The Singh thing: law being an ass

Disclaimery bobbins: I kno o about law. This post is my opinion based on a bit of cursory reading and if you want 100% reliable truefacts the legal bloggers are a much better place to look.

The blogs are all over this story, but it's not in the papers yet. Physicist Simon Singh followed up his successful pop-sci book Fermat's Last Theorem with a new one called Trick or Treatment? on alternative medicine. In it, he called out* the British Chiropractic Association for promoting bogus treatments. The BCA, as is usual for a pore ole downtrodden group of penniless but well-meaning practitioners who just want a chance to debate the evidence, sent in the legal team.

The libel court's preliminary ruling, which lawblogger Jack of Kent describes as astonishing, was that to defend himself, Singh will have to prove that the BCA are deliberately and knowingly lying to patients. This is going to be almost impossible, because they are probably not doing so, which is why Singh never said they were in the first place. He was saying the treatments don't work, which they don't, and that the BCA promotes them, which it does.

I wish Simon all the best with the case and will for deffo buy his book now.

*In the present-day American meaning of "publicly challenged them", not the Regency "slapped them in the face with a glove, dashed a glass of Burgundy over their small-clothes and demanded single combat." Although that would be much cooler.