Category Archives: General

Christmas traditions with a twist

Posted in Education, General, Religion, Skeptic by

If having the odd drink too many, and arguing with that strange relative who has a tall tale defending pseudoscience, is your version of strange Christmas traditions, you’re just not trying.

Imagine drawing a face on, and feeding a log you also keep warm with a blanket or hat, then letting the kids beat the shit out of it with sticks on Christmas Day. The uniquely Catalonian idea of “defecating log” is to fatten the woe begotten wood in the lead up to Christ’s birthday, so that it defecates treats of almonds, hazelnuts and nougats as presents for the albeit suddenly violent kids. They also have a chant for what they want, which includes warning against shitting out any herring, which is just way too salty. Aye! Some clever parenting in the wee hours and sleight of hand, ensures the right treats, and definitely no herring, plops onto the floor.

Better yet, is El Caganer or Kagen, which is a nativity scene character answering the call of nature and defecating his or her own, er… yuletide log. It’s thought variously that these fibre-fed figures originally made their way into larger nativity scenes, perhaps representing small villages, and have even been positioned in a quiet corner to offer a “Where’s Wally?” type challenge. Some claim it symbolises birth in a stable (no thanks) or fertilising the Earth (better). Others reckon it’s about good luck in the New Year. The usual job went to a peasant with a Catalan red cap. Clever marketing has now stepped in, leaving no-one safe. Today Kagen characters that represent certain news-worthy folk of the year, can be purchased for the Holy scene. I’m looking at you Hilary… and Donald… and “ooo, ooo, ahhh”, Michael Jackson.

In Norway it’s wise to lock up your brooms because witches and various evil spirits are out and about roaming the countryside. They obviously have some travelling to do, because they spend a good deal of said wandering searching for brooms to ride. There’s also no guarantee they will be happy with just one broom to zoom. Remember to hide your brooms and offer a protective prayer, before they’re swept away. You’ve been warned.

In Iceland the 13 days before Christmas can be plagued with havoc brought about by the 13 troll brothers who dwell in yon mountains. Known as the Yule Lads, a different brother will visit the house each night and leave a gift or a rotten potato in children’s shoes. This depends (you guessed it) on whether they’ve been naughty or nice. The Yule Lads have awesome names reflecting their bothersome natures, such as Pot Licker, Spoon Licker, Window Peeper, Sausage Swiper and Door Slammer (I feel seen). Icelandic kids have long been kept in line with tales of the Lad’s mother, Grýla, who may well come to steal them away.

The Welsh have Mari Lwyd (the Grey Mare) the origins of which actually predate modern Christmas, and may reach to the depths of Paganism. The Welsh like to pop a horses skull on a pole, or rather obviously, on the head of an accomplice, before covering it in a white sheet and bright decorations. These jaunty chaps, reminding us that all is not yet dead, then wander to various houses where they sing or engage in rhyming battles with the home owners. If successful, they are rewarded with food and drink, and invited in to dance and evoke further trickery. They then presumably gallop off until next year.

Mari Lwyd – Wales

In Oaxaca Mexico, the Night of the Radishes is held on 23rd December. Locals carve around 20 tons of large radishes into cultural motives, icons and complex nativity scenes. Prizes are given for the most creative of the displays which attract large crowds, adding much to the aura of cheer and celebration. The radishes are not for eating but the care given to the carvings leads to some fascinating artwork. Cancel that Chrissy trip to the beach and head to Oaxaca, I say.

Goats get a Guernsey in a few Christmas carry-ons it seems. In Romania the ancient tradition of Capra involves men wearing sheepskin, bells on their shoes and a colourful, horned, exaggerated goats-head with impressive snapping jaws. Accompanied by musicians and singers, they wander about doing their thing, including jaw snapping in tune to the drum beat. In Sweden the Gävle Goat gets plenty of attention, and thanks to the tendency of loutish Swedes to burn and batter them down, plenty of rather ineffective protection.

The Gävle Goat, constructed in the castle square in Gävle is a giant version of the Yule Goat, and since its original appearance in 1966, 42 of 59 goats have been variously burnt, bashed, shot with fireworks and kidnapped by helicopter after the bribing of a goat-guard, before being abducted to Stockholm. One year the goat was burnt down, rebuilt and burnt down again. This led to the ineffective “Goat Committee” being formed. In 1988 gambling on the goat’s fate was legally sanctioned. Of course, that year it survived. During another year, a DOS attack shut down security cameras allowing the goat to be, yes, burnt to the ground. It’s also been run down by a student in his Volvo Amazon, kicked to pieces by vandals, burnt down after being shot with flaming arrows by Santa Claus and The Gingerbread Man and also hidden in the backyard of an unimaginative thief. One year the Goat committee concluded that the brown fire-proofing was ugly and decided to omit it. It was set alight, extinguished and shortly after, set on fire yet again.

Hot Stuff – The Gävle Goat

Some goats stood 13 metres and weighed 3 tons. Forward thinking students from the Natural Science Club weighed the evidence and constructed smaller less conspicuous goats. These little guys were promptly “smashed to pieces”. Undeterred, the young scientists persisted, only to later find their creations “floating in the river”. I understand they are far from defeated. Go science!

In Finland a lovely tradition sees family members head out into the icy weather on Christmas Eve to place lit candles at the resting place of loved ones and friends. This gives a delightful warm glow to what are usually cold, spooky places of isolation. Nice one Finland. More fascinating is the Ukrainian tale of the poor widow who, with help from her wee ones, grew a pine tree from a fallen pine cone. When Christmas came they had no coin to buy decorations for the tree so went to bed on the Eve with heavy hearts. Mother rose at dawn to find the tree covered in spider webs. She opened the window to get a gander, and when sunlight hit the webs they turned to silver and gold, right on that there tree. And yay, they were never poor again. Mother must have invested the silver and gold in Christmas tree decoration companies, which she later floated on the stock market leaving changes in volatility to impact us poor consumers as we decorate our own trees all these generations later. Okay, I actually made up the stock market thing.

In Slovakia if you want good luck to befall you and yours, the idea is to get the most senior member of the family to throw pudding on the ceiling. The more pudding that sticks, the more luck you can expect. So, the trick is to make that pudding recipe as sticky as possible. Just don’t get a shock if grandad’s teeth are also smiling down at you from the ceiling. Speaking of eating, don’t forget that thanks to a successful ad campaign by KFC in the 1970s, for a Party Barrel to be had at Christmas Time, Japanese sales are greater than any other time of the year. It’s been so successful, finger-lickin’ Japanese have to pre-order weeks in advance and on the day itself there can be queues stretching way out of KFC shops.

There are of course many, many more unique traditions to check out and enjoy around the world at this time of year. If you’re bored sitting at home come night time, a quick search should reveal the location of Christmas lights and/or the suburbs and streets which are known for putting on impressive displays in suburban Australia.

And from this author have a very happy and joyful festive season followed by a safe 2026. El Caganer!

DNA contamination of mRNA vaccines is still not a thing

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, COVID-19 Vaccine, Health, Immunisation, Science, Skeptic, Skeptical Activism, Social Media by

The fact that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are not contaminated with excessive or dangerous levels of residual DNA should not really have to be addressed. Nonetheless, doing so often comes up in arguments to debunk what is becoming a persistent trope of the anti-vaccine lobby.

In November last year I looked at an excellent report from Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which plainly called the claim, misinformation. In March this year refuting the myth of “Turbo Cancer”, I went through a bunch of already well debunked attempts to justify the existence of this non-existent cancer. DNA contamination of COVID mRNA vaccines took up a few paragraphs.

The popularity of residual DNA contamination as a cause of invented harms favoured by anti-vaccine fear mongers shouldn’t surprise us. We received easy to understand information from health authorities well before the COVID vaccine rollout, that mRNA in vaccines never penetrates the cell nucleus and thus, DNA would remain untouched. Yet that very notion was targeted early and often by contrarians. Then came the flawed science with flawed methodology, that still remains unpublished. Remember the testing of vials that arrived anonymously in the mail without cold packs? Don’t forget mRNA vaccines require storage at about -20ºC. Then came sleight of hand by Kevin McKernan et al, using Qubit Fluorometric Quantification (fluorometry) in an unwarranted addition to the original testing regime of Quantitative PCR (qPCR). qPCR indicated DNA below FDA guidelines. Fluorometry significantly and inaccurately inflates results because it measures mRNA when calculating total DNA levels.

In fact there’s a few elements to understanding why DNA in mRNA vaccines is a non-event. That’s why I recommend watching Dr. Dan Wilson of Debunk the Funk on YouTube. Dan’s been flattening bogus bumps in the anti-vaccine world for quite a while now. His video on 2 July called Update on DNA contamination is one of a few he’s done tackling this particular myth. Interestingly, what recently caught my eye was Dan’s praise for the TGA report on misinformation about excessive DNA in mRNA vaccines.

Dan wrote to the TGA to check how they determine COVID DNA in their samples, as there are various ways to do this (see video 7:15). It turns out the TGA used the method that “most over-estimates the amount of DNA that could possibly be in that vial”. This still yielded “zero batches that exceeded the limit of residual DNA”.

So again, what this tells us is that DNA contamination of mRNA vaccines is a total furphy and they remain completely safe. Still, I sincerely recommend spending 10 minutes checking out Dan’s video, and having a look through his others for sound information to educate yourself about persistent and evolving anti-vaccine disinformation and misinformation.

Skepticon 2025 Early Bird Tickets On Sale

Posted in Education, General, Health, Science, Skeptic, Skeptical Activism by

Skepticon Australia 2025 is to be held at the Forum Theatre in Melbourne over the weekend of 4-5 October. There’s also a Friday night meet and greet on the evening of the 3rd. Tickets are now available.

The speakers list is steadily growing. The Skepticon page tells us:

This is the twelfth Australian Skeptics convention to be held in Melbourne.

Renew old friendships, make new ones, and hear from the best speakers at Skepticon XL.

The 2025 convention will be held on the weekend of October 4-5 at the Forum Theatre, University of Melbourne, a great venue a few steps from the newly constructed Parkville Underground train station.

You can expect another line up of high quality speakers giving skeptical perspectives on medicine, science, education, belief and consumer issues. Guaranteed to be informative, incisive, challenging, and lots of fun.

Stay tuned for information about the Friday night meet and greet and the Saturday night dinner.

It will be a festival exploring science, reason, critical thinking and skeptical conviviality.

I can recommend the event, and advise keeping an eye on the Skepticon site as finer details about speakers, topics and the Saturday night dinner take shape.

TICKETS

  • Drop in to Humanitix to purchase tickets
  • Access the full price list here
  • Contact the host of Skepticon 2025 if necessary
  • Tickets will be in your Order Confirmation Email from order@humanitix.com

DIRECTIONS

Get directions to the Forum Theatre in the Arts West Building (Building 148) Uni of Melbourne

Heavens to Gimbals – James Randi video restored

Posted in General, Media, Science, Skeptic by

Forty five years ago, Australian businessman Dick Smith arranged for James Randi to visit Australia and conduct controlled, scientific experiments on water divining. This particular event played a role in promoting interest in scientific skepticism in Australia and the formation of the Australian Skeptics, who have an article on this very topic here.

The 1980 experiments were produced by Dick Smith Adventure Pty Ltd. It proved compelling in what it revealed about water divining (aka dowsing) as a promoted skill, the reasons dowsing has been by some, uncritically accepted as factual, and the thinking process behind those that believe it is a genuine phenomenon. In addition, Randi brought with him a wealth of experience and explanation regarding the cognitive bias specific to water divining and non-critical thinking in general. These became apparent as the documentary unfolded.

Digital restoration from a 45 year old VHS tape took a significant amount of time including the application of unique software. Thanks go to Richard Saunders and Glenn Brady. You can learn more about this and Randi’s visit via The Skeptic Zone, Episode #870.

Do enjoy, James Randi in Australia – 45th Anniversary Edition.

Conspiracy Theory Attribution: An attempt to defend the Wilyman thesis

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Australian Vaccination-risks Network, Health, HPV Vaccine, Immunisation, Judy Wilyman, Media, Science, Skeptic by

In 2015 a long standing Australian anti-vaccination activist and lobbyist, Judith Wilyman, was awarded a PhD by the University of Wollongong. Titled A Critical Analysis of The Australian Government’s Rationale for its Vaccination Policy, the work attracted exceptional criticism. I’d like to consider the veracity of certain arguments raised in defence of Wilyman’s work, noting they have arisen from one source and are themselves extensive. [Jump to Conspiracy Theory Attribution].

Antithesis

From across the globe and from multiple sources, criticism flowed readily for Wilyman’s publication. For this author, there was one thing other than the content that also rankled. The fact that it was a collection of biased references arranged to attack the integrity of one of Australia’s most effective public health initiatives. Quite striking, for a work that emerged from an academic institution, is the absence of any original research conducted by the author. As the author uses the term “thesis” we had best examine this. The Oxford dictionary offers two distinctions, with the following describing “a doctoral thesis”:

a long essay or dissertation involving personal research, written by a candidate for a university degree

This may of course seem petty unless you’ve taken time to examine this work. Nonetheless for the sake of clarity I too shall yield and refer to this diversion from genuine analysis of Australian vaccination policy, as a thesis. It is clear however, that there is no research, methodology, study, data collection or justified hypothesis. There is only a literature review and a biased one at that. Australian emergency physician Kristin Boyle describes the work as, “the inevitable product of someone with an ideology based agenda”. Genuine literature reviews that seek to examine varying or different arguments, are valuable items of research. They collate and examine related works, and in judging the strengths or weaknesses of each, offer a contention, or indeed a novel conclusion. This didn’t happen in the Wilyman literature review. Still, Judith Wilyman falsely poses herself as “an expert witness” in a family court case, a “specialist in government vaccination policies” (federal politics), and has significantly elevated her importance to the fields of vaccinology and public health.

The reality is Wilyman barely scraped in. One of her two examiners suggested the thesis was unworthy of PhD status and better suited to a Master’s degree. They observed concerns about a lack of engagement with existing literature and “the lack of an appropriate theoretical framework”. Wilyman they argued, had conducted no original research nor contributed to the knowledge of the subject. This conflict was resolved by the rare event of appointing a third examiner. Australian Skeptics Inc. report (archived):

That third examiner, also unnamed, judged that, while the thesis as assessed showed Wilyman conducted original research, it did not make a significant contribution to knowledge of the subject, had no indication of a broad understanding of the discipline within which the work was conducted, and that it was not suitable for publication. 

They recommended that the thesis be resubmitted, and gave “extensive and detailed comments on areas that need to be improved”, sharing the same concerns as the earlier critical examiner.

This revised version was consulted by only one examiner; the third individual who had requested the significant changes. The original “earlier critical examiner” was not asked for an opinion. The examiner who had accepted the original, doubly-rejected thesis, was considered a certainty for the improved version. Thus, a year later than she planned, Wilyman had her PhD.

In the excellent article, PhD thesis opposing immunisation: Failure of academic rigour with real-world consequences (Vaccine 37; p. 1542), Wiley et al postulate as to how this oversight possibly came to be:

The quality of the writing and presentation of the thesis is such that many of its arguments could seem plausible to an examiner without specific content knowledge, despite sound academic credentials. Our combined expertise (vaccinology, epidemiology, the history and practise of immunisation policy development globally and in Australia, social science) and as PhD examiners, both gives us detailed knowledge of the sources cited by the thesis, and allows us to identify key deficiencies […] A critical analysis should consider the merits and faults of an issue and be conducted in a way that is not designed to find only evidence for the writer’s pre-determined conclusions. […] This thesis does not include methods for assessing the literature, does not discuss aspects of identified studies which may contradict one another, or attempt to establish the quality of relevant studies. Rather, the references used are highly selective, only citing a small number of the available epidemiological studies and clinical trial reports, all of which are interpreted to support conclusions which appear pre-determined.

The Supervisor

A News GP summary of the above paper in Vaccine is available here. Let’s examine the first sentence in the above quote. Firstly, does it help us understand how such a deliberate failure to include material supporting Australia’s vaccination policy was not addressed by Wilyman’s supervisor? Secondly, is it likely such a biased collection of arguments was missed because examiners, and particularly the supervisor, lacked “specific content knowledge”? Sure, Wilyman studied within the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry. Her supervisor, Professor Brian Martin completed his PhD in Theoretical Physics and later became a Professor of Social Sciences, at the University of Wollongong. But not being qualified in vaccinology, related fields or policy development does not render senior academics incapable of accessing evidence or seeking consultation. More so, Wilyman’s published acknowledgement of her supervisor is unambiguous;

I would also like to thank Professor Brian Martin, my primary supervisor at the University of Wollongong, for his unwavering support and encouragement. His weekly phone calls kept me focused and there were many robust discussions that helped me to overcome the significant opposition to this project. I thank him for his patience and dedication to my research.

It’s important to acknowledge that the role of Professor Brian Martin (left) in Wilyman’s thesis was not just one of “unwavering support” for her many unsupported claims, but one in which his own later accounts afford academic freedom more importance than academic integrity. I shall endeavour to be as fair as possible in referencing claims Brian Martin has made in defence of the Wilyman thesis. I will seriously consider the notion of Conspiracy Theory Attribution (CTA) and the suggested failure of critics to analyse the thesis and citations presented.

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