You may have noticed our shiny new widget over to the right: we’re supporting the campaign launched by the charity ‘Sense about Science’ to keep UK libel laws out of science.
What’s this about?
Well, last year the British Chiropractic Association decided to sue the science writer Simon Singh for libel after he criticised them for promoting the use of chiropractic to treat children with conditions such as asthma and colic – treatments which he described as “bogus”. Whatever you believe about the efficacy of “alternative medicine”, if you care about freedom of speech you should support the open discussion of evidence rather than the silencing which results from libel cases. (And this isn’t the first relevant case – Ben Goldacre, author of the Bad Science blog and column, was sued by Matthias Rath for expressing concerns about Rath’s promotion of vitamin pills to treat AIDS in South Africa. Rath withdrew his case, but for more than a year Goldacre was unable to discuss the issue and had to omit an entire chapter from his book ‘Bad Science’.)
There’s been lots of discussion about this case: the legal blogger Jack of Kent has set out the legal issues; you can read Simon Singh’s own account of the last year; journalist Nick Cohen provides some background and puts it in the context of ‘libel tourism’, where the UK’s libel laws are used by (for instance) Saudi businessmen against US publications simply because content is available online. Things have got so bad the states of New York and Illinois are drafting legislation to protect people from the decisions of UK courts on libel.
All this matters because people need access to information about science and health, open discussion improves the quality of evidence, and blogs like this one need freedom of speech to be protected. We should all be worried about the chilling effect of UK libel law.
Oh, and I forgot to say: the preliminary ruling on the case – which settled how Simon Singh would have to defend himself and against which he is now appealing – turned on the meaning of ‘bogus’. There’s a really interesting discussion of its different meanings in the US and UK at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1426
[...] More support from the Feminist Philosophers blog. [...]
For what it’s worth, the native Brit in my household says “bogus” means “intentional fake.”
I don’t know quite quite to think about the differences in libel laws, with the burden of proof on the defendent in the UK. It’s a worry if you could show they were culpably ignorant and still they could win.
I think I must have had my British-English intuitions disrupted by several years in the US (and maybe generational differences). I’d read Simon Singh’s paragraph many times between last summer and Eady’s preliminary ruling in May, and it never occurred to me it could be interpreted as meaning that the BCA were being deliberately dishonest.
But even apart from the meaning of that one word, case law clearly shows that meaning is to be taken from the piece as a whole, and in a later paragraph Singh makes it clear he thinks the BCA are deluded, not dishonest. (This part of case law is why tabloid newspapers can get away with scandalous headlines so long as the text of the article moderates the meaning enough.)
There’s something else that hasn’t been commented on so much: libel is actionable per se, which means (I discovered in my tort law class) that you don’t have to show you’ve been harmed by the defamatory statements in order to sue. That makes sense where an individual – a natural person – is protecting a reputation which gives them social status rather than economic benefit. But I don’t think entities other than natural persons should be able to sue for libel. Unfortunately, under UK libel law, even huge multinationals like Macdonalds can sue for libel without first having to show they’ve suffered harm as a result of the defamatory statements…
Thanks for the articles and site, I enjoy reading them.
I will be sure to pass your site onto my family, friends and patients.
All the best
Dr. Brian