Last night at about 1am a friend of mine sent me a link to a brand new COVID website called Wanaka Health Bridge. I clicked on the link, and saw that the site talks about the risks resulting from ... (566 words)

Mike Adams is well known to skeptics. For many years he's run the Natural News website, which started out as a source of medical misinformation paired with a shop selling expensive, useless ... (424 words)

Last week I attended an I Ching meeting online, where I learned how to use the I Ching to help me to make life decisions. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is a book of 64 different sayings which are ... (664 words)

There's a website in New Zealand promoting "Vortex Water". The front page of the site starts by saying: "Natures Design's revisited today and everyday....Billions of years of proven and valued ... (443 words)

The Centner Academy in Miami, Florida has barred its teachers from being able to see students if they've been given the COVID vaccine, and will not be employing new teachers who have already been ... (318 words)

A friend sent me an article about a paper published recently in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called: "Linking Evangelical Subculture and Phallically Insecure Masculinity Using ... (339 words)

Cocksy, a celebrity builder on New Zealand TV, has cancer and is currently on an experimental new treatment. In an article on the NZ Herald, Cocksy spoke about how until recently he's been self ... (123 words)

SleepDrops is a New Zealand based company offering herbal/homeopathic products that are supposed to help you to sleep, although there's absolutely no evidence that they work. Last month SleepDrops ... (318 words)

A few weeks ago the Wellington Skeptics made their annual pilgrimage to the Go Green Expo. Billed as a Green Living and Sustainable Lifestyle Show, in reality the majority of stands push nonsense ... (352 words)

SleepDrops is a New Zealand company which sells small vials of liquid drops which are supposed to help you get to sleep and stay asleep. Their ingredients are a mixture of small doses of herbs and ... (485 words)

Herbal remedies are very popular these days, with many pharmacies in New Zealand happy to promote products that don't work as treatments for medical conditions, or even just as a preventative measure ... (371 words)

The Aussies have just had their skeptics conference, and have given out a Bent Spoon award to Sarah Stevenson, for her Sarah's Day brand of nonsense. Sarah has claimed that she managed to cure a case ... (175 words)

Last week a friend let me know that someone in my area was giving away kangen water for free - presumably in an effort to get people to sign up to buy a water filter. Kangen is a water filter that's ... (324 words)

In a frankly scary move, the WHO are legitimising unproven medical therapies by including them in the new edition of its "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health ... (127 words)

Protests have been happening around the country this week on the topic of the government's use of 1080 poison. In my time I've heard a few arguments against use of the poison, and there doesn't seem ... (258 words)

Yesterday I went to an "Allergy Free and Healthy Living Show" in Porirua. Sadly there were very few stands at the expo that were about allergies - there was Allergy NZ and Coeliac New Zealand. Most ... (617 words)

A new study of over 1,000 cancer patients in the US has shown that a choice to use alternative therapies alongside conventional therapy leads to a higher chance of dying from cancer. This is a very ... (327 words)

We talked about a court case a while ago involving Johnson & Johnson, and a claim that asbestos in their talcum powder has been giving people cancer. A new decision in the US has seen a court ... (338 words)

Mark Hanna has written a great blog post detailing the issues the Chiropractic Board has had getting their members to abide by their codes and New Zealand law. While I'm not surprised to hear about ... (315 words)

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, ... (533 words)

The NZ Herald has published a story about a woman whose terminal cancer was cured after she took cannabis oil. Of course, there's more to this story - isn't there always. In this case, the woman used ... (112 words)

In Canada, a man has been selling bottles of medicinal hot dog water for $38. The organic beef hot dogs were boiled before being added to unfiltered water and poured into a vial shaped like a test ... (278 words)

It seems that every new advance in technology is accompanied by people who are willing to warn the world of made up dangers. Anti-vaccine advocates have been around since the beginning of vaccine use ... (581 words)

The NHS recently decided to stop funding homeopathy. Until recently, taxpayers' money was used in the UK to fund homeopathic hospitals (in London, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and Tunbridge Wells) and ... (206 words)

Dr Oz is up to his usual nonsense, promoting an author who claims that astrology can predict your health. Rebecca Gordon believes that the Vitruvian Man may hold the key to how the signs of the ... (372 words)

Breakfast on 1 recently hosted a physiotherapist advertising the Shakti Mat - a yoga mat covered in plastic circles, with each circle consisting of 20 or more sharp spikes. The mat is supposed to ... (228 words)

New Zealand's first flat earth conference has just been hosted, last Saturday in Auckland. Around 30 "flat mates" crowded into the Backyard Bar's function room to listen to conversations about how ... (360 words)

In the past, searches have been conducted for Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, using technologies ranging from men with binoculars to underwater video cameras and sonar. A new search being led by a ... (435 words)

As we talked about at the end of last year, there's been a real push to sell Kangen Water devices in NZ recently. An article in the Herald recently has detailed Ainsley Brunton's efforts to sell the ... (333 words)

President Trump will be promoting Dr Mehmet Oz to the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition, which is a little worrying. Trump's no stranger to making what look like very bad ... (162 words)

An advert masquerading as an article, almost totally devoid of any useful data that would allow people to work out whether the results are even significant. However, it seems that some media outlets ... (39 words)

Stuff had an article this week about personalised vitamins. Companies who require you to talk to a dietician before being recommended vitamins have been around in NZ for a while, but two companies ... (416 words)

Healing crystals have become very popular recently, with people buying many different crystals to either wear or place in their homes and help with physical and mental health issues, monetary ... (301 words)

I was contacted by a journalist for the Sunday Star times a few days ago with some questions about Ken Ring. He's predicting an earthquake for June or July the 13th to 15th. Here are my responses to ... (902 words)

There's been some interesting local research on people with health conditions doing their own research. The Southern Cross Health Society has looked into whether people look up their symptoms on ... (257 words)

An organised group of homeopaths offering bogus treatments for autism has been written about in the Guardian newspaper in the UK. The article talks about how more than 120 homeopaths in the UK are ... (346 words)

A while ago I was contacted by an older gentleman, Cedric, who told me over the phone that he'd heard me on the show and wanted to know if I was interested in a theory he has about the origins of the ... (500 words)

There's a new fad to put mushroom in your coffee. Claims are being made that these powdered mushrooms can help your health and wellbeing. "purportedly an anti-inflammatory, and is supposed to ... (214 words)

Tanya Filia​, who has beaten the odds and outlived doctors' estimates of her life expectancy, is now pushing for the government to subsidise natural treatments. Unfortunately this kind of story is ... (166 words)

A fraudster has conned a clairvoyant, Maureen Smith, in the UK by pretending to be her on Facebook and charging people money for online readings. The scammer sent messages to all of Maureen's friends ... (103 words)

A new locally made diet pill has gone on sale in NZ, and will soon be available in the US as well. Its makers are promoting the product at the moment After a $20 million government grant, the company ... (350 words)

7 Sharp have interviewed Marta Fisch on Waiheke Island, who has built an ugly looking metal box - three side walls - in her garden, to keep out "radiation". Radiation in this sense is the kind of ... (266 words)

The Regent Theatre in Dunedin is in the news again, as it's been flooded. This is unfortunate, as it appears that someone accidentally left a tap on that has caused damage to carpets and the ceiling. ... (242 words)

Kelvin Cruickshank, one of our famous local psychics who has appeared on Sensing Murder, has "helped" a family to locate the body of "Curly" - an elderly gentleman called Raymond Stirling who went ... (260 words)

A quack Chinese doctor from Australia has opened up a clinic in Auckland, to better serve his kiwi patients. Shuquan Liu will likely be selling his weight loss herbal diet in NZ, which consists of ... (235 words)

A Reiki meeting has been deemed newsworthy by the Taranaki Daily News. For those who are not sure what reiki is, it's a form of alternative "healing" where it's very unlikely any healing actually ... (204 words)

The UK Mirror recently carried a weird story claiming that there are numbers so big that they would create a black hole in your brain if you could memorise them. The title of the article is: "The ... (277 words)

Liza Schneider has written an article for the BoP Times, printed online in the Herald, which promotes nonsense therapies for animals. I've complained about Liza in the past, to the ASA, the NZVA and ... (90 words)

Companies in the US are selling "raw" water, which means the water has been untreated. At $50 for 9 litres, it seems pretty expensive for something that's likely to leave you sick. The idea seems to ... (197 words)

Georgian College in Toronto has cancelled a course in homeopathy, due to negative feedback. The proposed new course was going to cost about $5,000 a term, and included a module on homeopathic ... (93 words)

An Australian woman, Shona Leigh, has publicly spoken about how she supposedly cured herself of cervical cancer with cannabis oil. This story seems to be popular in NZ because of the new Labour ... (221 words)

The ASA have had issues recently with the amount of complaints us skeptics have been submitting to them for dodgy medical claims. It appears that as a result of a particular complaint about an ... (223 words)

Frank Hoogerbeets from the Netherlands has predicted a major earthquake of 8 or 9 in the first week of March. His predictions says that "electromagnetic amplifications caused by planetary alignments" ... (154 words)

This story starts back in 2002. The winner of the NZ Skeptics' Bent Spoon award that year was Green MP Jeanette Fitzsimons. She won the award for supporting the idea of using Possum Peppering to rid ... (383 words)

As if people not vaccinating their kids isn't enough nonsense to deal with, there's an increasing trend for pet owners to not vaccinate their pets as well. This appears to be due to silly concerns ... (118 words)

This story comes from listener Stu. A couple of bears were injured recently in California's wildfires. They were delivered to UC Davis, a respected university in California. Unfortunately they were ... (237 words)

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 ... (267 words)

I'm in Nelson on holiday at the moment, and at a market today I saw a lot of nonsense - many bad medical claims being made about honey, jewellery, etc. One thing I saw was a "grounding stick". ... (224 words)

Britt Hermes used to be a naturopath. She graduated and treated patients in the US, before realising that naturopathy was all bluster and no substance, and she wasn't helping anyone with their ... (408 words)

18 classes of health product are being de-funded by the NHS in the UK, including 7 that are blacklisted: Homeopathy Herbal treatments Omega-3 fatty acid compounds (fish oil) Co-proxamol Rubefacients ... (61 words)

A new pharmacy called Wellworks, focussing on natural health products, is due to open in Wellington in January. The store is hoping to offer kombucha to drink at a "wellness" bar, along with many ... (128 words)

In September, a 70 year old man apparently burst into flames in London. It's a sad event, and a horrible way to die. The press have started calling it a case of Spontaneous Human Combustion - the ... (198 words)

NZ Skeptics Conference The NZ Skeptics conference was a great success, with a quiz on the Friday night and a weekend of fascinating talks. We gave all the attendees a bag of alternative medicine ... (339 words)

Dr Libby is a nutritional biochemist, not a medical doctor, who regularly posts alternative medicine articles in Stuff. She sells books, goes on speaking tours, has promoted a Multi Level Marketing ... (184 words)

After a ghost was spotted in a picture of a mirror being sold in a TradeMe auction, Wendy McCawe from Wellington Photographic Supplies quickly spotted that the "ghost" in question was actually a ... (142 words)

There's lots of nonsense at this year's Go Green expo, and I'll be there today sampling the weird and wonderful. The Expo seems to contain more and more alternative health products each year, and ... (395 words)

The prevailing scientific opinion on lie detector tests is that they don't work well enough to be relied on in courts as evidence - in fact, they're probably not even a good way of discerning the ... (100 words)

Doterra is a successful multinational company which sells innovative medical treatments - or at least that's what they'd have you believe. In reality, it appears to be a Multi Level Marketing scheme, ... (681 words)

A company is making claims about their soap made out of breast milk. Ignoring the ick factor that many people will have with the idea of making soap from breast milk, there's no evidence that, as ... (159 words)

NZ now has its second ingested product for sun protection being sold. The first hit the market a few years ago, and is from a company called Osmosis Skincare. Their product contains "harmonised" ... (290 words)

A couple of years ago I went along to a talk in Wellington about a new device called the QTB (Quantum TrailBlazer), now rebranded as a QSB - Quantum Scalar Box. Back then the device was made from a ... (222 words)

The Pharmacy Council recently ran a consultation about a new proposed Code of Ethics, after they tried to weaken their code a couple of years ago to remove the requirement that pharmacists could only ... (374 words)

There was a nice story about the 30th anniversary of the Lotto this week from Stuff. The article talked about how the fact some numbers come up more often than others is likely chance (Lotto take ... (136 words)

Debbie Merrick bought a doll for £5 and then placed the doll on eBay, after making international news by talking about the doll being haunted. Apparently the doll scratched Debbie's husband, although ... (407 words)

There's a lack of rural doctors in NZ, and one doctor has spoken on Radio NZ this week about the trials and tribulations he's suffered trying to renew his visa to stay in the country. Dr Feller is a ... (201 words)

Emails have been released about the show Sensing Murder from OIA requests, and have brought to light (unsurprisingly) that the show has not materially helped the Police, and in some circumstances is ... (350 words)

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 ... (333 words)

The Spinoff did a great job of looking into Hamilton Councillor Siggi Henry's views on a variety of topics. It turns out that she's anti fluoride, anti-fat (she recently said that obesity was a risk ... (76 words)

A mother in the US was found by doctors to be causing her child to fall ill because she was taking pills made from her own placenta. A company in the US makes the pills from dried placenta, and you ... (148 words)

A breatharian couple, Camila Castello and Akahi Ricardo, have publicly claimed that they live on "cosmic nourishment" from the "energy that exists in the universe and in themselves". They claim that ... (192 words)

An article in the Herald this week talked about several innovations that were showcased at the Hamilton Fieldays event. Unfortunately, one of the products, DermaShield, appears to be very much ... (218 words)

Radio NZ published an article this week that seemed to accept, without evidence, claims that traditional Maori medicine can help with medical conditions including cancer. The article focuses on a ... (351 words)

Dave Hansford from Nelson has written a book - called "Protecting Paradise: 1080 and the Fight to Save New Zealand's Wildlife" - about New Zealand's use of the poison 1080. The name appears to be a ... (249 words)

A new alternative therapy has become popular recently - grinding up oak galls and putting the paste in your vagina. Oak galls are woody balls created when a wasp larva grows inside an oak tree's leaf ... (221 words)

Although there is a history in skepticism of people being "skeptical" of climate change, modern skepticism understands that there is a broad consensus amongst scientists that climate change is both ... (414 words)

Someone in the US recently flew on a plane with a spirit level to prove that the earth is flat. Instead he demonstrated a misunderstanding of physics. Planes have an artificial horizon (or attitude ... (418 words)

On April 11th I submitted a complaint to Medsafe about Te Kiri Gold, a bleach made by farmer Vernon Coxhead which he is selling as a cancer cure. To whom it may concern, PureCure Limited ... (1547 words)

Kelvin Cruickshank has made the news because he's promoting a new book - "Surrounded by Spirit". In the book he claims he talked with the spirit of Jonah Lomu at a show last year, apparently unaware ... (295 words)

Otago University have defended their decision to allow a screening of Vaxxed, citing free speech and a need to controversial topics to be discussed. "The screening here is able to go ahead simply to ... (132 words)

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 ... (480 words)

Vaxxed played at the LynnMall Reading cinema in Auckland today at 3pm. It's disappointing to see a major corporation allow a misleading, dangerous movie like Vaxxed to play at their venue - and ... (179 words)

Mark Hanna of the Society for Science Based Healthcare and I had an exchange over IM a few months ago, where we realised that there are so many bad claims being made for alternative therapies that if ... (1163 words)

Shaquille O'Neal gave his support to the flat earth conspiracy movement on a podcast recently. However, although many websites were quick to jump on this, it turns out that Shaq was just joking: One ... (217 words)

An interview with Philly de Lacy (chief executive) and Carolyn Harper (executive producer) of Screentime, who make Sensing Murder, was conducted by Steve Kilgannon of the Sunday Star Times this week. ... (1105 words)

Anti-vaccination advocates in New Zealand have raised enough money to bring a screening of Vaxxed, a movie created by disgraced ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield and promoted by Robert de Niro, to New ... (115 words)

Homeopathic products are made by diluting a substance that causes similar symptoms to the condition they're meant to treat. In the case of Hyland's Teething Tablets, that substance is belladonna, ... (172 words)

Apparently the recent stranding of hundreds of whales at Farewell Spit was due to an energy beam from Mount Taranaki. This theory has been posited because of a radar map of rain, which shows an ... (367 words)

A man from Nelson won $100,000 recently when his numbers came up in the lottery, and he'd purchased 12 tickets with the same numbers. Although this is touted as a lottery tactic, in the long run, on ... (215 words)

Robert Hunt spoke on behalf of Creation Ministries International this morning at Upper Hutt Baptist Church. The service started off with some singing, and then Robert was introduced. Robert started ... (888 words)

Nigel Antony Gray, who "predicted" last month's earthquake on Facebook, has recently shown just how daft, and dangerous, he is. Nigel has been travelling the country recently giving talks on ... (195 words)

I was contacted by a journalist about a local cancer "cure", Te Kiri Gold, and sent a response (with a little help from ex-chair of the NZ Skeptics, Vicki Hyde): Thanks for contacting the NZ ... (646 words)

The Society for Science Based Healthcare were asked about Applied Kinesiology this week and I helped to write this response to questions: Is there any scientific-based evidence to suggest applied ... (810 words)

Fijian government representatives, including leader Frank Bainimarama, were at a lavish launch event a couple of weeks ago to announce the launch of a new app which is set to revolutionise our mobile ... (181 words)

After last Sunday's show, when I talked about Bioptron at the Go Green Expo, a Bioptron rep called up RadioLive and asked for me to contact them. I called, and was then contacted the next day by a ... (196 words)

There have been a few stories in the news recently about earthquakes that have left me feeling skeptical: Palmerston North woman claims her assistant dog can anticipate earthquakes ... (562 words)

I went to the Go Green Expo yesterday, along with other skeptics. The expo is meant to showcase green products and services, but many of the stalls promote alternative health. The sheer number of bad ... (356 words)

A Chinese man appears to have invented a novel way to tell the future. He puts his hand down a woman's top, feels her breast, and presumably uses the information he gleans to work out what is in ... (97 words)

Here's a press release that was sent out recently about a complaint I'd made to the ASA. As a result of the complaint, we uncovered the fact that Medsafe "grandfathered" in over a thousand of ... (477 words)

An incident at the Hawke's Bay Better Home and Living Show has made the news because it made the courtroom. There were sellers of two different brands of health bracelet at the show, Shuzi and ... (270 words)

The infamous Brio clinic in Thailand has sucked in unsuspecting kiwis, promising to treat them with unconventional therapies for cancer. One unfortunate victim, Holly Devine, died after raising ... (249 words)

Mark Hanna at the Society for Science Based Healthcare has complained recently about the Napier Courier's column written by a local homeopathy business, called "Homeopathy Hub". the weekly column ... (294 words)

Despite much criticism of both the original broadcasts and the recent reruns, it appears that TVNZ are recording a new episode of Sensing Murder. The episode focuses on a murder in Napier in 2008. In ... (346 words)

There is currently a bill working its way through parliament which proposes moving the decision to fluoridate water supplies away from local councils and into the hands of DHBs. This appears to be a ... (199 words)

Stuff have reprinted another article from Juice Daily, which claims that garlic, pineapple, a salt water gargle and chicken soup can help with allergies. Of course, this is all unproven tosh and ... (247 words)

Mark Hanna at the Society for Science Based Healthcare has complained recently about the Napier Courier's column written by a local homeopathy business, called "Homeopathy Hub". the weekly column ... (172 words)

A woman has made the news today because she has been denied treatment for a medical condition, symphysis pubis dysfunction, related to her pregnancy. Southern Cross Insurance have said that the ... (286 words)

The NZ Herald reports that "a leading scientist" (Dr Poikolainen) has said a bottle of wine a day would do no harm to your health, and that drinking more than the current recommended daily amount of ... (152 words)

The Society for Science Based Healthcare has recently submitted complaints about articles in two newspapers. The first is an article which appeared in the Herald on Sunday a few weeks ago ("Caring ... (262 words)

Julia Rucklidge from Canterbury University has suggested that processed food may be a cause of a mental illness epidemic. I'm not sure that a) there is an epidemic, or b) processed food is a cause. ... (207 words)

I totally agree that people should not be allowed to talk about treating health conditions if they have not received approval, and hopefully the upcoming Natural Health Products bill will be a step ... (124 words)

There were several witch doctors in Auckland last year, and they eventually left the country after efforts were made to clamp down on them, including some successful ASA complaints. A new witch ... (241 words)

Brian Cox argued with Australian senator Malcolm Roberts on TV show Q&A about climate change, accusing NASA and other organisations of "corrupting" temperature data. @youtube I looked into ... (175 words)

An article on Stuff has done a good job of explaining that superfoods aren't all they're cracked up to be. Superfoods are foods that are touted as having high levels of one or more nutrients, with ... (139 words)

Somebody asked Sandra Clair from Artemis, who writes for the Herald and sells natural remedies: "My daughter was recently diagnosed with glandular fever. She is missing quite a bit of school and the ... (108 words)

Yet another infomercial style article has been published on the NZ Herald, this time talking about the benefits of bee venom. Abeeco are a major seller of bee products in New Zealand, and they have ... (155 words)

I was asked for my thoughts about the most recent Sensing Murder re-run last week, and an article was published on Monday talking about the program. I talked with journalist Carly Gooch about how ... (1030 words)

This weekend's lottery Powerball jackpot was worth $40 million, with 3 winners. The NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB reported on Richard Lustig, a US man who has won several prizes and written a book ... (273 words)

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/81470129/Christchurch-City-Council-to-reduce-use-of-potentially-dangerous-weedkiller ... (207 words)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/health/judge-to-sentence-parents-whose-little-boy-died-of-bacterial-meningitis-384237241.html A couple in Canada who treated their child's ... (152 words)

A recent article on Ken Ring's Predict Weather website, presumably written by Ken, has told people not to trust anything they read in the media. In a particularly conspiratorial tone, the article ... (103 words)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/29/more-than-100-nobel-laureates-take-on-greenpeace-over-gmo-stance/ ... (240 words)

A petition on change.org has been signed by 1,000 vets asking for the UK to blacklist homeopathy as a treatment that vets can prescribe for animals. Over 2,500 people have signed it in all. Danny ... (200 words)

Tony Robbins is a very popular motivational speaker, and charges US$1,000 or more for a high energy day of talks. Events have names such as "Date with Destiny", "Life and Wealth Mastery" and "Unleash ... (240 words)

Stuff published an advertorial article last week claiming that colloidal silver - small particles of silver in a cream or spray - could treat a variety of medical conditions. The article was written ... (322 words)

A dermatologist at a recent anti-ageing conference has said that regularly exposing the face to the light and electromagnetic radiation from smartphones can speed up ageing and wrinkles. Doctors even ... (246 words)

Chris Hyde from the Timaru Herald received a response to an OIA request to CYF this week. There was a recent case where a man was convicted for child abuse of CYF kids in Timaru, and he was used by ... (123 words)

There have been multiple sightings of UFOs in Christchurch this week, prompted by footage recorded by Oisin Lavelle. The footage shows a coloured blob moving erratically. The flickering of the blob ... (186 words)

Consumer NZ used secret shoppers to visit 46 NZ beauty clinics with a raised skin spot. The issue was such that the undercover person should have been referred to a GP, but 7 of the 46 clinics said ... (83 words)

A young woman died this week, while she was trying to raise $70k to fund and alternative cancer treatment at the Brio Clinic in Thailand. Amanda Ferreira also died last month from cancer. She had ... (165 words)

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: "consider if the Tonkin and Taylor ... (184 words)

Ikoi spa is offering an "enzyme spa", where you are buried in rice bran, sawdust and other organic material. Claims are being made that this can help digestion, circulation and the immune system, but ... (72 words)

Chris Savage, an ex police officer from Australia, has a long history of being outright dangerous. He's anti-vaccine, and claims to be able to treat autism and cancer with magnesium (chloride) and ... (271 words)

Maureen is the newest member of parliament, a National Party MP who seems to have a few pseudoscientific beliefs. In Maureen's Maiden Statement (first speech) in parliament in February: "I have ... (248 words)

Bobby brown has spoken out about having sex with a ghost! "I bought this mansion in Georgia ... this was a really, really spooky place. But yes, one time, I woke up, and yeah, a ghost. I was being ... (158 words)

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. However, a group called ... (158 words)

Valerie Todd, an osteopath, has been found guilty by the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal of performing acupuncture on three patients in Nelson in 2014 without the required qualifications, ... (121 words)

The NZ Herald published a list of the top 5 luckiest stores, and went so far as to claim that your chances of winning the lottery would increase if you visit one of these stores! Of course, there is ... (78 words)

Mark Hanna and I wrote a letter to the New Zealand Medical Journal about research we had completed showing that the majority of chiropractors break the Chiropractic Board policy on advertising. The ... (1311 words)

An Australian woman with a newborn has passed whooping cough onto her daughter, and now wishes she'd taken the vaccine she was offered: "I was offered the injection in week 28, being the healthy, ... (116 words)

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. I was treated with some Reiki (and a ... (201 words)

The Health Minister (Jonathan Coleman) and Associate Health Minister (Peter Dunne) are proposing to move the decision about water fluoridation out of the hands of local councils, and giving the ... (224 words)

Christchurch council has voted 12-1 to look into ceasing use of glyphosate to kill weeds. The decision seems to have been made based on a recent International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) ... (197 words)

An article on Stuff makes a lot of claims about these herbs and spices, but makes sure to qualify their claims with phrases such as: could be beneficial can be linked to age-old remedy used to ward ... (327 words)

Jacqueline Fox, who died last year, had used Johnson & Johnson's talcum powder for 35 years on her genitals. Talc, a mineral, is made up mainly of the elements magnesium, silicon and oxygen. ... (138 words)

On Thursday I went to Cafe Scientifique, a regular meeting in Wellington where talks are given about a scientific topic. At the event on Thursday, Jane, the owner of a company called "Acupuncture ... (254 words)

Submissions are closing next week for the Natural Health and Supplementary Products bill, which seeks to regulate alternative medicine. Although there are several issues, such as the use of ... (93 words)

A new trend started recently, when IV "hydration" clinics opened in Australia late last year, called iv.me and the Hangover Clinic. The clinics offer customers a range of treatments, consisting of IV ... (122 words)

Last year professor Paul Glasziou from Bond University in Australia headed up a team that wrote a systematic review of systematic reviews on homeopathy as part of a report for Australia's National ... (355 words)

Yet another sea monster has been found, this time in Swansea, NSW, Australia. Ethan Tipper posted the photo on Facebook, asking "What the f*** is this?". Many alleged sea monsters are partially ... (75 words)

There is a one second shaky video of a Yeti, along with a higher resolution picture. "This morning skiing in Formigal with friends, we've come across this. What the hell is it? A bear or a Yeti? ... (175 words)

A couple of stories about fast food that set off my skeptical alarm bells this week. What a Happy Meal looks like after six years Yet another story about how fast food doesn't rot, this time in ... (271 words)

Hang bags of water around to keep flies away. Coins or bits of tin foil can be used inside the bags. Ideas of how it works include: refracted/reflected light confuses them their magnified reflection ... (252 words)

The Whakatane council voted to remove fluoride from its water supply a couple of weeks ago, and reversed the decision this week. Back in 2013 the council held a referendum. The result was 60% for ... (162 words)

Research is coming to light that antioxidants in food and drinks are not useful to aid health, and may actually be damaging to us. Antioxidants have been put in food for many years as preservatives, ... (165 words)

(Although we all know that fast food is not generally a great nutritional choice, there's a lot of nonsense out there about how bad fast food is. The most pernicious is about how fast food doesn't ... (225 words)

Robert Young is an alternative medicine practitioner who believes that disease is caused by a pH imbalance in the blood. He's written books about his beliefs, and runs a retreat where for $2,000 a ... (439 words)

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. ... (147 words)

Australian Anti-vaccination activist's 11 week old daughter hospitalised for whooping cough, which kills 1 in 200 children who pick up the infection. It appears from Facebook posts that she has no ... (76 words)

Former accountant turned psychic took $250 thousand from an elderly couple in a rest home who had been friends with him for 30 years. The money was taken over a period of 12 years. Just lost his ... (179 words)

The Wellington Astrology centre, a drop-in office in central Wellington, is struggling to make ends meet and has turned to Pledge Me to raise funds. It's been running since 2011, but now needs $3,000 ... (67 words)

An osteopath in Christchurch has been disciplined for treating a patient's toothache by touching her breast. He said that tightness in her chest muscles was causing problems with her jaw. This is the ... (593 words)

Dr David Evans has found that, while the underlying physics of the model is correct, it had been applied incorrectly. He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate's ... (114 words)

MagneSleep lost an ASA complaint about a magnetic bracelet they sell, and they don't like me I run an activism group in Wellington, and we submit ASA complaints, OIA requests, etc. MagneSleep sold a ... (220 words)

House Network in the UK is offering a ghost-free home certification service, and they point to a report that says that: Houses can sell for up to 20% less than market value, and twice as hard to ... (136 words)

Regent theatre, Dunedin, playing Phantom of the Opera. A crew member felt their trousers being tugged, the bottom of someone's seat was kicked, a chandelier prop worked intermittently, and a hat was ... (94 words)

The Pharmacy Council is trying to change part of its Code of Ethics: Here is the old code: 6.9 Only purchase, supply or promote any medicine, complementary therapy, herbal remedy or other healthcare ... (259 words)

A silly article on Stuff recently talked about the benefits of a haka before playing rugby: "Every time I see a New Zealand team like the All Blacks do a haka before a game, I know they have an edge ... (170 words)

One in 13 men will develop prostate cancer before the age of 75. Frustrated by misinformation and a lack of medical emphasis on clinically-proven natural preventative treatments, Mr Matthews speaks ... (228 words)

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. April Eclipse was visible April 5th, 1am. This one is visible from South ... (271 words)

Matthew Dawson-Clarke, 24, from Auckland was in Peru and took part in a cleansing ceremony. Ayahuasca (pr. Ayuwasca) is hallucinogenic and illegal in many countries. It is popular amongst new age ... (108 words)

A Southern Cross survey suggested some 1.56m New Zealanders regularly took the products. About 750,000 had done so for at least five years. University of Otago's Professor Jim Mann said: "It's ... (140 words)

The awards are hosted by the Pharmacy Guild of NZ and Pharmacy Today. Martin Harris is a previous winner of Best Complementary Healthcare Campaign, in 2012: To win this award you need to have come up ... (328 words)

Most of the serious claims have already been removed, after I talked to them on the phone, but Resene still talk about crystal energy and other nonsense concepts. ... (28 words)

Waisake Naholo's miracle healing Waisake Naholo has a cracked fibula - the smaller of the lower leg bones (alongside the tibia). All Blacks coach Steven Hansen said: "he was weight-bearing on it and ... (175 words)

"… she successfully resisted the forces pitted against her, giving an astounding manifestation of some power other than that making up the ordinary phenomena of nature." So wrote the Feilding Star on ... (1886 words)

Martin Bridgstock worries about a new trend which might, in the long run, threaten both science and skepticism. What exactly is a pseudoscience? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it like this: A ... (1811 words)

Charter schools open door for creationism Government plans to establish charter schools look like providing a way for creationists to get their teachings into New Zealand's classrooms (Dominion Post, ... (1220 words)

The Scope of Skepticism: Interviews, Essays and Observations from the Token Skeptic Podcast, by Kylie Sturgess. Podblack Books, 2012. 151pp. About $NZ18, or NZ$6.40 for Kindle. Visit tokenskeptic.org ... (485 words)

There may indeed be a place for creationism in the science classroom, but not the way the creationists want. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ Skeptics Conference. We live in a ... (1865 words)

Having a basic knowledge of the principles of chemistry can help one evade the pitfalls of many pseudosciences - but it's not infallible. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ ... (2610 words)

Some fields that claim the authority of science may be in need of an overhaul. This article is based on a presentation to the NZ Skeptics 2009 conference in Wellington, 26 September. I have always ... (1960 words)

White-tail spiders: a web of misconceptions Linley Boniface is to be congratulated for her humorous take on the prevailing hysteria around alleged "white-tail spider bites" (Dominion Post 9 March). ... (1126 words)

Bogus chiropractor? I thought they were all bogus! A Motueka man, Michael Dawson, was fined $4000 for describing himself as a chiropractor. This upset Nelson chiropractor Dr John Dawson who was ... (1437 words)

It's often said that scientists long rejected the idea of meteorites, but the evidence for this assertion is far from convincing. Pseudoscience constantly attempts to discredit science. One method is ... (944 words)

It is with sadness that I see that the Skeptic is still accepting articles and letters with political bias. I would like to spend much of this letter countering some of Owen McShane's arguments from ... (1521 words)

Pseudoscientific beliefs can be dangerous when they form the basis of government policy In my last column, I mentioned that conspiracy thinker Phillip Day travels the world (he again toured New ... (775 words)

You can't break the laws of thermodynamics, says Bob Brockie Next time you visit the US don't miss the Museum of Unworkable Devices, the brainchild of physics Professor Donald Simanek from the ... (414 words)

Neither theory nor observation support claims that lunar cycles can be used to forecast the weather Ken Ring of Titirangi is New Zealand's best known proponent of the idea that the Moon is an ... (2666 words)

Ancient Phoenicians in New Zealand? A recent book makes the claim, but the evidence doesn't bear scrutiny. Ross Wiseman's book, New Zealand's Hidden Past (Discovery Press, 2001), is his personal ... (3733 words)

PSEUDOSCIENCE AND THE PARANORMAL, by Terrence Hines. 2nd edition, Prometheus. ISBN 1-57392-979-4. This book thoroughly demolishes the pretence that laboratory experiments in ESP have produced ... (607 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)

Children & Quackery It is hard to be sure what Mike Houlding is on about in his rather opaque letter but I gather that he is lumping the use of clairvoyants, homoeopathic remedies and ADHD under ... (486 words)

University days are a great time to explore new directions. But sometimes you may end up a long way from where you thought you were going. Back in 1969 I was a fresh-faced first year student at ... (1118 words)

Blairs 'rebirthed' Tony Blair and Cherie took part in a 'rebirthing ritual' during a holiday in Mexico, says the Dominion (17 December). They were guided through the ritual while dipping in a Mayan ... (743 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)

Re-birthing Finale A Colorado colour therapist was jailed for 16 years after being found guilty of causing the death of a 16 year old girl. It must have been quite traumatic for the jury who watched ... (1072 words)

John Riddell has a few confessions to make. I struggled out of bed this morning on the first day of the two thousandth year since nothing in particular happened. Rather than watch millenium ... (1192 words)

Some of you may recall Mike plugging the following two books at the conference. Both are concerned with the anti-science backlash, promulgated mostly by the academic left in the USA: post-modernism, ... (157 words)

This article originally appeared in the excellent US magazine Skeptic, edited by Shermer, (Vol 2 No 3) and also forms Chapter 4 of Shermer's book Hope Springs Eternal: How Pseudoscience Works and Why ... (3873 words)

Folie-a-deux can be defined as a paranoid disorder in which the same delusion is shared by two (or more) persons. The delusion is thought to be transmitted from a dominant but paranoid person to his ... (3800 words)

This is a copy of a presentation given to the New Zealand Skeptics 1995 Conference in Auckland When Denis Dutton asked me to prepare some comments on this topic he gave me a very wide brief covering, ... (5405 words)

Sorry -- not a 50% price reduction on BMWs, not even gratis cases of Bernkastler Beerenauslese. But: For only the price of a stamp, learn of two life-prolonging offers from Herr Wolfgang Dog of ... (162 words)

The Skeptics began in simpler times. Some of us recall when the burning issues of Skeptical enquiry were whether Uri Geller bent spoons, whether Russians were using telepaths to communicate with ... (893 words)

The following extract from William Doyle's Oxford History of the French Revolution (pp 64-65) reminds us that things change but things remain the same. The final sentence reminds us that widespread ... (182 words)

Tertiary institutes around the country are beginning to offer courses, and even entire degrees, in subjects that are pure pseudoscience. The Aoraki Polytechnic has applied to the New Zealand ... (1859 words)

Karekare beach is surrounded by high cliffs which shield my house from television transmissions so that I gain most of my media information from radio and print. Hence it was some time before I saw ... (608 words)

Cynthia Shakespeare, Tony Vignaux and I are proud to report that we held a remarkably successful winter lecture series in June. We had organised speakers for local Skeptics before, with attendances ... (550 words)

Did you catch TV3's Inside New Zealand documentary programme a few weeks ago on "Satanic Ritual Abuse"? If so, you won't have forgotten it, try as you might to "repress" the memory. It was one of the ... (616 words)

Award-winning author and long-time Skeptic Margaret Mahy delivered the after-dinner speech at the 1993 Skeptics Conference. This is an abridged version of her talk. I was a sceptic with a "c", before ... (3605 words)

Manipulation of the Colon Some time ago I remember reading a letter in the Listener from a frustrated doctor who accused the public of being medically illiterate. Sometimes I feel this way myself but ... (1589 words)

In the years since the Skeptics' beginnings in 1985 we've seen paranormal and pseudoscientific fads come and go. The Shroud of Turin was big back then, till carbon dating did it in (except in the ... (605 words)

Science, Pseudoscience and Junk Science Christchurch, September 3rd-5th The programme for the 1993 Skeptics Conference is still under development, but it's shaping up to be really interesting. It'll ... (339 words)

Do horses really have a distinct set of personality types or is it just a load of equine excreta? There are times when I think all taxonomy is pseudoscience. It certainly seems to have a ... (760 words)

Irreproducible achievements finally get what they deserve Forget Sweden. This past October crowds descended on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the first annual Ig Nobel ... (481 words)