Dear readers, my dear friend (and astronomer from Galaxy Zoo) Edd told me a story the other day, which made me mad. I wanted to tell the world about this unfairness, but he’d do a far better job, so I made a new category: for guest blogs. Over to Dr. Edward Edmondson, Post Doctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth.
Hanny’s invited me to guest blog on a recent story which she’s heard no end of from me and other users on her Twitter stream, and I’m very grateful for the chance to explain a bit more about it.
The story concerns Simon Singh – a rather well known British science writer. As a bit of a mini-bio, Simon studied physics at Imperial College London and did a PhD in particle physics at the University of Cambridge and CERN. Following this, Simon went on to work for the BBC making a number of really excellent science programs, and from there went on to write a number of books. I’ve read his first few and they are great books, and I understand that one of his most recent, “Big Bang”, is really excellent.
Simon’s latest book is coauthored with Professor Edzard Ernst – the UK’s first professor of complementary medicine. It is titled “Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial”, and studies a number of alternative medical treatments with the expertise that Professor Ernst brings.
An awful lot of what would be called alternative medicine consistently fails to pass scientific trials. An awful lot of the rest of it hasn’t been properly tested at all. As has recently been repeated in Tim Minchin’s excellent poem ‘Storm’, but which I believe I first read in Richard Dawkins’ foreword to “Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations” by John Diamond* – “There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t work.”
Now, Simon Singh wrote an article for the Guardian newspaper, during Chiropractic Awareness Week – a campaign of the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). Chiropractic is one of the major ‘alternative’ treatment systems around today. It involves manipulating the spine and has at one time or another been claimed to successfully treat all manner of conditions, an awful lot of which most people would have real trouble (for good reason) believing that manipulating the back could treat. The list includes epilepsy, shingles, asthma, colic, bed-wetting, stomach ulcers… the list goes on. In fact, chiropractic’s founder claimed to have cured deafness in one of his earliest cases. Simon called out the BCA for claiming that their members can treat children with colic, sleeping difficulties and other conditions despite a lack of evidence that this is the case.
As a result of this, the BCA chose to sue him (and not the Guardian newspaper, which is perhaps a bit unusual). Now, in many countries the BCA would have to prove that what was said about them was untrue, but in the UK the ‘burden of proof’ is on the defendant – Simon has to prove that what he said was true, but with the surprising addition that the first ruling by a judge in the ongoing case is that the word ‘bogus’ which Simon used meant that he was saying the BCA was deliberately lying – something that most readers of the article I have spoken to did not interpret the article to mean, and something that Simon himself did not mean. In other words, he is expected to defend an opinion he does not hold. Simon recently announced he is intending to appeal this decision.
The trust Sense About Science is leading a petition on the matter. They say that the scientific community would have preferred an open discussion of the available evidence or a debate in the mainstream media. However, the BCA claim there is lots of medical evidence for the treatments in question, but go to their Research page and there are no listed documents for anything other than the treatment of back pain. Treating asthma and colic by manipulating the back is not the same as treating back pain by manipulating the back, for reasons which should be pretty clear. In fact, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled against advertising that claims chiropractic can treat colic, amongst other conditions.
The BCA also says they wish to engage in scientific debate. Despite the BCA saying this, they chose to sue and their approach is having a silencing effect on scientific debate and the libel laws in the UK are causing real problems for people wishing to raise important issues which put them in conflict with others. As Dr Aust points out, in Simon Singh’s Story So Far article, the BCA chose to turn down a chance to respond in the Guardian and chose instead to sue the individual journalist and not the newspaper.
This is certainly something that goes beyond the one case of the BCA and Simon Singh however. We really do need to change our laws to avoid cases like these and “libel tourism”, as both David Allen Green and Nick Cohen explain (libel tourism is when people in another country take advantage of the UK’s differing laws to sue someone here, even when neither they nor the person they are suing live here).
Your support in this one case and in trying to change our laws really is greatly appreciated by Simon Singh and the communities of science and journalism. In the Facebook group supporting Simon he says “your support is much appreciated and your postings are a real morale booster”, and lots of signatures on the petition will definitely help to show the UK government how important we feel it is to be able to engage in these debates without fear of legal action. The Sense About Science pages are an excellent place to go to learn more, and I strongly recommend the legal blog Jack of Kent which has followed the case from the beginning with great insight into the situation with the perspective of a lawyer.
There are a number of comments from people of all walks of life on the Sense About Science pages which make great reading. One final link however – in the interests of an open debate the BCA’s vice president has posted this story (which I’m afraid you’ll have to register to read). It puts across their side of the story. The comments to it should be read too however.
*John Diamond was a British journalist who sadly died of cancer. His book “Snake Oil” and also “C: Because Cowards Get Cancer Too” are excellent books – very good reading, informative and at times very moving.
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