Technology may change, but the art of the shyster remains undiminished.
Your Back Page scribbler is a huge fan of Australia’s Bent Spoon Award.
This accolade is presented annually by the Australian Skeptics and it goes to whomever that organisation judges to the most egregious perpetrator of preposterous pseudoscientific and/or paranormal piffle foisted upon the public in any given year.
Last year’s deserving winner came from the field of naturopathy, where one Barbara O’Neill captured the judges’ imagination with her advice to cancer patients to ditch their chemotherapy treatment in favour of using bicarbonate of soda instead.
She also impressed the skeptics (not in a good way) with her claims that grated potatoes prevented tetanus, cayenne pepper was a cure for stomach ulcers, chopped onions could treat pneumonia and saying that sliced garlic placed on a baby’s foot was “more powerful than antibiotics”.
In the face of all that, this year’s winner had a high bar to overcome. And yet Dolly Adamson, of Kyneton Paranormal in Victoria, has done herself proud.
While not claiming to have any medical expertise, Ms Adamson does, however, purport that she is able to talk to the ghosts of murdered children, and their killers, using an amazing device called a “Spirit Box”.
According to the Australian Skeptics media release, among the children Adamson claims to be in touch with are the Beaumont children (presumed murdered in 1966), Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon (missing since 1973), William Tyrrell and Madeleine McCann. She also says she gets messages from their killers.
But perhaps the most compelling case Adamson made for this year’s honour was her claim to have received messages from the ghost of Dezi Freeman, who murdered two policemen in 2025.
Particularly impressive, given that at the time she received these ghostly missives, January 2026, Freeman was very much still alive and on the run.
“Making money by pretending to talk with the ghost of Great-Aunt Mary is one thing, but claiming to get messages from murdered children is a new low,” challenge co-ordinator and investigator from Australian Skeptics Inc, Richard Saunders, told media.
“The dead don’t talk, but money does.”
Saunders explained that Adamson and Kyneton Paranormal perpetrate their racket using something called a Spirit Box.
“It’s nothing more than a radio that scans the AM frequencies and pauses on each one for about a second, long enough to hear a word or part of a word being broadcast. No ghosts, just radio announcers,” he added.
Among other charlatans competing for this year’s award were the Vivacious Living Centre in Perth, which is charging clients to diagnose and treat their illnesses using an unregistered and dodgy body scanning device from Russia called the Metatron NLS (based on non-existent frequencies).
And a shout out, too, to Monica and Lise Smit, who have been using their online shop to resell totally useless Orgone Energy (a fictional energy) devices that claim to protect gullible folks from electromagnetic field radiation.
Dolly Adamson might have pipped you guys at the post this year, but keep up the shonky work and, who knows, 2027 might see you guys at the top of the podium.
If you are wondering where the “Bent Spoon” concept comes from, it stems back to a TV show in the 1970s featuring a bloke called Uri Geller, a self-proclaimed “psychic” who reckoned he could bend spoons with the power of his mind.
Turned out, it was just the power of his fingers that bent the spoons, but lots of folks were happy to go along with the scam.
Spoon-feed your tasty story tips to the ever-hungry Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au.
