The new Australian mini-series Apple Cider Vinegar was just released on Netflix. The series dramatises the true story of Australian Belle Gibson, who was a wellness influencer who falsely claimed to have cured her terminal brain cancer through diet and alternative medicine. She released an app, and later a recipe book, called The Whole Pantry, and pocketed $300K in donations meant for charity.
I saw a Facebook post from a friend that caught my interest. A weird thing happened to him on the morning of the 17th of April; he explained it as something from a horror movie. He had a doorbell where he had never put batteries in the ringer unit, but despite the lack of batteries at 6:30 am it started to ring, and continued to ring as he picked it up and shook it to double check it didn't have batteries. Indeed, it didn't.
Another fortnight, another newsletter. Thanks to everyone who's been ensuring that I have good skeptical content to publish. And, dear reader, if you think you have a skeptical story in you that you want to tell, I would love to hear from you. If you're not sure if you're able to write a compelling story, don't worry - I'm more than happy to help you craft something that will pass muster. And if you're concerned that you'll be too verbose, I'm happy to cut down your story to a more manageable size - or, more likely, serialise it and publish it in multiple issues. And, remember, if you write us an article and you're happy joining us on the NZ Skeptics' podcast, Yeah… Nah!, we'd love to talk with you there as well. Just reply to this email to get in contact with me, or email news@skeptics.nz, if you think you might have something that is worth sharing.
Publisher: Massey University Press
For this week's newsletter, I bumped into a news story about Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist who seems to be making a career out of making unfounded claims of having discovered aliens. On the back of the recent David Grusch shenanigans in the US, it's not surprising that the public are hungry for alien stories, and Avi has a great one for them to feast on - it's just sad that it's likely going to end up being found to be nothing more than sloppy science and wild conjecture.
This week I've looked at what might be behind a funny story about combat-ready mermaids, and found out that it's not the answer I thought I was going to find. I also did a silly thing, and joined a Multi Level Marketing scheme - but don't worry, it's all above board. Just email me if you'd like to join my downline or buy some of my scrapbooking products, and I can give you my affiliate link.
Having been a member for many years, I think it is about time that I made a confession, which I am told is good for the soul even if it is not very good for my continued membership. I am a committed church member, even though the word “committed” makes me think of mental institutions and prisons. I think of the scriptural stories as parabolic and written to guide one's behaviour, definitely not intended as a scientific text. Therefore when a story is physically impossible or extremely unlikely, I simply shrug my shoulders and think that it is a fable and the important part is the message it is portraying. I would never think of using the Bible as a physics or astronomy textbook any more than I would use the physical science texts as a moral guide. Interestingly, I note that many people who have no religious affiliation take great comfort in thinking that when they die they will meet up with old friends who have “gone before”. I think it would be churlish of me to tell them of my doubts in that regard. Also, I have enough humility to recognise that we are still very far from knowing everything about the physical world.
In this week's newsletter, I've published the text from a couple of oral submissions the NZ Skeptics and the Society for Science Based Healthcare (SBH) recently presented to MPs. One interesting part of this was a question asked of SBH, which allowed Daniel Ryan to detail some of the harms that Natural Health Products have caused in New Zealand. I've included Dan's email, and the short but promising response he received. I've also written about my time after graduation from the Eastern Lightning online fellowship meetings and my entry into the Level 3 group, as well as my brief foray into its leadership.
It's a bumper issue today, but I make no apologies for bringing you a ridiculously long email! If you're using a web based client like GMail, you may need to click the “View entire message” link or similar to read the whole newsletter this week, or click the “Read this in your browser” button at the top of the email to open the newsletter as a web page in your browser.
Last Monday (12th December) there was a tragic incident in Wieambilla, Queensland, leaving six people shot dead.
I once met Katherine Smith, the Editor of the New Zealand Journal of Natural Medicine (not a magazine I'd recommend reading - it'll make you angry!). We had an enjoyable chat, and as we were at a wellness and spiritual festival, WellFest, she had no idea I was a skeptic. She showed me her folder of photos and cuttings about the “synchronicity” she'd experienced in her life - a series of spirals, stretching from a spiral painting she made as a young child, through to photos she'd taken in the '80s with faint spirals in the background, and a recent picture of a weird glowing spiral in the sky she'd cut out from a newspaper. I told her that I recognised the sky spiral, that it was a picture from Norway of a Russian rocket booster. Of course she was having none of it - the spiral in the sky was a sign for her, part of a message the universe was sending her through a series of events too unlikely to be coincidence. And of course she wasn't interested in reading into this phenomenon any further - she'd decided what it was, and what it meant to her, and that was enough.
We've covered the Peter Ellis case before, and indeed, it was a particular focus of NZ Skeptics activity in the 1990s.
It cannot have escaped anybody's notice that this week there was yet another mass shooting at a school in the USA - this time in Uvalde, Texas.
Just over a year ago I wrote a newsletter issue titled “_Beware of Scientologists Bearing Gifts_”, where I talked about an interesting ruse in Auckland. Someone from the Auckland Scientology office had been creating lots of fake MeetUp groups as a way to trick people into visiting their building - with event names such as “Success through Communication”, “How to get RID of STRESS!”, “English Study Group”, “Rubik's Cube Master Class” and “FREE movie night Auckland”.
I hope everyone is having a great Valentine's day, and that none of you are stuck in a muddy field somewhere dealing with sanitation issues ;)
This week, long time skeptic Felicity Goodyear-Smith tells us her story...
This week's newsletter is all about those sweet, sweet sounds. There's a story about Spotify, starring Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Joe Rogan. And one about expensive audiophile-level computer hardware. On top of this, some of you might be interested to hear that we're going to try something new with the newsletter soon, something audio related...
Continuing on from Mark's item last week, long-time skeptic and former committee member Barry Lennox gives us his views…
I'm sure most people know the story of the Tiger King, a documentary series which became required viewing last year around the world when many countries went into lockdown. The series followed Joe Exotic, a flamboyant character who ran a big cat attraction and ended up behind bars for some of his questionable life decisions.
Last week Craig introduced a new section to our newsletter, which he's named Why Are You A Skeptic. We're keen to hear from each of you about why you're a skeptic, and to publish your stories in the newsletter. If you're up for it, please send your story to newsletter@skeptics.nz. For now, here's my story of how I came to skepticism, and why I'm involved with the NZ Skeptics:
A recent article on the Ars Technica site details the story of a so-called ethical hacker who was employed by a company to build a pro-Trump fake news empire. (Note, this is the real fake news, as in news that isn't true - compared to the “fake news” that Trump infamously categorised unfavourable coverage of him as.)
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 supplements. Some of his sillier posts included using a microscope to take zoomed-in photos of McDonald's chicken nuggets as a way to make them look unappealing.
Sorry to harp on about anti-vaxxers, but there's another story this week that has emerged about prominent American anti-vaxxer Del Bigtree. Bigtree runs ICAN - the Informed Consent Action Network, and has a slickly produced video podcast called The Highwire.
A couple of weeks ago, I spent an enjoyable weekend away with some friends up in Russell, in the Bay of Islands. A couple of points from a skeptical perspective; firstly, one of my friends told me about an interview he heard with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand, which I've since listened to (detailed below), and the second was a conversation I overheard which illustrated to me how “fake news” and misinformation is innocently spread.
NDEs were in the media this week. Radio New Zealand did an interview with Professor Bruce Greyson who has a book out After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond.
This week has been pretty interesting in the arena of skepticism. As you'll no doubt be aware, this week saw the inauguration of Joe Biden as president of the US and the beginning of his administration. We've seen various pro-science, evidence-based actions taken in just the first couple of days - for example, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, rejoining the World Health Organisation, and halting the Keystone XL pipeline, which I personally celebrate.
In other news, Australian ex-celebrity chef Pete Evans has finally been kicked off Facebook for spreading conspiracy theories about Covid-19. He had previously been fined $25,000 for trying to sell a 'Bio Charger' device as a fake coronavirus cure via a livestream on the platform.
Welcome to this week's NZ Skeptics newsletter. I'm going to be pretty brief as I've have a busy weekend, but there were a few stories that caught my eye this week.
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 both cannabis oil and chemotherapy to fight her cancer - no prizes for guessing which of those two will have helped her more. It also turns out that cancer was only "terminal" if the woman had not received any treatment. This is not what is normally considered to be a diagnosis of terminal cancer - terminal usually means that the cancer is not treatable with medicine, not that the cancer is not treatable without medicine.
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.
Where: www.newshub.co.nz
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 government's recent efforts to relax our laws on medicinal cannabis use.
Two women in a yacht were rescued this week, adrift a long way off the coast of Japan. Their story is that they left Honolulu for Tahiti, and immediately hit a storm which damaged their boat. After drifting for 6 months at sea, and being attacked by sharks, they were eventually rescued by the US Navy.
It looks like the book has finally been closed on one of the most famous Satanic Panic cases in the US - that of the Kellers.
Six of us skeptics went along to Father John Rea's healing event on Tuesday in Tawa, Wellington. John is a well known healer in New Zealand, and he's appeared on my skeptical radar in the past for making claims about being able to treat cancer.
Robert Hunt spoke on behalf of Creation Ministries International this morning at Upper Hutt Baptist Church.
The Society for Science Based Healthcare has recently submitted complaints about articles in two newspapers.
A couple of stories about fast food that set off my skeptical alarm bells this week.
Hosted by Fraser Cain of AstronomyCast, this hour long magazine-style show takes listeners through the previous week's space news. Each episode has an assortment of guests who take it in turns to present, each with their own topic, and with Fraser asking the questions and expanding the stories. Each week a cast of regular voices tend to appear, and there's a wider community of more infrequent guests.
In the first of a new series of columns, Matthew Willey catches up with what celebrity medium Kelvin Cruickshank is up to these days.
In Issue 100 of the NZ Skeptic I commented on how issues of concern to this society never seem to go away. A classic example of the moment is the case of Neon Roberts, the seven-year-old English boy whose New Zealand-born mother took him into hiding rather than have him subjected to radiotherapy along with chemotherapy to treat his aggressive brain tumour, and fought in the courts for her right to use alternative therapies instead.
If the beliefs of a sizeable number of people turn out to be correct, this will be the final issue of the NZ Skeptic. According to a survey of 16,262 people in 21 countries conducted by market research company Ipsos for Reuters News, two percent of respondents strongly agree, and eight percent somewhat agree, with the proposition that 21 December 2012, the end of the current cycle of the Mayan Long Count calendar, marks the end of the world. Perhaps surprisingly agreement is highest in China (20 percent), while the Germans and Indonesians (four percent) are relatively dubious. One could perhaps question the representativeness of the sample (comprised of people who have agreed to take part in online surveys), but there must be a lot of people out there who are really worried about this.
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.
Surfing on the massive wave kicked up by the craze for things paranormal is Dunedin's spookiest entrepreneur, Andrew Smith - host of Dunedin's Hair Raiser Ghost Walk. Is it all nonsense, or is there something mysterious afoot?
Occasionally, the Skeptics get correspondence from the general public. Chair-entity Vicki Hyde responds to two such inquiries.
It wasn't a dark and stormy night but a gaggle of skeptics got together recently to listen to ghost stories in Hamilton. Professional story teller Andrew Wright sent shivers down the groups' skeptical spines as they listened to his rendition of one of the oldest known horror stories, Lord Fox, a BlueBeard variation.
In which John Riddell reminisces about happy childhood days and reflects on the stories we tell to grown-ups
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 a videotape of the session in which the girl begged for air and screamed that she was dying". What we need in New Zealand are equally tough laws that protect children from acts of omission, particularly where children are denied safe and effective medical treatment in favour of ludicrous quackery. (Dominion June 20th, Hokum Locum #59)
Skepticism is very much concerned with assessing the quality of evidence in support of a particular claim. But evidence means different things to different people. In the first of a two-part series, Jim Ring examines the legal profession's view of the matter.
Well, that's another year in the "hot" seat, and more "interesting" times. I've had over 250 messages in my Skeptics email folder build up since January, and that's only the ones I wanted to keep. It provides a form of diary for what we've done throughout the year.
IT'S BEEN a quiet old time in the Waikato, these past few months. My cat hasn't channelled any past lives, nor has she been abducted by aliens.
NEW ZEALAND MYSTERIES, by Robyn Gosset; Bush Press, 1996; 208 pages; $29.95
Surely the Kaimanawa Wall story was one of the great beat-ups of all time. Here was a natural rock outcrop, which experts immediately told us was of a kind common in the area, raised to status of "great mystery" and worthy of the other "X Files puzzles" of Easter Island, South America and so on.
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 People Believe in It_. It's a thought-provoking piece which should be handy reference for any skeptic's library. This is part one of three._
It is rare that Nelson interests the world's news media. The "sheep suspended from pine trees" story was sufficiently bizarre to get their attention.
Readers familiar with Stephen Fry only for his TV comic appearances (A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder) may be surprised to meet him as author of a novel, and even more surprised that such a novel should be reviewed in New Zealand Skeptic. Squash your doubts -- this book is full of paranormal mysteries to delight the skeptical reader.
Australian creationist Peter Sparrow toured New Zealand recently.
A sceptical mini-history of the crashed flying saucer saga
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.
Isaac Asimov, one of the great explainers of the age, died on 6 April, aged 72.
The Bent Spoon, as oft we've pointed out, is the only negative press award in New Zealand. Recipients' reactions to it have varied.
by Howard Blum; Simon & Schuster 1990
A breathless story about a Tibetan who supposedly cures brain tumours prompted the Skeptics to give their annual Bent Spoon award to the New Zealand Listener.
The New Truth articles on the "Disappearing Regiment" were examined in New Zealand Skeptic No. 15. A curious sequel to these stories, headed "Mystery clouds hold secret to rail horror!", appeared in New Truth's issue of 20 October 1989. After reading the "Disappearing Regiment" articles (25 August and 1 September 1989), Mr Jack Bramley, a wood carver now living in Whitianga, told New Truth of three clouds he had seen from Taupo and which had remained in the same position near Mt Ruapehu for the three days before Christmas 1953. In the article the clouds were linked to the disaster which occurred when the Wellington-Auckland express was plunged into the Whangaehu River shortly before 10.30 pm on 24 December 1953.
Is it the influence of New Age vegetarian extremists?: the latest paranormal enthusiasms are cress seed-sprouting (it's a more growing experience than metal spoon-bending) and crop circles. We have Time Magazine's authority for crop circles having occurred here, and not only the British Skeptics but the New Zealand Skeptics would welcome any information about the crop circle phenomenon in this country.
by Whitley Strieber, Arrow Books, $12.99.
Sometimes a programme really makes one think about how television defines what is important for us to know about.
The Press Council has not accepted that a jam-eating poltergeist was a logical explanation for a series of events reported in a Truth story.
After we have marvelled at the endurance shown in "The Wooden Horse, and thrilled to the weekly plottings of "Colditz," can we be expected to be interested in yet another prisoner-of-war story? Especially if it all happened nearly seventy years ago? For readers with a skeptical interest in matters clairvoyant, the answer in the case of "The Road to En-