26 May 2025
In my efforts to wrestle with the push to include AI content in our newsletter, I've been chatting recently with our newest regular contributor, Patrick Medlicott, about why I prefer content that is written by humans. One new reason that popped into my head is that I know, from editing people's stories every fortnight, that each of our writers leaves their own distinct fingerprints on each and every article they write. Bronwyn, Katrina and Patrick each have their own tell-tale signs that they have written an article - certain repeated typos, punctuation choices, use (or lack of use) of commas, sentence length, repeatedly used words and phrases, etc. Each of these things has become very familiar to me, and through my editing I try to clean up each article without losing too much of these fingerprints.
28 April 2025
As I'm sure you're all aware, although I'd question whether it really should be international news, the Catholic Pope has died. So we're all now going to be eagerly awaiting the white smoke that tells us the Catholic cardinals have chosen their new leader. I wish this wasn't news - a small group of senior (both old and high-ranking) people choosing which of them gets to be in charge of a pre-scientific organisation with supernatural beliefs doesn't seem to be something we should have to care about. But…
31 March 2025
After having written in the last issue about the committee's hesitance to let people submit articles for inclusion in the newsletter that include significant AI content, I wasn't totally surprised to receive an email from Peter Harrison, who we've had on our podcast before talking about AI. What did surprise me, though, was the formal tone of his letter - which at first I took to be a little passive-aggressive. However, this and the Americanized spelling still didn't tip me off as to the real author of the email:
17 March 2025
An interesting point came up when preparing this week's newsletter. In Patrick's article about a couple of recent climate change papers, he's used AI (he doesn't specify which one) to summarise one of the papers for him. As soon as I saw this I had a knee-jerk reaction that writing an article for us in this way is probably not the way we want to go. I've been proud that we've managed to put together a lot of fascinating, entertaining content over the last few years, and the idea that we might offload some of that effort to an AI worries me.
17 July 2023
So, I'm a Diet Coke drinker. I don't drink hot drinks, and never have for my whole life. At least from my teenage years, when hot drinks were introduced in the form of tea, I always found them too hot and would burn my mouth. So, at least for the past few decades, I've consumed a reasonable* amount of Diet Coke.
17 April 2023
This week I've an update on the NZ Skeptics $100K challenge, and take a look at a scam product I've seen advertised via an app I use.
7 November 2022
Ok, the title doesn't really reflect this article as you think it does…
14 March 2022
On March 13th Dr. Darren Saunders (Associate Professor of Medicine at UNSW, Cancer Biologist) made international headlines for his takedown of a new trend hitting social media: Methylene Blue.
6 December 2021
In this week's newsletter I spend far too much time debunking a baseless vaccine injury claim about Celine Dion, convince my wife to use tin foil to treat what ails her, and talk about a tragic, and avoidable, death in New Zealand from COVID. And, after all of that, committee member Bronwyn has returned with another great article, this time looking with a critical eye at some claims that have been made about the damage fireworks can cause.
26 October 2021
I'll preface this by saying that this is a topic I'm certainly not qualified to talk about.
9 August 2021
One idea I've been given is to find a large set of Deepak Chopra quotes, and use that to train an algorithm to create nonsense quotes talking about quantum realities and the collapse of the wave function. All I need to do now is find a bunch of quotes in a format I can feed to the algorithm.
19 May 2021
Sue Grey, Nelson lawyer and co-leader of The Outdoors Party (an anti-vax, anti-5g, anti-1080 political party), had her day in court last week, taking the government to court over their COVID vaccine rollout. Although I was not able to spare the time to spend the day in court, I did manage to briefly visit the outside of the High Court in the morning, and when I got there Billy TK, who had decided to join the circus, was arguing outside with security guards. It turns out he had been kicked out of the court foyer for filming in a prohibited area, and of course his being removed was just proof that the system is corrupt. Go Billy!
28 April 2021
Essential oils are concentrated extracted plant chemicals that have a strong smell of the plant they were extracted from - their "essence". These oils are often heated in a diffuser, or evaporated via a wick, in order to spread their smell. Of course, if nice smells were all these oils were about, there wouldn't be much for me to be skeptical about.
14 October 2018
The other day I received an ominous email telling me that I have malware installed on my PC as a result of visiting porn sites, and that I need to cough up £850 so that my sordid life isn't made public:
16 September 2018
In my time I've heard a few arguments against use of the poison, and there doesn't seem to be any new claims this time round. The kind of arguments I've seen in the media are that it:
22 July 2018
Sellers of alternative therapies usually say publicly that they always recommend their patients continue normal therapy while they also use acupuncture, herbal remedies, etc for their medical conditions. This is especially important in the case of people who have life threatening medical conditions that can be successfully treated with conventional medicine, such as cancer. However, there are many stories in the news of people who have enough faith in their choice of alternative medicine that they decide not to use conventional therapy, or turn down some proven conventional therapies on offer - and in the worst cases, the alternative therapy practitioners actively dissuade their patients from using modern medicine.
15 April 2018
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.
3 December 2017
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 nonsense.
4 June 2017
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 play on the Graf Boys' documentary Poisoning Paradise, which tried to paint a picture that 1080 is not as safe as the government says it is.
10 July 2016
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 there are only around 60 unsolved murders from the last 100 years, and that it wouldn't take much for a "psychic" to memorise some of the details of each of these cases. I also managed to find an article online from 5 years before the program was filmed which detailed most or all of the facts that the psychics were able to produce.
28 February 2016
On Thursday I went to Cafe Scientifique, a regular meeting in Wellington where talks are given about a scientific topic.
21 February 2016
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 Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
27 September 2015
The Dalai Lama has spoken about his successor, and suggested that if it's a woman, they would have to be attractive.
1 August 2015
I've heard it said more than once that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) 'does no harm'. I suppose that could be true of a healthy person using something like homeopathy, where the only harm is likely to be to their wallet. But time and again, forms of CAM have been shown to do harm, and now we hear of another tragic, and fatal, case.
1 February 2013
Do you believe in climate change? Based on my past readings of NZ Skeptic of course not. After all this is the skeptic's magazine.
1 May 2011
Englishwoman Doris Stokes was a medium - by which I don't mean her dress size was between small and large. She claimed she spoke to people "on the other side," to use the euphemistic jargon of the darkened drawing room. She was a sort of cosmic Telecom operator, only I suspect her charges were a good deal higher than 99c a minute plus GST.
1 November 2009
Alison Campbell considers the evidence for the efficacy of parachutes.
1 February 2008
Despite a series of studies showing it to be ineffective, ultrasound continues to be widely used by physiotherapists.
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 February 2002
John Riddell reckons he's a sensible bloke. But then, doesn't everybody?
1 May 1997
Britain's The Skeptic magazine celebrated its tenth anniversary with a Top-Ten survey of paranormal phenomena of the decade.
1 August 1996
Yes, it is frustrating, even positively nauseating. There you are struggling day in day out, doing your best and striving for the real breakthrough in science. Yet the real breakthrough never comes. Lack of talent, originality, or just not the right friends? Who knows? And who cares?
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 August 1993
The pop star Michael Jackson has denied that he uses chemicals to lighten his skin and claimed to be suffering from a disorder called "vitiligo," which is a spontaneous loss of skin pigment. Jackson said "There is no such thing as skin bleaching. I've never seen it. I don't know what it is." (GP Weekly 24 Feb, 1993)
1 February 1993
This is a summary of a talk given at the 1992 Skeptics conference by_ Dr Eric Geiringer.
1 August 1992
A very interesting look at the state of homeopathy in the UK in the '90s, including its use by some "conventional" doctors and vets. Details are given of a few trials (some double and triple blind) that have been conducted claiming to give support to homeopathic techniques. Unfortunately, relatively little time is permitted for dissenting views, and I am sure many of our rural members will have other explanations for some of the "miraculous" animal cures presented. A thought-provoking programme nevertheless; it should be essential viewing for any skeptic confronting homeopathic enthusiasts.
1 May 1992
An enterprising skeptic has found the answer to our energy and transportation problems, if only the Illuminati will let him speak...
1 February 1991
NEW research dismissing the role of tinted lenses in treating reading difficulties has sparked an angry reaction from special education experts.
1 November 1987
Since ancient times, alternative healing methods have been used by medical practitioners and spiritual adepts to soothe the irritation of body and soul. Many people today are drawn towards the mystical and transcendental as alternatives to orthodox methods. Before people condemn these alternatives, they must look carefully at them, not shutting their eyes to the unsatisfactory and disastrous results that happen when they have ignorantly employed. For those wanting to channel their research into the area of alternative medicine, I give a list of practices currently being carried on in New Zealand.
1 May 1987
Enlightenment or deception? Illusion or delusion? HOWARD WARNER paid $25 for 30 minutes to find out.