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Ken Ring coverage wins Skeptics’ Bent Spoon award

> From the WeatherWatch archives

New Zealand Skeptics has bestowed its annual Bent Spoon award on the news media for its coverage of “Moon Man” Ken Ring’s earthquake predictions.

NZ Skeptics awarded its annual prize for “journalistic gullibility” to all news media outlets and personalities who took Mr Ring’s earthquake prediction claims at face value.

That had misinformed the public and contributed to 50,000 people leaving Christchurch “with all the inconvenience, cost and emotional harm that that caused,” Skeptics media commentator Vicki Hyde said today.

“We believe that it is the business of the professional media to ask pertinent questions on behalf of the public when presenting material as factual,” she said.

“Many, many media outlets and journalists failed the basic standards of their profession…they did us all a disservice.”

After Christchurch’s deadly February 22 quake, Mr Ring, an astrological weather forecaster, predicted another major tremor was going to strike the city on March 20.

His prediction caused many people to flee to battered city.

The NZ Skeptics website said the group was “dedicated to increasing public awareness of the dangers and inanities of pseudoscience and bogus paranormal claims”.
 

– NZPA

Comments

Before you add a new comment, take note this story was published on 12 Aug 2011.

Ken Ring on 15/08/2011 4:48am

Isn’t it odd how selective the Skeptics are!!

Early but slightly warmer winter on way
11:22 AM Friday Apr 29, 2011
An early, but slightly warmer winter than usual is on the way, according to NIWA.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10722281

Maz on 13/08/2011 4:37pm

When you predict an earthquake most days, you’re bound to get one right, I guess.

Ken Ring on 13/08/2011 9:55pm

Everyone knows earthquakes do happen every day, due to of the land tide, but I don’t worry about them, nor does anybody. If you ever read my articles over the past 12 months I only warned of the next biggest ones. Otherwise it is like warning every time a surf wave rolls in vs a tsunami wave.

Ken Ring on 13/08/2011 1:27pm

USGS apparently get their info from GNS. What cannot be denied is that I do have a Geonet screenshot of a 7-intensity on 20 March, no mistake, meaning between 6-6.9mag by USGS standards. If USGS does not list it then GNS did not put it forward. GNS does have a history of trying to discredit me and it’s not rocket science to work out why – I would be viewed as a threat if the moon method delivers worthwhile results. Naturally I don’t feel like making the proof of the 7-intensity available to anyone who has a hate-agenda but I don’t mind forwarding it to Phil if he asks for it, so that he can verify it for this forum. The sad thing is the public had trust in sciences once. Then along came Kyoto, Climate Gate and the ETS, all based on a bevy of provable cover-ups, deceptions and lies. Pre 20 March GNS said no one could predict earthquakes. On 20 March they were predicting them, to counter me. So there is a conspiracy going on and the earth-sciences in this country cannot be trusted to tell the truth. For instance they removed this 7 September article from the internet [url=http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/canterbury-earthquake/4142032/What-lies-beneath]http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/canterbury-earthquake/4142032/What-lies-beneath[/url] which said “Dr Kelvin Berryman stated that the fault lines under the Lyttelton Tunnel were too small to worry about and there would not be another damaging fault for 200-600 years.” This article is now nowhere to be found. It was pulled from the internet on the morning of 28 Feb, the day of the Campbell Live interview. On 8 July my press release went out saying Christchurch earthquakes were on the wane as they had been since the end of April, apart from the odd big one. That led to the Close Up interview. I said it first or TV1 wouldn’t have asked me to appear. The next night GNS repeated what I said, claiming it was their own idea. So now we are told GNS can predict earthquakes. If they can predict them then why didn’t they then warn the public pre 13 June? I did, on the 11th, on Radiolive. Maybe one of posters here from GNS can tell us whether GNS can predict earthquakes or not because I am confused. GNS and their supporters can’t have it both ways.

WW Forecast Team on 13/08/2011 1:51pm

Hey Ken Thanks for the info – can up please send us the GeoNet screenshot you have of the 7.1 reading. Cheers 🙂 – WW

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