This year has seen one of the most significant discoveries ever made — the announcement that there are solid indications of life having once existed on another planet. The implications for us all, whether scientific, philosophic or religious, are tremendous.
Continue readingA New Age Myth: the Kaimanawa Wall
In the 4 May 1996 issue of the NZ Listener, an article titled “Megalith Mystery: Are giant stones in the Kaimanawa Forest Park evidence of an ancient New Zealand culture?” (Chapple 1996:28-29) appeared. It centred on Barry Brailsford’s contention that the “Kaimanawa wall” was “the best (physical) evidence so far” of the pre-Maori “Waitaha nation” which he alleges flourished in New Zealand over 2,000 years ago. Shortly thereafter I was telephoned by Jim Mora of TV1 and asked to give a “traditional archaeological perspective” on the matter as part of an item on the Holmes Show arising from Brailsford’s contentions about the “wall”.
Continue readingThe Forest of Flying Sheep
It is rare that Nelson interests the world’s news media. The “sheep suspended from pine trees” story was sufficiently bizarre to get their attention.
For those who missed the story: Some people walking in a pine plantation forest near Wakefield discovered the decayed bodies of about eight or nine sheep on the ground with another five or so entangled in the trees up to ten metres from the ground. The legs of the animals were tied up with wire.
This story was widely publicised, and the local council received calls from all over the world. Although within New Zealand this was generally treated as just a funny story, those overseas quickly scented a UFO mystery and an American caller wanted to know if there were scorch marks on the ground. There were not and how any UFO could land in a pine forest defies imagination.
It was obvious that the animals must have been dropped from the air. In fact a spokesperson for the council suggested an explanation on Radio New Zealand when the story first broke. This turned out to be largely correct. A helicopter pilot gave a full explanation to the council within 24 hours.
The animals had died of sleepy sickness (a metabolic disorder associated with lambing). Number eight fencing wire was then threaded through their hocks and they were slung from a helicopter to be flown to where they could be buried. (Hygiene regulations demand they be buried or burned.) The wire broke while the helicopter was flying over the forest. The pilot searched the area from the air and on foot but could not find the corpses. It is assumed that all the animals were originally entangled in the trees but decomposition caused some of them to fall.
The pilot apparently cleared up the mess once he know where it was. No prosecution is likely although the law may not have been strictly obeyed. This case was clearly an accident.
It may surprise many to discover that there are several offences (such as pollution cases like this) where the police display no interest. It is up to other bodies to prosecute if they deem it necessary. They are generally more interested in getting the mess cleared up.
In spite of this I can imagine stories, some time in the future in te UFO literature, suggesting a legal “cover-up”. Perhaps we shall see on television the story of how Nelson was nearly invaded by woolly aliens. We can be pretty certain that the overseas media never carried the prosaic explanation of this story.
The Clairvoyant – The police don’t want to know
Back in March, when the police seemed to be making no progress in hunting down South Auckland’s serial rapist, a community newspaper ran a story effectively chiding the police in general and Detective Inspector John Manning in particular for taking no notice of the advice being given him by one of Auckland’s leading clairvoyants, Ms Margaret Birkin, who has her own programme on Radio Pacific.
Ms Birkin had received a letter from an “amateur” who claimed to know the name and address and other information which would identify the rapist and put the matter to rest. Inspector Manning said they knew the name and received scores of letters from clairvoyants claiming to be able to identify the criminal.
Ms Birkin complained in the story that despite the letter and two visits to the police station by Mrs Birkin’s husband they had still not responded. “They don’t want to know and people’s lives are at stake” she protested. “I know a lot about the rapist, but I would know a lot more if I could hold a piece of clothing.” The police insisted they had better things to do with their time.
Not to be deterred the reporter then printed six responses to a street “survey of locals” pointing out that “Clairvoyants are used frequently in the United States of America and Australia.” Five out of the six seemed to think it was a good idea. Two believed it depended on the quality of the clairvoyant. One claimed to “be a sort of clairvoyant” herself (just what sort she didn’t say). One said he didn’t believe in it but thought that in desperate times the police should try anything. Our single sceptical hero was Mr Len Hewgill of Manurewa who alone didn’t think it would help. “I like to be able to see things and touch things,” says Len, narrowly escaping a sexual harassment charge.
Skeptics may have noticed that when the police finally apprehended the serial rapist there was silence from the clairvoyant community. Certainly none rushed forward claiming “I was right, I told you so.” Your Editor was prepared to concede that this might have reflected uncharacteristic modesty on the part of the psychics and so he telephoned Detective Inspector Manning to see if any of them had been right all along.
He laughed.
How Bent is Bent?
For those of you who have not been involved in selection of a Bent Spoon, here’s how it is generally done and how this year’s selection was made. Throughout the year, people propose likely candidates — suggestions are passed on in the form of newspaper clippings, phone-calls, letters, email or, occasionally, videotape. Denis coordinates the discussion, which involves the Skeptic’s executive officers and often members of the committee and members with appropriate expertise.
One award is given each year, with the announcement made shortly before the conference (to help boost interest in the conference). This year, about half a dozen candidates were nominated, a fairly typical number. We don’t tend to bother with the truly ridiculous material that is a mainstay of certain tabloid publications, as (we hope) no-one really believes those things anyway. We also eliminate overseas material (usually TV “documentaries”) as the Bent Spoon is a New Zealand award.
The leading candidate for much of the year was AIT Press, for jeopardising their hard-won academic credibility with the publication of Suppressed Inventions and The Poisoning of New Zealand. The damaging and silly nature of these books had been well covered in Metro by Vincent Heeringa, for which he received one of our excellence awards. Three weeks before our conference, the Justice Department report Hitting Home was released. A journalist who phoned the Skeptics for comment first suggested that it receive the Bent Spoon. Denis and I studied it and discussed the issues it raised with others. Sociologist (and Skeptics member) Greg Newbold independently wrote about many of the concerns.
Ultimately Denis and I decided to give the Bent Spoon Award to Hitting Home for two reasons: (1) AIT Press had already been well and truly excoriated in the Metro article and we were already recognising this with the excellence award (2) the Hitting Home report had far greater potential for broad-ranging social effects were it to remain unchallenged.
At the AGM, the following motion was passed: “That a New Zealand Skeptics subcommittee examine the 1995 Bent Spoon Award to the Justice Department’s report on domestic violence and report back to the NZ Skeptics committee before the end of 1995.”
We urge members to read the report and make up their own minds — let us know what you think either privately or for the December issue of the Skeptic.
Vicki Hyde, Chair-entity
Roswell Autopsy
Post-mortem on the autopsy or autopsy on the post-mortem?
Post-mortem undoubtedly. There could hardly be a deader duck than the supposed Roswell autopsy film, whatever species of being or inanimate object we saw being carved up.
I will leave to others discussion of the murky provenance of this film, and the many anachronisms said to infect it. Instead, I offer some thoughts on biological aspects.
The cadaver pictured, if genuinely extra-terrestrial, represents perhaps the most important piece of biological material ever to come into human possession. To merely carry out the crude dissection shown would be only the tiniest beginning of any investigation which researchers of fifty years ago would have carried out. One might almost say that anatomists, histologists and biochemists, both then and now, would kill for the possession of a few grams of the “meat” on that slab.
By the late 1940s, the essential similarities of all terrestrial life-forms had been established — the aqueous environment necessary for cellular activity, the universal genetic code of nucleic acids, the cellular machinery of proteins built up from a few L-amino acids, the resemblances in energy metabolism, and many other features. Were the object the body of a genuine extra-terrestrial, I cannot conceive that the medical and scientific people involved in the autopsy would not have seized on this, the first opportunity in human history to investigate such a thing, and make a thorough microscopic, chemical and biochemical analysis of what they had in the hand. If the autopsy was genuine, where is all this information? Are we to believe that someone has been sitting on it for nearly fifty years, when publication, either official or by a “leak”, would yield instant fame and fortune?
Some knowledge of extra-terrestrial biology could be expected to confer an advantage on those holding it, by offering a different perspective on how we ourselves work. There appears no evidence of this in American research publications; scientists in the US, as everywhere else, are groping at the frontier between the known and the unknown, using only our knowledge of Earth-based biology.
Should mankind ever have the opportunity to investigate extra-terrestrial life-forms, scientists the world over would say with Wordsworth “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive …”. The prospect is vastly grander and more exciting than anything seen in the Roswell “autopsy”.
We Used to Call it Bedlam
Karekare beach is surrounded by high cliffs which shield my house from television transmissions so that I gain most of my media information from radio and print.
Hence it was some time before I saw Satanic Memories, the so-called documentary which won for TV3 the Skeptics’ Bent Spoon Award. I found this programme so difficult to watch that it took me two sittings — the combination of fury and embarrassment was just too much to bear.
The programme clearly deserved the Skeptics’ major award. It exemplified all those aspects of the pseudoscience of the “New Age” which we Skeptics find so disturbing, distasteful and eventually downright dangerous.
We saw the expert hypnotherapist plant in his subjects’ mind the responses which would confirm their satanic memories. For example, he hints that the young man’s feet appear to be giving pain and, sure enough, he dutifully remembers being slung over a waterfall by the ankles. If a hypnotist implies the presence of the devil himself the subject will see him.
The other gross oversight was the failure of the documentary team to look for any evidence in support of the extraordinary claims being made. We followed this family as they re-visited small towns in which they claimed that killing and eating babies, and throwing young people over waterfalls, was as routine as Friday night fish and chips. Surely there must have been records of these deaths and disappearances. Even the general public would surely have noticed something was amiss given that the inhabitants of small country towns don’t miss much. But our intrepid television team never bothered to call into the local police station or newspaper office to check to see if there were any records referring to these remarkable memories of things past.
We also had first-hand evidence of the total lack of professional ethics among so many members of this new cabal. I cannot imagine any registered medical practitioner allowing the televised treatment of a genuine patient — even if the patient had given consent. And surely any registered psychiatrist would have to take the position that such consent could hardly be regarded as “informed”. But in this documentary we saw a disturbed patient endure quite severe mental trauma during her “therapy”, while her therapist seemed quite pleased by the opportunity for self-promotion.
What was surely the most sickening was the use of two disturbed people as characters in an “entertainment” designed to be broadcast into thousands of New Zealand homes. The mother had a long-standing record of mental illness and treatment. At least one of her sons seemed to be following the same path. Many viewers must have found this parading of their travails as a vehicle for home entertainment both embarrassing and distasteful. Many households would have found it great for a laugh and would have screeched with delight or with terror at the “exorcism” scenes in the hypnotist’s office.
When I was at school our teachers used to point out that we were much more civilised in our treatment and understanding of the mentally ill than our nineteenth-century forebears. We were shocked to learn that civilized people used to visit the insane asylums of the time as a source of entertainment. No trip to London was complete without a visit to Bedlam.
Well, I suppose we have made some advances. In those days the ladies and gentlemen of England had to take the coach to enjoy their Saturday afternoon’s entertainment at the human zoo. Thanks to modern science and to those who look after our interests in New Zealand On Air, we in New Zealand can now take our entertainment without having to leaving the sofas of our living rooms. Isn’t that wonderful?
Christchurch Pesticide Scare
The media were quick to cry “Wolf” when concerns were raised about the fungicide Benlate.
On 9 December, 1993, the people of Canterbury read an alarming headline in the Christchurch Press: “Herbicide scare after babies born with defects”. Three City Council staff “who worked with herbicides gave birth to babies with defects”. In this first report neither the nature of the defects nor a specific herbicide were mentioned.
Several comments by Council officials and others, intended to soothe public fears, were quoted in the report — “coincidence”, “a link between the defects and herbicides was unlikely”, “the substances … did not absorb well through the skin”. An occupational health expert had been asked to investigate and report urgently; a fourth parks employee of the Council, who had worked in the same area as the other mothers, had given birth to a healthy baby.
During 1993 the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Helen Hughes, had been investigating the use and disposal of dangerous chemicals in New Zealand, and the report arising from these enquiries was published only a few days after the story in the Press. The Commissioner was quoted as saying that the controls recommended by her office would have been even stronger had she known of the Christchurch birth defects.
Despite the encouraging noises emerging from the Civic Offices and other official buildings, public anxiety increased almost to the level of hysteria.
Within a week the substance under suspicion had been identified as benomyl (a fungicide, not a herbicide), made by Du Pont and sold under the name “Benlate”. Sales plummeted, TV cameras were taken to garden centres to picture staff sweeping the stuff from the shelves, and only eight days after the first report, Du Pont’s New Zealand Manager was buying whole pages of advertising space in the newspapers to rebut the accusations made against his company’s product.
During the week journalists interviewed some of the people involved, and a few personal and medical details emerged. Two of the three babies were blind; the mother of one, born in 1990, was “in anguish” after slowly rebuilding her life; the parents of the other were in a more belligerent mood, threatening legal action against Du Pont. The Wellington bureaucracy was also quick to act; the Ministry for the Environment’s representative on the Pesticides Board announced she would press the Board to de-register benomyl, and recommend the Department of Health should ban its use.
Further comments intended to lessen public anxiety came from the City Council, including the announcement that Benlate was being withdrawn from use in the Parks Department. Then, less than ten days after the first report, the matter sank from public view while New Zealanders attended to the serious business of the Christmas-New Year summer holiday period. Behind the scenes, however, Dr John Alchin, Occupational Physician, was very busy. Before the issue became public, the City Council had asked him to investigate the birth defects. His report, 74 pages long, was submitted on 15 April, 1994, and reported in the Press the following day. The sub-editor’s summary of Alchin’s summary read, “Report on birth defects finds no pesticide link.”
Alchin’s investigation had been very thorough. He had examined the hospital obstetric and paediatric records, the medical and ante-natal records of the family doctors, and the notes of the obstetricians and paediatricians concerned. He had interviewed the parents at length and scrutinised City Council procedures. He instituted wide searches of two computerised medical databases, and talked to several New Zealand experts in epidemiology, environmental health, medical genetics and toxicology.
Concerning the two babies who were born blind, he noted: (1) one was born in 1990, the other in 1993; (2) their blindness resulted from two quite distinct congenital defects; (3) birth defects are not uncommon, there is roughly a 1 in 1000 chance of any two babies being born with major anomalies; (4) the two mothers had had minimal exposure to pesticides during pregnancy; and (5) other studies show no linkage of human birth defects to pesticide exposure. In view of the emphasis given to Benlate in the media reports, it is odd to note that Alchin could not confirm that either mother had been exposed to this material during pregnancy.
The third baby in the study was said in early reports to have “severe epilepsy”. Dr Alchin found he began having seizures at three or four days old, but from three months at least until nine months, had had none. His mother’s exposure, if any, had been to Roundup (glyphosate), not to Benlate. Alchin considers neonatal seizures to be common, and no evidence links their occurrence to pesticide exposure.
It seems that we have here another case of “chemophobia”, an irrational fear of exposure to chemicals, particularly synthetic, biologically active substances. What was presented initially as almost an epidemic of birth defects associated with horticultural sprays is seen on careful examination to be nothing of the kind.
Those of us who were born more or less whole, and have borne/sired healthy children, can hardly imagine the depth of pain suffered by the parents of these two blind babies, nor appreciate the handicap with which the infants start out in life. To seek some cause for such an affliction, any cause rather than no cause at all (chance), is perhaps natural. Nonetheless, to pin blame on something baselessly can in the long run only be harmful and an impediment to understanding.
Despite the thorough investigation, and Alchin’s exoneration of the pesticides, not everyone was convinced. A spokesman for the Toxins Action Group was quick (too quick even to have read the document) to label it a “whitewash”, and, at last report, the parents of one of the blind babies were continuing their legal action. Before the findings were announced, the Soil & Health Association had decided the eye defects were caused by Benlate, and was demanding its withdrawal.
The City Council emerges creditably from this affair. Its arrangements for proper handling of the wide range of horticultural materials used in our parks and gardens seem to be carefully designed with safety in mind, a thorough investigation was promptly set up as soon as an apparent problem appeared, and Council officials tried, though with little success, to counter the inappropriate public response.
As a Christchurch ratepayer, I feel my contribution to the costs of the enquiry was well worthwhile. It is good to know that this scare was unfounded; one can hope, but not with much optimism, that such scares may not occur again with so little cause.
Hokum Locum
Manipulation of the Colon
Some time ago I remember reading a letter in the Listener from a frustrated doctor who accused the public of being medically illiterate. Sometimes I feel this way myself but it is not a good practice to attack one’s audience. Public education cannot be achieved within the context of traditional ten-minute medical consultations compared with quacks who may spend up to an hour providing mis-information. Drug companies are on record as cynically exploiting a gullible public eg. “…neither government agencies nor industry, including the supplement industry, should be protecting people from their own stupidity”.
Letter to Hoffman-Laroche, quoted in NCAHF Vol 15 No.4
In a letter to Little Treasures, a writer who would probably prefer to remain anonymous claimed that her child’s constipation was cured by chiropractic manipulations because “one leg was slightly longer than the other and the passage to the bowel was obstructed by this”. The anatomical possibilities are intriguing! George Dunea writes a regular letter on the US medical scene for the BMJ and in an article reviewed the current activities of chiropractors in the US. Using aggressive marketing techniques they are claiming to treat an even wider range of self-limiting conditions such as colds and colic. One third of Americans use such unconventional treatments at a cost of $10 billion annually and one third of this cost is borne by public funds or private insurance. Dunea goes on to say: “Alternative treatments have also become popular for pets…one large dog, afraid to sleep because he had been beaten badly as a puppy, was described as taking his first afternoon nap after his spinal cord had been adjusted”.
Realigning the Spine. BMJ Vol 307 p71
An American doctor, posing as a concerned parent, surveyed 100 chiropractors and found that 80% of them would treat middle ear infections with cervical spine “adjustments”. Some 78% also sold vitamin supplements from their offices.
Chiros treating children. NCAHF Vol 16, No.6
Conductive Education
This is a treatment based on the teachings of the Peto Centre. Children suffering from cerebral palsy are treated with an intensive (and expensive) series of exercises aimed at developing alternative neurologic circuits to their paralysed limbs. These treatments have no scientific basis and a government financed controlled trial confirmed that the Peto system gives no better results than conventional treatment. There are frequent public appeals to raise money for this treatment but the money could be put to much better use by organisations such as the Crippled Children’s Society.
BMJ Vol 307 p812
Homeopathic Immunisation
Enough has already been said on the enduring myth of homeopathy. An Australian GP was rebuked for recording a homeopathic-type immunisation in a child’s health records and the Medical Defence Union said that such action makes the GP potentially liable if the child subsequently develops a serious illness such as whooping cough or measles.
NZ Doctor 11/11/93
Psychic Surgery revisited
Shirley MacLaine, the high priestess of new-age (rhymes with sewage) silliness has regained her health and happiness after visiting a Filipino psychic surgeon. In Shirl’s own words: “He inserted his hands into my body and withdrew clots of blood and internal matter of some kind, then withdrew his hands”. In defence of Woman’s Day they did add at the end of the article “Oh Really!”
Woman’s Day 31/8/93
Yin Yang Tiddle I Po
So went the song of the Goons (actually Yin tong..) making about as much sense as an article on Chinese medicine which appeared in NZ Doctor 22/7/93 entitled “Look to natural forces to maintain health”. It is written by a trained veterinarian (Massey 1980) who is now practising as a doctor of Chinese herbal medicine. If that isn’t a paradigm shift I don’t know what is! I would love to know what prompted him to change from scientifically based veterinary practice to this nonsense. The treatment of subclinical diseases is prompted by examination of the tongue and pulse. This is a wonderful scheme because all sorts of diseases can be treated and there is no way of disproving that they ever existed. “Iced food and drinks should be avoided like the plague, as these are discordant with the prevailing Qi of summer and will stress the body”.
In a child with eczema the Chinese diagnosis was “blood deficiency complicated with wind and damp. The prescription was designed to “nourish blood, expel wind, strengthen digestion, remove damp, and cool the emotions”. As I have mentioned before, Chinese herbs sometimes contain unexpected substances. A chronically ill man developed muscle wasting which proved to be due to triamcinolone (a potent steroid) contained in “herbal” tablets. Each “herbal” tablet contained 5.4 milligrams of triamcinolone.
GP Weekly 17/11/93
Japanese Herbal Medicine
Japanese doctors will soon be able to gain a degree in Japanese herbal medicine. Seventy percent of Japanese doctors already prescribe such remedies known as kampoyaku. In response to side-effects of modern drugs and a consumer sense of depersonalisation in western medicine, such remedies are now state funded to the tune of US$1.5 billion and increasing by 15% annually. Kampo is based on 4000-year-old medical texts and diagnosis depends on the skill and intuition of individual doctors. (Where have I heard that before?) Such clinical instincts have already been shown to be weak in Western medicine, eg. “only about 50% of gastroscopies, coronary artery grafts, and carotid endarterectomies could be justified by independent panels of experts”.
Viewpoint, The Lancet Vol 341, p878
It is interesting that the Japanese community sees fit to waste money in this area when they have a chronic shortage of trained anaesthetists, causing Japan to have a maternal mortality (during childbirth) twice as high as the UK. There is also a complete lack of information about crude surgical mortality rates because the large numbers of private hospitals are not required to report their operation numbers.
Their hospitals have also been struck by an epidemic of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) due to the widespread overprescribing of antibiotics (BMJ Vol 306, p740). MRSA is a nasty bacterium which becomes prevalent whenever antibiotics are prescribed either inappropriately or excessively. This epidemic occurred because doctors are paid a set price for drugs used, whereas the drug companies supply these at a discounted rate with the doctors pocketing the difference.
New life for old medicine, The Lancet Vol 342, p485; Health Research in Japan, Letter, The Lancet Vol 342 p500
The Cocaine and Guinea-pig Diet
Move over Jenny Craig! An entrepreneurial father and son have set up a weight loss clinic on the shores of Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, at 3810m above sea level. Obese guests are invited to chew a syrupy extract from coca leaves (cocaine in its crudest form!) and if that is not enough they can enjoy having their skin rubbed down with a live guinea pig. These attractions are hoped to restore the flagging tourist industry but it is bad news for the guinea pigs.
Economist August 31st 1992, p36
Generalised Chemical Sensitivity
This is a diagnosis beloved of quacks who validate essentially depressive symptoms that some patients develop after a real or imagined chemical exposure. Glutaraldehyde is a highly effective disinfectant which has good activity against both the hepatitis and HIV viruses, but can cause skin and other sensitivity. A nurse who used this chemical developed baffling symptoms and was seen by a number of specialists who are described as suggesting that “her illness may have had an `emotional’ component”. Note the implied suggestion that an emotional cause is somehow less honorable than a “real” illness.
Her most distressing symptoms were “mood swings, irritability, loss of judgement, poor concentration and short-term memory loss” which are classic depressive symptoms. She is described as being unable to enjoy a lengthy conversation without becoming exhausted. An occupational physician dogmatically stated “There’s no doubt in my mind that the chemical has affected her immune system, leading to a multi-system pathology”. He went on to decry the patient’s “degrading and demeaning experience in failing to have her condition acknowledged by specialists” and “they go away thinking it’s all in their minds”.
Here again is the implication that physical symptoms are either “real” or imaginary. As we know, symptoms are almost always real, but can be produced by anxiety or notional beliefs (somatisation, for example headaches with depression). The result is a person who is now chronically unwell and unemployed and who has received both the wrong treatment and the wrong diagnosis. Exposure to other foods and chemicals now “causes an immediate deterioration in her ability to think clearly”.
This is a classic case of somatisation and is clearly not an occupational disease. This patient’s illness has arisen from the notion that she has somehow been “poisoned” and the availability of compensation completes the process. Doctors who continue to deny the importance of psychological factors paradoxically encourage the abnormal illness behaviour while no doubt sincerely believing that they are acting in the patient’s best interests.
This whole area was briefly reviewed by NCAHF (Vol 16 No. 6) who coined the phrase “environmental anxiety disorder” and quoted research in which immunologic testing did not differentiate patients with chemical sensitivities from controls. Finally NCAHF says “the power of the imagination, operant conditioning, and practitioner influence can reinforce imaginary sensitivities”.
GP Weekly 17 Feb 93
Quackery in the US
The US National Institutes of Health Office (Alternative Medicine) has awarded nearly $1 million in research grants for topics which include: t’ai chi for balance disorders; massage for HIV-exposed babies; dance movement for cystic fibrosis patients; biofeedback for diabetics and acupuncture for depression. I predict that all of these trials will produce glowing reports of improvements, having failed to make any allowance for the placebo effect, natural disease variation and spontaneous improvement.
Moa Mania
Some Skeptics have been surprised that our organisation has been so restrained in its response to the purported moa sighting near Cragieburn. As we see it, the whole issue is fraught with difficulty.
The notion of a colony of large moas escaping detection till now, despite its location in the Southern Alps accessible to Christchurch, almost defies the imagination. Almost, but not entirely: there is a lot of dense country out there, and the notion of a surviving moa — or two, or twenty — cannot be classed with Bigfoot or UFO abductions.
To this, we have to add the perceived credibility of the witnesses. The Press reporter who broke the story, Dave Wilson, is a previous winner of one of the Skeptics’ “excellence in journalism” awards. He’s an intelligent, persistent, hard-headed bloke who has spent a lot of time interviewing the trio who saw the beast, and he’s strongly inclined to the view that they are at least sincere. Wilson is a world away, for instance, from the cynical, exploitative Australian journalists who a few years ago got their hands on a family that had seen a blinding light on sky over the Nullarbor desert. Wilson has, to the contrary, been careful and measured in his approach.
The New Zealand Skeptics, it seems to me, cannot simply disregard Wilson’s convictions on this issue. If the trio is lying, it’s a particularly skillful and cruel hoax on Wilson personally, not to mention the rest of us. Still, for my part, I found the watery “footprint” of the beast, a photograph of which the three trampers produced at the very beginning of the flap, cause for the most skepticism. It was all wrong for a print left by a running bird, or a standing moa. The fuzzy photograph of the bird itself was plausible; the footprint looked outright fake.
If the sighting is not a hoax, then something like a loose emu still is far more likely than a moa. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal in the hearts of most skeptics that something as wondrous as the recovery of the moa might just turn out to be true. Wouldn’t we all cheer?
When I was musing on this the other day, Vicki Hyde brought me back down to earth with a stern lecture on the real, numerical probabilities of there being large, undetected moas in one of our more accessible parks. She was right, of course. But then I never claimed to have a skeptic’s soul. If anything, I more-and-more consider myself temperamentally gullible, and in need of occasional dressings-down by more tough-minded types like Vicki. Nevertheless, if the Skeptics are to err in this case or any other, better perhaps to be slightly on the side of a splendid possibility, than to dismiss without any consideration some extraordinary claim.
One of the highlights of our upcoming conference will be a symposium on cryptozoology. Dave Wilson will be there, and we may even be able to bring along the moa spotters themselves. Meanwhile, Vicki is organising a “fuzzy-photo” contest for Skeptics who can produce evidence demonstrating the existence of some extinct or extraterrestrial beast. Or perhaps a tossed hubcap, a floating log, or a chicken-wire moa.
TVNZ Newsman Writes Book!
The TVNZ fortnightly newsletter, Networks, recently carried the welcome news that a Senior Editor in TVNZ’s news division has written a book. The Astrologer and the Paradigm Shift will, according to Networks “clear up many common misconceptions about astrology.”
According to the author of the book, “Astrology is loosely grouped with modern New Age beliefs but it is in fact an ancient philosophical tradition out of which modern science arose.”
The newsman, a physics graduate, gave up his intention to pursue a scientific career when he found “physics didn’t address the connection between the human being and the environment, so was too divorced from reality.”
His book is 468 pages long. When asked how his colleagues felt about having the author of a book in their midst, he said that some of them didn’t know how to handle it, “although lots are intuitively sympathetic to where I’m coming from. I’ve done chart readings for several people” at TVNZ.
As is so often obvious, TVNZ news has no qualified specialist science or medical reporters. (In the recent flap over their carcinogenic potential, cellphones were in one TVNZ report repeatedly referred to as “radioactive.”) Nevertheless, it is heartening to learn that it now has a qualified astrologer to cast horoscopes for the staff.
Tattooed Maoris Did It!
The failure of clairvoyants to locate the missing Wellington man, Michael Kelly, or to know the manner of his death, will not startle many skeptics. No major missing persons case in the history of New Zealand has been solved with paranormal help, despite the fact that police have been deluged with clairvoyant tips over the years — from Mona Blades to Kirsa Jensen, Teresa Cormack, Luisa Damodron, Heidi Paakkonen or Michael Kelly.
Nor are we surprised that self-described psychics were called in by a desperate family. When all leads go cold, people are vulnerable to the suggestion that paranormal powers can help.
What ought to worry us is the media-generated atmosphere in which such delusion can flourish. Both the Dominion and the Evening Post published straight accounts of the clairvoyants’ visions of Michael Kelly’s “abductors” (See News Front). Kelly was supposedly robbed by two or three “rough-looking, tattooed Maoris,” about 26 years old. All the clairvoyants agreed on a description of their car. I’ll bet it was a Holden in need of body work.
No sooner had the Dominion published these psychic delusions than police phones started ringing hot with reports of suspicious-looking Maoris motoring about Wellington.
Both the Dominion and the Evening Post richly deserve a Bent Spoon for treating psychic fantasies as though they were news, but they’re not the only guilty parties. The Holmes show recently featured an item on a clairvoyant who was “helping” in the search for a toddler missing near the shore of Lake Wakitipu. Just as Michael Kelly’s family was told foul play was involved in his disappearance, so the mother of this little drowning victim has been given psychic visions implying abduction by a man. This psychic search also failed, but that fact didn’t make it onto Holmes.
Particularly upsetting in the Kelly case is that the clairvoyants were at last report still insisting another person was involved in the death, implying foul play. To the family’s anguish can now be added the burden of disquiet about the coroner’s findings.
Holmes, the Dominion, the Evening Post — why, even Sharon Crosbie gave at least one skeptic an attack of near-clinical depression on a recent morning when she provided fifteen minutes of unchallenged air-time to a visiting American “clairvoyant.” This huckster told Sharon that she got into the psychic business 25 years ago when she had a seven-hour conversation in French with her daughter, though neither of them had ever spoken the language before. Seems they simply “flipped back to the year 1654 in the south of France.” Sharon fairly giggled and gushed while the woman babbled on about akashic past lives and predicted “many, many changes on the planet … a lot of earthquake activity in New Zealand,” all because “we’re moving into a higher level of vibration.”
Let’s give Sharon credit: two days later she had the good grace to read on air a letter from Peter Lange excoriating her for the interview. Sharon’s an intelligent woman and, what the hell, we all have our off days. (Though the Press Association carried our official condemnation of the use of clairvoyants in police investigations, neither the Dominion nor the Evening Post chose to publish the story — guess they’re having an off month.)
It’s the continual tacit validation of claims to psychic power in gullible broadcast interviews and published articles that leads anguished, vulnerable families of missing persons to resort to clairvoyants. “There must be something in it — after all, I heard a woman on the radio just the other morning…”
But critical intelligence isn’t dead yet. The reliable Kim Hill recently interviewed Dave Allman, promoter of the Elliott Wave Theory, a form of share market voodoo that’s been around for a long time. Like Sharon’s psychic, Allman was a nonstop talker. When she could finally get a word in, Kim brought the interview to a close. “I was going to ask you if it’s an art or a science,” she sighed, “but I guess it’s a religion.”