Category: Skeptical Article

December 2, 2013

Liza With a Zee?

OR

By Ken Greatorex

This  article was first posted a couple of years ago. As we keep getting inquiries about the spelling of our name, we’ve dusted it off and brought it to the top of the blog.

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Vic Skeptics received this via email a few months ago.

Hello, I’m interested in your organisation but wonder why you choose to use the U.S spelling of sceptic? Surely, this is not the norm in Australia and for pedants such as myself is quite off-putting.
John

The following is based on the considered replies that the question prompted.

View More Liza With a Zee?

4 Comments
July 19, 2013

Vitamins: A Panacea for all Ills?

louis roller close-up-smallAssociate Professor Louis Roller PhD

Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences,
Monash University

“We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things:
and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe betide him who would endeavour to erase them” — Goethe, 1774

Vitamins have caught the popular imagination. A recent study established that some 52 per cent of the Australian population takes some form of complementary medicine. It found that 37 per cent of these people were taking vitamins. Overall, 19.2 percent of the total Australian population – about 4.4 million people – are taking vitamins. Many people take over-the-counter vitamins without professional advice and a few practitioners prescribe megavitamin therapy. View More Vitamins: A Panacea for all Ills?

1 Comment
May 4, 2013

Money Well Spent? Dubious Medicine on Medicare

By Mal Vickers

Before you read any further, try to guess the answer to this question:medicare chiro acu

In Australia, in 2012, how many chiropractic treatments occurred as a result of a doctor’s referral?

To clarify, I’m not asking for the total number of chiropractic consultations that occur per year, just patients consultations for chiropractic treatment where the patient was referred by a medical doctor – how many? Find the answer in the text below highlighted in red. How close were you?

Medicare Dollars are Taxpayer Dollars

Everyone in Australia pays for Medicare rebates through the tax system. Medicare enables community access to a variety of quality health services but that’s not in question. What I’d really like to look at is how much we pay through the Medicare system for treatments that show little or no efficacy. View More Money Well Spent? Dubious Medicine on Medicare

8 Comments
December 20, 2012

A Letter to Chiropractors about Advertising

by Mal Vickers

Back in June 2012, a letter was sent to the Chiropractors’ Association of Australia (CAA). The text of this letter is reproduced below. The letter was signed by representatives of the Australian Skeptics and the Tinnitus Association of Victoria.

letter edge texture -430W top

Att: Dr Laurie Tassell

President of the Chiropractors’ Association of Australia (National) Limited

Date: 19 June 2012

Dear Dr Tassell,

We request that your organisation takes action by removing misleading claims regarding the treatment of medical conditions via chiropractic. It appears to be a practice of a small number of your members to advertise that they can treat conditions for which there is little or no scientific evidence that chiropractic is effective. View More A Letter to Chiropractors about Advertising

5 Comments
November 24, 2012

Book Launch – “Snarls From the Tea Tree”

by Ken Greatorex

I recently had the privilege of attending the launching of a new book.

Hosted by Ballarat Books, this event featured co-authors Dr David Waldron and Simon Townsend with Snarls From the Tea Tree.

To quote the publicity:

For the past 150 years Victoria’s bushland has been haunted by the myth of large cat like predators stalking the wilderness, feeding on stock and leaving stories in local folklore and mythology.

Snarls from the Tea-Tree traces the development of the story from its origins in the colonization of Victoria to the present day and explores the themes, legends, claims and context of this deeply pervasive urban legend in rural Victoria.

Dr David Waldron is a lecturer in History and Anthropology at the University of Ballarat. Simon Townsend is a veteran big cat researcher and co-founder of Big Cats Victoria. View More Book Launch – “Snarls From the Tea Tree”

1 Comment
September 26, 2012

RMIT Open Day 2012 -Traditional Chinese Medicine

By Mal Vickers

I went along to Open Day at RMIT Bundoora.  Oh boy, where do I start?

As a skeptic, I’m interested in the courses offered that seem further along the woo scale than most. To be fair, I should point out that RMIT is a big university, the overwhelming majority of courses on offer are high quality, science or humanities based. However, this is a skeptical blog, RMIT’s Chiropractic and Chinese Medicine disciplines are of interest to me.

In 2011 I took a close look at Chiropractic, I asked some questions about the practice and wrote two blog posts (here and here). A year later my questions about Chiropractic, still remain unanswered.

This year, I thought I’d take a closer look at Chinese Medicine.

RMIT offers a range of courses in both Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture, up to and including a degree in Chinese Medicine.

Before I get into the details, here’s a little disclaimer.

Discussing Chinese Medicine can be tricky, due to cultural sensitivities, so let me state what I’m trying to do up front. I question the ‘medicine’ part of the description ‘Chinese Medicine’. Saying something is a ‘medicine’ implies that it’s effective for, at least, some health conditions. The associated cultural grouping is irrelevant. I could be investigating ‘Collingwood Supporter’s Medicine’ or ‘Morris Dancer’s Medicine’ – it’s the ‘medicine’ part that interests me. I also wish to question View More RMIT Open Day 2012 -Traditional Chinese Medicine

6 Comments
June 15, 2012

Happenings – June 2012

by Ken Greatorex


Nuns Fight Back! In last month’s Happenings, we reported on an attempt by The Vatican to rein in America’s fifty thousand nuns. Here’s the latest. Meanwhile, Australia’s last openly pro­gressive Catholic bishop, Can­berra’s Pat Power resigned, citing the Vatican’s inability to listen, clergy sex abuse and the short­age of priests as the biggest issues facing the church.

In Australia, a supreme court judge has forced Jehova’s Witness parents to allow their four-year-old daughter to receive a blood transfusion, without which she had a life expectancy of a few weeks. View More Happenings – June 2012

No Comments
May 18, 2012

Happenings

by Ken Greatorex

This is a collection of odds, ends and newsy bits that have taken our attention in the last month.

  • The Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne was as big an event as predicted. There was even an appearance by both militant Christians and Muslims. HERE. For Dick Gross’s review, see HERE
    Eugenie Scott

    The GAC was big enough to have its own fringe, in fact. Our own April Skeptics Café was billed as just such an event, featuring  the delightful Eugenie Scott. It may not have represented an enormous crowd for Ms Scott – she is much in demand internationally as a speaker – but it set a record for La Notte’s Club Room. View More Happenings

1 Comment
April 4, 2012

A Skeptic’s Guide to The Age of the Earth

This article first appeared as a Vic Skeptics discussion pamphlet. The full range of our discussion pamphlets can be downloaded by clicking the “Useful Info” link at the top of this page.

When naturalists started examining the Earth in the 18th century for evidence of its age, they were to a large extent seeking to confirm the suggestion of the Bible that the Earth was several thousand years old; but the closer they looked, the less certain they were that this was the correct answer.

Geologists examined the rocks across Britain, and noted that the same sequence of rocks occurred in different places, suggesting that the rocks had a common source. They also noticed that different levels of rocks contained different groups of fossils, including fossils of animals different from those of today, and not mentioned in the Bible. Yet the fossils were in similar orders in different locations. Rocks were also classified according to how they were made, and by the order in which they’d been created. In the first case, rocks were classified as sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic. Sedimentary rocks are rocks created by grains of mud or sand laid down over the years on lake or sea floors, and compressed into rock by the weight of material lying above them. Igneous rocks are rocks of volcanic origin. Some are from lava which has cooled solid on the surface of the Earth (such as basalt), while others have cooled while still inside the Earth (such as granite), and emerged after they’d solidified. Metamorphic rocks are rocks (usually sedimentary) which have been altered by heat or pressure (such as limestone being converted to marble). View More A Skeptic’s Guide to The Age of the Earth

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November 28, 2011

A Skeptic’s Guide to The Pyramids

This article first appeared as a Vic Skeptics discussion pamphlet. We’ve added two “Pyramids” classroom activities: a motivational and interactive practical exercise and a crossword. You’ll find the links to these at the end of the article. The full range of our discussion pamphlets can be downloaded here: http://www.skeptics.com.au/resources/educational/or by clicking on the “Useful Info” link at the top of this page.

By Peter Barrett (Canberra Skeptics)

Think of Egypt and you think of pyramids. These impressive objects have fascinated people for centuries; they were even tourist destinations for the ancient Greeks and Romans. What amazes people today is their massive size combined with the precision of their construction. There are people today who believe that this size and precision is evidence that the ancient Egyptians couldn’t have built the pyramids unaided, and that they instead were assisted by aliens or people from Atlantis. View More A Skeptic’s Guide to The Pyramids

3 Comments