Melanie Trecek-King is the creator of Thinking Is Power, an online resource that provides engaging and accessible critical thinking content.
Trecek-King is an Associate Professor of Biology at Massasoit Community College, where she teaches a general-education science course designed to equip students with empowering critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy skills.
An active speaker and consultant, Trecek-King loves to share her “teach skills, not facts” approach with other science educators, and to help schools and organizations meet their goals through better thinking.
Melanie will speak on both Saturday and Sunday.
Affectionately called the Wikipediatrician, Susan Gerbic is the founder of Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia (GSoW), Monterey County Skeptics and is a self-proclaimed skeptical junkie.
Recently Susan has been keeping a close eye on unqualified “naturopath” Barbara O’Neill. Although banned in Australia, O’Neill has mastered the lucrative avenues that social media offers and continues to mislead audiences from overseas locations.
A Skeptical Inquirer contributor, Gerbic is a fellow of CSI and winner of the James Randi Foundation award for 2017. In 2018, Susan founded and manages About Time a non-profit organization focusing on scientific skepticism and activism.
While her particular focus has been “Grief Vampires” (psychics), her activism encompasses all areas of skepticism. You can find out more at AboutTimeProject.org.
Susan will speak on both Saturday and Sunday.
Annie is an actor, author and corporate trainer, committed to elevating the quality of critical thinking in business and life. She focuses on helping women avoid being conned by new-age nonsense and self-help platitudes.
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.
Lyle Allan holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree and is a Master of Arts in Political Science at the University of Melbourne. He is a retired teacher at Victoria University and lives at Barwon Heads on the Bellarine Peninsula.
He has written extensively on ethnic political issues and multiculturalism, and until a stroke in 2016 was a Council member of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia Victoria-Tasmania Branch. He wrote an article for The Skeptic published in December 2021, The Brew Ha Ha, about the conspiracy theorist Karen Brewer.
Karen Brewer and the Freemasons.
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, Read more…
My Journey To Skepticism:
Katherine’s journey to skepticism involved a broadening of her outlook and beginning to question what was once her status-quo. Originally, Katherine had been persuaded of the merits of the “semi-aquatic theory” of evolution, and was also under the spell of the chiropractic “dis-ease” model.
This involved joint cracking, checking leg-length differences and muscle-testing to diagnose allergies. Katherine’s crying was interpreted as being due to the fact her sister was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. There were other weird healing procedures, including the ringing of a bell near the head.
Katherine 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.
Gary Bakker is a clinical psychologist with 40 years experience. He will present on an area of contemporary controversy.
Sex, gender and identity: The politics and the science.
Examining the known science underlying sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI).
Stephen Bavaro is an Archaeology student at Macquarie University, Sydney.
He has been involved in the Skeptic Movement for the last three years and is also a secular humanist. In addition to the traditional areas of Skepticism Stephen has a particular interest in pseudoarchaeology, pseudohistory and how they distort the study of past and current cultures.
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 allegorical construct.
Tim Grant is the Director and Founder of “Lifecycles” as premium consultancy working on sustainability metrics.
The demonisation of plastics to avoid challenging consumerism more broadly.
Over the past 10 years, there has been increasing pressure from community and environmental groups to reduce plastic pollution, culminating in legislation and corporate declaration of targets to become plastics free or have plastic reduction targets.
While reducing the emissions of plastics into the environment is a laudable goal, there is significant confusion over the objectives of fossil plastic replacements. It sometimes framed as a need to be not fossil, to be degradable, biodegradable, compostable, renewable or sustainable – to avoid macro plastics or microplastics.
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”. Read more…
Mal Vickers is a life member of the Australian Skeptics and former long-term committee member of the Victorian branch. Mal is renowned for his activism in relation to shonky treatments offered by alternative therapists such as chiropractors.
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.
Mal’s Skepticon presentation is called Snake Oil Incorporated.
Navigate the aisles of Australian pharmacies and you’ll encounter a puzzling array of products, ranging from trusted medicines through to ridiculous quackery. Among the shelves laden with genuine medicines, you might find offerings like Vita Gummies, promising good health by chewing lollies.
Sue Ieraci is an emergency medicine specialist with a long history of collaboration with Stop the AVN, Friends of Science in Medicine and Australian Skeptics in opposing and debunking health science misinformation.
Sue is active on social media, believes in providing evidence-based discourse and likes a good argument. Sue often treads the knife edge between informing readers and getting banned by pseudoscience spruikers, including those promoting extreme diets, unscientific “therapies” and useless supplements.
Her favourite homeopathic “remedy” is “Nat.Mur” – Natrium Muriaticum or – as it is more commonly known – water that no longer contains salt. She is fascinated by the concept that a lot of nothing is stronger than not much nothing.
In her upcoming presentation, Sue explores the factors that lead conventionally-trained doctors to turn to pseudoscience.
Liam Mannix is a multi-award-winning national science reporter for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, as well as Nine’s other stable of mastheads.
He won the 2022 Press Club Quill Award for Excellence in Science, Medical and Health Reporting, the 2020 Walkley Award for Short Feature Writing, the 2019 Eureka Prize for Science Journalism, the 2019 Barry Williams Award for Skeptical Journalism and has twice won the Walkley Young Journalist of the Year (Innovation) award.
He lives in Melbourne. Read more…
Panel Discussion:
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.
Melissa Davey is medical editor of Guardian Australia and has been covering health for more than a decade. She won a Walkley Award in 2019 in the Women in Leadership category for her investigation into disgraced gynaecologist Emil Shawky Gayed.
In 2023 the investigation she led into concussion in sport, including an examination of the spurious scientific evidence informing concussion guidelines, triggered an AFL inquiry and saw her and her colleagues win a Melbourne Press Club Quill award in the ‘Investigation’ category.
She is half way through completing her masters of Public Health. Read more…
Panel Discussion:
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.
Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, MPH PhD, is an epidemiologist and science communicator. He has worked as an epidemiologist for over a decade, with experience in both infectious and chronic diseases.
He is also a regular columnist for publications including the Guardian, TIME magazine, Stat News, and others, as well as writing a weekly blog.
He has two cats. Read more…
Panel Discussion:
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.
Dr. John Cook’s Skepticon talk will be called The Holy Grail of Fact Checking.
John Cook is a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne.
He researches how to use critical thinking to counter misinformation. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website that won the 2011 Australia Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge.
In 2013, he published an award-winning paper quantifying the 97% scientific consensus on climate change which was highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. He created the Cranky Uncle game, combining critical thinking, cartoons, and gamification to build resilience against misinformation.
He currently works with organizations like Facebook, NASA, and UNICEF to develop evidence-based responses to misinformation.
Zafir has had a lifelong interest in how we form beliefs and how many people seem immune to counter-evidence. This interest resulted in Zafir diving into research literature, experimenting with difficult conversations and becoming an amateur ethnographer.
Recently, some of his findings have been gaining traction with international researchers in epistemology and the psychology of belief. Zafir has collaborated with the Cognitive Immunology Research Initiative and The Evolutionary Philosophy Circle.
He writes, gives presentations, and talks about why we believe and why he thinks it best we believe as little as possible. His ideas are informed by recent research from cognitive psychology and neuroscience and his own observations.
Zafir lives in the top of the South Island, New Zealand.
The Bayesian Balance: how thinking in ratios can help us avoid the truth trap.
In his talk, Zafir will introduce a modified version of a concept called Reason’s Fulcrum. Read more…
Adam Ford is an IEET Affiliate Scholar, a futurologist and works as a data/information architect, a data analyst and data engineer.
He has co-organised a variety of conferences in Australia, USA and China. Adam convenes the global effort of ‘Future Day’ seeking to encourage a specific day to ritualize focus on the future.
As a grass roots journalist, he has interviewed many experts on the future – and is currently working on a documentary project focussing on preparing for the future of artificial intelligence – the Singularity.
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