The UFO Movie THEY Don’t Want You to See

When it comes to UFO documentaries, The UFO Movie THEY Don’t Want You To See offers in depth answers from the relevant scientific disciplines that help us understand, “exactly what we know and how we know it” on the topic of UFOs, or if you prefer, UAPs.

Suffice it to say these in depth answers don’t include the beliefs of journalist Ross Coulthart, winner of The Australian Skeptics 2023 Bent Spoon Award. Executive officer Tim Mendham helps us understand in noting:

Coulthart won for his recent espousal of UFO conspiracy theories and claims that alien bodies and wrecked spacecraft are being held in secret by various government across the world – claims he makes based on hearsay with no evidence, no bodies, no space junk.

The UFO Movie THEY Don’t Want You To See is a feature length indie documentary produced and directed by science writer Brian Dunning. You likely know Brian from the award winning Skeptoid podcast, appearances at numerous Skeptic conferences – including Skepticon Australia – articles in The Skeptic magazine, Skeptical Inquirer or guest spots on other Skeptic media, such as The Skeptic Zone podcast. A great deal of work has gone into making and producing this movie, so let’s get to it.

In an age when misinformation, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories have become mainstream, UFOs have risen to become one of the most-talked about pop culture phenomena. With all of this noise, how can we expect anyone to know how much of this is true? What is in our skies? What do we know, and how do we know it? And most importantly: Are we being visited?

Science does have most of these answers, and we’re working on answering the rest of them. The film features experts in:

• Physics & relativity
• Exobiology
• Exoplanetary spectral analysis
• Image analysis
• Pilot training and air traffic control
• Defense

For more information about the movie, there’s an FAQ page here. If you’ve seen it you no doubt want to watch again. If you haven’t seen it pop the kettle on, draw the curtains and enjoy…

Nate Eggins – Conspiracy Of One – to entertain Skepticon diners

Entertainment for Skepticon’s Saturday night dinner, will be courtesy of Brisbane-based songwriter, musician and science communicator, Nate Eggins. In addition, Nate will also be one of the Skepticon MCs. With thought-provoking lyrics, Nate aims:

To encourage interest in science, promote critical thinking and with his quirky sense of humour, playfully nudge us to second-guess pseudoscience, modern advertising and conspiracy theories through fun catchy clever music.

Nate, a multi-instrumentalist, has used his talent and interest to create the solo project, Conspiracy of One. Described as A bit sciency, A bit funny,Conspiracy of One sold out two live performances at the Brisbane Planetarium, for the release of Nate’s debut album, Road To Reason.

Skeptics and fans of the Australian Skeptics podcast The Skeptic Zone are likely familiar with Nate’s 2021 hit, The Sound a Duck Makes. Indeed your “Quack!” vocal may well be on it. Road To Reason reflects Nate’s journey, “from the darkness of ignorance toward the light of scientific and critical thinking”.

Hit songs from the album include Can You Guess My Star Sign? which features Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, The Song THEY Don’t Want You To Hear and It’s Not You, It’s Corona. Great music and good humour with dinner, in the company of skeptics? Sounds like a great night.

Nate Eggins

You can learn more about Nate Eggins on his Facebook page, Instagram or check out some of his music on YouTube.

The Saturday night dinner is at the St. Andrews Conservatory in Nicholson St. Fitzroy. If you’d like a ticket, please visit Try Booking.

Clinical psychologist will chat to Skepticon audience

Gary Bakker is a clinical psychologist with over 40 years experience. His talk at the upcoming Australian Skeptics national convention is titled, Sex, gender and identity: The politics and the science.

Gary Bakker

Gary notes:

It has been very hard to get past the politics of issues around sex, gender, and identity while trying to apply the science to our legal and social policy decision-making. For example, it took several submissions to journals before my two articles on the topic – ‘Sex, gender, and identity: It’s complicated’ and ‘Sex, gender, and identity: Science or politics?’ – were published, both eventually in Rationale, the journal of the Rationalist Society of Australia.

Even Skeptical Inquirer “didn’t want to go there” because any moderate contribution is attacked (cancelled) by both of the vocal extremes on the issue.

Visit Skepticon 2023 for more information or look for tickets here.

Don’t miss Katharine Shade’s journey to skepticism

This year at The Australian Skeptics national convention, Katharine Shade will reveal her journey from the fog and confusion of woo, to the glaring clarity of skepticism.

Katharine Shade

Such ventures from the badlands of belief, tend to feature similarities. Katharine will tell of her escape from the healing that never healed, of living with faith in the so-called “dis-ease” model beloved by fundamentalist chiropractors, and even diving headlong into the semi-aquatic theory of human evolution. 

Her tale promises to have a happy ending, as Katharine ultimately succeeded in broadening her approach to learning accepted truths. However, she says it took a bit more time to learn enough skills to be able to more precisely attribute plausibility, and understand how a theory that seems perfectly valid, can be bogus.

You too can follow Katharine’s journey at Skepticon 2023 and even finish off the day at the entertainment packed dinner. Or just kick back at home on the couch, and watch online. Tickets are available here.

Melissa Davey joins Skepticon panel

Award winning science journalist Melissa Davey will be joining Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz and Liam Mannix in the panel discussion, Skepticism in the Media, this December 3rd in Melbourne. The panel will delve into science in the media, how to spot deceptive headlines and more.

Melissa Davey

Melissa is medical editor of The Guardian and in 2019 received the Walkley Foundation June Andrews Award for Women’s Leadership in Media, for her work investigating gynaecologist Dr. Emil Shawky Gayed. The impact of her work was highly significant, with a Walkley judge commenting:

She revealed a systemic bias against women patients, which contributed to a failure to stop these abuses. The stories forced medical authorities to investigate and to suspend the doctor. Davey now leads sessions for doctors on the dangers of ignoring women’s health complaints.

Melissa is Guardian Australia’s Melbourne Bureau chief. In August 2020 Scribe published her book The Case of George Pell: reckoning with child sexual abuse by clergy. David Marr writes of the compelling read:

At last, the secret trials of George Pell are revealed in compelling detail by one of the very few who was there throughout. With unmatched authority, Melissa Davey answers the questions that haven’t gone away: why was the cardinal found guilty, and why was he then set free?

In 2023 Davey led an investigation into concussion in sport, including an examination of the spurious scientific evidence informing concussion guidelines. This work prompted further investigations and an apology from the AFL to players. Melissa and her colleagues consequently won the Grant Hattam Quill award for investigative journalism.

Presently, Melissa is halfway through completing her masters of Public Health. You can catch the panel discussion along with many other stimulating presentations during Skepticon 2023 over the first weekend in December. Live and online tickets are available.

Karen Brewer at Skepticon 2023?

When it comes to cooker conspiracies in Australia, Karen Brewer has carved out a niche of her own. Few who have observed Brewer are unaware of the all-important two questions.

Where did they go to school? And, who’s their daddy? The answers according to Karen will reveal if said subject is or was “a filthy Freemason DeMolay”. Karen is convinced a cabal of paedophiles march from DeMolay ranks and apart from occupying most areas of public life, have an inordinate influence on the placement of DeMolay symbolism in parks, on buildings, around streets, indeed everywhere.

In her spare time Karen motivates her “ANZACS” to yell at Governors General, or rather their driveways, in Australia and New Zealand. They are usually aided by a megaphone and demand the GG dissolve parliament and issue writs for a new election. This is because the government is corrupt and is hiding the truth about Bill Heffernan’s fanciful list of high ranking paedophiles, announced under parliamentary privilege. 

In September 2020, Karen’s allegations of paedophiles in parliament led to the National Party MP for Mildura, Dr Anne Webster, and her GP husband, Philip, being awarded $875,000 in damages for social media defamation, courtesy of Brewer. As Media Watch reported at the time, the judge referred to Karen as “delusional”. 

Karen is closely watched on social media by her fans and perhaps many more who just can’t look away. Thankfully, Lyle Allan who holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree and is a Master of Arts in Political Science at the University of Melbourne, has her in his academic gaze. Indeed, Lyle wrote an article for The Skeptic published in December 2021, The Brew Ha Ha, about the conspiracy theorist Karen Brewer.

Lyle Allan

Lyle will speak about Brewer at Skepticon this year and tells us:

Freemasonry has rarely been the subject of fierce opposition in Australia and New Zealand. Karen Brewer, a conspiracy theorist par excellence, does just that.

Freemasons, according to Brewer, control parliament, the judiciary, the police and the public service in Australia and New Zealand. Not only that she claims that Freemasonry promotes pedophilia. She is also critical of Demolay, a little-known Masonic youth organisation that former United States President Barack Obama once belonged to.

Brewer has had run-ins with the law in New Zealand and Australia. The National Party of Australia federal parliamentarian Anne Webster won substantial damages against Brewer for defamation. Paul Barry, on the ABCs Media Watch program, claimed Webster was unlikely to receive the damages awarded to her from Brewer.

Brewer organises demonstrations outside the residence of the various state Governors and the Governor General in Australia and New Zealand.

The amount of support she has cannot be established with certainty, but a comment in The Australian newspaper that she may have 20,000 followers is possibly too many.

I’m really looking forward to his presentation. You can still get tickets for the convention, to attend live or online.

Liam Mannix coming to Skepticon 2023

Liam Mannix is one of Australia’s most accomplished science journalists, writing for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, as well as Nine’s other mastheads. His website is here.

Liam Mannix

Liam won the 2022 Press Club Quill Award for Excellence in Science, Medical and Health Reporting, the 2020 Walkley Award for Short Feature Writing, and the 2019 Barry Williams Award for Skeptical Journalism. 

His investigation into the nerve pain drug Lyrica, resulted in Liam winning the 2019 Eureka Prize for Science Journalism, and he has twice won the Walkley Young Journalist of the Year (Innovation) award. He has even found time for Facebook and can be found on X here.

A quick visit to the Skepticon 2023 website reveals you can:

Join Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz (Health Nerd) and the award-winning science journalists Melissa Davey and Liam Mannix in this panel discussion looking at science in the media and how to avoid being misled by the headlines you read.

Tickets are available here.

Mal Vickers coming to Skepticon 2023

Mal Vickers is a skeptical activist with a singular focus on shonky so-called treatments, and the much-to-be-desired responses of regulators responsible for keeping our community safe.

According to Skepticon 2023 website:

Mal Vickers

In 2016 Mal received the ‘Skeptic of the Year’ award, jointly with Dr Ken Harvey for complaints about chiropractors. While studying towards a Master of Public Health, Mal investigated the complementary medicines market using the complaints made about its advertising and products. Mal is a mild-mannered bio-medical engineer and enjoys photography and tinkering in his workshop.

Working with Dr. Ken Harvey Mal has been instrumental in targeting false claims that can harm consumers. They reported on persistent non-evidence based claims in breach of the Chiropractic Board and AHPRA guidelines, and the absence of appropriate responses from these regulators.

Mal and Ken published the first review of the TGA’s Complaints Resolution Panel over its entire 19 year life. The analysis comprehensively demonstrated the failure of the TGA to ensure regulatory compliance by advertisers of complementary medicines.

While our regulatory system is meant to rein in violations, from 1999 to 2018 complaints and established breaches of the law greatly increased. 
At Skepticon, Mal will peel back the layers of misleading advertising that ultimately wastes people’s time and money. 

How do the companies behind these products get away with it? And, who tops the list for unethical behaviour? 

Mal is also on social media:

• Facebook
• Twitter / X

You can still get tickets to Skepticon for either the physical or online experience.

Annie McCubbin coming to Skepticon 2023

Would you like to know why smart women make bad decisions? If so, buying Annie McCubbin’s book, Why Smart Women make Bad Decisions would be a great start.

Annie published it in 2020, then in May this year she published Why Smart Women Buy the Lies. Annie is more than a little annoyed that critical thinking is so often side-lined, whilst pseudoscience and New-Age waffle is instead shaping decision-making. Consequently, Annie focuses on helping women avoid being conned by the feel-good vibes of self-help promises.

Annie McCubbin

Annie trained and worked as a professional actor appearing in major theatre productions and Australian TV dramas.  In 2001, Annie founded COUP – a corporate development and communication consultancy – with her husband, David.  They have pioneered skills-based training drawn from theatre practice, critical thinking, and business principles, delivered to companies across Australasia in finance, professional services, pharma, resources, telecoms, FMCG, government and the profit-for-purpose sector.

Having trained and coached thousands of women leaders, it became blindingly apparent to Annie that understanding cognitive flaws and unconscious biases is the best protection from the deceptions and distortions that cause unwelcome drama in business. 

You can hear Annie speak at Skepticon 2023. Tickets for the convention and/or online viewing are available here.

Dr. John Cook will be at Skepticon 2023

John Cook is a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne.

Dr John Cook

In 2013, John published Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, an award-winning paper quantifying the 97% scientific consensus on climate change. The paper has been highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. 

In 2007, John founded Skeptical Science, a website that won the 2011 Australia Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. He has an interest in using critical thinking to counter the effects of misinformation.

Tickets for Skepticon live and online, available here.

Zafir Ivanov and Reason’s Fulcrum coming to Skepticon 2023

The fact that two individuals can form opposite conclusions when faced with the same evidence, is something that Zafir Ivanov has pondered most of his life.

Zafir has devoted a great deal of time to understanding how we form beliefs. Why are some people immune to counter-evidence? Why are some easily swayed by weak arguments, and others unmoved by strong evidence? In fact, people respond to evidence quite differently.

Zafir Ivanov

Zafir’s interest led him to study research literature, experiment with difficult conversations and to become an amateur ethnographer. He writes, gives presentations, and talks about why we believe and why he thinks it best we believe as little as possible. Zafir has collaborated with the Cognitive Immunology Research Initiative and The Evolutionary Philosophy Circle.

At Skepticon 2023 he will introduce a modified version of a concept called Reason’s Fulcrum. Zafir will use this to demonstrate Bayesian Reasoning, and thinking in ratios in addition to how this can help one appropriately adjust when faced with new evidence. He will argue in support of rejecting absolute certainty and Truth (with a capital T).

In November last year Zafir presented the below TEDx talk, Our worldview alters our view of the world.

Stephen Bavaro coming to Skepticon 2023

Pseudoarchaeology is a type of fantasy story telling of the “ancient” past. A well referenced entry on Wikipedia basically describes it as the interpretation of the past without accepting existing evidence-based findings or applying the methodology of genuine archaeology. This 1987 articlefrom Penn Museum’s Expedition Magazine confirms pseudoarchaeology was well established decades ago.

Seasoned skeptics tend to nod sagely and acknowledge the days of Chariots of the Gods?, by Erich von Dänniken whenever the topic comes up. More recently we have Ancient Apocalypse, masquerading as a documentary on Netflix and narrated by well known myth-maker, Graham Hancock. Like many baseless claims today, social media, slick videos and pseudoscientific language have contributed to a contemporary rise in the popularity of pseudoarchaeology. As an accurate understanding of our world and its past is critical, this is most unfortunate.

Enter Stephen Bavaro. Stephen is studying archaeology at Macquarie University in Sydney. He has a strong interest in pseudoarchaeology and pseudohistory, particularly with how they distort the study and understanding of past and current cultures. You can check out Stephen’s Facebook page here.

Stephen Bavaro

At Skepticon in Canberra last year, Stephen spoke about von Dänniken and belief in ancient aliens. This year at Skepticon in Melbourne he will focus on Atlantis and the role of Ignatius Donnelly in popularising belief in an actual city, as opposed to Plato’s notion of an allegoricalconstruct. Stephen spoke to Richard Saunders about his work during last weeks episode* of The Skeptic Zone. 

You can read about all speakers at Skepticon 2023 here and look at ticket options here.

* Allow web fonts or hit “pause” to see the audio player, if you have an ad blocker.

Susan Gerbic to speak at Skepticon 2023

Self-proclaimed skeptical junkie, Susan Gerbic, will be speaking at Skepticon 2023, which runs over December 2nd and 3rd this year.

Susan Gerbic

Susan has done some awesome things in the world of skeptical activism and is the founder of Monterey County Skeptics. In addition she founded and manages the About Time project, which you can check out here. Susan is a winner of the James Randi Foundation award for 2017 and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. She also contributes to Skeptical Inquirer.

Susan could also see, not just the potential of Wikipedia, but the potential power in genuinely educating those who visit Wikipedia to access information on a topic. We all end up on Wikipedia at some time to read up on any number of subjects. In fact it’s a top hit in searches. Susan felt strongly about the quality of information on Wikipedia, and how it influenced decisions people might make.

So Susan founded Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW). This involves organising a team of people across the globe, that edits pages on Wikipedia in multiple languages. Consider this GSoW slogan:

The mission of the Guerrilla Skepticism editing team is to improve skeptical content of Wikipedia. We do this by improving pages of our skeptic spokespeople, providing noteworthy citations, and removing the unsourced claims from paranormal and pseudoscientific pages. Why? Because evidence is cool. We train – We mentor – Join us. 

GSoW was particularly relevant this year, with regards to unqualified and dangerous “naturopath”, Barbara O’Neill. An Australian, O’Neill is subject to a Permanent Prohibition Order from the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission. This hasn’t stopped her manipulating social media and exploiting opportunities to present harmful claims to audiences overseas, in pursuit of her lucrative scheme. Fortunately as her profile recently rose, so did hits on O’Neill’s Wikipedia page – one edited by GSoW.

Episodes of The Skeptic Zone on 18 June and 2nd July this year, featured Gerbic who discussed the spike in traffic to O’Neill’s Wikipedia page. In the wake of TikTok videos, hits on the page went from around 20 per day to 9,000 per day. No doubt, many were convinced to save their money.

Gerbic’s activism covers all areas of skepticism, particularly that of “Grief Vampires”. 

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz coming to Skepticon 2023

So, it’s Sunday morning right. No not now. Back then. Back on… Sunday morning.

I’ve plunged the coffee, added a cup and milk, and am scrolling through that thing called X. You know – what Elon did to Twitter. I meant to check the weather because it’s cool, windy and wet and I hate the heat, so I’m like “Yay! Let me look at the digits”, but somehow I get on X.

There’s a tweet with a screenshot and the screenshot reads:

If you’re not an expert but you think you’ve destroyed the entire foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you could be wrong.

Even before the caffeine kicked in I knew it was good – the tweet not the coffee – and perhaps I maybe wished I’d said it. Okay, I did wish I did but I didn’t and will now have to learn to live with that. Then I looked at the handle and the caffeine must have just then kicked in because my memory worked. It went way, way back to the afternoon before, when I’d seen it on Twitter / X. It was @GidMK.

Now, @GidMK calls himself the Health Nerd, but has a whole bunch of talent. In fact I even know that:

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz

Well, I actually stole that from the Skepticon 2023 speaker bio for Gideon. I also know stole information that he’ll be involved in a panel discussion and that you can:

Join Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz (Health Nerd) and the award-winning science journalists Melissa Davey and Liam Mannix in this panel discussion looking at science in the media and how to avoid being misled by the headlines you read.

Skepticon 2023 runs over Saturday 2nd to Sunday 3rd December, and you can get tickets for either day or for virtual attendance. As for the tweet itself, well I couldn’t find it at first. I had to do an advanced search, which is all very la-de-dah with lots of typing in little boxes until I found it way, way back in January 2020. 

Yes. It was from B.C. Before COVID. And it’s hard evidence that critical thinkers were employing logic and sensibility long before social media platforms realised fact-checking was a thing.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to catching Gideon at Skepticon.

If you're not an expert but you think you've destroyed the entire foundation of a vast scientific edifice with 10 minutes of Googling, you might want to consider the possibility that you could be wrong

— Health Nerd (@GidMK) January 13, 2020

Melanie Trecek-King coming to Skepticon 2023

Over on the Skepticon 2023 website is a link to all convention speakers. 

Melanie Trecek-King, the creator of the online critical thinking resource, Thinking Is Power will be speaking at Skepticon 2023. Melanie is an Associate Professor of Biology at Massasoit Community College and has a “teach skills, not facts” approach to science education.

You can check out Melanie’s Facebook page, the Thinking is Power X profile or read Melanie’s full profile on the Skepticon 2023 website.

Details and a range of tickets to Skepticon 2023 are available via Try Booking.

It’s commonly said that seeing is believing, but it’s often the other way around: Believing is seeing.

Quote: Errol Morris pic.twitter.com/AUPKYjdzP8

— Thinking Is Power (@ThinkingPowers) October 19, 2023