An Audio Spectacular

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…

Craig and I are hoping to get together online and audio record some of the things we write about in the newsletter as a fortnightly podcast. For those of you who might be interested in listening to this newsletter on the way to work instead of reading it when you get there, we’ll let you know what it’s called and where to find it once we’ve sorted everything out. We’ll talk about our stories, and probably chat a little about what we think of them. We may also at times be joined by some of our fellow committee members, including Daniel Ryan (who’s a keen activist and may want to tell us what he’s been up to) and Bronwyn Rideout (who’s written a few articles for us already, and we’re hoping will write for us more regularly)..

Speaking of Bronwyn, she’s written us a piece about why she’s a skeptic, so I’ll start with that before diving into my audio news.

Mark Honeychurch

Why I am a Skeptic

Bronwyn Rideout

What do the Brontosaurus, Harry Houdini, and a phrenology bust have in common?

Each played a part in my journey towards skepticism.

I would wager that at one point in their lives, the readers of this newsletter could unabashedly name their favourite dinosaur; mine will forever be the brontosaurus*. As a youngster in the early 90s with a penchant for intense special interests, access to cable TV stations such as the CBC and PBS more or less did a lot of the heavy-lifting in educating me about these long-deceased reptiles when the offerings of my small-town library and the patience of my beleaguered teachers were exhausted. The release of the first movie in what would become the Jurassic Park franchise provided a boon of documentaries of variable quality, but with a consistent message about the science behind the dating of fossils. While these explanations were excessively simplified in retrospect, the knowledge that fossils can be millions or even billions of years old had a seismic impact on an 8-year old who had only heard the earth described as being thousands of years old.

The next step in the devolution of my religious beliefs and the evolution of my skepticism involved seances. I have long forgotten the original context (it was likely Halloween related) but I was introduced to the exploits of Harry Houdini through a school assignment. The reading may have been about the Chinese Water Torture Cell, but I went straight to the school library once I learnt that he was not a fictional character. Luckily, it was more difficult to outpace the school librarian as there were quite a few books on Houdini-related subjects. Unfortunately, many were inclined to say that ghosts existed and presented photographic evidence in support of that thesis, instead of exposing spirit photography as the outright fraud it was. Harry Houdini and his ilk were frequently presented as killjoys, but I was impressed by the methods he applied to debunk mediums, and the simplicity of the challenge he put forth to prove if communication in the afterlife was possible. From this starting point, I was introduced to the efforts of James Randi and others in illuminating the tools of deception utilised by sheisters and scammers. More so than radiometric dating, this knowledge has been incredibly applicable in my day-to-day life when avoiding faith healers, youth groups, and multi-level marketing pitches.

When I was 11, I was in health class and bored with yet another lesson about the food pyramid. As I flipped through a text book that was well past 15 years out of date, I saw this bizarre photograph of a phrenology bust on the first page of a chapter called “Quackery”. Well, shit, I was enthralled by the different devices and treatments that were supposed to cure cancer, diabetes, and hair loss. But alongside the hilarity, there was the gravity of the deceit and greed that motivated these oftentimes literal snake oil salesmen to peddle these products, and the resulting destruction to the health and finances of their victims. This chapter was not included in the curriculum or taught to any of the students nearly 30 years ago and, in light of current events, I wonder if that was short-sighted. Thus, in the pursuit of my own career in health, I’ve expanded upon that lesson by taking on an evidence-based practice. I see it as my professional responsibility to educate the public about the realities of research informing hospital policies, the marketing of health products, and misinformation in mainstream and social media. 

* Do not come at me with Brontosaurus vs. Apatosaurus discourse. I know what I wrote.

Moving away from Spotify

I’m not normally one for jumping on bandwagons, but when I saw friends posting on Facebook over the last few days that they were cancelling their Spotify subscriptions, I figured this was one cause I could get behind.

As many of you will know, a couple of years ago music streaming service Spotify bought the rights to both the back catalogue of Joe Rogan’s podcasts and new episodes going forward. Joe Rogan has promoted all kinds of nonsense on his podcast before, where he interviews people on the fringes about their ideas. This has included conspiracy theorists, known racists and UFO believers, although recently he’s had a focus on COVID, and unsurprisingly has been promoting dubious cures while casting doubt on vaccines and masks.

It’s worth considering what Joe himself had to say about the misinformation on his podcast, which I featured in a previous newsletter:

“I’m not a doctor, I’m a fucking moron, and I’m a cage-fighting commentator who’s a dirty stand-up comedian… I’m not a respected source of information – even for me.”

It’s a pity Joe doesn’t heed his own words and stop promoting opinions he realises are not to be respected – but then Spotify have paid him a lot of money to make his opinions public (~US$100 million).

This week musician Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum – either get rid of Joe Rogan, or remove his music from their streaming service. Having invested a lot of money in Joe, Spotify chose to protect their investment, and removed Neil’s music. Apparently 30% of all online listens to Neil’s music have been through Spotify, presumably as they are the pioneering streaming service and as the incumbent have a lot of users who signed up when there were no alternatives, users who haven’t shopped around since. So this is no small loss for Neil’s pocket. Joni Mitchell has also asked for her music to be removed, and given how political musicians can be, I wonder if others will follow.

Spotify’s share price has also dropped, with the loss so far being worth a lot more than what they paid for Joe Rogan. However, I don’t expect this to be a permanent thing, as markets are both agile and fickle these days, so it’s easy to spook investors with a piece of bad news and see a price dip, but often share prices will bounce back fairly quickly. Spotify’s share price has been slowly dropping over the last year anyway, so only time will tell whether this will have had any lasting damage beyond what was expected.

It appears that there are a lot of people changing their music streaming provider on the back of this news. There are reports that some people trying to unsubscribe from Spotify are having problems doing so, and that their support line is “unusually busy”, but many people have managed to unsubscribe and people are recommending just removing your payment details if the unsubscribe function doesn’t work for you.

Although I don’t imagine many people are moving because they want to listen to Neil Young’s music, I do think that many people have likely been spurred on by his stand. It’s not like Neil Young is a great skeptic, having previously been on the wrong side of the GMO debate, but at least on this issue he’s taken an evidence-based position, and understands that Joe has the potential to cause real harm with his “reckons”. In Neil’s ultimatum to Spotify he referenced a recent letter to Spotify from medical professionals, imploring them to ditch Joe Rogan. Spotify ignored them as well.

So, like many others, I’ve cancelled my family Spotify subscription and moved to Google – for a similar price I get their music service and YouTube premium as well – goodbye annoying YouTube ads! Obviously Google, like pretty much any large tech company, is not squeaky clean, but they seem less “evil” than Spotify does right now. I’m not sure if enough people will cancel their subscription for it to make a difference, but even if the numbers jumping ship don’t add up to anything significant for Spotify, at least the negative press is likely to give them pause.

Coincidentally, over the last few weeks I’ve been trying to watch what I would consider to be the most frustrating of Joe Rogan’s interviews – those of two other people who have a massively over-inflated sense of self, and who are well known for talking nonsense on a wide variety of topics, rapper Kanye West (or Ye, as he now calls himself) and comedian Russell Brand. Needless to say, even for me (and I’m known for liking cringeworthy nonsense) these interviews have been excruciatingly painful to watch, and I’ve not managed to finish either of them yet (to be fair, they’re each about 3 hours long). Next up might be Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens and Jordan Peterson, although maybe I’m brave enough to try the Alex Jones episodes. I’m spoilt for choice! Sadly, some of the episodes that look like they might be genuinely interesting, such as the one with skeptic Brian Dunning, are not on YouTube.

A computer hard drive that makes your music sound better?

I’m sitting here writing this week’s newsletter with music playing in the background – I’ve just listened to tracks by (and I’m name-dropping here) Malcolm Middleton, the Flashbulb, Madvillain, PJ Harvey, Mogwai and 65daysofstatic. I’m enjoying this music being played from Plex on my Chromecast, through my TV, via a Sony home theatre amp, to my in-wall 7.1 surround sound speakers. The entire setup might have cost me $1,200, if we exclude the cost of the TV (another $1,500). But could I be enjoying my music more if I’d spent more money buying reference equipment from high-end specialist companies?

It seems unlikely. Like many things in life, there are likely to be diminishing returns as you pay more for something. But there’s something particular about high end audio equipment that really annoys me. The top end of the market seems ridiculously expensive – is that money really being converted to an improved listening experience?

For those not in the know about audiophiles, there are some people who choose to spend boatloads of cash on specialist audio setups that are meant to improve the sound of their music. This might be a basement setup with a bare concrete floor, with Hi Fi separates ($20,000 valve amplifier, $7,000 CD player and $56,000 record deck) each sitting on a separate marble slab for reduction of unwanted vibrations. These components will be powered by a dedicated three-phase power supply delivered to the house independently of the power for the lights, power sockets, etc, via a $55,000 power cable. The components will be cabled together with $54,000 gold plated RCA interconnect cables, and the speakers will be wired up with “Oxygen Free” cable that costs $57,000 per metre. The amplifier may even have had its volume knob replaced by a $500 wooden one.

When it comes to people justifying these high prices for audio equipment, they will talk about qualities such as the noise floor, background, signature, PRAT (pace, rhythm and timing), depth and positioning. So, are these differences in how the music sounds real, or just wishful thinking?

So much of what is sold as high end audio, when put through blind testing, turns out to be no better than reasonably priced hardware. One of my favourites is the testing of straightened coat hangers vs expensive cables, which is a test that has been repeated recently using professional measuring equipment rather than human ears, and one which shows there’s no discernible difference between the two.

As far as I can tell with these blind tests of high-end audio devices, even if a difference could be measured on professional audio testing equipment (and often it can’t be), the sound quality difference from a properly configured reasonably priced setup cannot be discerned by the human ear. The difference is likely all in the listener’s head, not their ears. Many audiophiles refuse to take part in blind tests, using hand-waving excuses to avoid finding out they’ve wasted their money.

The idea that spending lots of money won’t get you a better sound is even more the case for digital equipment. With digital signals, a data stream cannot be made to be “warm”, “smooth” or “neutral”. A digital signal contains zeros and ones – there’s no room for nuance of sound there. There is the possibility of errors being introduced to the signal, such as a bit being flipped from a 0 to a 1, but most digital data transfer protocols have error correction algorithms to protect against this. This might use parity/error-correction bits to allow the detection of errors, which would trigger a request for the data to be re-sent (or even the in-place correction of a single-bit error).

So for any digital audio hardware that purports to offer an improved listening experience, I become immediately skeptical. There’s an argument to be made that ineffective shielding of digital components can cause unwanted signal leakage into analogue output audio after it’s been converted from digital. Some of you may have noticed this when using a pair of wired headphones plugged into an older PC, or one with a cheaper motherboard. It might be that noise from some of the components will induce an audible hum into your audio. But when we’re talking about even a half-decent audio setup, rather than a cheap PC, this will not be a problem. And for audiophiles with their isolated power feeds, remote DACs and optical cables, this is really not going to be an issue at all.

This brings me to a piece of hardware I found online recently – a custom-built audiophile data storage device, specifically an M.2 NVMe SSD stick. This piece of PC hardware is where digital files are stored in a computer before they’re transferred into memory, pulled into the CPU for processing, and so on.

At first I thought the idea was to store your music files on this drive, but it turns out that – because it’s only 333GB when used “properly”, and audiophiles like to use large lossless, uncompressed, high bit-rate files – the idea is to keep your copy of Windows on this drive. You are meant to store your music on another PC (e.g. a NAS), which is kept remote from the playing hardware. Your audio files will be transferred by TCP-IP over ethernet to your audio PC with this SSD in it (and I bet there’s a good chance this transfer will involve a $10,000 ethernet cable and a $2,500 network switch!).

So, given that the files placed on this storage, and their subsequent transfer through various components, is totally digital, and that this is meant for your OS files only, there’s no way that any kind of audio signature, or nuance of sound, could be applied by this storage device to any audio files. But that’s not what the audiophiles who’ve tested this hardware say in the Audiophile Style forum:

“The bass and tonal range is expansive”

“Very neutral especially in the High frequencies. No digital nasties. Extended highs without any sibilance on hardness. Bass lines are clean and articulate. Impact of bass and drums is very good. The mid range is neutral, not lacking any warmth and pace. Stereo spread is now very good; you hear sounds extreme left and right just outside of the speakers and/or HPs. Depth is good. Positioning of vocals and instruments is spot on”

The forum goes on with people talking about the sound signature of different Operating Systems (Windows 10 vs Server 2016 vs Linux), whether to power the device via the added DC power jack or the motherboard’s power supply, how long to “burn in” the drive before the sound improves, and which network card to use.

Honestly, reading this kind of feedback is depressing. It’s a group delusion of people who have convinced themselves that they have super hearing, that physics bends to their will, and that black is white. At least one member of the forum spoke up, calling this “Classic snake oil”. I’ll leave you with his reply when he was told to go and complain somewhere else (just before having his account deleted):

“I call out meaningless BS whenever I see it. Too many people make money off other people’s ignorance. That bothers me a great deal.

I had hoped to learn new things about audio reproduction by engaging with this site. Unfortunately I have encountered a community largely composed of adherents to a fantastical proto-religion in which logic is scorned, science is ridiculed and BS is exalted.”

An Audio Spectacular

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…

Craig and I are hoping to get together online and audio record some of the things we write about in the newsletter as a fortnightly podcast. For those of you who might be interested in listening to this newsletter on the way to work instead of reading it when you get there, we’ll let you know what it’s called and where to find it once we’ve sorted everything out. We’ll talk about our stories, and probably chat a little about what we think of them. We may also at times be joined by some of our fellow committee members, including Daniel Ryan (who’s a keen activist and may want to tell us what he’s been up to) and Bronwyn Rideout (who’s written a few articles for us already, and we’re hoping will write for us more regularly)..

Speaking of Bronwyn, she’s written us a piece about why she’s a skeptic, so I’ll start with that before diving into my audio news.

Mark Honeychurch

Why I am a Skeptic

Bronwyn Rideout

What do the Brontosaurus, Harry Houdini, and a phrenology bust have in common?

Each played a part in my journey towards skepticism.

I would wager that at one point in their lives, the readers of this newsletter could unabashedly name their favourite dinosaur; mine will forever be the brontosaurus*. As a youngster in the early 90s with a penchant for intense special interests, access to cable TV stations such as the CBC and PBS more or less did a lot of the heavy-lifting in educating me about these long-deceased reptiles when the offerings of my small-town library and the patience of my beleaguered teachers were exhausted. The release of the first movie in what would become the Jurassic Park franchise provided a boon of documentaries of variable quality, but with a consistent message about the science behind the dating of fossils. While these explanations were excessively simplified in retrospect, the knowledge that fossils can be millions or even billions of years old had a seismic impact on an 8-year old who had only heard the earth described as being thousands of years old.

The next step in the devolution of my religious beliefs and the evolution of my skepticism involved seances. I have long forgotten the original context (it was likely Halloween related) but I was introduced to the exploits of Harry Houdini through a school assignment. The reading may have been about the Chinese Water Torture Cell, but I went straight to the school library once I learnt that he was not a fictional character. Luckily, it was more difficult to outpace the school librarian as there were quite a few books on Houdini-related subjects. Unfortunately, many were inclined to say that ghosts existed and presented photographic evidence in support of that thesis, instead of exposing spirit photography as the outright fraud it was. Harry Houdini and his ilk were frequently presented as killjoys, but I was impressed by the methods he applied to debunk mediums, and the simplicity of the challenge he put forth to prove if communication in the afterlife was possible. From this starting point, I was introduced to the efforts of James Randi and others in illuminating the tools of deception utilised by sheisters and scammers. More so than radiometric dating, this knowledge has been incredibly applicable in my day-to-day life when avoiding faith healers, youth groups, and multi-level marketing pitches.

When I was 11, I was in health class and bored with yet another lesson about the food pyramid. As I flipped through a text book that was well past 15 years out of date, I saw this bizarre photograph of a phrenology bust on the first page of a chapter called “Quackery”. Well, shit, I was enthralled by the different devices and treatments that were supposed to cure cancer, diabetes, and hair loss. But alongside the hilarity, there was the gravity of the deceit and greed that motivated these oftentimes literal snake oil salesmen to peddle these products, and the resulting destruction to the health and finances of their victims. This chapter was not included in the curriculum or taught to any of the students nearly 30 years ago and, in light of current events, I wonder if that was short-sighted. Thus, in the pursuit of my own career in health, I’ve expanded upon that lesson by taking on an evidence-based practice. I see it as my professional responsibility to educate the public about the realities of research informing hospital policies, the marketing of health products, and misinformation in mainstream and social media. 

* Do not come at me with Brontosaurus vs. Apatosaurus discourse. I know what I wrote.

Moving away from Spotify

I’m not normally one for jumping on bandwagons, but when I saw friends posting on Facebook over the last few days that they were cancelling their Spotify subscriptions, I figured this was one cause I could get behind.

As many of you will know, a couple of years ago music streaming service Spotify bought the rights to both the back catalogue of Joe Rogan’s podcasts and new episodes going forward. Joe Rogan has promoted all kinds of nonsense on his podcast before, where he interviews people on the fringes about their ideas. This has included conspiracy theorists, known racists and UFO believers, although recently he’s had a focus on COVID, and unsurprisingly has been promoting dubious cures while casting doubt on vaccines and masks.

It’s worth considering what Joe himself had to say about the misinformation on his podcast, which I featured in a previous newsletter:

“I’m not a doctor, I’m a fucking moron, and I’m a cage-fighting commentator who’s a dirty stand-up comedian… I’m not a respected source of information – even for me.”

It’s a pity Joe doesn’t heed his own words and stop promoting opinions he realises are not to be respected – but then Spotify have paid him a lot of money to make his opinions public (~US$100 million).

This week musician Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum – either get rid of Joe Rogan, or remove his music from their streaming service. Having invested a lot of money in Joe, Spotify chose to protect their investment, and removed Neil’s music. Apparently 30% of all online listens to Neil’s music have been through Spotify, presumably as they are the pioneering streaming service and as the incumbent have a lot of users who signed up when there were no alternatives, users who haven’t shopped around since. So this is no small loss for Neil’s pocket. Joni Mitchell has also asked for her music to be removed, and given how political musicians can be, I wonder if others will follow.

Spotify’s share price has also dropped, with the loss so far being worth a lot more than what they paid for Joe Rogan. However, I don’t expect this to be a permanent thing, as markets are both agile and fickle these days, so it’s easy to spook investors with a piece of bad news and see a price dip, but often share prices will bounce back fairly quickly. Spotify’s share price has been slowly dropping over the last year anyway, so only time will tell whether this will have had any lasting damage beyond what was expected.

It appears that there are a lot of people changing their music streaming provider on the back of this news. There are reports that some people trying to unsubscribe from Spotify are having problems doing so, and that their support line is “unusually busy”, but many people have managed to unsubscribe and people are recommending just removing your payment details if the unsubscribe function doesn’t work for you.

Although I don’t imagine many people are moving because they want to listen to Neil Young’s music, I do think that many people have likely been spurred on by his stand. It’s not like Neil Young is a great skeptic, having previously been on the wrong side of the GMO debate, but at least on this issue he’s taken an evidence-based position, and understands that Joe has the potential to cause real harm with his “reckons”. In Neil’s ultimatum to Spotify he referenced a recent letter to Spotify from medical professionals, imploring them to ditch Joe Rogan. Spotify ignored them as well.

So, like many others, I’ve cancelled my family Spotify subscription and moved to Google – for a similar price I get their music service and YouTube premium as well – goodbye annoying YouTube ads! Obviously Google, like pretty much any large tech company, is not squeaky clean, but they seem less “evil” than Spotify does right now. I’m not sure if enough people will cancel their subscription for it to make a difference, but even if the numbers jumping ship don’t add up to anything significant for Spotify, at least the negative press is likely to give them pause.

Coincidentally, over the last few weeks I’ve been trying to watch what I would consider to be the most frustrating of Joe Rogan’s interviews – those of two other people who have a massively over-inflated sense of self, and who are well known for talking nonsense on a wide variety of topics, rapper Kanye West (or Ye, as he now calls himself) and comedian Russell Brand. Needless to say, even for me (and I’m known for liking cringeworthy nonsense) these interviews have been excruciatingly painful to watch, and I’ve not managed to finish either of them yet (to be fair, they’re each about 3 hours long). Next up might be Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens and Jordan Peterson, although maybe I’m brave enough to try the Alex Jones episodes. I’m spoilt for choice! Sadly, some of the episodes that look like they might be genuinely interesting, such as the one with skeptic Brian Dunning, are not on YouTube.

A computer hard drive that makes your music sound better?

I’m sitting here writing this week’s newsletter with music playing in the background – I’ve just listened to tracks by (and I’m name-dropping here) Malcolm Middleton, the Flashbulb, Madvillain, PJ Harvey, Mogwai and 65daysofstatic. I’m enjoying this music being played from Plex on my Chromecast, through my TV, via a Sony home theatre amp, to my in-wall 7.1 surround sound speakers. The entire setup might have cost me $1,200, if we exclude the cost of the TV (another $1,500). But could I be enjoying my music more if I’d spent more money buying reference equipment from high-end specialist companies?

It seems unlikely. Like many things in life, there are likely to be diminishing returns as you pay more for something. But there’s something particular about high end audio equipment that really annoys me. The top end of the market seems ridiculously expensive – is that money really being converted to an improved listening experience?

For those not in the know about audiophiles, there are some people who choose to spend boatloads of cash on specialist audio setups that are meant to improve the sound of their music. This might be a basement setup with a bare concrete floor, with Hi Fi separates ($20,000 valve amplifier, $7,000 CD player and $56,000 record deck) each sitting on a separate marble slab for reduction of unwanted vibrations. These components will be powered by a dedicated three-phase power supply delivered to the house independently of the power for the lights, power sockets, etc, via a $55,000 power cable. The components will be cabled together with $54,000 gold plated RCA interconnect cables, and the speakers will be wired up with “Oxygen Free” cable that costs $57,000 per metre. The amplifier may even have had its volume knob replaced by a $500 wooden one.

When it comes to people justifying these high prices for audio equipment, they will talk about qualities such as the noise floor, background, signature, PRAT (pace, rhythm and timing), depth and positioning. So, are these differences in how the music sounds real, or just wishful thinking?

So much of what is sold as high end audio, when put through blind testing, turns out to be no better than reasonably priced hardware. One of my favourites is the testing of straightened coat hangers vs expensive cables, which is a test that has been repeated recently using professional measuring equipment rather than human ears, and one which shows there’s no discernible difference between the two.

As far as I can tell with these blind tests of high-end audio devices, even if a difference could be measured on professional audio testing equipment (and often it can’t be), the sound quality difference from a properly configured reasonably priced setup cannot be discerned by the human ear. The difference is likely all in the listener’s head, not their ears. Many audiophiles refuse to take part in blind tests, using hand-waving excuses to avoid finding out they’ve wasted their money.

The idea that spending lots of money won’t get you a better sound is even more the case for digital equipment. With digital signals, a data stream cannot be made to be “warm”, “smooth” or “neutral”. A digital signal contains zeros and ones – there’s no room for nuance of sound there. There is the possibility of errors being introduced to the signal, such as a bit being flipped from a 0 to a 1, but most digital data transfer protocols have error correction algorithms to protect against this. This might use parity/error-correction bits to allow the detection of errors, which would trigger a request for the data to be re-sent (or even the in-place correction of a single-bit error).

So for any digital audio hardware that purports to offer an improved listening experience, I become immediately skeptical. There’s an argument to be made that ineffective shielding of digital components can cause unwanted signal leakage into analogue output audio after it’s been converted from digital. Some of you may have noticed this when using a pair of wired headphones plugged into an older PC, or one with a cheaper motherboard. It might be that noise from some of the components will induce an audible hum into your audio. But when we’re talking about even a half-decent audio setup, rather than a cheap PC, this will not be a problem. And for audiophiles with their isolated power feeds, remote DACs and optical cables, this is really not going to be an issue at all.

This brings me to a piece of hardware I found online recently – a custom-built audiophile data storage device, specifically an M.2 NVMe SSD stick. This piece of PC hardware is where digital files are stored in a computer before they’re transferred into memory, pulled into the CPU for processing, and so on.

At first I thought the idea was to store your music files on this drive, but it turns out that – because it’s only 333GB when used “properly”, and audiophiles like to use large lossless, uncompressed, high bit-rate files – the idea is to keep your copy of Windows on this drive. You are meant to store your music on another PC (e.g. a NAS), which is kept remote from the playing hardware. Your audio files will be transferred by TCP-IP over ethernet to your audio PC with this SSD in it (and I bet there’s a good chance this transfer will involve a $10,000 ethernet cable and a $2,500 network switch!).

So, given that the files placed on this storage, and their subsequent transfer through various components, is totally digital, and that this is meant for your OS files only, there’s no way that any kind of audio signature, or nuance of sound, could be applied by this storage device to any audio files. But that’s not what the audiophiles who’ve tested this hardware say in the Audiophile Style forum:

“The bass and tonal range is expansive”

“Very neutral especially in the High frequencies. No digital nasties. Extended highs without any sibilance on hardness. Bass lines are clean and articulate. Impact of bass and drums is very good. The mid range is neutral, not lacking any warmth and pace. Stereo spread is now very good; you hear sounds extreme left and right just outside of the speakers and/or HPs. Depth is good. Positioning of vocals and instruments is spot on”

The forum goes on with people talking about the sound signature of different Operating Systems (Windows 10 vs Server 2016 vs Linux), whether to power the device via the added DC power jack or the motherboard’s power supply, how long to “burn in” the drive before the sound improves, and which network card to use.

Honestly, reading this kind of feedback is depressing. It’s a group delusion of people who have convinced themselves that they have super hearing, that physics bends to their will, and that black is white. At least one member of the forum spoke up, calling this “Classic snake oil”. I’ll leave you with his reply when he was told to go and complain somewhere else (just before having his account deleted):

“I call out meaningless BS whenever I see it. Too many people make money off other people’s ignorance. That bothers me a great deal.

I had hoped to learn new things about audio reproduction by engaging with this site. Unfortunately I have encountered a community largely composed of adherents to a fantastical proto-religion in which logic is scorned, science is ridiculed and BS is exalted.”

What’s in my Inbox?

I was scrolling through my emails today, looking to see if I had received any Why Are You A Skeptic responses from any of you. Sadly there was nothing I’d missed; no stories of how you’d found skepticism after an all-night bender where you’d snorted ketamine and met God, or how you’ve always been skeptical since the age of two.

Instead, what I did find were some random emails that I thought might be of skeptical interest to everyone. Firstly, as a counterpoint to Craig’s article last week about the James Webb telescope, Creation Ministries International have mailed me about the project, informing me:

“We are told that Webb will see stars and galaxies as they appeared 13.5 billion years ago, which is what is meant by “early”. Note that this is a claim based on belief in the big bang model. What Webb will actually observe will be light from galaxies and stars that are very far away. How long that light takes to get to the JWST is another question. In fact, even the assumed vast distances to the very far away galaxies are model and parameter dependent”

In other words, “if we imagine that light travels faster than scientists say it does, or that it used to travel faster in the past, then maybe the universe is only 6,000 years old”. Of course, having a much faster speed of light (two billion percent faster) throws the entirety of physics out of whack, but if we ignore that pesky detail then this hypothesis is a great idea.

Next I have an email from Josie in Canada telling me:

“I read your article about Father John Rea. We know him personally and we live in Canada. Miracles do happen !”

This is in response to an article I wrote back in 2017 about Father John Rea, after myself and several other skeptics went on a field trip to visit him at one of his healing sessions. As I wrote at the time:

“The idea of John’s knowledge is that God has given him messages of who can be healed. John reads out a list of conditions, and for each condition he gives some clues as to who the person or people who are suffering might be… It reminded me of how stage psychics sometimes do a quick fire of throwing out lots of different guesses (the scattergun approach), and then honing in on those that resonate with someone in the audience, while quickly moving on from those that don’t fit anyone.”

The email included a PDF called “Major St. Therese miracles experienced or reported at the Living Insights Center, St. Louis, MO, as of 12/22/21”, which documents the supposed miracle healings that have occurred around a statue of St. Therese housed inside the Living Insights Center building. From what I’ve read so far, none of these supposed miracles would pass the Catholic sainthood miracle test.

I received an email from fellow committee member Jonathon Harper, saying:

“My story in the NZ Listener on the Supreme Court test for Peter Ellis’s mana is out. At least it will be on the stands next Monday (17th January). Karyn Scherer (the Editor) was great to work with, not quite as pedantic as some of the other publishers I have worked with, but I think very responsible and accurate. What I learnt from her is that tone is important. By that I mean, sticking to what happened, what people said, so if the conclusions you may feel compelled to draw are unpalatable, the ‘you’ is the reader, and not the writer. Also the idea that it is good to intimate that you have some understanding that we all have foibles, and we are all in this together. Karyn is also very enthusiastic, forthcoming, personable, friendly and supportive so I felt privileged in all the best senses of the word to have worked with her on this.”

If you’re interested in the Peter Ellis case, you might want to pick up a copy of the Listener and have a read.

Finally I found an email sent to the NZ Skeptics committee that I will throw open to our members. If any of you would like to pen a respectful response to Andre, please send it to [email protected] and we’ll forward it on:

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

This week I discuss the popular Netflix movie Don’t Look Up, ponder the association between the holiday road toll and drownings, celebrate the continuing success of the JWST, and take a look at the abuse that prominent scientists are being subjected to.

I’ve been on holiday for the past three weeks but tomorrow I’ll be returning to work, as I expect many will also do so. Hopefully your holiday break, if you had one, has been enjoyable.

Oh, and in breaking news, as I write this Sunday evening, it seems that Brian Tamaki has attended another protest, seemingly in breach of his bail conditions. I wonder how many chances he’s going to be given!

Craig Shearer

Don’t Look Up

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you’ll be able to watch a movie that’s been the topic of some discussion in science circles. That is Don’t Look Up – a satirical look at science communication. The movie’s been out for a little while now, so I feel justified in discussing the plot – so SPOILER ALERT!

In Don’t Look Up, a pair of US astronomers, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio, discover that a comet, at least 5km wide, is on a collision path with Earth, and there’s just 6 months until impact. Such an impact would cause a planet-wide extinction event.

They present their findings to the president of the US, played by Meryl Streep – seemingly a female version of Donald Trump (even going so far as to show her son as Chief of Staff in a nepotistic hire). The president is a former reality TV star and anti-intellectual.

The president is apathetic about it and more concerned about image and approval ratings. The astronomers then leak the news to a talk show, complete with plastic, vapid hosts who don’t take the threat seriously. Lawrence’s character loses composure and rants about the danger, prompting mockery of her online (which I felt completely reflected reality).

Rocked by a sex scandal and afraid of the political fallout, the president then backs a project to attempt to alter the comet’s course by striking it with nukes. It’s then proposed that the comet potentially contains valuable rare-earth elements, so a billionaire CEO of a tech company comes up with a project to splinter the comet into fragments and recover the bounty. Unsurprisingly, the mission by the tech company to fragment the comet fails, with most of its landers failing.

The political landscape divides into those who “believe the science” and those who want to deny it, with some casting doubts on whether the comet actually exists. Lawrence’s character goes to visit her parents, where she’s not welcome. My favourite line from the movie is where one of her parents says “We’re for the jobs that the comet will provide”.

Eventually the comet is so close that people can see its reality by just looking up into the night sky (though I’m sceptical that most US cities have low enough light pollution to make this possible). But those opposing the science are wearing MAGA-esque hats with the slogan “Don’t Look Up” across them. This has obviously echoes of the COVID pandemic, and of climate change. 

Unsurprisingly, with the failure of the mission by the tech company, the comet then inevitably collides with Earth, with catastrophic consequences. But the elites (including the president) have managed to escape Earth on a spaceship, cryogenically frozen, then revived 22,000 years into the future on a habitable Earth-like planet. The ending is amusing, so I’ll leave that for you to see (it’s after the credits).

The movie is really about climate change, and our lack of action on it, and how the rich and privileged will be able to be shielded from its worst consequences. Indeed, with allusion to Elon Musk, there’s the obvious expectation that we can just find a replacement planet to inhabit. 

Professor Brian Cox did an interview video that discusses the movie. Interestingly, he seems to have missed the point a bit, and focused on how accurate the science is around comets (or asteroids) and their potential to crash into our planet and cause a catastrophe, completely ignoring climate change. To be fair to Cox, perhaps he was asked to comment on the accuracy of the science behind the movie, so perhaps the climate change aspects of it were out of scope.

Ultimately the movie is a piece of fairly heavy-handed satire that fans of science will probably appreciate for its depressing reflections of the reality of our world, but probably won’t play well with the end of the demographic that denies the reality of our collective predicament.

Drownings and the road toll

Over the past week or so we’ve seen headlines separately related to the magnitude of the holiday road toll, and high number of summer drownings.

To me, it seems that it’s human nature to clutch at any variation in the statistics and try to make sense of it. I think there’s a lot of randomness in the number of people dying on the roads, but I can understand the police wanting to get people to drive more carefully and avoid mistakes that lead to deadly crashes. 

Every life lost on the roads is a tragedy and we should aim to minimise this. But when you look at the statistics over time, travel on the road has become safer. Cars are better manufactured and more safely designed, and our fleet has modernised, though there’s still a lot of “old clunkers” on the roads. 

But, this year’s holiday road toll is at the high end historically, with 17 people losing their lives. I wonder whether being out of lockdown, and people wanting to do a summer road trip, has seen more cars on the roads, and consequently more crashes. And there I go, as others do, trying to rationalise the numbers!

The same applies to drownings at our beaches and rivers, with 14 people sadly drowned – the highest number in 25 years. 

Now it’s all very well to have some thoughts about the potential factors behind these fatalities, but there are those amongst us who go off the deep end (no pun intended). In the most ridiculous of takes, we have Sue Grey (anti-vax lawyer), who we’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, now trying to draw a relationship between the COVID vaccines and the drownings and the road toll. 

Sue Grey writes: Has anyone looks (sic) at factors that might explain the large number of car and swimming accidents. Are there any novel medical treatments or other factors that might explain this?

So apparently, according to Sue Grey, the COVID vaccine is now offered as an explanation for increased drownings and car crashes. Hmmm… it seems she’ll clutch at anything to discredit vaccines.

But, on the other hand, she’s also tried to blame the death of a 23-year-old Australian man, who was into powerlifting, on the vaccine. According to Grey, young and healthy people don’t die of COVID, so if they do, it was probably the vaccine, not COVID.

Coming this year, she and other anti-vaxxers are launching what they refer to as the “People’s Inquiry” into the NZ COVID response:

An inquiry by the people, for the people, to ask and answer the questions that the government, media and big pharma have suppressed, and to make recommendations about an exit strategy and reclaiming democracy

Sarcasm: I’m sure that it will be totally rational and they’ll get to the bottom of things, presenting cogent facts for all to see! More likely, they’ll have some pre-determined conclusions that they just want to reinforce.

Still, perhaps 2022 will be the year that the NZ Law Society releases a decision about Sue Grey. Their investigation began back in November – one wonders why these things take so long. And then there’s the case of the Kaiapoi doctors offering vaccine exemptions along with their weight loss advice. Hopefully we’ll hear an outcome of this soon too.

JWST unfurled

In my last newsletter I wrote about the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Post launch there were many operations that it had to go through to be successfully deployed, the most major of which included its unfolding. 

It’s now reported that the telescope’s unfolding has completed. There were a total of 344 potential points of failure – now all but 49 of these have been “retired”. It would seem that most of the potential and highest risk failure points have passed. 

It’s probably fair to say that the potential problems may have been exaggerated, at least in the media, so as to “keep us on the edge of our seats”. But, the fact that it’s been successful is a tribute to the engineering talent and planning on the project.

Now we must await the telescope to cool down to its operational temperature of 40K or about -223C. Cooling down in the vacuum of space isn’t something that happens quickly – we must wait for the heat to radiate away as a vacuum is a pretty good insulator!

The telescope is on its journey to the L2 Lagrange Point between the Sun and Earth, now being about three quarters of the way there. It will be late June before we see any images, but I’m sure it will be worth the wait.

NASA has put together a nice set of animations that show the unfolding that has now taken place.

Scientists under attack

This week it’s been reported that University of Auckland scientists Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles and Professor Sean Hendy have taken a case to the Employment Relations Authority. They’re claiming that their employer – the university – hasn’t done enough to protect them from attack by people upset with their science communication and public comment on COVID-related issues. They describe their attackers as “a small but venomous sector of the public”.

The authority has agreed to expedite their cases, which seems sensible given the potential danger they face. 

Wiles and Hendy have argued that part of their roles is to publicise their work, for which we should be thankful. Their work has directly influenced the government response to the pandemic.

The university has argued that they should address safety concerns by keeping public comment to a minimum. This seems unreasonable and a bit of a cop-out. The university has previously asked them to comment publicly in their role as employees and for the Prime Minister’s Office. It would seem that the university is happy to receive the positive benefits of the publicity without having to be responsible for any undesirable outcomes.

Siouxsie’s written up her experience in The Guardian.

Siouxsie and Sean aren’t alone. Professor Michael Baker, from the University of Otago, has also reported abuse, as detailed in the Otago Daily Times (thanks to David Crook for providing the article).

An interesting point in that article is that scientists and academics who’ve chosen to limit their comment to only their areas of academic expertise have been subject to less abuse – sort of limiting the attack surface, so to speak. But still, that article makes the point that the abuse has a chilling effect – that previously communicative scientists and academics are withdrawing from public comment – something which is pretty scary given our collective dependence on scientific literacy.

Commenting publicly is something we all benefit from and academics should be able to do this without suffering abuse or having to be worried for their personal safety. 

‘Tis the season

If you’re a member of NZ Skeptics you should receive a reminder to renew your subs soon. If you’re not currently a member, you can join us for a very reasonable cost.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all, and thank you for your support over the last year. We had a very successful conference late last year, and our membership has been slowly increasing, which is great! If you’re a paid-up member, thank you for your financial support and you should be receiving a reminder to pay your (very reasonable) subscription soon. And if you’re not currently a member, you can always rectify that situation by joining us.

This year we’re continuing our monthly national Skeptics in Cyberspace meetings, where we all jump into a Zoom meeting together – and the next meeting is this Friday evening. If you would like to join us for a chin wag and some BYO beer, just ensure you’re a member of one of the Meetup groups below and RSVP to the next “Cyberspace” meeting:

https://www.meetup.com/Auckland-Skeptics-in-the-Pub/events/283005439/
https://www.meetup.com/Wellington-Skeptics-in-the-Pub/events/283005428/
https://www.meetup.com/Christchurch-Skeptics-in-the-Pub/events/283005445/

First up in this week’s newsletter we have another great Why are You a Skeptic segment, this time from Lance Kennedy. Please keep them coming! I for one am finding the telling of your Road to (Skeptical) Damascus moments fascinating, and each of them so far has included at least one topic that’s been new to me and I’ve enjoyed reading up on. With that, over to Lance and some UFO photos.

Mark Honeychurch

Why are You a Skeptic

Lance Kennedy

I can blame my skepticism on George Adamski.

For those who do not know, that unworthy gentleman made money writing books about non-existent aliens. He even went to the extent of writing that his alien friends in their miraculous space vehicles took him on joy rides around our solar system. To back up his claims he published, in his books, a photo of a circular flying saucer against a cloudy sky.

To my shame, I was taken in. My excuse is that I was in my early teens and somewhat naive.

The turning point came when I encountered a magazine article about George Adamski, which very effectively debunked everything he had written. Of note is the fact that the article had a photo that was almost identical to the one Adamski had published, of the flying saucer. Except that the background sky and clouds were totally different. The author of the article had taken the photo by the simple expedient of throwing a steel rubbish tin lid into the air, spinning, and then snapping his picture against the background of the sky. It was immediately obvious that Adamski was a cheat.

Frankly, I was utterly mortified. My horror was that I could be so gullible. Since then I have been a lot more discriminating in what I am prepared to accept as true and correct. Like every good skeptic, I now require credible evidence. My standard is that if something extraordinary is to be believed, the evidence must be strong enough to get it published in a reputable and peer reviewed research journal such as “Nature” or “The Lancet.” Any claim not so published is to be taken with a mountain of salt.

Lotus-Heart fined for “taking a stand”

The Lotus-Heart restaurant in Christchurch has chosen to take a stand against vaccine mandates, by refusing to let customers know if they require a vaccine pass, not promoting use of their COVID Tracer QR Code, and not having any system in place to check vaccine passes. As a result they have been fined $20,000 dollars by WorkSafe.

Other people and businesses have been doing well when it comes to raising money for their COVID weirdness on the popular fundraising site Givealittle. This includes an Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) gym who were given a $12,000 fine, and have since raised over $40,000 to help fight (no pun intended) in court what they claim are unjust mandates, and Casey Hodgkinson who claims she has been injured by the Pfizer vaccine and has raised over $12,000 to fund alternative treatments.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar Givealittle page popped up soon for the Lotus Heart, although presumably this kind of fundraising will only inspire generosity the first few times it’s attempted. Once a few more companies have used this method to help pay the consequences of their bad decisions, I suspect they’ll start to find it get harder and harder to enthuse people enough to donate their money – especially as many of those who are likely to donate are also likely to be unvaccinated, with a good chance that this has affected their employment and subsequent financial status.

And I fully expect to see some of the usual names pop up when and if these cases end up in court – Sue Grey, Liz Lambert and Ashleigh Fechney (who you may hear more about in an upcoming newsletter) all spring to mind, as they all seem more than happy to take money in exchange for bad legal advice or representation. Stay tuned for more.

An unusual vaccine endorsement

A surprising endorsement of COVID vaccines came out recently – from none other than Donald Trump. Trump has a spotty history when it comes to supporting good science, and he’s well known to skeptics for touting several unproven cures (including that particularly confusing press conference where he talked about bleach and an internal UV light).

However, Trump recently said (in an interview with another dubious character, Candace Owens):

“The vaccines work, but some people aren’t taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones who don’t take the vaccine. But it’s still their choice. And if you take the vaccine you’re protected. The results of the vaccine are very good and if you do get it’s a very minor form. People aren’t dying if they take the vaccine.”

So, given Trump’s often tenuous grasp of reality, and the many dangerous Republican policies around COVID in the US, why would Trump be boasting about how well the vaccines work? Well, it’s because he thinks the vaccines are his achievement. From the same interview:

“The vaccine is one of the greatest achievements of mankind… I came up with three vaccines… in less than 9 months. It was supposed to take five to twelve years.”

I’m not sure how the many scientists who worked tirelessly on the vaccines for many months feel about this, but personally I’m inclined to let this one slide. Many of the Republican rank and file still look up to Trump, indeed many somehow believe he is still their rightful President. So if Trump is able to convince some of these vaccine hesitant Republicans to get themselves vaccinated, that’s a win in my book.

Nuclear Gandhi

As a programmer, I love a good story about buggy software. Maybe it makes me feel better about my own mistakes! So when I recently heard about a fun bug in the strategy game Civilisation, from way back in 1991, I was intrigued. Apparently the fallout from this particular code error (no pun intended) was that the peaceful world leader Mahatma Gandhi would suddenly become very fond of amassing and using nuclear weapons – a quirk that has been named Nuclear Gandhi.

The source of this problem has been described as an integer overflow (or underflow) bug. In software, integers (and other data types) are often saved with a certain number of bytes. A byte is made up of eight binary bits, making a byte able to hold one of 256 possible values. To store an integer using one byte, we could store a value between 0 to 255, or, if we want to be able to store negative numbers as well, a value between -128 and 127. These are called unsigned and signed integers respectively.

Now, sometimes if you try to store a number larger or smaller than the limit of your data type allows, it will roll around. So for an unsigned integer (from 0 to 255), trying to save the number 256 would actually just store a 0. And an attempt to store a -5 would end up saving the value 251.

And so we come to Civilisation. As Wikipedia describes it:

Civilization is a turn-based single or multiplayer strategy game. The player takes on the role of the ruler of a civilization, starting with one (or occasionally two) settler units, and attempts to build an empire in competition with two to seven other civilizations… Before the game begins, the player chooses which historical or current civilization to play… The game begins in 4000 BC, before the Bronze Age, and can last through to AD 2100 (on the easiest setting) with Space Age and “future technologies”.

Obviously a game like this uses a lot of variables in code to store values for many different attributes for all of the game’s mechanics, including those of how each world leader will act. 

The bug that caused Gandhi to gain an affinity for nukes was apparently related to an unsigned single byte integer used to store each leader’s aggression level. These levels could be anything from 1 to 10 (or maybe 12), with numbers above that (up to 255) not being used.

The story of this bug is that Gandhi was the only world leader assigned the lowest possible value of 1 for aggression. But, whenever a nation moved to democracy, this was seen by the game as a peaceful step, and the leader’s aggression level was dropped by 2. For Gandhi, this would put his aggression at -1. But, because an unsigned integer was used, this would end up being saved as an aggression level of 255. And Gandhi with nukes and an aggression level 20 times higher than anyone else in the game was not something you wanted to have to deal with.

This particular bug is frequently used as a warning to programmers of the perils of not using the correct data type for storing your data, including in courses at Harvard University.

However, if that was all there was to it, it wouldn’t be much of a skeptical story. Not only did I learn about Nuclear Gandhi only recently (strategy games aren’t really my thing), but I also learned that the bug is almost certainly not real – despite the fact that many people have attested to having experienced it.

This video from a few years ago does a great job of delving into the details, including contacting creators Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley:

Spoiler: it looks like the bug didn’t exist at all. Brian Reynolds, one of the game’s coders, remembers there only being 3 aggression levels (not 10 or 12), and that the lowest level was assigned by default to all world leaders. Additionally, he thinks the code engine for the early Civilisation games wouldn’t have suffered from a wraparound integer bug causing variables to become extremely large. Instead he suggests that other factors were likely to blame for people’s recollections of Gandhi being aggressive with nuclear weapons in the game. The game had code to make any leader with nukes become aggressive, and this, coupled with how surprising it would be to see peace-loving Gandhi suddenly become aggressive, likely left an impression in people’s minds that other leaders becoming aggressive wouldn’t. So Nuclear Gandhi is more about people’s preconceived notions of how Gandhi should act in the game, rather than a glitch in the code.

An interesting point is that ensuing Civilisation games, starting at Civilisation V, ended up programming Gandhi to have the maximum values for both building and using nukes. This was balanced in game by assigning a fixed role of Peacekeeper to Gandhi’s character, making his predilection for nukes a rare but real possibility (depending on which other roles he acquired). This retrospective adding of the non-existent Nuclear Gandhi bug as a feature in later games may have cemented the idea in many people’s minds that the original game also had this peculiar behaviour.

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.
 

I hope this newsletters finds you well and that a pleasant Christmas was had. 

This year there were claims that Santa’s deliveries would result in a COVID “super-spreader event” happening. Of course, we’ll probably have to wait for a few weeks to see whether this has eventuated. However, the skeptic in me is doubtful of Santa’s existence, so perhaps that would rule out the basis of that story.

Anyway, I hope that nobody got anything particularly pseudoscientific as a gift, and that any conversations with family members were rationally based. I can but dream… 

It’s Boxing Day as I write this – another lovely sunny day in Auckland (as was Christmas Day) with an almost clear blue sky outside, and some lovely warm water at the beach. So this newsletter is going to be quite short.

Wishing you enjoy what remains of 2021 and that you experience a celebratory transition into 2022.

Craig Shearer

We have lift off

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has successfully launched!

The telescope project, 30 years in the making, is now heading to the L2 Earth-Sun Lagrange Point, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. 

You’ll recall the flaws with the Hubble Space Telescope’s optics were able to be fixed by adding corrective mirrors during a visit by astronauts on the Space Shuttle. Not so for the new telescope – with the L2 Lagrange point being well outside the reach of any manned missions with our current technology.

We can only hope that the project is a success, but of course, its success will be due to the countless hours that scientists and engineers have dedicated to the project over the previous decades, and will continue to do so for its projected 10 year lifespan.

The new telescope’s mirror is 3.5 times the size of Hubble’s, allowing us to see further back in time, possibly to within 100 million years after the Big Bang, back to the formation of the first stars. It should allow us to see how the first stars and galaxies formed. (Of course, 100 million years is still an unfathomably long time!) It may also reveal details as to why there are supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies.

The telescope will also be more sensitive than Hubble in the infrared wavelengths, allowing us to see more detail.

As well as peering back in time closer to the beginning of the universe, the telescope will allow imaging of exoplanets, including spectrographic analysis of their atmospheres (if they have them). This is really exciting stuff as it potentially allows chemical signatures of life to be remotely detected – at least what we think might be signs that life might exist.

And, they’re planning on pointing the telescope at Titan – one of Saturn’s moons. That could reveal some exciting new knowledge.

Alas, we’ve got about 6 – 7 months to wait until the first images are released – but wow, what a time to be alive – I’m excited to learn about all the discoveries that are going to be made!

Vaccination stats

I think we have cause to celebrate. Despite not knowing what 2022 will bring, Aotearoa/New Zealand has a pretty high rate of vaccination – with over 91% of the eligible population having received two doses, though with Maori still under 80%. 

Boosters are on the horizon for many (I’ll be getting mine mid-January), and I’m thankful that 5 – 12 year olds will be able to get vaccinated too. 

It’s unfortunate that the perception of the vaccine is that you get it and then you’re protected for the rest of your life. Alas, this isn’t the reality. It does seem likely that relatively frequent boosters will be required, at least with the current technology. We are used to having a yearly vaccine against Influenza, and being required to get a Tetanus booster, so why not against Covid-19 as well. 

Omicron at this stage seems to be less virulent than Delta, though more contagious. Who knows what the next variant will deliver. 

The fact remains that the best defence against getting sick is to get vaccinated and encourage others to do so too. 

Anti-vaxxers have largely lost their battle. It does seem that most of the population have been skeptical of their claims – and that is cause for celebration.

Why are you a skeptic, Barry Lennox?

Continuing on from Mark’s item last week, long-time skeptic and former committee member Barry Lennox gives us his views…

Why did I become a skeptic?  Well, the first stirrings occurred at about 6 or 7. We lived in a small town in Central Otago, and a popular local man was electrocuted. Next day at school, our teacher exhorted us to never ever touch a bare power wire. Just then, I happened to see outside the window, some birds sitting on the power lines. So “Please Miss, the birds are sitting on the line, they look OK”  After some hemming and hawing, we were told “Err, Ahh, that’s because they have special feet”  Well my knowledge of electricity was almost zero then, but somehow, I had a small sense of sensing BS. Later that day I asked my father who gave me the correct version. Moral, be sceptical of school teachers!

Then a few years later we had moved to a farm in North Otago, and Sunday School was compulsory for me (Thanks, Mum) One day our teacher solemnly advised us that God is like electricity, you can’t see it, you can’t feel it, but it’s there.  My BS detector dinged. I could see electricity, at least lightning; OK, not really the same but near enough for me. I could certainly feel it as many electric fence shocks taught me. We had a lot of these as most of our stock was pigs, and electric fences are the only fence a pig will respect.  I also had a bit of knowledge, as I was starting to mess about with crystal sets, and even had a “Hikers One” radio underway. Anybody remember it?

(I found a picture of the Hiker One – Craig)

Several months later I was reading a long article about a series of catastrophic airline crashes, mainly the DH Comet but others too. What struck me was people who missed a flight for various reasons were quick to proclaim “God was looking after me” This was puzzling and a few weeks later I had the cheek to ask the Sunday School teacher.. “Why did God only save 1 person and let the other 150-200 die?”  The tense reply was “God works in mysterious ways” in a tone that implied I should never display such skepticism again.

What started the more aggressive skeptic phase was working with a chap (a semi-conspiracy theorist and an NRA member) about 30 years ago, who had this habit of appearing each water-cooler break with another “Wow, didja hear this amazing story” There were many; here’s one sample.  It was the old tale about the charred remains of a scuba diver found in a tree after a forest fire. Check it out… 

Almost every day, this went on and on and on, until a few of us got a little tetchy with him. Not for us the kind empathetic understanding their worldview stuff. Nevertheless it took some weeks to get it knocked off. About then a couple of us cooked up our own fake “didja hear this amazing story” and propagated it to him and around the traps, Sadly it was never popular enough to make it into Snopes!

These days, it’s the psychics, homeopaths and all the other alt-med peddlers, antivaxx ravers, the scammers and others that arouse my ire.  When I become President for life, there will be a new Act that puts woo peddlers who take money off desperate terminally ill people, into the most hellish prison imaginable!

However a friend of ours was taken in by a very cunning banking scam and lost a lot of money. There were a few ignored warning signs, but at the time she had a lot going on in her life, and the scammers had impeccable English (operating ex Sydney) and a great cover story.  One of the more disturbing aspects was the lack of interest by the NZ Police, whereas the Australian Federal Police helped a lot and were instrumental in recovering some of the money.

Be careful and skeptical out there. My creed is…. Nice Story, now show me the evidence! And, “What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence” 

Thanks Barry. If you’d like to contribute your story, please email [email protected] 

So, that’s it for the newsletter this week. 

By the way, NZ Skeptics held a successful AGM a couple of weeks ago, with a good turnout of members in addition to the committee. We’ve got some interesting developments planned for the newsletter in the year ahead which will hopefully expand its reach. Watch this space!

Why I am a Skeptic

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 [email protected]. For now, here’s my story of how I came to skepticism, and why I’m involved with the NZ Skeptics:

I grew up as a fairly inquisitive kid, and liked to challenge those who tried to push religion on us impressionable kids – the church leaders who came in to talk at school assemblies, adults who ran the local youth group, etc. After a weird period in my teens and twenties when I became a Christian, I returned to my atheist roots with a vengeance, upset with myself that I’d let myself be fooled into believing such nonsense.

From atheism, it was a short hop to what I consider the wider field of skepticism. Not only were gods nonsense, but so were psychics, acupuncturists and UFO hunters. The more I read, the more I realised that there are a lot of people out there who, whether they are misguided or malicious, are selling people a lie. From a $50 Reiki session to a $5,000 speaker cable, unscrupulous sellers everywhere were, and are, using lies and falsehoods to make a quick buck.

After a few years of consuming skeptical content online, I decided I wanted to do something practical, something of use. So I went along to my local Skeptics in the Pub to see what other skeptics were up to. It was refreshing to meet a group of people who had the same worldview as I had. Although the regulars at the Wellington Skeptics in the Pub came from a wide range of backgrounds and professions, and were/are a weird and wonderful group, we all had the same respect for evidence and critical thinking – and that made it feel like I belonged. Since joining Skeptics in the Pub I’ve also joined the NZ Skeptics and helped form the Society for Science Based Heatlhcare, and I’ve tried to help make a difference where I can.

I think the reason I’m a skeptic is because I see all the scammers and the con artists out there, the preachers and the conspiracy theorists, the naturopaths and the vaccine deniers, and I want to do something about it. I want to help to stop these people from making people’s lives worse, and I think this can be done by shining a light on their bullshit, warning others about how ineffective, costly and sometimes dangerous their nonsense can be, and reporting them to the relevant authorities or professional bodies when they’re behaving in an unethical manner. Working with others in the skeptical community has been a good way to tackle those who try to take advantage of others.

Mark Honeychurch

Black Oxygen Organics – a new panacea

Black Oxygen Organics is a recent craze in alternative medicine. Many people swear by it, saying that it can treat all sorts of conditions – from heart issues and ADHD to COVID and cancer.

But what is it, who’s behind it, and does it work? Well, it turns out the answers to the first two questions will help us to figure out the third one.

The Black Oxygen Organics website (now archived) calls their product “A gift from the ground” and says:

“Fulvic acid is the end product and smallest particle of the decomposition of ancient, organic matter. Organic matter is just a fancy way of saying peat bog. When extracted, purified and delivered in a liquid supplement form, it carries all the nutritional information, anti-oxidant capacity and genetic coding of everything in that decomposed matter.”

So, basically this product is dirt. It’s fairly interesting dirt, as it’s being dug up from the bottom of a peat bog, and has been sitting there for thousands of years breaking down into chemicals such as fulvic acid, but it’s still dirt – and as such this is a very complex mix of chemicals, bacteria and all sorts of stuff. And people are meant to mix it with water and then spread it on their skin, bathe their children in it, and even drink it.

Of course, with something sciencey sounding like fulvic acid, there are going to be unscrupulous people who claim it has healing powers. And the internet is awash with companies selling fulvic acid tonics, drops, pills, powders and lotions. Even in NZ we have companies selling this cure-all and making claims about its amazing abilities.

Black Oxygen Organics, though, has been doing it differently. The company has been advertising their miracle mud through Instagram and Tik Tok, using the hashtag #BOO and harnessing the power of media influencers who are compensated for getting new customers to sign up to buy the dirt, through a Multi Level Marketing scheme – and at $110 for a small bag of dirt. And when it comes to this social media advertising, medical claims are being made by “independent agents” of this MLM, so you end up with an ever escalating list of fantastical claims being made – and an inability for the authorities to police the problem as it’s so widespread. And that’s how the company can get away with making claims of being able to treat autism, cancer and COVID – because technically the company itself isn’t making the claims, their “agents” are.

So, who’s behind this product? Marc Saint-Onge is the creator of Black Oxygen Organics, and it turns out that this isn’t his first time selling peat bog to unsuspecting customers:

Marc’s been in trouble in his native Canada since the 80s, when he was fined for practising medicine without a licence. As we just heard, Marc used to run a company called Golden Moor. That’s just one of several companies he’s created over the years since he was first in trouble – he’s also run Anti-Rheuma Bath and NuWTR. He also mentioned that he learned orthotherapy, a massage technique that claims to be able to treat medical conditions, and elsewhere he’s claimed hat he’s a naturopath, reiki master, herbalist and aromatherapist – all classic red flags, as these are all well known to be disproven alternative therapies.

So the claims are hard to believe, and the man has a history of selling mud and getting in trouble for it. But what about the evidence? Of course, there is none – or at least there’s no good quality evidence. That’s par for the course with alternative medicine. But there’s now so many bad claims on the internet that the website WebMD warns:

“People use fulvic acid for conditions such as allergies, eczema (atopic dermatitis), cancer, Alzheimer disease, and others, but there is no good scientific evidence to support these uses.”

Beyond the baseless medical claims, in the US testing has been done on the Black Oxygen Organics product, showing that it has elevated levels of lead and arsenic. So this product is not only useless, it’s potentially dangerous. And this is pretty ironic, given that one of the claims made about the product is that it works as a heavy metal detox.

Marc’s LinkedIn page has been deleted, and his company has recently closed down, as has happened with Marc’s previous mud selling companies. Health Canada has been proactive in making this happen, including forcing a recall of their products and putting out an announcement that said things plainly:

“Stop taking these products”

But it looks like there’s a pattern here, though, and Marc will likely be back soon with another company selling his mud to unsuspecting consumers. Now, though, it seems like he’s learned the power of social media, and the ability of Multi Level Marketing schemes to hook people in, and so I suspect his next venture, if he doesn’t end up behind bars, will make him a lot of money again.

The Tiger King Psychic

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.

Season 2 of the show is now out, and I’ve been watching it recently. Given that Joe Exotic ended up in jail at the end of season 1, season two aims its focus elsewhere – concentrating on the disappearance of Carole Baskin’s husband Don Lewis, over 20 years ago.

In the middle of the season, Don’s now middle-aged children are shown trying to find out what happened to their father, employing a gimmicky lawyer and a conspiracy minded internet sleuth to help them. But one person in particular caught my eye – Troy Griffin, a psychic:

His title is a mouthful – “Christian Clairvoyant Empathic Psychic Medium”. Troy apparently uses remote viewing, and for murders can use this “skill” to find locations of interest.

From what I’ve found online, Troy claims that he works for police departments, charging up to $250 an hour. He told ABC news, who interviewed him as part of a story of a missing pregnant woman, that his success rate is around 20% (which is interestingly a lot more humble than many psychic detectives), but when pressed by ABC to give one example that they could look into, he couldn’t even manage to name one. The news company contacted the police about the pregnant woman case, to hear from them about Troy’s claims of being involved in the investigation, but the police said they had had “no official contact” with him and were unaware that he was involved at all.

In front of the cameras for season 2 of the Tiger King, Troy went looking for the place where Don was supposedly killed. When he finds what he thinks is the location, he talks of feeling “bad juju” and then he starts retching and becomes visibly upset – so much so, that the daughter of the deceased man has to comfort him.

To me, this is the absolute pits. I’ve always liked using the term grief vampire to refer to psychics, but to pretend that you’ve psychically connected to a traumatic event, and then play-act that you are affected by this trauma to the extent that a grieving family has to comfort you, is taking it to another level. This man had the nerve to appear on camera feeding on the emotions of a missing, possibly murdered, man’s children, getting them to give him attention and sympathy for his fake emotional state. Ugh.
 

Brian Tamaki is God

A couple of weeks ago I attended an online sermon from Destiny Church with a few friends. The sermon started off fairly tame, with Brian joking about viewers eating popcorn – so I went and grabbed a bag of popcorn for us to eat while we watched. I figured it was the least a group of heathens could do.

Brian continued a series of sermons he’s been giving for a few weeks now, about Revelation and the End of Days. Hilariously, when I checked the previous week’s sermon on YouTube this morning it came up with exactly 666 views:
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaq2IKPjy0g

Brian’s been telling his congregation that the end is nigh, but not too nigh. In fact, he made the claim that the end could come now, but he’s asked God to hold off – apparently Brian wants to have some “fun” before the end comes, so he’s applied for a time-out.

Brian spent some time talking about money, and how it is an idol that people worship – as he broadcast from his multi-million dollar mansion. He said that he is immune to the dangers of money, because he has money but money doesn’t have him. He went on to talk about other idols that people have, and said that the Sky Tower in Auckland is another idol – apparently it’s shaped like a vaccine needle, and we’re all worshipping this idol at the moment, rather than God. Brian’s message was very anti-vaccine, but at no point did he mention whether he has been vaccinated himself – I have my suspicions that he probably has been.

Eventually Brian, who has given himself promotions from Pastor to Bishop to Apostle, went one further. He talked about how one of the issues with the modern church is that, for all the good work they may do, nobody is willing to take the bold step of proclaiming that they are God – that God is a part of them. And of course Brian spelled out that he considers himself to be one with God – that, in part, he is God.

As a small mercy, viewership of the live stream never even reached 100 people, so it wasn’t a great turnout – although maybe many of these viewers were entire families and possibly some people decided to watch the stream later on rather than streaming it live. But I hold out hope that, when given the choice to not watch Brian Tamaki spread his nonsense without them being spotted, many of his congregation just decided they’d rather have an extra couple of hours in bed!

Sneaky Scientology

Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital made the news last week, with an 89 year old man being charged for his part in the abuse of children who were under the hospital’s care in the 1970s. Dr Selwyn Leeks, who was the lead psychiatrist at the centre, has been charged with “wilful ill treatment of a child”, but due to his ill health will not be prosecuted.

The media were obviously working hard to report on this news, and had been looking for experts to give them some informed opinions. Sadly for 3 News, they ended up being tricked into believing that the Citizens Commission for Human Rights (CCHR) is a legitimate, reputable organisation. In reality it’s a front organisation setup by Scientology, as a way to promote one of the many strange ideas that founder L. Ron Hubbard had – the idea that psychiatry is evil. The organisation’s website doesn’t even exist – there’s just a parking page:
 

L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology (an abusive group that deceivingly calls itself a religion) had mental health problems through most of his life, and was apparently dependent on psychiatric drugs. Possibly because of this dependence, he declared that psychiatry is all just a big lie, and that it is an “industry of death”. They even run a museum in Hollywood called “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death”. This is yet another of Hubbard’s weird ideas that Scientologists today are expected to continue with. As an illustration of just how oppressive Hubbard’s ideas are to Scientologists, I’ve heard that there’s a rule which means that Scientologists can only clean windows with vinegar and newspaper – because, according to L. Ron Hubbard, that’s all you should ever need for the job. I’ve taken some Scientology courses online, and they’re all about imparting Hubbard’s “wisdom” to followers – discredited ideas about how the mind works, how to learn properly, how to avoid trauma, and so on.

3 News ended up interviewing Mike Ferris, a well known Scientologist in New Zealand, last week – treating him like an expert. This isn’t overly surprising as it appears that Mike, and the CCHR, have also conned the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care into thinking that they are a legitimate organisation. Mike gave evidence to the commission in June this year.

In reality the Citizens Commission on Human Rights is just a mouthpiece for the ideological ideas of L. Ron Hubbard, a man who created a dangerous cult and hated psychiatry. It’s worrying to see victims, officials and the media all being hoodwinked by Scientology. These people are not involved because they want to help the victims, they just have an axe to grind – and, in fact, Scientology has mentally and physically mistreated, and continues to mistreat, thousands of its members every day.
 

Why I am a Skeptic

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 [email protected]. For now, here’s my story of how I came to skepticism, and why I’m involved with the NZ Skeptics:

I grew up as a fairly inquisitive kid, and liked to challenge those who tried to push religion on us impressionable kids – the church leaders who came in to talk at school assemblies, adults who ran the local youth group, etc. After a weird period in my teens and twenties when I became a Christian, I returned to my atheist roots with a vengeance, upset with myself that I’d let myself be fooled into believing such nonsense.

From atheism, it was a short hop to what I consider the wider field of skepticism. Not only were gods nonsense, but so were psychics, acupuncturists and UFO hunters. The more I read, the more I realised that there are a lot of people out there who, whether they are misguided or malicious, are selling people a lie. From a $50 Reiki session to a $5,000 speaker cable, unscrupulous sellers everywhere were, and are, using lies and falsehoods to make a quick buck.

After a few years of consuming skeptical content online, I decided I wanted to do something practical, something of use. So I went along to my local Skeptics in the Pub to see what other skeptics were up to. It was refreshing to meet a group of people who had the same worldview as I had. Although the regulars at the Wellington Skeptics in the Pub came from a wide range of backgrounds and professions, and were/are a weird and wonderful group, we all had the same respect for evidence and critical thinking – and that made it feel like I belonged. Since joining Skeptics in the Pub I’ve also joined the NZ Skeptics and helped form the Society for Science Based Heatlhcare, and I’ve tried to help make a difference where I can.

I think the reason I’m a skeptic is because I see all the scammers and the con artists out there, the preachers and the conspiracy theorists, the naturopaths and the vaccine deniers, and I want to do something about it. I want to help to stop these people from making people’s lives worse, and I think this can be done by shining a light on their bullshit, warning others about how ineffective, costly and sometimes dangerous their nonsense can be, and reporting them to the relevant authorities or professional bodies when they’re behaving in an unethical manner. Working with others in the skeptical community has been a good way to tackle those who try to take advantage of others.

Mark Honeychurch

Black Oxygen Organics – a new panacea

Black Oxygen Organics is a recent craze in alternative medicine. Many people swear by it, saying that it can treat all sorts of conditions – from heart issues and ADHD to COVID and cancer.

But what is it, who’s behind it, and does it work? Well, it turns out the answers to the first two questions will help us to figure out the third one.

The Black Oxygen Organics website (now archived) calls their product “A gift from the ground” and says:

“Fulvic acid is the end product and smallest particle of the decomposition of ancient, organic matter. Organic matter is just a fancy way of saying peat bog. When extracted, purified and delivered in a liquid supplement form, it carries all the nutritional information, anti-oxidant capacity and genetic coding of everything in that decomposed matter.”

So, basically this product is dirt. It’s fairly interesting dirt, as it’s being dug up from the bottom of a peat bog, and has been sitting there for thousands of years breaking down into chemicals such as fulvic acid, but it’s still dirt – and as such this is a very complex mix of chemicals, bacteria and all sorts of stuff. And people are meant to mix it with water and then spread it on their skin, bathe their children in it, and even drink it.

Of course, with something sciencey sounding like fulvic acid, there are going to be unscrupulous people who claim it has healing powers. And the internet is awash with companies selling fulvic acid tonics, drops, pills, powders and lotions. Even in NZ we have companies selling this cure-all and making claims about its amazing abilities.

Black Oxygen Organics, though, has been doing it differently. The company has been advertising their miracle mud through Instagram and Tik Tok, using the hashtag #BOO and harnessing the power of media influencers who are compensated for getting new customers to sign up to buy the dirt, through a Multi Level Marketing scheme – and at $110 for a small bag of dirt. And when it comes to this social media advertising, medical claims are being made by “independent agents” of this MLM, so you end up with an ever escalating list of fantastical claims being made – and an inability for the authorities to police the problem as it’s so widespread. And that’s how the company can get away with making claims of being able to treat autism, cancer and COVID – because technically the company itself isn’t making the claims, their “agents” are.

So, who’s behind this product? Marc Saint-Onge is the creator of Black Oxygen Organics, and it turns out that this isn’t his first time selling peat bog to unsuspecting customers:

Marc’s been in trouble in his native Canada since the 80s, when he was fined for practising medicine without a licence. As we just heard, Marc used to run a company called Golden Moor. That’s just one of several companies he’s created over the years since he was first in trouble – he’s also run Anti-Rheuma Bath and NuWTR. He also mentioned that he learned orthotherapy, a massage technique that claims to be able to treat medical conditions, and elsewhere he’s claimed hat he’s a naturopath, reiki master, herbalist and aromatherapist – all classic red flags, as these are all well known to be disproven alternative therapies.

So the claims are hard to believe, and the man has a history of selling mud and getting in trouble for it. But what about the evidence? Of course, there is none – or at least there’s no good quality evidence. That’s par for the course with alternative medicine. But there’s now so many bad claims on the internet that the website WebMD warns:

“People use fulvic acid for conditions such as allergies, eczema (atopic dermatitis), cancer, Alzheimer disease, and others, but there is no good scientific evidence to support these uses.”

Beyond the baseless medical claims, in the US testing has been done on the Black Oxygen Organics product, showing that it has elevated levels of lead and arsenic. So this product is not only useless, it’s potentially dangerous. And this is pretty ironic, given that one of the claims made about the product is that it works as a heavy metal detox.

Marc’s LinkedIn page has been deleted, and his company has recently closed down, as has happened with Marc’s previous mud selling companies. Health Canada has been proactive in making this happen, including forcing a recall of their products and putting out an announcement that said things plainly:

“Stop taking these products”

But it looks like there’s a pattern here, though, and Marc will likely be back soon with another company selling his mud to unsuspecting consumers. Now, though, it seems like he’s learned the power of social media, and the ability of Multi Level Marketing schemes to hook people in, and so I suspect his next venture, if he doesn’t end up behind bars, will make him a lot of money again.

The Tiger King Psychic

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.

Season 2 of the show is now out, and I’ve been watching it recently. Given that Joe Exotic ended up in jail at the end of season 1, season two aims its focus elsewhere – concentrating on the disappearance of Carole Baskin’s husband Don Lewis, over 20 years ago.

In the middle of the season, Don’s now middle-aged children are shown trying to find out what happened to their father, employing a gimmicky lawyer and a conspiracy minded internet sleuth to help them. But one person in particular caught my eye – Troy Griffin, a psychic:

His title is a mouthful – “Christian Clairvoyant Empathic Psychic Medium”. Troy apparently uses remote viewing, and for murders can use this “skill” to find locations of interest.

From what I’ve found online, Troy claims that he works for police departments, charging up to $250 an hour. He told ABC news, who interviewed him as part of a story of a missing pregnant woman, that his success rate is around 20% (which is interestingly a lot more humble than many psychic detectives), but when pressed by ABC to give one example that they could look into, he couldn’t even manage to name one. The news company contacted the police about the pregnant woman case, to hear from them about Troy’s claims of being involved in the investigation, but the police said they had had “no official contact” with him and were unaware that he was involved at all.

In front of the cameras for season 2 of the Tiger King, Troy went looking for the place where Don was supposedly killed. When he finds what he thinks is the location, he talks of feeling “bad juju” and then he starts retching and becomes visibly upset – so much so, that the daughter of the deceased man has to comfort him.

To me, this is the absolute pits. I’ve always liked using the term grief vampire to refer to psychics, but to pretend that you’ve psychically connected to a traumatic event, and then play-act that you are affected by this trauma to the extent that a grieving family has to comfort you, is taking it to another level. This man had the nerve to appear on camera feeding on the emotions of a missing, possibly murdered, man’s children, getting them to give him attention and sympathy for his fake emotional state. Ugh.
 

Brian Tamaki is God

A couple of weeks ago I attended an online sermon from Destiny Church with a few friends. The sermon started off fairly tame, with Brian joking about viewers eating popcorn – so I went and grabbed a bag of popcorn for us to eat while we watched. I figured it was the least a group of heathens could do.

Brian continued a series of sermons he’s been giving for a few weeks now, about Revelation and the End of Days. Hilariously, when I checked the previous week’s sermon on YouTube this morning it came up with exactly 666 views:
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaq2IKPjy0g

Brian’s been telling his congregation that the end is nigh, but not too nigh. In fact, he made the claim that the end could come now, but he’s asked God to hold off – apparently Brian wants to have some “fun” before the end comes, so he’s applied for a time-out.

Brian spent some time talking about money, and how it is an idol that people worship – as he broadcast from his multi-million dollar mansion. He said that he is immune to the dangers of money, because he has money but money doesn’t have him. He went on to talk about other idols that people have, and said that the Sky Tower in Auckland is another idol – apparently it’s shaped like a vaccine needle, and we’re all worshipping this idol at the moment, rather than God. Brian’s message was very anti-vaccine, but at no point did he mention whether he has been vaccinated himself – I have my suspicions that he probably has been.

Eventually Brian, who has given himself promotions from Pastor to Bishop to Apostle, went one further. He talked about how one of the issues with the modern church is that, for all the good work they may do, nobody is willing to take the bold step of proclaiming that they are God – that God is a part of them. And of course Brian spelled out that he considers himself to be one with God – that, in part, he is God.

As a small mercy, viewership of the live stream never even reached 100 people, so it wasn’t a great turnout – although maybe many of these viewers were entire families and possibly some people decided to watch the stream later on rather than streaming it live. But I hold out hope that, when given the choice to not watch Brian Tamaki spread his nonsense without them being spotted, many of his congregation just decided they’d rather have an extra couple of hours in bed!

Sneaky Scientology

Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital made the news last week, with an 89 year old man being charged for his part in the abuse of children who were under the hospital’s care in the 1970s. Dr Selwyn Leeks, who was the lead psychiatrist at the centre, has been charged with “wilful ill treatment of a child”, but due to his ill health will not be prosecuted.

The media were obviously working hard to report on this news, and had been looking for experts to give them some informed opinions. Sadly for 3 News, they ended up being tricked into believing that the Citizens Commission for Human Rights (CCHR) is a legitimate, reputable organisation. In reality it’s a front organisation setup by Scientology, as a way to promote one of the many strange ideas that founder L. Ron Hubbard had – the idea that psychiatry is evil. The organisation’s website doesn’t even exist – there’s just a parking page:
 

L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology (an abusive group that deceivingly calls itself a religion) had mental health problems through most of his life, and was apparently dependent on psychiatric drugs. Possibly because of this dependence, he declared that psychiatry is all just a big lie, and that it is an “industry of death”. They even run a museum in Hollywood called “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death”. This is yet another of Hubbard’s weird ideas that Scientologists today are expected to continue with. As an illustration of just how oppressive Hubbard’s ideas are to Scientologists, I’ve heard that there’s a rule which means that Scientologists can only clean windows with vinegar and newspaper – because, according to L. Ron Hubbard, that’s all you should ever need for the job. I’ve taken some Scientology courses online, and they’re all about imparting Hubbard’s “wisdom” to followers – discredited ideas about how the mind works, how to learn properly, how to avoid trauma, and so on.

3 News ended up interviewing Mike Ferris, a well known Scientologist in New Zealand, last week – treating him like an expert. This isn’t overly surprising as it appears that Mike, and the CCHR, have also conned the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care into thinking that they are a legitimate organisation. Mike gave evidence to the commission in June this year.

In reality the Citizens Commission on Human Rights is just a mouthpiece for the ideological ideas of L. Ron Hubbard, a man who created a dangerous cult and hated psychiatry. It’s worrying to see victims, officials and the media all being hoodwinked by Scientology. These people are not involved because they want to help the victims, they just have an axe to grind – and, in fact, Scientology has mentally and physically mistreated, and continues to mistreat, thousands of its members every day.
 

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

This week I look at the Australian Skeptics psychic survey, some more COVID-related stuff, UFOs, and I talk about my introduction to skepticism (and you can too).

Craig Shearer

Psychic survey

Our recent Skepticon saw Richard Saunders, from the Australian Skeptics, present the results of The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project. 

Over the past 12 years, the Australian Skeptics recorded and documented psychic predictions covering the 21 year period of 2000 – 2020. They then analysed the predictions of accuracy. This was an impressive effort. It meant recording predictions made by psychics in a variety of media – such as magazines, TV, newspapers, websites and YouTube. 

The methodology needed to be carefully devised as it’s difficult to describe exactly what constitutes a successful prediction. I can predict, with 100% accuracy, that the sun will rise tomorrow but that doesn’t make me psychic!

There was a ton of work in doing this. The size of the database was impressive, with around 3,800 predictions collected over the 21 year period. Each prediction was then analysed to determine what the result was. 

“This was done with each prediction being discussed and online searches used to discover the result. At times this was a quick task with the answer found easily as either a predicted event happened, or it did not. At other times it took great effort and much searching to discover the answer. Stock market charts, interest rates over the years, housing markets, exchange rates and so on all took a great deal of time to research. Even the plight of any particular sporting team took time and effort to research. If the conclusion was debated, the author made the final call. Many of these uncertain predictions ended up being catalogued as “Too Vague”.”

Summarising their findings:

• Only 11% of predictions are “correct”. 

• The profession’s journal, the International Psychics Directory, has only 8.5% correct.

• Most predictions were too vague, expected, or simply wrong.

• Most of what happens is not predicted, and most of what is predicted does not happen.

While it may sound impressive that psychics actually got some claims right, it generally comes down to chance. For example, a psychic may predict that a particular political party would win an election. That they were correct in their prediction doesn’t mean they were able to see the event in advance – just that they guessed an outcome and wrote it down.

Many psychics are prolific. If you make a lot of predictions, and they’re vague enough, by chance some of them are going to turn out to be correct.

Then there are those predictions that are expected, such as the deaths of elderly prominent people, such as celebrities, politicians or royals.

Finally, it’s fairly obvious that psychics can’t really predict the future as none of them have predicted major recent events such as the advent of COVID-19 (despite claims that Sylvia Browne did so in a book written just after the SARS outbreak – checked by Snopes).

You can read the article describing the project in detail in the Australian Skeptics magazine.

The Girouard Sting

No doubt this week you will have seen the “sting” executed by Paddy Gower from Newshub. 

If you haven’t, Newshub journalist Paddy Gower organised an undercover investigation which revealed an American doctor who runs a weight loss clinic with her husband (also American) is handing out medical certificates as exemptions to the COVID vaccine.

The two doctors run The Girouard Centre, based in Kaiapoi, just north of Christchurch. You might want to look at their website, but it’s now essentially shut down (being a password protected Wordpress login). Of course, the Wayback Machine allows us to see previous snapshots of the site and go exploring. 

It would seem that the Girouards have run weight-loss clinics in the US, and that these are still in operation. 

The key points from the investigation are that the doctor – Dr Jonie Girouard – is a GP registered with the New Zealand Medical Council. They are investigating her, but she’s also being investigated by the NZ Police. There are number of relevant points here – they’re running a business where they’re actively encouraging people to remove their masks in an enclosed space. They’re both unvaccinated, so shouldn’t be operating their business and exposing people to risk. Then there’s the potentially fraudulent aspects of charging to provide a certificate they know will be virtually useless, to providing a very dubious “medical examination” in the form of a blood pressure test.

While the string centered on Dr Jonie Girouard, one would probably rightly assume that her husband is on board with her approach. It appears that he has participated in anti-vax messaging here in NZ. While he’s not registered with the Medical Council so can’t legally practise medicine in NZ, he still gives advice on weight loss at their clinic, and is reportedly unvaccinated also. 

They’ll likely get shut down, and I hope that they actually suffer some consequences from the irresponsible actions they’ve taken. (And deporting them back to the US would be a good move too!)

The multi-vax man

It has emerged that there’s a man who’s been showing up to receive the COVID vaccine on behalf of other people (for which he’s being paid), having up to 10 vaccinations in a single day.

Obviously the effects of this haven’t been studied, as it’s outside the bounds of what would actually be given in a standard vaccination dose. 

This does boggle my mind though. What does it say about people willing to pay somebody else to take a vaccine for them, that they believe is harmful? Or is it only harmful to them? What does it say about the anti-vaxxers who say that the vaccine has terrible and risky side effects? I don’t think I’ll ever understand how these people work.

On a more serious note, it is a difficult problem to solve. On the one hand, it seems it would be a good idea to require photo ID when getting the vaccine. But, as we know, this puts barriers up, and for particular populations (such as Maori and Pasifika) having to produce photo ID can be problematic. Not everybody has a driver’s licence and many won’t have a passport.

The vast majority of those currently eligible to receive the vaccine (over 12s) have had it, with almost 95% having had their first dose. Those remaining are in populations where hesitancy is rife, or vaccinations are difficult to access, but also the staunch anti-vaxxers, who may well be subject to vaccine mandates, requiring them to be vaccinated to remain in their job.

Part of me finds it difficult to have much sympathy for anti-vaxxers, but I then realise that most of them are likely to have been subjected to misinformation and aren’t the evil characters that some would make them out to be.

UFOs and the Pentagon

NZ Skeptics occasionally received email asking about skeptical topics:

English and grammar issues aside, our correspondent is asking what we think about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the new term for UFOs and flying saucers).

What triggered this query was likely the recent announcement of a new intelligence group at the Pentagon. Back in June the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report which analysed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). 

In the July report, they categorised the phenomena into five categories:

• Airborne clutter (birds, balloons, recreational drones, plastic bags)

• Natural atmospheric phenomena (such as ice crystals, moisture and thermal fluctuations)

• Industry or other government programmes

• Foreign adversary systems

• Other.

The “other” category is where they place everything they can’t identify, and where the uncertainty lives. The report states:

“And a Handful of UAP Appear to Demonstrate Advanced Technology”

“Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”

What they don’t do is claim there’s any evidence of extraterrestrial life visiting us. 

By Touch Of Light – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Last month it was announced that the Pentagon will track unexplained airborne objects through a new intelligence group.

So they’re going to provide better systems for reporting such incidents. This is a good thing. What we typically see is that when unexplained phenomena are better studied, better explanations emerge. And often, such explanations involve natural phenomena that have been mistaken for artificial objects – for example, bugs close to a lens being interpreted as distant objects moving very quickly, or commercial aircraft (as was the case with the triangular “UFOs” we’ve previously reported).. 

What we’re unlikely to see is that these explanations will uncover that aliens are visiting us. I, for one, would love that to be the case. The chance to see, study, and possibly communicate with beings from elsewhere in the universe would be fascinating. But the vast distances involved, and the well-established limit the speed of light puts on travel make it extremely unlikely.

So, sorry, but while UFOs might be fun to think about, the recent developments at the Pentagon don’t change our stance that ET visiting us is unlikely. Show us some good quality evidence!

WAYAS – Why are you a skeptic?

We love getting feedback on the newsletter, and hearing others’ perspectives. And, we think that others would like this too.

We’re starting a new section in our newsletter which shines a spotlight on people in our local skeptical community. With that in mind, we invite short contributions from readers telling us why you’re a skeptic, what you’re skeptical of, what ideas you have for activism. Anything like that.

If you want, we can keep you anonymous, or if you’re happy to be identified, we can use your name, and a profile picture if you’d like to submit one.

You can send us your contribution to [email protected] 

So – I’ll start – my name’s Craig Shearer, and I’m a skeptic. 😀

I think I’ve always been naturally sceptical, and had an interest in science from my earliest years. I was taken to church by my parents, but recall usually expressing doubts about its veracity. I guess I had atheist leanings from my teenage years. But I went along, as most people did in the 1970s and 80s. 

My introduction to organised skepticism occurred back in about 1993 when I was teaching software development at Manawatu Polytechnic. A fellow lecturer, a seemingly smart guy, was a fundamentalist Christian who was a firm believer in Young Earth Creationism. 

He and I had quite a few discussions about the evidence for evolution. The internet was in its infancy at the time, so finding resources was quite a bit more difficult. By the mid 90s I was participating in discussions in skeptic forums, and encountering the likes of Michael Shermer (who, it now seems, is a quite unpleasant character).

One Christmas, my wife gave me a 1st generation iPod, and I downloaded some skeptical podcasts – and I was hooked. Skepticality, Skeptoid, and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe were great listening pleasure for me. I became more active when I attended a Skeptics in the Pub in Auckland back in about 2009, and then formally joined NZ Skeptics. 

I think skepticism has been a big part of my life. I see a lot of value in being able to support your beliefs with evidence. It’s a shame so few  people do though!

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

This week I look at the Australian Skeptics psychic survey, some more COVID-related stuff, UFOs, and I talk about my introduction to skepticism (and you can too).

Craig Shearer

Psychic survey

Our recent Skepticon saw Richard Saunders, from the Australian Skeptics, present the results of The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project. 

Over the past 12 years, the Australian Skeptics recorded and documented psychic predictions covering the 21 year period of 2000 – 2020. They then analysed the predictions of accuracy. This was an impressive effort. It meant recording predictions made by psychics in a variety of media – such as magazines, TV, newspapers, websites and YouTube. 

The methodology needed to be carefully devised as it’s difficult to describe exactly what constitutes a successful prediction. I can predict, with 100% accuracy, that the sun will rise tomorrow but that doesn’t make me psychic!

There was a ton of work in doing this. The size of the database was impressive, with around 3,800 predictions collected over the 21 year period. Each prediction was then analysed to determine what the result was. 

“This was done with each prediction being discussed and online searches used to discover the result. At times this was a quick task with the answer found easily as either a predicted event happened, or it did not. At other times it took great effort and much searching to discover the answer. Stock market charts, interest rates over the years, housing markets, exchange rates and so on all took a great deal of time to research. Even the plight of any particular sporting team took time and effort to research. If the conclusion was debated, the author made the final call. Many of these uncertain predictions ended up being catalogued as “Too Vague”.”

Summarising their findings:

• Only 11% of predictions are “correct”. 

• The profession’s journal, the International Psychics Directory, has only 8.5% correct.

• Most predictions were too vague, expected, or simply wrong.

• Most of what happens is not predicted, and most of what is predicted does not happen.

While it may sound impressive that psychics actually got some claims right, it generally comes down to chance. For example, a psychic may predict that a particular political party would win an election. That they were correct in their prediction doesn’t mean they were able to see the event in advance – just that they guessed an outcome and wrote it down.

Many psychics are prolific. If you make a lot of predictions, and they’re vague enough, by chance some of them are going to turn out to be correct.

Then there are those predictions that are expected, such as the deaths of elderly prominent people, such as celebrities, politicians or royals.

Finally, it’s fairly obvious that psychics can’t really predict the future as none of them have predicted major recent events such as the advent of COVID-19 (despite claims that Sylvia Browne did so in a book written just after the SARS outbreak – checked by Snopes).

You can read the article describing the project in detail in the Australian Skeptics magazine.

The Girouard Sting

No doubt this week you will have seen the “sting” executed by Paddy Gower from Newshub. 

If you haven’t, Newshub journalist Paddy Gower organised an undercover investigation which revealed an American doctor who runs a weight loss clinic with her husband (also American) is handing out medical certificates as exemptions to the COVID vaccine.

The two doctors run The Girouard Centre, based in Kaiapoi, just north of Christchurch. You might want to look at their website, but it’s now essentially shut down (being a password protected Wordpress login). Of course, the Wayback Machine allows us to see previous snapshots of the site and go exploring. 

It would seem that the Girouards have run weight-loss clinics in the US, and that these are still in operation. 

The key points from the investigation are that the doctor – Dr Jonie Girouard – is a GP registered with the New Zealand Medical Council. They are investigating her, but she’s also being investigated by the NZ Police. There are number of relevant points here – they’re running a business where they’re actively encouraging people to remove their masks in an enclosed space. They’re both unvaccinated, so shouldn’t be operating their business and exposing people to risk. Then there’s the potentially fraudulent aspects of charging to provide a certificate they know will be virtually useless, to providing a very dubious “medical examination” in the form of a blood pressure test.

While the string centered on Dr Jonie Girouard, one would probably rightly assume that her husband is on board with her approach. It appears that he has participated in anti-vax messaging here in NZ. While he’s not registered with the Medical Council so can’t legally practise medicine in NZ, he still gives advice on weight loss at their clinic, and is reportedly unvaccinated also. 

They’ll likely get shut down, and I hope that they actually suffer some consequences from the irresponsible actions they’ve taken. (And deporting them back to the US would be a good move too!)

The multi-vax man

It has emerged that there’s a man who’s been showing up to receive the COVID vaccine on behalf of other people (for which he’s being paid), having up to 10 vaccinations in a single day.

Obviously the effects of this haven’t been studied, as it’s outside the bounds of what would actually be given in a standard vaccination dose. 

This does boggle my mind though. What does it say about people willing to pay somebody else to take a vaccine for them, that they believe is harmful? Or is it only harmful to them? What does it say about the anti-vaxxers who say that the vaccine has terrible and risky side effects? I don’t think I’ll ever understand how these people work.

On a more serious note, it is a difficult problem to solve. On the one hand, it seems it would be a good idea to require photo ID when getting the vaccine. But, as we know, this puts barriers up, and for particular populations (such as Maori and Pasifika) having to produce photo ID can be problematic. Not everybody has a driver’s licence and many won’t have a passport.

The vast majority of those currently eligible to receive the vaccine (over 12s) have had it, with almost 95% having had their first dose. Those remaining are in populations where hesitancy is rife, or vaccinations are difficult to access, but also the staunch anti-vaxxers, who may well be subject to vaccine mandates, requiring them to be vaccinated to remain in their job.

Part of me finds it difficult to have much sympathy for anti-vaxxers, but I then realise that most of them are likely to have been subjected to misinformation and aren’t the evil characters that some would make them out to be.

UFOs and the Pentagon

NZ Skeptics occasionally received email asking about skeptical topics:

English and grammar issues aside, our correspondent is asking what we think about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the new term for UFOs and flying saucers).

What triggered this query was likely the recent announcement of a new intelligence group at the Pentagon. Back in June the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report which analysed Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). 

In the July report, they categorised the phenomena into five categories:

• Airborne clutter (birds, balloons, recreational drones, plastic bags)

• Natural atmospheric phenomena (such as ice crystals, moisture and thermal fluctuations)

• Industry or other government programmes

• Foreign adversary systems

• Other.

The “other” category is where they place everything they can’t identify, and where the uncertainty lives. The report states:

“And a Handful of UAP Appear to Demonstrate Advanced Technology”

“Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.”

What they don’t do is claim there’s any evidence of extraterrestrial life visiting us. 

By Touch Of Light – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Last month it was announced that the Pentagon will track unexplained airborne objects through a new intelligence group.

So they’re going to provide better systems for reporting such incidents. This is a good thing. What we typically see is that when unexplained phenomena are better studied, better explanations emerge. And often, such explanations involve natural phenomena that have been mistaken for artificial objects – for example, bugs close to a lens being interpreted as distant objects moving very quickly, or commercial aircraft (as was the case with the triangular “UFOs” we’ve previously reported).. 

What we’re unlikely to see is that these explanations will uncover that aliens are visiting us. I, for one, would love that to be the case. The chance to see, study, and possibly communicate with beings from elsewhere in the universe would be fascinating. But the vast distances involved, and the well-established limit the speed of light puts on travel make it extremely unlikely.

So, sorry, but while UFOs might be fun to think about, the recent developments at the Pentagon don’t change our stance that ET visiting us is unlikely. Show us some good quality evidence!

WAYAS – Why are you a skeptic?

We love getting feedback on the newsletter, and hearing others’ perspectives. And, we think that others would like this too.

We’re starting a new section in our newsletter which shines a spotlight on people in our local skeptical community. With that in mind, we invite short contributions from readers telling us why you’re a skeptic, what you’re skeptical of, what ideas you have for activism. Anything like that.

If you want, we can keep you anonymous, or if you’re happy to be identified, we can use your name, and a profile picture if you’d like to submit one.

You can send us your contribution to [email protected] 

So – I’ll start – my name’s Craig Shearer, and I’m a skeptic. 😀

I think I’ve always been naturally sceptical, and had an interest in science from my earliest years. I was taken to church by my parents, but recall usually expressing doubts about its veracity. I guess I had atheist leanings from my teenage years. But I went along, as most people did in the 1970s and 80s. 

My introduction to organised skepticism occurred back in about 1993 when I was teaching software development at Manawatu Polytechnic. A fellow lecturer, a seemingly smart guy, was a fundamentalist Christian who was a firm believer in Young Earth Creationism. 

He and I had quite a few discussions about the evidence for evolution. The internet was in its infancy at the time, so finding resources was quite a bit more difficult. By the mid 90s I was participating in discussions in skeptic forums, and encountering the likes of Michael Shermer (who, it now seems, is a quite unpleasant character).

One Christmas, my wife gave me a 1st generation iPod, and I downloaded some skeptical podcasts – and I was hooked. Skepticality, Skeptoid, and the Skeptics Guide to the Universe were great listening pleasure for me. I became more active when I attended a Skeptics in the Pub in Auckland back in about 2009, and then formally joined NZ Skeptics. 

I think skepticism has been a big part of my life. I see a lot of value in being able to support your beliefs with evidence. It’s a shame so few  people do though!

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.

Mark Honeychurch
 

Is Celine Dion suffering from vaccine injury?

I was talking to a friend last weekend who works as a tradesman. He asked me, as a skeptic, what I thought of the coronavirus vaccine – did I think it was dangerous? And was COVID real? He’s pretty sure the scientists aren’t lying to him, but he’s talked with a lot of colleagues who aren’t so sure. Most of my friends are fairly skeptical, and a lot of the time I breathe the rarefied air of skepticism, so it was interesting to hear a perspective that I don’t really come in contact with in my daily life – a friend who’s intelligent, but has heard enough misinformation from the anti-vaccine crowd that he’s becoming a little unsure.

After our conversation, the next morning, he forwarded me a copy of a screenshot he’d been sent – a news story saying that Celine Dion has had to postpone a tour because she has been suffering from muscle spasms – and that the COVID vaccine is the reason for her horrible symptoms.
 

He asked me if I could find anything to prove this statement wrong, so of course I immediately started googling.

The first thing I found was several articles about Celine Dion cancelling a residency in Las Vegas because of health issues – specifically muscle spasms. None of the articles talked about the cause of her problems, but it turns out that at least half of this story is true. So, what about the other half? Was the vaccine the cause? I found a few fact checking sites which debunked this specific rumour, dating back to October, but the articles didn’t have any proof that this wasn’t a case of vaccine injury.

But does it matter that I couldn’t find any kind of statement from Celine Dion refuting the claim that she’s been damaged by the vaccine? No, it doesn’t.

There’s an important skeptical mantra to remember here, about the onus of proof. If someone’s making a claim without any evidence, it’s not up to you to prove them wrong – the onus of proof is on them, as the person making the claim; they need to provide evidence to back up what they’re saying. This has been described eloquently by the late Christopher Hitchens, and is known as Hitchens’ Razor:

“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”

Having said that we don’t need to prove the rumour false, we can still look at its plausibility:

Firstly, the fact that no reputable news source has reported this is telling. Instead, this vaccine injury claim has been solely spreading through social media.

The message my friend received came from an anonymous Twitter account called “Christ is our King”. Looking at the account, it was only created in April this year, and is supposedly run by a “Traditional Catholic, Husband & Father” in Phoenix, Arizona – although a lot of the content posted by the account is about Australia. The account shares other unverified stories of vaccine injury, as well as a lot of conspiracy ideas (like that COVID is engineered by China to kill Christians), and frequently compares people to Nazis.

Out of interest, here is a word cloud of common words used by the account:
 

And here’s their Twitter posting by hour – and, interestingly, this matches the Phoenix time zone well (7am to midnight). I was expecting to see a timeline that more closely matched somewhere in Australia:
 

Next, as Celine Dion is in her 50s and currently lives in Nevada, she is likely to have been vaccinated early on in the year. Vaccine injuries usually happen immediately after the injection – not months later. 

The symptoms also don’t fit what we’d expect from vaccine injury – injuries are usually expected to be an allergic reaction, which the CDC says would likely include “rapid heartbeat, difficulty breathing, swelling of the throat, or a generalized rash or hives”.

Finally, Celine Dion’s sister talked with ABC news about the issue. She talks about the cause of the muscle spasms being a sloping stage, and doesn’t mention the COVID vaccine at all.

So, although I can’t prove that this is not a case of vaccine injury, it’s certainly looking like a pretty implausible claim. Plus I can rest easy knowing that it’s not up to me to prove the rumour wrong, it’s up to those who created the rumour to prove that it’s true.

Tin Foil Treatments

I was sent a funny article the other day about the benefits of aluminium foil on a website called Tips and Tricks. The website appears to be a prolific source of clickbait – articles with catchy titles that are designed to suck you in and get you to click the link to read more. This is because the company wants to take you away from social media sites and onto their website, to show you adverts and make money from them.

The article had some health tips that involved using tin foil to help with colds, joint pain and fatigue. Now, sadly, I wasn’t suffering from any of these ailments last night, but my wife walked the Tongariro Crossing last weekend and since then she’s had a sore knee and has been feeling tired. So I managed to convince her to help me out, and test these medical life hacks.

For her fatigue, the site says to:

“put a few sheets of aluminum foil in the freezer for two to four hours. Then put the sheets on your face… We haven’t tried this ourselves yet, but we hear from many people that it really works! So, definitely worth trying.”

So, I folded a large piece of foil a few times and placed it in the freezer yesterday in preparation.

For the knee pain, the site said:

“Wrapping your joints in a sheet of aluminum foil can also help against pain. You can use a bandage to keep the foil in its place properly. Wrap the foil around the painful joint before you go to bed and keep it in place during the night.”

The third tip was about wrapping your feet in foil if you have a cold, but sadly my wife doesn’t have a cold. I am, however, committed to trying this myself the next time I have the sniffles. Apparently it can take a couple of days for the treatment to make a “difference”, which is not really saying much – especially as our bodies usually only take a few days to fight off a cold.

When my (long-suffering) wife went to bed, she wrapped her knee in foil and placed the cold foil on her head. I continued browsing the Tips and Tricks website, and found an article about how to help with Restless Leg Syndrome. Wouldn’t you know it, my wife also suffers from RLS! So, following the site’s advice, I very quietly snuck into the bathroom, unwrapped a bar of soap, tiptoed into the bedroom and slipped it quietly under her side of the mattress.

In the morning, my wife said that her knee was not really much different – apparently it’s hard to sleep with foil wrapped around your knee, so she removed it at some point. But she did have a horrible headache – so the foil on the head had backfired.

As for the restless leg – from what I could tell, and from what she could remember, she didn’t have any issues at all last night. Success! … however, when I double-checked the instructions, I noticed that it said to put a bar of lavender soap between the sheets at the foot of the bed. I’d put a bar of aloe vera soap under the mattress in the middle of the bed. So maybe I’ve found a new cure? Or maybe my wife’s RLS is worse some days than others, and a single night’s secret test is not a good way to test claims!

I found a lot of other silly health “advice” on the website, such as:

“If you pee in the shower often, you’ll immediately feel as if you need to pee every time you hear running water… On top of that, peeing in the shower on a daily basis can lead to nerve damage. There’s a chance that this will result in a lowered continence.”

Pickle juice is cheaper and healthier than a sugary drink, and can help with weight loss, hangovers and muscle spasms.

When you poop, it should be as long as your forearm and you should only ever need to wipe once.

In fact, if you follow the positive advice on this site, your diet will consist of the daily consumption of pickles, pears, garlic, bananas, beer, coffee, kiwi fruit, lemon, ginger and vinegar.

Although those examples are pretty silly, some of the other health pages are concerning – such as one which “helps” people to self-diagnose stomach cancer via symptoms such as dizziness, fatigue, low appetite and nausea. And another for lymph node cancer, with symptoms including itching, fever and fatigue. And there are many, many other pages listing these kinds of symptoms for ovarian cancer, endometriosis, menopause, Parkinsons, COVID, appendicitis, pregnancy and more. These pages all list such generic symptoms that the articles are likely to cause unwarranted worry for some people. I think doctors are overloaded enough at the moment without having to deal with people self-diagnosing from using Dr Google.
 

The sad death of Rex Warwood

Rex Warwood sadly died late last week. He was a long time reporter, and later editor, for the Franklin County News, and was apparently well liked. However in recent years he appears to have succumbed to conspiratorial thinking, and he became a vocal critic of vaccination against COVID, saying things online such as:

“Vaccinations have got nothing to do with health. They have been part of a global plan to depopulate the planet, only that won’t become evident for a little while. “

“Vaccines are a bio weapon and it will be left to “the few” – the un-vaccinated – to save it from extinction”

Rex even appears to have fallen for a Jacinda Ardern cryptocurrency scam I wrote about a couple of weeks ago – a Facebook advert sharing a video which talks about Jacinda investing $25 million in a cryptocurrency that everyone should invest in. When I say that he fell for the scheme, Rex didn’t invest in it – but he did believe it was real, and thought that Jacinda must be corrupt for having earned $25 million during her time as Prime Minister that she could afford to invest in a cryptocurrency scheme. He said:

“This person has been reported as being worth $25 million after being in a job for three years that pays around $450,000 per year… What a coincidence she is now going on advertisements promoting a new “secret” method of earning fabulous money… Time to open the books on all of these politicians who are spending billions on COVID”

It was quite surprising to hear that Rex had died in Auckland’s North Shore hospital from COVID – a tragic irony that is being repeated all too often around the world at the moment. In fact, there are a couple of sites that document deaths of anti-vaxxers from COVID.

One is the Herman Cain Award sub-reddit – a part of the reddit website where people post stories of those who have died of COVID after calling the virus a hoax or similar. The board is named after an American politician, and 2012 Republican presidential candidate, who was famously skeptical about the use of face masks and caught COVID after attending a Trump rally:

The site describes the Herman Cain award nominees:

“Nominees have made public declaration of their anti-mask, anti-vax, or Covid-hoax views, followed by admission to hospital for Covid. The Award is granted upon the nominee’s release from their Earthly shackles.”

The other site is called Sorry Anti-Vaxxer, and it serves a similar purpose. There’s a disclaimer on its front page which says:

“The purpose of this site is educational, except for a few exceptions, everyone listed on this site was/is an anti-vaxxer activist who helped spread COVID-19 misinformation on social media. Share to stop others from making the same mistake. GET VACCINATED!”

However, despite these lofty aims, I’ve found the tone of both of these websites to be concerning. There’s almost a glee to some of the stories of people dying of COVID. I’m not sure if it would even be possible to make an educational site about COVID deniers dying of the disease that was not offensive, but these two sites have most definitely not managed that.

It’s likely we’ll see more COVID deaths in this country, and the stats we already have show that these deaths will disproportionately be among those who are unvaccinated. I hope we can all be kind, and not gloat about this slowly unfolding, and largely avoidable, tragedy.
 

 

Real and imagined issues with fireworks

Bronwyn Rideout

The 96-hour fireworks industry is both a source of joy and dread for New Zealanders nationwide. Fireworks can only be sold privately in this country between November 2nd and November 5th, and while this period is an ideal lead-in to Guy Fawkes Night, those of us living near pyrotechnic enthusiasts know all too well that amateur backyard displays will be a feature of our lives until late into the summer.

However, the sounds and sights of fireworks throughout the late-spring and early-summer may be a thing of the past. First, opinions about Guy Fawkes Night are changing. In New Zealand, town and city councils are directing their focus (and funds) towards Matariki (which is held in July), while celebrations in the United Kingdom are declining in many localities due to the rising popularity of Halloween, and controversies that surround questionable effigy choices (such as this story about an effigy made of the Grenfell Towers).

Secondly, the ongoing pandemic has had a contradictory impact on supply and availability of fireworks worldwide. Two years of lockdowns and missed celebrations are the perfect tinder for those who want to blow-off steam and blow-up things. While this increase in demand should signify a hefty pay-day, reduced transport capability and capacity has pushed shipping prices to a premium, with one purveyor of fine pyrotechnics stating that his shipping costs alone have increased by $20,000 – before increases in product costs are included; Stuff shared Bad Boy Fireworks owner James York’s claim that several small seller had approached him to buy-out their supplies. For communities that were keen to push forward with their own displays, attendance was limited by alert levels, while attempts to get fireworks out of Auckland were hampered.

Compounding this supply and demand issue is a third element: opinions about fireworks are simply changing. The Countdown supermarket chain stopped selling fireworks in 2019 while The Warehouses stopped in 2021, both as a result of consumer surveys. Customers of The Warehouse preferred public displays, while more than 25% were claimed to have stated that they did not participate in fireworks at all. Participants of the Countdown survey found that 66% of customers rarely or never bought fireworks. Even though they still enjoyed special occasions like Diwali, Chinese New year, Matariki, and Guy Fawkes, the inclusion of fireworks was not seen as necessary (the number of respondents in either survey has not been shared).

Chief rationale in both surveys were concerns for animal welfare, environmental impact, and neighbourhood disruption. Even if you are not on social media, talk around the water cooler or between Zoom meetings might be punctuated with tales of missing pets and broken sleep in the days after Guy Fawkes.  If you are on social media you may have seen memes/(dis)infographics like the following:

The claims made on this particular image appear reasonable, as it confirms some behaviours that one may have observed personally, especially with regards to domestic pets. However, it still trends to the alarmist, as some of the claims here either misrepresent the complexity of human and animal behaviour or are not evidence-based.

Bees:  There is no evidence to back up this specific claim, while anecdotes from beekeepers claim that bees are not bothered by fireworks. In fact, your porch light is more dangerous than fireworks, as bees are phototactic and will fly around artificial lights all night until they die. Such behaviours have been used by environment groups in Australia to protest against mining development near established apiaries. Predators or infestations by ants or mites are the most common causes of bee abscondment. Strong smells, frequent disruption of hives by beekeepers, and poor environmental conditions such as humidity, also contribute to population depletion.

Birds: This claim is true, but oversimplifies the issue. The mass death of 4,000 to 5,000 black birds in Arkansas on New Year’s in 2011, and hundreds of starlings, also on New Year’s, in Rome in 2021, were due to fireworks and firecrackers being set off illegally in areas where large populations of birds were roosting for the evening. Aside from egregious human error, the timing and location of these incidents were significant contributors, as birds roost together in larger numbers in the northern hemisphere winter than they do in the summer. Furthermore, professional fireworks are detonated in areas that are intended to cause the least disturbance to wildlife, whereas in the case of Rome, firecrackers were set off in the immediate vicinity of birds roosting in the trees that lined an urban neighbourhood.

Thunderstorms are not a comparable event, as birds have higher sensitivity to the changes in humidity, temperature, aid pressure, and sound that precede bad weather, and are able to behave accordingly.

Nest abandonment/abandonment of young: A 2008 study conducted in the town of Gualala, California demonstrated that seabirds did abandon their nests when fireworks were set off near the nesting sites. However, evidence that this applies to wild animals is sparse, although the claims are repeated on animal shelter and animal rights websites. Researchers attribute this to the difficulty of monitoring animal behaviour at night, when fireworks are normally displayed.

Pollution: Pollution is a legitimate concern and problem surrounding fireworks. Modern day fireworks are constructed from non-biodegradable plastic, and debris has been found in the digestive systems of various animals. Smoke also adds to air pollution.

PTSD:  A Saskatoon city councillor Pat Lorje came under fire in 2016 for making the following tweet:

”I hope someone warned the Syrian refugees that the booms, bangs & other noise wasn’t from weapons,”

Following up with:

“Amazed that so many people do not know of connection between PTSD of war victims & soldiers, and fireworks which often triggers anxiety”

While the councillor came under fire for her generalisations of refugees, they weren’t completely incorrect. They may, however, have been a little behind the ball so to speak, as a local group that supports refugees and immigrants actively informs its members of upcoming fireworks shows, an action which has been effective for refugee groups overseas. Shawn Gourley, who co-founded the group “Military with PTSD”, has been quoted multiple times saying that it isn’t planned fireworks that are triggering, but rather unexpected fireworks and explosions that are the real problem.

However, this wouldn’t be a skeptical article without considering if there is a scam or questionable practice behind the scenes.

And is there ever!

This meme is courtesy of “The Forever Dog”, a book and website which champions pseudoscience and keto diets as a means to elongate the life of your best four-legged friend. A full take down of this book and its writers, Dr. Karen Becker (Integrative Pet care expert at Mercola.com) and Rodney Habib ( a ‘social media influencer’), was written on the anonymous blog Skeptvet. Skeptvet’s entire blog is worth the read if you are interested in how alternative medicine is pervasive in veterinary science.

The meme above does have a couple of valid points, but the rest are easily resolved when we can finally forgo the homespun fireworks in favour of displays that are considerately timed, organised, and curated to benefit the local wildlife and vulnerable members of the community.