4 August 2025
Since the explosion in popularity of the podcast The Telepathy Tapes soon after it was released, creator Ky Dickens appears to have quickly realised that her intention to have a break between seasons was not going to be in the best interests of maintaining the attention of the many listeners she had attracted in a very short amount of time. And so, at the end of Season 1 after 10 weeks of weekly releases, Ky announced that she would be releasing bi-weekly interviews, called The Telepathy Tapes Talk Tracks, to bridge the gap to Season 2.
21 July 2025
On Friday evening Bronwyn and I, rather than running our usual Skeptics in Cyberspace meeting, visited the Johnsonville Community Centre to experience the signs and wonders of a Christian Revival event, where we were promised healing, hope and miracles.
28 April 2025
In part one of this series I recapped the core beliefs of sovereign citizens, and where those beliefs come from, as well as some of the mischief being caused for Councils and the Police. In part two I looked at their interactions with Justices of the Peace. In this final part I explore what's been happening in our Courts. The focus is mainly on NZ Courts, but I will also delve briefly into a couple of Canadian cases, one of which is drawn upon extensively in most NZ Court rulings around sovereign citizen behaviour.
5 August 2024
Paul Burns, a Catholic who sporadically emails us with inane arguments, wrote to us recently about our $100,000 challenge, in an email titled “_My own challenge_”:
5 February 2024
This article is a brief introduction to facilitated communication (FC) - what it is, and what harm it can do for a person being facilitated. I will also give some guidance on what you can do to help.
3 October 2022
The NZ Skeptics Conference 2022 is being held in Wellington on the weekend of 26th and 27th of November. We'd love to see you there, in person. We've got some great speakers lined up, and it will be great to see everybody again.
21 March 2022
There are several key provisions which allow Kiwi's to determine whether the claim one makes to being a health care practitioner is valid.
2 August 2021
One of the interesting aspects of being part of NZ Skeptics is that we often get contacted by people to espouse views and theories that diverge from the mainstream, evidence-based views on things.
12 July 2021
While trawling conspiracy websites and videos, as I tend to do for fun, I stumbled across a recommendation for a local kiwi numerologist. But the recommendation said that, unlike the usual mystical nonsense, this particular numerologist uses science and maths to find real patterns that are actually useful.
5 July 2021
Did you know that NZ Skeptics is running an in-person conference again this year (after not running one last year because of COVID).
17 May 2021
A video from “LADbible” has been doing the rounds recently, showing members of a Russian fitness group performing feats of amazing speed. The video shows several clips of them punching something or someone so quickly that you barely see any movement, punching in circles in front of their body with a speed that makes their arms blur, and repeatedly punching something in front of them at an unbelievable rate.
3 May 2021
A.C.E., or Accelerated Christian Education, is a Christian based curriculum used in New Zealand - both in some Christian schools, and by parents who homeschool their children. The curriculum boasts that it covers from kindergarten to year 13, and that it is recognised by New Zealand universities.
16 November 2020
In Homeopathy news, Edzard Ernst, retired academic physician and specialist in complementary and alternative medicine (and skeptic hero) has created a “challenge for all homeopaths of the world”. In a similar way to the James Randi Educational Foundation's one million dollar paranormal challenge, Ernst has come up with a scientific way for homeopaths to “prove” their worth. What entrants need to do is identify the contents of 6 homeopathic solutions that they have chosen, but that have been transferred into containers marked 1 – 6 by a notary and sent back to them.
16 September 2018
I had a phone call this week from "Spark". I spoke to a couple of Indian gentlemen who explained that my private IP address had been made public, and that this meant that my internet connection was compromised.
1 May 2018
How to be a positively skeptically active person, some suggestions
1 May 2013
A homeopathic preparation of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is gaining popularity in New Zealand (NZ Herald, 2 March), despite costing upwards of $3000 per litre.
1 August 2005
The ACC-sponsored conference Many Faces of Abuse (Auckland, 10-12 August 2005) features a plenary speaker, Anne McDonald from Melbourne, who cannot talk, walk or feed herself. Her minder, Rosemary Crossley, is the inventor of Facilitated Communication - a technique whereby a facilitator supports the hand or arm of a severely disabled person and thereby enables that person point to letters of the alphabet. This technique gives severely disabled people the miraculous ability to spell out words, sentences and even whole paragraphs of astonishing, unlikely and often wildly pornographic prose. As a result of Facilitated Communication, hundreds of families and caregivers worldwide have had their lives and careers destroyed by devastating and subsequently-discredited allegations of sexual abuse. Among responsible organisations and individuals concerned with mental and physical disability there is now widespread agreement that Facilitated Communication is nothing more than a powertrip for manipulative therapists who prey on the vulnerability and dependence of the severely disabled.
1 February 2002
John Riddell reckons he's a sensible bloke. But then, doesn't everybody?
1 August 1999
From a medical member, recently moved to a rural practice:
1 May 1989
A HAMILTON woman claims the predictions of a computerised horoscope she subscribed to were so accurate that she had a nervous breakdown.
1 May 1987
Any medium who demonstrates communication with spirits under controlled conditions will be able to collect $232,000, Dr David Marks, the chairman of New Zealand Skeptics said yesterday.