Dr Gerrard Liddell said he had spoken to dozens of anti-mandate protesters across both the North and South Islands.
The former mathematics lecturer at the University of Otago said he found the protesters’ way of thinking fascinating.
He went to the Wellington protest as he thought it would be a momentous historical event.
"Most of the people I know, they’re so boring — they don’t have any interesting or deviant views to talk about," he joked.
He usually began his conversations with protesters by asking questions — despite the narratives of protesters often being inconsistent and based on factual inaccuracies.
He did not think he had changed many minds, but was interested in finding common ground from which to build a dialogue with protesters and evade their efforts to shut down people with a different view from them.
He had also talked to protesters in Taupo, Bulls, Amberley and the Octagon.
There were a few common themes he had noticed across the different locations, Dr Liddell said.
The movement New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science was a "central and corrosive source" of disinformation for protesters.
He believed the media should do more to expose how ludicrous some of its website’s content was and thought good-quality science should be communicated more clearly.
Many protesters did not trust statistics, so he often walked them through how information was gathered to show them how difficult it would be to control health data in New Zealand.
While some of the protesters he had met were "a bit agro", others were really nice people.
Many of the people protesting against vaccine mandates had not been happy with how the world was before, which made them vulnerable to conspiracy theories when the pandemic happened.
Ultimately, he was concerned about the way debates were conducted and believed in having more opportunity for better public dialogue, Dr Liddell said.
OSCAR FRANCIS
