23 June 2025
After Bronwyn's article in the last newsletter about cryonics, Katrina and I have decided to get in on the action and write our own articles on related topics to accompany the second part of Bronwyn's series. It's been interesting to learn more about longevity and preservation - both the real science, and the pseudoscience. And thankfully there were a couple of fascinating documentaries I was able to watch to help me flesh out my article, so it wasn't all just reading for me.
3 February 2025
In just over a month's time, Bronwyn and I will be driving up to Auckland to visit New Zealand's second Mormon temple. We're also going to try to visit the Kaimanawa wall on the way, so if anyone's been there and has any advice about driving the gravel road to the nearby camp site, I would love to hear from you. While in Auckland we'll try to organise a Skeptics' get together - maybe brunch somewhere on Sunday the 9th. So, if you're in Auckland, we'd love for you to join us for a chilled out chat.
9 December 2024
In part one of my delve into obscure local cryptids we looked at the Kabagon, which bore more than a passing resemblance to an elephant seal, the Roa Roa, which was likely a case of mistaken identity of livestock, and the Rotomahana Saurian, which may well have been a floating tree. Here are three more cryptids I found that appear to have rational explanations:
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:
30 October 2023
I'm happy to let everyone know that the result of the recent Jehovah's Witness court case has been released. This was the High Court case I visited on my lunch break a couple of weeks ago, where the JWs were trying to argue that they shouldn't be investigated as part of the government's current Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry. Thankfully the church has lost its case, and its argument that it doesn't “care” for its members was not enough to allow them to escape scrutiny. The Commission put out a short press statement after the decision was made public:
4 September 2023
For this week's newsletter, I bumped into a news story about Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist who seems to be making a career out of making unfounded claims of having discovered aliens. On the back of the recent David Grusch shenanigans in the US, it's not surprising that the public are hungry for alien stories, and Avi has a great one for them to feast on - it's just sad that it's likely going to end up being found to be nothing more than sloppy science and wild conjecture.
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!
19 June 2023
Craig is away in the US for the next four weeks, so I'm going to try to hold the fort until he gets back. Thankfully I have articles from some of our reliable contributors this week, and I'm hopeful that I'll be able to convince one or more of them to take over for an issue or two in the coming weeks.
8 May 2023
Having been a member for many years, I think it is about time that I made a confession, which I am told is good for the soul even if it is not very good for my continued membership. I am a committed church member, even though the word “committed” makes me think of mental institutions and prisons. I think of the scriptural stories as parabolic and written to guide one's behaviour, definitely not intended as a scientific text. Therefore when a story is physically impossible or extremely unlikely, I simply shrug my shoulders and think that it is a fable and the important part is the message it is portraying. I would never think of using the Bible as a physics or astronomy textbook any more than I would use the physical science texts as a moral guide. Interestingly, I note that many people who have no religious affiliation take great comfort in thinking that when they die they will meet up with old friends who have “gone before”. I think it would be churlish of me to tell them of my doubts in that regard. Also, I have enough humility to recognise that we are still very far from knowing everything about the physical world.
27 March 2023
In this week's newsletter, I've published the text from a couple of oral submissions the NZ Skeptics and the Society for Science Based Healthcare (SBH) recently presented to MPs. One interesting part of this was a question asked of SBH, which allowed Daniel Ryan to detail some of the harms that Natural Health Products have caused in New Zealand. I've included Dan's email, and the short but promising response he received. I've also written about my time after graduation from the Eastern Lightning online fellowship meetings and my entry into the Level 3 group, as well as my brief foray into its leadership.
14 November 2022
We're now under two weeks away from our annual conference, being held in Wellington (25th - 27th November) - our first in-person meeting since the pandemic. We've got an exciting lineup of speakers, but the best part will be meeting up with fellow skeptics again and being able to share thoughts in person. I'm looking forward to it - you can find out more on the conference website. I hope to see you there.
20 June 2022
I once met Katherine Smith, the Editor of the New Zealand Journal of Natural Medicine (not a magazine I'd recommend reading - it'll make you angry!). We had an enjoyable chat, and as we were at a wellness and spiritual festival, WellFest, she had no idea I was a skeptic. She showed me her folder of photos and cuttings about the “synchronicity” she'd experienced in her life - a series of spirals, stretching from a spiral painting she made as a young child, through to photos she'd taken in the '80s with faint spirals in the background, and a recent picture of a weird glowing spiral in the sky she'd cut out from a newspaper. I told her that I recognised the sky spiral, that it was a picture from Norway of a Russian rocket booster. Of course she was having none of it - the spiral in the sky was a sign for her, part of a message the universe was sending her through a series of events too unlikely to be coincidence. And of course she wasn't interested in reading into this phenomenon any further - she'd decided what it was, and what it meant to her, and that was enough.
18 April 2022
It would be hard to miss that there has been some controversy in the science community in Aotearoa/New Zealand around the role of Mātauranga Māori (translated as Māori knowledge) in the school curricula.
14 June 2021
As promised, myself and another couple of skeptics recently visited the Theosophical Society's building in Wellington to hear their National President, John Vorstermans, give a talk titled “_The Ageless Wisdom_”. The Society has a great little building on Marion Street, with a comfortable library of esoteric mystical books at the front, and a large main room with lots of wood and painted mystical symbols. It has a particularly Masonic feel to it.
1 May 2019
In late March, representatives from NZ Skeptics attended an evening session of 'Psychic Healing' in Christchurch, as performed by so-called 'psychic-healer', Jeanette Wilson. NZ Skeptics Society was formed in part to examine and counter this sort of ridiculous woo, so we felt it was important to investigate and report on the sort of depths to which woo-sters will go.
8 July 2018
There have been promising results from a recent trial of an HIV vaccine. An effective vaccine would be a useful part of our fight against AIDS related deaths. The new vaccine needs further trials, but in the study showed an 80% immune response, which is much better than previous attempts to create a vaccine. In brief, as I'm sure everyone knows, the HIV virus causes AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - and it's this compromised immune system that can be fatal.
25 February 2018
The conspiracy theorists are out in force already after the recent school shooting tragedy. One of the survivors, 17 year old David Hogg, has gone on national TV in the US to publicly state that he's not a "crisis actor".
19 June 2016
The Bilderberg Group met last week, and there were protests by the usual conspiracy crowd.
13 March 2016
The Mandela Effect is where people have false memories of past events, and decide that there's been a jump to an alternative universe where history is different.
4 October 2015
The Pharmacy Council is trying to change part of its Code of Ethics: Here is the old code:
27 September 2015
Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, from Auckland was in Peru and took part in a cleansing ceremony.
1 February 2004
Cellulite is the term used by women's magazines to describe dimpled fat. It has no scientific or anatomical validity and it is simply ordinary fatty tissue that assumes a waffled appearance because fibrous tissue prevents the skin from fully expanding in areas where fatty tissue accumulates. This has been confirmed by a study where biopsies of fat and cellulite were microscopically indistinguishable by pathologists who were blinded as to the samples' origin. Calling fat "cellulite" is part of the modern trend to seeking alternatives to the (unpalatable) truth, in this case an adipose euphemism.
1 May 1998
When I was young enough to think Dr Who was scary, I remember thinking it was good to live in times when people didn't believe in superstitions anymore. Recently, US taxpayers coughed up US$350,000 testing the effectiveness of Therapeutic Touch. It's one of those alternative therapies. The practitioner waves his hands over the patient, without touching them, while thinking gooey thoughts.
1 August 1996
CSICOP has been trying to have available, both to its staff and to anyone else who wishes to use it, the finest library of skeptical materials on the paranormal in the world. We have been gathering material for this collection as a part of the Center for Inquiry's library, under the direction of Dr. Gordon Stein. He has been combing the used bookstores of the country for appropriate material.
1 November 1991
William of Malmesbury chronicled the reign of ill-fated William Rufus, the red-headed son of William The Conqueror who was shot, so 'tis said, in mistake for a squirrel. In the early part of the 12th Century, he expressed some scepticism concerning portents following the king's burial within the tower of Winchester Cathedral.
1 August 1991
Even the most republican-minded skeptic must admit that monarchical feelings sometimes have their uses. New Zealand was recently visited by Jacqueline Stallone. She arrived in a blaze of publicity, widely airing her views on astrology and other psychic matters.