After a fair bit of wind last night, there’s an eerie calm in Wellington as we brace for a storm that has variously been described as “gigantic”, “the biggest storm on the planet” and “Australia-sized”. I’m not holding out much hope for my 5km fun run in Petone on Sunday. And for a country with […]
MoreThe Canterbury earthquake has shaken out a fair bit of pseudoscience along with the shattered Christchurch masonry. First there was the Council of Homeopaths attempting to flog their shonky products to quake victims promising to help them “return to a more normal mental, emotional and physical state”. Then there was the Christchurch mum who believes […]
MoreDebate in scientific, political and business circles has raged for years over whether Bisphenol-A, a chemical used to line everything from drink bottles to tins of fruit can have harmful health effects on children and adults. UPDATE: Audio of Professor Gordon Robertson’s presentation on the science of food packaging hazards available here. With countries around […]
MoreIt is great news that Peter Beck and the team at Rocket Lab have scored a grant (amount undisclosed) from the US Office of Naval Research to “study new rocket propulsion methods and fuels”. But did the Herald on Sunday really have to go to the trouble of creating the infographic below to illustrate that, […]
MoreOne of the interesting aspects of the earthquake’s impact on Christchurch has been the phenomenon of liquefaction, where soil and sand is compacted and water is forced to the surface. There have been many reports of sand volcanoes, water fountains and severe cracking of the ground – all the result of soil liquefaction. ECAN has […]
MoreScientists from GNS Science and the University of Canterbury have been busy in the wake of Saturday morning’s 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Canterbury attempting to learn more about the quake and what caused it. Credit has to go to GNS Science’s John Ristau, Canterbury’s Mark Quigley and Kevin Furlong, professor of geoscience at Penn State […]
MoreGallileo is invoked in this attack on the Skeptics Society with Scott Sharpe suggesting it is conventional medicine not alternative medicine that needs quackbusting… And sometimes Sciblogs contributor Dr Michael Edmonds’ response in last weekend’s Sunday Star Times…
MoreThere were lots of articles published in the New Zealand Medical Journal last week that were worthy of mainstream media coverage. Chronic funding shortages for cochlear implants, the red tape involved in doing clinical research in New Zealand, sleep apnoea in Wellington taxi drivers. In the letters section, we had the raging debate over Linda […]
MoreThe respected medical research scientist, Professor Sir Graham Liggins, died today after a long illness. He was aged 84. It was fitting that the first tribute to Sir Graham, or “Mont” as he was known to friends came from the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, who set up the Liggins Institute […]
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PETER GRIFFIN 
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