Chair-entity’’s Report 2002

The year got off to a good start with a series of successful meetings run by our Auckland colleagues in conjunction with the Rationalists, and I thank those involved for their efforts. I’d also like to thank Claire le Couteur and others who, in conjunction with Philip Catton of the Canterbury Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, organised a local Darwin Day celebration at short notice. That was on February 12, and was our first participation in an international effort which should see us mark the occasion each year, culminating in 2009 with the 150th celebration of the publication of Origin of Species.

I have become the convenor of the International Representatives for the Darwin Day Project, based in the US, which is looking to encourage celebrations around the globe. A number of local Skeptics have contributed to the first Darwin Day book, to be published next month – in company with the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Stephen Pinker.

In June, I was fortunate enough to attended the 4th World Skeptics Conference and be firmly convinced, once again, that the level of quality and humour of our own conferences rank among the best in the world. One contentious debate at the WorldCon was whether religious, economic and political criticism should be a part of the skeptical purview. As a consequence, we surveyed our members to assess whether this view was supported here. It seems fairly clear that you support the distinction between those claims which are scientifically testable and those which are not, though the actual topical focus has changed over time.

We’ve produced a new edition of the membership form. These can be passed on to people who may be interested in the cause, put on file with the local library and so forth.

We’ve also started production of a series of informative brochures which will be available for general distribution in both print and online form. So far, these have included flyers on acupuncture, astrology, creation science, UFOs and others. I’d like to acknowledge the valuable assistance of Laurie Eddie of the South Australian Skeptics who has provided text files of the brochures which they produced, and which sparked our activity.

The minutes of the last AGM covered plans we had for the website, almost all of which have been put into place. These include:

  • the email alert service, which has attracted the interest of non-members
  • a members’ only section to provides access to the Video Library and the Book Library; we received an early book donation from member Al Dennard and hope to encourage more
  • extended information on the Bent Spoon and Bravo Awards, and other resource information

A proposal to run a teacher-oriented competition to encourage critical thinking and develop useful teaching resources is one that was sparked by Alastair Brickell shortly before this conference, and we look forward to it helping to raise the profile of the society. We’ll also be working on boosting the media image of the Skeptics, in response to comments from the survey. I expect 2003 to be another busy but productive year.

Chair-entity’s Report 2001

Not a Bad Start to the Millennium

I’m pleased to welcome you officially to the 21st century, which I suspect will need Skeptics every bit as much as the last century, judging by the general level of activity over the past year.

Last November, I was delighted to be able to attend the World Convention of card-carrying Skeptics held in Sydney. I came away thinking we could produce just as illuminating and charming a bunch of speakers, so don’t be surprised if a couple of years from now you hear recommendations that we bid for a World Con in New Zealand.

Early in January we got a week’s notice to submit nominations for the Minister of Health’s Advisory Committee on Complementary and Alternative Medicines. Six months later we heard that yours truly hadn’t made it, and neither had nominations from a whole host of medical bodies of one form or another. The Committee is very strongly biased in favour of CAM practitioners and we await their first pronouncements with interest and — perhaps justifiably — a certain degree of apprehension. However, we do look forward to working with the group established by Dr Graham Sharpe which is to focus on the role of such therapies.

The website development approved in principle by last year’s AGM progressed with a hiss and a roar, and we now have a home at http://skeptics.org.nz. It’s proven very useful for me, as I can immediately access the vast bulk of material we’ve produced in the past decade or so, so I can have everything at my fingertips when I get rung up by journalists looking for information on the Kaimanawa Wall or whatever.

The website has also proven its utility with the conference in providing access to the registration form and programme for those electronically inclined. It also means you are now only a click away from a membership form when you’re talking to someone who really should join… I have some ideas for increasing the site’s usefulness still further which we’ll discuss later, such as information on the video library, dead tree library and a possible news alert service.

Contacts with the media have continued throughout the year, with the New Zealand Herald going so far as to track me down in Timaru Hospital for a comment on aromatherapy. We’ve worked with other organisations – providing the Royal Astronomical Society with ammunition showing the Moon landing wasn’t a hoax (they suspected as much), finding anthropological experts able to counter the notion of visiting Numidians in ancient Aotearoa, setting the legal wolves of Warner Brothers and some other large corporations onto a scam infringing their trademarks, and sharing information and ideas with the skeptical community overseas.

As always, your committee has been active in their ideas, suggestions and help, and I thank them and all those involved in the conference organisation for helping make our candle shine in the dark.

Best regards,

Vicki Hyde

Chair-entity, NZCSICOP Inc. 2001 Chair

A Year Of Mussels & Chardonnay

Vicki Hyde presents the year 2000 chair-entity’s Report

I’m pleased that we all appear to have survived the Millennium melt-down and will have to wait another thousand years for the sky to fall in. Apart from the pre-millennial party at the beginning of the year, the past 12 months have seen “business as usual” on the skeptical front.

Alternative treatments continue to get highly positive and highly uninformed media coverage. The Minister of Health has announced a study into alternative treatments and their efficacy. As more and more of these enter the public health system, apparently in response to public demand, I urge you to make your public voice heard. Please write to the minister or your local MP expressing your concerns.

At least one can see a ray of light in the prosecution of the company touting Lyprinol mussel extract as a cancer cure; though one has to note that they were fined $5000 and reports had sales of $1.2 million in the first few frenzied days of product release. Of course had TVNZ had a journalist with science training on the job, it would have been a non-starter and certainly wouldn’t have got the extended lead story coverage it did get.

It’s not just TVNZ though. TV3 had the documentary Gabrielle’s Choice, regarding a woman’s decision to try the alternative route in treating a suspected cancer. It came to the appalling conclusion that, having made the choice to undergo 17 weeks of Rife radio frequency treatment, oxygen therapy, multi-vitamin and herbal dosages etc, the reason these things didn’t work in reducing the lump was because Gabrielle didn’t believe hard enough. It was all her fault.

Fault-finding is an interesting past-time, if somewhat arbitrary. I see that the religious Samoan family who took their 14-year-old out of cancer treatment are now on trial for his manslaughter. No tear-jerking coverage on Holmes for them.

Our criticism of the Wellington’s healing touch “therapy” hit a raw nerve with Holmes. His outburst about the Skeptics being a bunch of “white-skinned, chardonnay-sipping elitists who should crawl back to the Arts Centre and get a life” was shortly followed by the announcement that he was taking extended leave to undergo conventional treatment for his own cancer. It should be noted ratings rose 10% in his absence.

We didn’t get asked back on to Holmes to examine our track record in the psychic-skeptic predictions made at the beginning of 1999. Regarding those, I take full responsibility for the All Blacks’ loss to France in the World Cup semi-finals, as I obviously jinxed the team. It would have been nice to know if the psychics had come up with an equally stunning prediction.

The primer continues to provide a useful teaching tool, and I have hopes for two more projects I would like to ask your support for. One is a small resource for libraries to encourage them to think about their book collection and cataloguing. Do they really need 174 books on astrology? That’s grown out of a presentation I made to the librarians at Canterbury Library, one of whom came up with the rather innovative idea of cataloguing the books under “fiction, non-fiction and crap”.

The other project is for you to consider a Web-based database of the NZ Skeptic, so we can all easily find material that has been published over the past 10 years and have fast reference to discussions of all the topics that come up time and time again. It would certainly make my life easier, and I suspect would be a very useful resource for all of us.

Your chair-entity,
Vicki Hyde

And Now to Financial Matters…

Ian Short provides a few comments on the Treasurer’s Report presented to the 2000 AGM.

The figures presented here have been rounded out to the nearest $100 dollars to make them more user friendly and represent the balance as at 31 December 2000.

The situation was that we had $4200 in our cheque account,and $27,000 in our term deposit. and we had income over expenditure of $220.

Our income of $12,000 came mainly from: Membership subscriptions $9,600, Sales $500, and Profit on conference 1999 $1,600.

Most of our payments related to costs involved in the Skeptic newsletter production. $10,200.

This means that our finances are in a very satisfactory shape. We are working within our income but using just about all of it on Skeptic business. The term deposit means that we have some money available to help with extra opportunities as they occur, e.g. a possible visit by James Randi.

Ian Short, Treasurer.

Accounts for Year Ended 31 December 1997

Income and Expenditure

Income
Members’ Subscriptions 8,558.38
Interest Received 1,837.64
Surplus from Conference 2,144.77
Net Sundry Sales 187.00
Miscellaneous 231.73
Total Income 12,959.52
Expenditure
NZ Skeptic production & distribution 6,968.55
Computing, membership list 618.75
Miscellaneous printing 213.08
Clerical, secretarial 304.67
Donation, Ian Plimer Defence Fund 1,000.00
Fees 50.00
Total Expenditure 9,155.05
Excess Income over Expenditure 3,804.47

Balance Sheet as at 31 December 1997

Members Funds 1/1/97 23,642.53 Bank Account 1,447.00
Income over expenditure 3,804.47 Term Deposits 26,000.00
27,447.00 27,447.00

Auditor’s Report

I have audited the financial statements of the Committee for the year ended 31 December 1997 in accordance with accepted auditing standards, and have carried out such procedures as I have considered necessary.

In common with other organisations of a similar nature, control over income prior to it being recorded is limited, and there are no practical audit procedures to determine the effect of this limited control.

Subject to the above, in my opinion the financial statements give a true and fair view of the Committee’s financial position as at December 31 1997 and the results of its activities for the year ended at that date.

F.G. Shaw, ACA (Retd)
27 February 1998
Christchurch

Chair-entity’s Report 1997

I think the world got a pretty big warning this year as to the dangers of pseudo-science and gullibility when the 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed suicide in the belief that they were to be resurrected in some fashion on board a UFO following the Hale-Bopp Comet. It’s not that we like to say “I told you so”, but….

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Chair-entity’s Report 1995

As delivered to the 1995 AGM

I’m pleased to report that after 10 years of waiting with bated breath, the New Zealand Skeptics now has its very own leaflet-cum-application form for handing out to the uninitiated. We’ve bemoaned the lack of these for some time — particularly those of us doing public presentations where we’ve often been asked for further information, contact details and the like. It should make it considerably easier for prospective Skeptics to find out about us and join the ranks. Bernard Howard, our ever-faithful Secretary, tells me that he has been getting in application forms from the new material, and we anticipate seeing lots more.

The Skeptics provide speakers for a wide variety of groups. Denis spoke to a rural group in the hinterlands of the deep dark south, and we gained a number of new members down there. I’ve spoken to a diverse range of groups, as far afield as Mount Somers (to the Highway 72 group — a collection of rural women, not a motorcycle gang, I hasten to add). Interestingly, one of the most challenging and perspicacious groups I was fortunate to address was the senior class of St Andrews College — maybe there is hope for the future from the children of today.

During the year Owen McShane in Auckland has been discussing skeptical issues and science on 95bFM, and of course we have the Auckland conference organised by Heather Mackay and Peter Lange, so we hope to see a bit more skepticism in our nation’s hotbed of vice and culture (ahem). The Wellington Skeptics have been busy organising a winter lecture series concerning skeptical issues, and I commend Tony Vignaux, Mike Dickison, Cynthia Shakespeare and their helpers for doing so.

We were fortunate enough this year to be visited by Dr Susan Blackmore, noted parapsychological researcher and Skeptic. Being on the Councils of both the Society for Psychical Research and CSICOP gives Susan a truly unique view of the paranormal. Susan spoke to a gathering in Wellington and to 250-odd in Christchurch, as well as giving interviews to National Radio, TVNZ’s Newsnight and The Press, and her fascinating and eminently rational research into near-death experiences and the like provided a great deal to think about.

(Incidentally, the Australian Skeptics very kindly provided us with Susan as an add-on to the Australian tour which they’d organised. Even more kindly, they did so gratis — of course, it hadn’t escaped our notice that they’d just been bequeathed A$1.2 million…)

The Skeptics’ bank account here, while in no measure comparable to that of our Australian counterparts, looks reasonably healthy according to the Treasurer’s report. We’d welcome suggestions of the sorts of activities or measures which members would like to see the Society undertake. Some possibilities are:

  • increasing the page count in the NZ Skeptic (currently at 20 pages)
  • providing information kits for schools on such subjects as evolution/creation “science” and UFOs (these subjects seem to come up regularly in school talks)
  • promoting a paranormal challenge with a prize (can be tricky to organise, but then “investigation” is in our formal name)

Obviously these (or others) could eat up our resources and it has been suggested that we fund raise to ensure that this does not happen. If anyone knows a skeptically minded elderly millionaire, please give his name and address to the Treasurer.

Thank you for coming to the conference and for staying for the AGM. Your continued support and skepticism is much appreciated.