognise readily, meant that their Fall issue was late and had to be combined with the Winter issue. Even then it was about the same size as one of our regular issues.
1 February 1989
For most individuals the result of a consultation with a psychic is a good laugh. But some get hurt.
1 February 1988
Sir, — I share Colin Bell's concern about what goes on in our universities and what sort of watching brief the university councils keep on their tutors (March 2).