Wham, Bam, Autism Scams: Reversing Autism through diet and therapy
14 October 2024
It has been a while since I wrote about pseudoscience and scams around curing Autism, but that doesn't mean I haven't been collecting a whopper or two to share.
Articles tagged with "parents"
Citizen Science Done Badly
18 March 2024
Apologies for this week's newsletter being a little late - I was planning to finish it off last night, but I was hit by some weird medical issue where I had a horrible headache and ended up sleeping from 5pm to get rid of it.
The Baby blood case
19 December 2022
You would have to have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks to not have heard about the case of the 4 month old baby at Starship Hospital needing heart surgery and, as part of that, donated blood products.
Alex Jones is losing his grip
16 September 2018
Alex Jones, who runs the website InfoWars, seems to be coming apart at the seams.
Khandallah School allowing evangelism
2 September 2018
On Friday afternoon I headed out to Khandallah School in Wellington as part of the Secular Education Network. SEN believes that schools should be secular, and that there is no place in our school system for Religious Instruction.
Homeopathic treatment for Autism?
21 January 2018
One of the issues with fundraising sites like IndieGogo and Kickstarter is that there's a lack of adequate oversight to ensure that the products being offered are actually plausible. Sometimes things end up on my radar that look too good to be true, and at other times they're just plain ridiculous.
Eighty children get chickenpox at school that calls for 'tolerance' of vaccine dodgers
13 December 2015
Up to 80 kids - 1 in 4 - at Brunswick North West Primary School in Melbourne have contracted chicken pox. The school is tolerant or even welcoming of parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids. Newsletters have reiterated this view:
Letters
1 August 2015
Issue 115, 2015 | I have just read your editorial and really enjoyed it. You make a lot of very good points and, as a teacher myself, I can relate to some of the experiences that you have described.
Child cancer a battleground
1 May 2013
In Issue 100 of the NZ Skeptic I commented on how issues of concern to this society never seem to go away. A classic example of the moment is the case of Neon Roberts, the seven-year-old English boy whose New Zealand-born mother took him into hiding rather than have him subjected to radiotherapy along with chemotherapy to treat his aggressive brain tumour, and fought in the courts for her right to use alternative therapies instead.
Amber teething beads: something to chew on
1 August 2011
A 'natural' way to manage teething pain has no plausible mechanism.
The Mesmerisation of the Media
1 November 2004
Journalists in New Zealand generally show a lack of scepticism when dealing with issues of science and pseudoscience - except for mainstream medicine. This article is based on a presentation to the New Zealand Skeptics Conference, 11 September, 2004
When Children are the Victims of Quackery
1 November 2001
This Bravo Award-winning item originally appeared as the editorial in the March 23 issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal
Skepsis
1 August 1999
ONCE again the medical profession has made a mess of its relations with the public, and I'm not talking about Gisborne smear takers.
Editorial
1 August 1989
Several members have sent me cuttings which I am afraid we can not use but which I am always glad to get. Malcolm MacCleary especially has sent me some good stuff on how to be a winning punter, news from the Order of the Magical Rose, Nelson and some more remarkable extracts from the Melchizadek Manuscripts. See how many clangers you can find in this passage:
Religious Fundamentalists Dealt Court Blow
1 May 1988
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruling striking down Louisiana's creationism law signals trouble for fundamentalist parents in Alabama who have challenged public school textbooks on religious grounds, attorneys and educators are saying.