Skeptical Thoughts
October 2021
Here are the topics I chose to talk about on RadioLive for the month. Some of them may not have been mentioned on the radio due to a lack of time.
Show
6 October 2021
An evening of I Ching
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Pseudoscience, I Ching
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 meant to be used for divination.
4 min read, 677 words. Continue Reading...
Alex Jones loses in court, again
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Conspiracy, Alex Jones
Alex Jones, host of the conspiracy spreading TV channel InfoWars, has an illustrious history of pushing nonsense ideas about the US - from the ridiculous to the downright dangerous.
2 min read, 345 words. Continue Reading...
27 October 2021
Are boats the answer to our rising sea level?
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Climate Change
One of the many effects of climate change is that the oceans are rising. This is going to be an increasing problem for coastal settlements and island nations. But one American political candidate who has worked for Trump in the past, Scott Pio, thinks he’s figured out an answer to the problem
, and posted his idea on Twitter: 2 min read, 302 words. Continue Reading...
NZ Doctors Called Sarah Speaking Out with Science
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Vaccines
Last week we talked about how the Doctors Stand Up For Vaccination
group had released its list of names of six and a half thousand doctors who have signed a letter in support of COVID vaccination. This letter was in response to a declaration created by Voices for Freedom, casting doubt on vaccination, that was signed by 56 doctors. 3 min read, 536 words. Continue Reading...
20 October 2021
Were Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by an Asteroid?
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Pseudoscience, Religion
Retraction Watch
has documented a recent debacle where an open access journal from Nature, called Scientific Reports, published an article titled "A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea". Tunguska, for those who’ve never heard of it, is the site in Russia where there was a suspected asteroid airburst 100 years ago. I love the Tunguska event - it’s one of those mysteries that looks so cool. Scientists were expecting an impact crater, but what they found was burned upright trees at the epicentre, and 80 million trees further out that had been knocked down - all facing away from the epicentre. 5 min read, 814 words. Continue Reading...
Doctors Speaking Out with Science
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Vaccines
A few months ago Voices for Freedom, an anti-vaccine group of Multi-Level-Marketing Mums, created a group called New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science
- with a website address of nzdsos.com. The group has 56 doctors as members who have apparently signed an open letter that erroneously states the following concerns: 4 min read, 661 words. Continue Reading...
Mike Adams behind mass misinformation campaign
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Pseudoscience, Scam
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.
3 min read, 431 words. Continue Reading...
When Doctors go wrong
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Vaccines
One of the signatories to the NZD SOS declaration, Dr Matt Shelton, is an interesting case - he made the news a few weeks ago when he sent a text message to his patients saying:
3 min read, 552 words. Continue Reading...
13 October 2021
Will the US mint a trillion dollar coin?
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Conspiracy
Rumours are flying in the US that President Biden plans to fix the debt ceiling issue by minting a one trillion dollar coin. Although this sounds patently absurd, there’s some logic behind this.
2 min read, 270 words. Continue Reading...
Psychic sued for false claims
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Psychic, Scam
It seems ridiculous, but a man in the US is suing a psychic
he asked for life advice. The psychic, Sophia Adams, told customer Mauro Restrepo that his marriage was at risk because of a "mala suerte" (bad luck) curse placed on him by an ex-girlfriend. For only $5 grand, she was willing to lift the curse and save his marriage. 3 min read, 564 words. Continue Reading...
The big Vaccine Push
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Vaccines
The government is really pushing the COVID vaccine at the moment, which is great to see. Wellington is getting a vaccine bus for the Hutt area, and the local MP, Ginny Andersen, is pushing for it to be called Jabba the Hutt.
3 min read, 484 words. Continue Reading...
The thin end of the QAnon wedge
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Conspiracy, QAnon
I naively thought that the whole QAnon movement would fall apart after Trump lost his bid for re-election. For those who have somehow not heard about QAnon before, it’s a conspiracy that started in the US a few years, and is supposed to be the writings of a high-level government insider who leaks secrets via hidden meaning and codes in his messages. However, it’s been obvious since the start that QAnon is not an insider, but just a made up persona used to promote right wing ideas and Donald Trump in particular. As Wikipedia says:
4 min read, 619 words. Continue Reading...