Articles tagged with "mark"

The Doomsday Comedy shows in London earlier this year were a hit, and now New Zealand can see what the fuss is about!

It was announced this week that RFK Jr. has hired David Geier as an analyst on a new study into the links between Autism and vaccines. A link that was debunked years ago, which even its most profitable holdout, American charity Autism Speaks, disavowed about a decade ago. This decision is just another in a series of attacks the White House has made against the disabled, and against science in general.

A few days ago I was scanning my spam folder, making sure nothing important had been accidentally classified as spam, when I noticed a cryptic email:

On Saturday afternoon I joined an old friend and fellow nonsense junkie, Tim Atkin, as we attended a creationist talk in Wellington, organised by Creation Ministries International (CMI - the group that run the creation.com website). Now, Tim has been spending a lot of time over the last few years learning mandarin, and this was to come in handy as the meeting was at the Wellington Chinese Methodist Church on Boulcott Street. We arrived just before the 4pm starting time, and were greeted by a large creation.com banner featuring one of CMI's favourite topics, dinosaurs (presumably this is seen as a way to capture the imagination of kids).

At the Society for Science Based Healthcare, we spend a lot of time looking at dodgy therapeutic claims. Most of these claims are made by practitioners of alternative therapies. A few months ago Mark Hanna, a colleague of mine at SBH, messaged me with a curious thought:

Over the past week or two, I've been having email conversations with a person from the other side of the skeptical fence. This person I'll refer to as Mark - which is his real name, but I'll not give any more information about him. (By the way, our skeptical newsletter writer Mark Honeychurch has sworn he's not running some elaborate joke on me!)

In the first part of this story from a couple of weeks ago, I described how I had accidentally made friends with a Chinese scammer on WeChat, the Chinese all-in-one social media app, before I was invited to move our conversation to Telegram, a secure encrypted chat app. In Telegram I was courted by a young Chinese “woman” (the quote marks are because I have a strong suspicion I was being catfished and was actually talking to a man most of the time) who proceeded to tell me about how rich she was, and how she could also make me rich by helping me to invest my money in crypto and precious metals. Her aunt had the inside scoop on when to buy and sell, and so long as we followed her instructions, we were guaranteed to make money. Under the guidance of my new friend, I made a practice transaction of “0.01” with fake money, just before the app crashed and we said good night.

It all started with noodles. During a work call with a Chinese colleague of mine, Evelyn, I was asked what I would be having for lunch. I told her that I would be having instant noodles and she berated me, saying that I should make noodles from a Chinese recipe instead. A couple of minutes later, several links to YouTube videos appeared via SMS, all showing similar recipes being made, with English subtitles to accompany the Mandarin instructions.

Well, hello there! Craig isn't looking and Mark is busy writing, so I thought I would slip in here and write the editorial for this week.

It has been a while since I edited a newsletter, and what better time than near the end of the year to take on the mantle again.

This past weekend has been a pretty skeptically-active weekend for me.

It's me again, Mark, for a third week running - as Craig is unavailable to do the newsletter again. This time it's COVID, and I can't blame him at all for not wanting to write a newsletter while getting over it.

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 Wanaka being three and half hours from a major hospital, and what that means for COVID-19 treatment. The website says:

Thank you Mark Fletcher for letting us know that you had a copy of the video of James Randi's 1993 Christchurch talk. He'd even transcoded the video from VHS to DVD several years ago, which made it a lot easier for me to get it onto YouTube. Thanks Mark, I owe you a beer!

Where: www.newshub.co.nz

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.

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 you picked a random combination of condition and treatment, chances are high that someone in NZ is making illegal claims that the treatment can successfully treat the condition.

Where popular culture is given a skeptical mark

I found out what a skeptic is when I was living in London. My husband Mark listened to a weekly podcast called The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe hosted by a bunch of brothers and their friends. After Mark finally persuaded me to arrive at the 21st century and purchase myself an iPod, the first thing he did was subscribe me to the podcast.

Warwick Don celebrated the 21st annual NZ Skeptics conference by presenting a potted history of the society.

The Psychology of the Psychic, 2nd edition, by David Marks. Prometheus Books.

This is my last newsletter. I am pleased to be handing over the editorship to Denis Dutton. I feel I have been very fortunate in the quality of contributions I have received and to have had regular contributors. A special acknowledgement is due to Mark Davies, Andrew Vignaux and Karen Tumer who physically produce the magazine. I had no idea of the amount of work they undertake until I became involved in it myself.

Self-proclaimed psychic Colin Amery is suing the former leader of the sceptics society, Dr David Marks, claiming his tarot card reading business crashed after Marks publicly questioned psychic abilities. Marks was senior psychology lecturer at Otago University when he tested Amery's claimed extrasensory powers.

It's thumbs up for Sunday News in a long running battle with self proclaimed psychic Colin Amery.

The Evening Post, Thursday, October 2, 1986

A Christchurch expert on the Shroud of Turin, Dr Denis Dutton, was yesterday elected chairman of the New Zealand Skeptics Society, which investigates psychic claims.

You have as much to gain by showing that someone has paranormal powers. David [Marks] and I would win a Nobel Prize if we could prove that. We've nothing to gain by just refuting another case.

By all accounts the first annual meeting of the Society at. Dunedin recently was a great success. This edition of the Skeptic has been designated as a conference special as we thought that members would welcome a permanent record of an historical occasion. The timing of the conference was determined by David Marks' departure and this meant that several of us were unable to go. 1 could not go because I had to supervise the dress rehearsal of the school play (If you want to know, Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco and a great success).

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.

12 - 2 p.m., Press Conference, - Committee Members and guests

12 - 2 p.m., - Press Conference, - Committee Members and guests