We’re happy to announce that this year’s Australian Skeptics Annual National Convention – Skepticon 2024 – will be held at the Guthrie Theatre in the University of Technology, Sydney, from November 23-24. This is our 40th consecutive convention; we haven’t missed a year since 1985, which we feel is quite
Australian Skeptics has only ever issued Lifetime Achievement awards twice – to former ASI president and executive officer Barry Williams and noted skeptic James Randi. The award recognises outstanding effort on behalf of the Skeptical movement, and a third has now been added with the award going to Richard Saunders.
Though it is painful to say it, Australian Skeptics have ‘awarded’ the 2024 Bent Spoon award to the Cancer Council WA for its endorsement of the pseudomedical and unscientific practices of Reiki and Reflexology. The Spoon is given annually to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of pseudoscientific or
Scientists who have come under a negative and unjustified spotlight will be featured at Skepticon XL, this year’s national convention in Sydney later this month. Among them will be Prof Dominic Dwyer, who was the Australian member of the World Health Organisation’s mission to explore the origins of COVID-19 in
We’re adding some extra fizz to this year’s Skeptics annual convention – Skepticon XL, November 23-24 in Sydney. We are extending the package for the convention dinner on November 23 with free drinks (for at least the first three hours), which means the wine, beer, cider, soft drinks, fruit juice,
The Western Australia branch of the Cancer Council has been nominated for the 2024 Bent Spoon award for the promotion of pseudoscience, in this case offering therapies based on the pseudoscience of reiki and reflexology. The Cancer Council WA is a registered charity with the stated purpose of working “with
The September 2024 issue of The Skeptic is out, with a feature devoted to magic, magicians, shamen, and their relationship with skeptics. Other contents include a look at Lemuria (before it sank), bad influencers, the Minnewanka merman, toxins and detox, ghost hunting, and more. You can read that article on
Tickets for Skepticon 2024, the 40th consecutive Australian Skeptics national convention, are now available from the convention website. We don’t know of any other Skeptical group – certainly not among English-language groups – that has achieved this continuous run of such events. That’s why we’re nicknaming it Skepticon XL. Tickets
Now is your chance to propose a perpetrator of preposterous piffle – your chance to nominate an anti-hero for the 2024 Bent Spoon award. The Australian Skeptics Bent Spoon award is one of the least sought-after credits in the Skeptical world … or any world, for that matter. It has
Armidale’s first ever Skeptics In The Pub event will be held on Wednesday 24 April in the downstairs section of the Wicklow Hotel, corner Marsh and Dumaresq Streets. Future topics for presentations will range broadly across subjects such as health, medicine, science, technology, history, politics, the social sciences and the
The March 2024 issue of The Skeptic has been published, with a special feature on how to cope with science: teaching students skills as much as facts; the positives and negatives of media coverage and how culpable the media are in spreading sometimes dangerous pseudoscience; and understanding that famous Razor.