The current committee is in unanimous agreement that the [1995] award was not justified. As such, we would like to apologise to the authors of the report. And, as a way to publicly hold ourselves to account, the 2023 Bent Spoon is awarded to ourselves – the NZ Skeptics – for our “lack of critical thinking” when it came to the Hitting Home report.

When I looked on the NZ Skeptics website, the only record of this extremely unusual development I could find is this simple statement:

Fortunately, the NZ Skeptics email newsletter sent out on 27th November 2023 gave some more details.

Bent Spoon

by Craig Shearer, (who had just stepped down as Chair of the society.)

This year’s Bent Spoon winner is an interesting one, so bear with me for a few minutes. Over the years we have used the Bent Spoon award to highlight damaging misinformation and gullibility, awarding the prize to local councils, media organisations and personalities, academics and even government ministers. Looking back at the history of the award, although we stand by almost all of the decisions, over the last few years the committee has become concerned about one in particular, from 1995.

In 1995 the Bent Spoon award was given to the Ministry of Justice, for a report they commissioned which looked into domestic violence against women, titled “Hitting Home”. The report interviewed men about their views on abuse, and attempted to uncover some statistics about the prevalence of different kinds of abuse in New Zealand. As far as we can tell, the report was well researched and written, and seems to have received a mostly positive reception both locally and internationally, with some notable dissent (mainly from men’s rights groups).

However, the NZ Skeptics took issue with some of the conclusions of the report, claiming that it “trivialises the real domestic violence that goes on in New Zealand” and pointing out what were considered to be shortcomings. These supposed shortcomings included the way in which the report defined abuse, which included not just physical but also psychological abuse. However, careful reading of the report shows that the authors were well aware of these potential issues, and were careful to let the readers know of the factors that needed to be borne in mind when reading the report. Indeed, in retrospect the report appears to have been somewhat ahead of its time.

At the time the award was announced, there was pushback from some members of the Skeptics, so a subcommittee was formed to accept feedback from members and come to a decision as to whether to rescind the award. In the end, a decision was made to keep the award in place, in part because a majority of the 16 people who responded to the subcommittee stood behind it.

Hugh Young, long time NZ Skeptics member and vocal opponent of the award said:

“We should graciously acknowledge our mistake, withdraw the “award” and publicly and unconditionally apologise to the authors of “Hitting Home”. This would be a good example of the kind of rational and adaptable behaviour we try to encourage in others.”

We will not be withdrawing the award. It was awarded by the committee at the time, and we would rather let the decision stand as evidence that, as skeptics, we’re just as prone to getting things wrong as everyone else.

The current committee is in unanimous agreement that the award was not justified. As such, we would like to apologise to the authors of the report. And, as a way to publicly hold ourselves to account, the 2023 Bent Spoon is awarded to ourselves – the NZ Skeptics – for our “lack of critical thinking” when it came to the Hitting Home report.

What we can learn from this is that we, more than most organisations, need to be careful about criticising others when we don’t have the expertise to be able to make a properly considered judgement. We’re on fairly safe ground when we go after conspiracy theories and “alternative” therapies, but we need to tread carefully when we, as laypeople, think that the experts in the room have got something wrong. As a committee we will strive to do better.

I’ll wrap up with a something the Chair of the Skeptics said back in 1995 that myself and the current committee are happy to stand behind:

“that we are able to have major differences of opinion, yet remain willing to argue rationally and reasonably, is, I believe, a reaffirmation of the sorts of principles for which the Skeptics stand and makes me, for one, proud to be a member”

[The 1995 Skeptics debate on the Hitting Home Report is recorded here.]