Last night I was watching the first episode of a 2024 TV legal drama called 'Matlock'. For those who are old enough to recognise that name - it isn't a remake of the detective show. Anyway, what caught my ear in this show was when the main character Madeleine Matlock (played by Kathy Bates) said she had managed to get past law firm security and stand unnoticed in a partners' meeting because older women are 'invisible'.
A few years ago, in the midst of COVID, Bronwyn wrote an article about Sri Chinmoy, and in it she briefly mentioned the Lotus Heart restaurant in Christchurch and their efforts to avoid implementing sensible COVID restrictions.
A couple of weeks ago the annual NZ Skeptics Conference was held in Christchurch, and my husband Dan, his mum and I flew down from Taranaki to attend.
Our 2026 conference at Tῡranga Library in Christchurch is just over 2 months away, and we have some exciting updates.
We've been promoting making submissions to the Therapeutic Products Bill. The NZ Skeptics committee has met and put together its official submission, and I've put in a personal submission.
Skeptic Steven Novella recently published an interesting open letter to cranks. In it he speaks in a very forthright, honest way about people who email him and pronounce that they have figured out something that overturns science, or have single-handedly solved one of science's many unsolved puzzles. Steven explains in the letter about the importance of peer review, and talks of the arrogance of those who think they're smarter than the combined wisdom of the world's experts. He makes a really good point that the proper route to making your claims public, and ensuring they are properly vetted and tested, is a lot of hard work - and it's this hard work that cranks are keen to bypass, often preferring to instead jump straight to making claims without designing experiments, and publishing books rather than writing scholarly articles.
In my last newsletter I mentioned the local body elections which are currently underway. The elections have some candidates standing who are aligned with various “freedom” and anti-vax groups. The media has done a fairly good job of identifying at least some of the candidates representing dodgy positions.
The population of New Zealand is changing – and not just because there are more of us, including many new immigrants, or because people are living longer. The other great change is that fewer people are religious and New Zealand is increasingly secular.
In the good news department, YouTube has de-platformed local misinformant Vinny Eastwood, also joining another local, Damien De Ment, also banned. Vinny Eastwood was king of promoting conspiracy theories, but it seems that various complaints have seen his channel now removed.
For those of you who like the work we do enough that you want to support us financially, it's that time of the year when membership subscriptions are due. Membership is only $40, or $20 if you're unwaged, and the money we receive will be spent on worthy causes, allowing us to help make New Zealand a more skeptical place.
NZ Skeptics is a registered charity. If you're already a member now's the time to pay your subs. If you're not a member, please consider joining us to support the work we do. Membership is only $40/year for waged/salaried people, and $20/year for unwaged people. You can sign up on our website.
We've all heard and seen the marketing hype of supplements and alternative medicine in various media. They promise so much, how could anyone survive without them? The global supplement market alone is was worth USD $96 Billion in 2017 according to Research and Markets July 2018 report. The global Complementary and Alternative Medicine Market is estimated to be worth $196.9 Billion by 2025 by Grand View Research in their November 2018 report. In the same report they claim nearly two thirds of the developed and developing world have used one form or another of complimentary or alternative medicine.
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:
So after a break of almost 13 months, fluoride is now back in Hamilton's water supply. It was 5 June last year that the council, after three months of public consultations, submissions and hearings, decided to cease fluoridation, despite clear support for the practice from the Hamilton populace and the medical profession. In doing so they bowed to pressure from a well-organised and well-funded lobbying campaign, and ignored scientific evidence, which they said they lacked the expertise to assess (for background on the funding of the anti-fluoride lobby, see Ken Perrott's excellent analysis at openparachute.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/who-is-funding-anti-fluoridation-high-court-action(.
A therapy marketed as a guaranteed way to stop smoking appears to lack a sound theoretical basis and to have little experimental support.
Thank you kindly for the recent award for journalistic excellence I received from your society for my editorial in the NZ Medical Journal on alternative treatments. It was wonderful to be honoured by a society such as yours whose aims and intentions I absolutely support and whom I have always held in the highest regard.
I think the world got a pretty big warning this year as to the dangers of pseudo-science and gullibility when the 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide in the belief that they were to be resurrected in some fashion on board a UFO following the Hale-Bopp Comet. It's not that we like to say "I told you so", but....
To all those who came to the Annual Conference in Christchurch—thank you for your support, and for making the event such a great and satisfying success. To those who could not come—we missed you. To all members—we hope to meet you at the Fifth Conference next year in Palmerston North.
For most individuals the result of a consultation with a psychic is a good laugh. But some get hurt.