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Oh FFS – British Chiropractic Association issues writ against Simon Singh

August 19, 2008 in Media, The other | 6 comments

Simon Singh, author and good egg, is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (note: it’s not a .org.uk address) because he said chiropractors knowingly promote bogus treatments.  It is lolworthy. Their legal attack will amount to them saying they promote bogus treatments – but not knowingly. Heh.  Chiropractic medicine is based on nonsense, and lacks any solid evidence.  If it had solid evidence it would simply be referred to as medicine.

Read more about it on Holford Watch.

Have a bit of a laugh at the press release they produced saying teens need to worry more about their health – here.  What a bunch of twats.  Their press releases, in my opinion, amount to sales literature.

See also.

Someone needs to set up a “shut up or I’ll sue you blog” documenting people with thin skins suing because they can’t handle debate.

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August 19, 2008 at 2:52 am

HolfordWatch

We compiled some of the more notorious incidents of easily bruised skin that reached for a healing legal-intimidatory balm when we were discussing the NZ Chiropractors’ Association and the robust line of diplomacy followed by Professor Frank Frizelle. jdc has a list at Legal chill and other threats.

Of course, neither of us dug up the link for when somebody decided to take action against PZ Myers, only to have a very effective lawyer donate some astonishingly efficient services that put an end to the harassment very quickly.

August 19, 2008 at 3:26 am

admin

Excellent stuff – thanks for the links. I’ve predominantly been keeping up with the CAM people’s flailing via your blog and others. I think the broader issue of legal threats on the internet are a serious issue. Luckily a lot of them amount to lolsuits. Still, it’s probably a golden age for solicitors – so at least some people are happy. I think our libel laws in the UK are flawed big-time. So much so they’re prompting libel tourism.

August 20, 2008 at 2:50 am

HolfordWatch

Sure – it’s part of what Ben Goldacre refers to as the “hassle barrier” and it’s used to silence dissent or foment manufactrovery rather than enhance knowledge.

in extremis, for the purposes of popular discourse, it is not necessary for homeopaths to prove their case. It is merely necessary for them to create walls of obfuscation, and superficially plausible technical documents that support their case, in order to keep the dream alive in the imaginations of both the media and their defenders…

I’ve lost count of the quantity of material I’ve trawled through from these lobbies. Time and again you find that the references they use do not say what they say they say. They use technical terms in a way that is completely inaccurate. They distort, misrepresent, and most significantly cherry pick data. After a while, you have to say: enough, life is too short, I’ve wasted too much time; you are no longer reliable witnesses to the data; you are, to me, a dead voice.

But that would be wrong…

So, between that and the legal hassles – yes, it is getting difficult to express even an evidence-based opinion in the UK. There seems to be an off-shoot of public communication were things are assessed on a ‘likelihood to offend’ basis and an estimate made of the chance of a legal objection. Our new version of PC, perhaps.

August 20, 2008 at 3:47 am

admin

Possibly a new version of PC, that certainly applies to religious hatred laws etc, although I think it’s always been there ( Aitken vs. The Guardian, lots of people vs. Private Eye, McLibel etc.) but the Internet has greatly increased the number of potential targets (starting with the Godfrey vs. Demon case). Likewise with use of copyright laws to remove media under US law using DMCA requests. Hopefully the recent criticisms from the UN committee on human rights will spark some kind of wider debate on the issue. In the case of CAM it definetly shows them to be as ruthless as other big business when it comes to using libel laws/copyright law/legal threats to shut people up. Maybe more so because of their insecurity when faced with coherent arguments.

One only hopes (in the absense of a change in the law) because of the Internet cases snowball to the point where things have to change for the system to function efficiently. The CAM people are adding to it and hopefully some precidents will work their way into the system that will make it more difficult for plaintiffs. At the moment the law itself is far too asymmetric in favour of plaintiffs with wonga.