There is no “face” on the Red Planet, according to pictures sent back from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. The BBC’s science correspondent says the news will dampen down the controversy that has raged since images were transmitted back to Earth in 1976 from the Viking spacecraft.
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An article by Gordon Hewitt in NZ Skeptic 47 states, “In June 1995…an article appeared in this publication saying counselling was no use. This judgement was based on a single study conducted in 1939.” This is not true, but as the author of the article I am obviously biased. May I urge all skeptics to read it for themselves?
Continue readingThe Strange Case of the Psychic Detectives
John Riddell contemplates how the newspapers would read if psychics really had the powers they claim
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“Real TV”?
Few would disagree these days that a great many programmes broadcast on television are pretty much rubbish, but never before have the New Zealand Skeptics felt obliged to bring a complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority. Until now….
Continue readingSkepsis
A ruse by any other name smells just as fishy, and it seems RSI, OOS and OOI are good examples, if a UK surgeon is to be believed. According to Murray Matthewson, the condition, whatever you choose to call it, is not what it’s cracked up to be.
Continue readingThe Home Schooler’s Guide To The Galaxy
IT’S a damned rotten trick, I know, but I rang up my mum and asked her a simple question, does the Earth go round the Sun, or is it the other way around? She wasn’t sure, but felt the most obvious, correct answer was that the Sun orbits the Earth.
Continue readingTouch Therapy Critic Hits Nerve
EMILY ROSA of Loveland, Colorado, designed and carried out an experiment two years ago that challenges a leading treatment in alternative medicine. Her study, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has thrown the field into tumult.
Continue readingPolitically Expedient Miracles
Jim Ring takes a look at canonisation and finds the lives of the saints less than miraculous.
Continue readingRisky Business
Chances are, you’re worried about all the wrong things.
Continue readingSo why are the Skeptics Giving Money to Convicted Child Abusers?
Chair-entity Vicki Hyde responds to a letter from a member who resigned from the society over the Skeptics’ donation to the Peter Ellis Defence Fund. We reprint her letter as a clear statement of the Society’s position on a controversial issue.
Continue readingCurly Water
Bernard Howard proposes an answer to a curly question.
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