Bent Spoon Winner 2000

Jasmuheen

By Barry Williams

Bent Spoon Winner

Australian Skeptics has announced that the winner of their Bent Spoon Award (presented to the perpetrator of the most preposterous piece of paranormal piffle) for 2000 is the Brisbane woman who operates under the name Jasmuheen. Although her claims that people can live on air and light alone, without the intake of food, have been exposed many times (most notably on 60 Minutes, Channel 9) as being completely fallacious, she still manages to trap many of the unwary into following her crackpot notions, to the detriment of their health.

Nominations:

• bioshield.com.au
• 'Mind Body Spirit' festival
• Channel 9 Small Business Show
• NSW Government (for banning PVC at the Olympics)
• Uri Geller (for psychically stalling the Olympic torch) - Two nominations
• National Science and Technology Museum in Canberra (the Questacon shop)
• Channel 7 (for the "Psychic Sphere")
• Mark Philippoussis and the Australian Davis Cup team
• Jasmuheen

Australian Skeptic of the Year

The award for 2000 went to Prof John Dwyer, immunologist at the University of NSW and Prince of Wales Hospital for his leadership in publicly exposing untested pseudo medical gadgets and techniques. The citation for his award reads:

Australian Skeptics Inc has great pleasure in awarding the title Australian Skeptic of the Year for 2000 to John Dwyer:

Whose clear exposition of the value of evidence and scientific method in medical research, and whose forthright and sceptical public exposure of pseudo-medical claims and treatments that lack this rigour, have contributed so much to the physical and intellectual health of our society.