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In Britain, Better Not Call It Bogus Science
Geoffrey.landis writes 'In Britain, libel laws are censoring the ability of journalists to write stories about bogus science. Simon Singh, a Ph.D. physicist and author of several best-selling popular-science books, is currently being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for saying that there is no evidence for claims that visiting a chiropractor has health benefits. A year earlier, writer Ben Goldacre faced a libel suit for an article critical of Matthias Rath, who claimed that vitamin supplements can treat HIV and AIDS in place of conventional drugs like anti-retrovirals. In Britain, libel laws don't have any presumption of innocence — any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it's true. Journalists are running scared.'
Perhaps Singh should argue that in calling the treatments bogus, he could not have libeled the British Chiropractic Association because the BCA is not a treatment, it is an organization. Thus, Singh could only have libeled the BCA (i.e., the members of the BCA) if they did not, in fact, promote such treatements (bogus or otherwise). In other words, Singh can say that he attacked the message (the treatements), not the messenger (the BCA), and therefore cannot be found liable for libel against the BCA.
Would the British courts buy it? I have no idea (INABL). But it seems like a reasonable distinction, one that fits well into wide-spread notions of civility as well as the vigorous public discourse required for the advancement of science.
Well, since I'm not living in a country where kooks and liars are given the benefit of the doubt, let me say quite publicly that chiropractors are frauds, along with naturopaths, healing touch types and all the other absurd lying pieces of worthless trash out there who profit off of the superstition and naivety of those with more money than brains.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
where there is freedom and democracy
Oh wait....
Pax,
Philboyd Studge
If every statement is false then you would be establishing the validity of a statement with a series of false statements.
Each statement used would need further verification and so.
This would essentially mean that nothing could be sufficiently proven unless a core set of axioms were adopted.
What are the axioms for life?
Penn and Teller solved this by calling people assholes (not liars or scammers) and talking about their bullshit (not lies and scams). "Bullshit" is sufficiently (at least in US) vague and opinionated. So: call it bullshit science, written by asshole scientists.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
How do you prove something true? Eventually you get to the point where you either have to assume something without proof, or spend your life searching for a basic truth. Lets take George Washington, everyone knows he exists but could he be a patriotic fabrication? You can only trace his linage back so far and even then public records were inaccurate many times. You hit a point where you can't prove anything. Some things should be assumed without full proof. Nothing can be fully proven.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I'd rather people rally behind a mantra such as "Once we've proven something false, stop saying it's true."
You know someone has reached the end of epistemological line when they have to start invoking nihilism to justify an absurd belief. If all knowledge is suspect, as you seem to indicate, then the whole exercise is pointless. Hell, maybe you don't exist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's like that here in the US if you question evolution.
Having RTFA, I can't help but consider it to be sadly biased.
e.g. One of the criticisms it makes is "in English libel cases, the burden of proof is effectively on the defendant. In other words, the defamatory statement is presumed to be false unless the defendant can prove it is true."
Maybe I missed something. Isn't this just a perfectly sensible extension of "innocent until proven guilty"? If I call you a thief and you sue me for libel, why should the burden of proof be on *you*, exactly?
What's more, it makes it sound like Singh has made the claim that chiropractors are completely bogus and can't help you with anything. When in fact, what they quote is that he argues there's no evidence to back up claims that getting your bones cracked can help with things like ear infections. Well, that's fair enough. I've been a chiropractor a few times for joint pain. They helped. Would I go to one for ear infections? Like hell would I.
In Britain, if you say "This person is a fake", you have to be able to prove it or you're liable for libel. If you say "I believe this person is a fake", that's a statement of opinion and not fact, and is held to a less rigorous standard. What, exactly, is wrong with this?
If this NY times article is an example of how good the journalism is outside of the UK, I'll stick to the current 'scared British journalists', thanks.
So.. it has come to this
Try enforcing that. PR firms supply newspapers with no end of bullshit spun to their clients' message. Time-poor journalists, under stress often end up churnalizing it. Bullshit pseudoscience turns up in good newspapers and people believe it... as they read it in the 'paper. It's one hell of a battle to keep that nonsense out of the media.
All knowledge about the universe—as opposed to logical tautologies, which, while often useful, tell us nothing about the world around us—is suspect. That's the most fundamental principle of scientific reasoning. For a given set of observations there exist two classes of models explaining them: those which may be true, and those which have been proven false via contradiction (either internal or in relation to the observations).
The closest anyone can get to the "truth" within the realm of science is a model which is self-consistent and compatible with all known observations and which involves no unnecessary assumptions or entities (Occum's Razor). The model could still be demonstrated false by future observations, however. The concept of absolute truth, propositions which once (correctly) proven can never be falsified, is the domain of pure logic and/or philosophy, not science.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The people of the United Kingdom have been far freer, and had far more rights than the citizens of the USA have ever had.
While the USA was trumpeting their "Freedom" from the Great Britain, a large portion of their population owned other human beings - a practice made illegal in the British isles. (Something they managed to achieve _without_ fighting a major war - they just did it because the people decided it was wrong, and should be fixed).
Other previous colonies of the United Kingdom are completely free of them, and generally achieved that freedom through a peaceful act of parliament. The Commonwealth of Nations is a loose collection of like minded and friendly nations, any member of it is free to leave at any time they want, and the only real power the Commonwealth has over its member states is the power to kick them out of the Commonwealth.
In short, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about. So go back to saluting the flag every morning, and don't forget to repeat your oath of allegiance, or you might lose your "freedom".
Great post, and exactly right. These anti-alternative-therapy people keep claiming alternative therapies "aren't scientific", but neither is traditional medicine. Doctors are just trained to compare symptoms with available pharmaceuticals and prescribe something and see if it works. It's totally shooting in the dark, and there's very little work in the medical industry that I see to understand how the body really works and develop safe and effective therapies for problems. Worse, all the pharmaceuticals have loads of negative side-effects.
There's a lot of people with various problems (like chronic fatigue syndrome) that traditional medicine has done absolutely nothing to find relief for, so they're forced to turn to anything that might help. You can cry all you want that it's bogus, but trying nearly anything beats sitting on your ass and suffering.
Wow, what arrogance. Who the fuck are you to say that those people did not heal anyone?
I'll bite. Among other things I'm a logical thinker and am a trained (though not practicing) scientist. My wife is an MD and we've discussed this very issue many times.
My dad lasted five years longer with his cancer than the doctor told him he would,...
That is a happy state of affairs but your logic is failing you. Doctors are wrong all the time. I know because I'm married to one who specializes in cancer diagnosis. It is an imperfect science and cancer is nowhere near being completely understood. Some cancers regress spontaneously for no explainable reason. Some cancers progress more slowly than average. No doctor can tell you more than a statistical likelihood for time to live and their answer is most likely incorrect - the only question is by how much. If your father sought unproven "alternative" medicines that is his right but the burden of proof is on you to show that they had some effect. I'm not about to assume that some snake-oil works just because some people believe it may have helped without any evidence to back up that assertion. That may sound cold but science is cold in a way.
I know a ton of doctors personally and I don't know a single one that wouldn't use something to save a patient that could be *proven* to work or even had a logical premise for why it should work. All progress in medicine is exploratory and comes about through trying things that we don't know if they'll work. But there is a threshold for absurdity. Claiming that you can cure cancer through chiropractic joint manipulation or acupuncture is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof.
We still don't know which one of those "absurd lying pieces of worthless trash" delayed his death this much.
Quite possibly none of them. Cancer doesn't always behave the way we think it will. Survival statistics are simply probabilities and sometimes people beat the averages by quite a lot.
Maybe it was the placebo effect, who knows. But do you think we care? When you live with someone who should've been dead for 3 years already, you tend to look a bit differently at medical science.
I have lived with dying people. My wife has worked in a hospice and diagnoses cancer patients daily. It hasn't changed my view on medicine one bit. The human body is incredibly complicated and there is far more that we don't understand than what we do. Getting cynical about medicine because we can't cure or even diagnose every disease is a waste of energy and time. If seeking emotional solace in "alternative medicine" or religion or whatever else help you cope, I guess I can't argue with that. But I certainly can and will argue against quackery because it hurts more people than it helps.
Actually, naturopathic medicine is not only legitimate, it is superior to and will eventually replace allopathic medicine (mainstream, drug-and-surgery medicine), assuming the Singularity does not occur first.
Glad we had you to clear that up for us. Nice to know that all those incredibly smart doctors have wasted their time and energy and have no idea what they are talking about. I assume you are just waiting for your Nobel prize in medicine because you know better than all of them? Sorry to hear the Nobel committee screwed you again this year.
For proof, read a book or two by Linus Pauling.
Very smart people say very absurd things all the time. Hero worship does not constitute proof of anything.
As for chiropractics, I am not sufficiently informed to make a judgment.
You're pretty clearly not informed enough about medicine to make an informed judgment either.
Nah. For Godwin's Law to really be invoked, it has to be hyperbole. I mean, look at Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown. And these fascist fuckwads are the *liberal* party in the UK. I mean, they make the U.S. look like it actually has a two party system!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I'm not saying out libel system is perfect but before i take shit like this from an American can you please look at which country.
1) has news full of rampant lies
2) has a population where 40-45% don't believe in evolution and believe the world was created in its current form
Oh right its the US, but yeah sure, OUR legal system is busted and cripples science journalism! You still have people on your news claiming provably false things, but yeah WE are the ones with the libel problem!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
In England and Wales, libel must be:
1. A statement of fact. Just like in the US, you can't sue over an opinion.
2. Untrue (but the defendant must prove the truth, not the plaintiff the falsehood. See "prove you're not a thief" passim.)
3. Defamatory. I can write that a particular convicted drug dealer also fiddles his taxes, and even if it's a lie, it's not defamatory, so no libel.
4. and 5. Libel doesn't have to be knowingly false, and doesn't have to be malicious. If a newspaper, say, publishes your name and photo, and identifies you as a convicted rapist, you have a case for libel even if the newspaper made a mistake and pulled a file on someone with a similar name from their records. Damages will be higher if it was knowing and malicious, though.
It seems to me as though the real difference is that the assumption in England is that people speak the truth, so lying about someone can be assumed to have a serious effect on them. In the US, the assumption appears to be that people will say any kind of crap, and you shouldn't believe what you hear.
I do: you're allowed to bring it up as a defense, but even if you prove your point it may not be enough for you to win the case.
Yes, it will. Please stop spreading FUD about English law. Proof of the truth of a statement is an accepted defence in English libel law, and every source I see describing English libel law says so. Please provide a direct link and (preferably) quotation of one that says otherwise.
It does look like guilty until proven innocent, and that's what confuses a lot of people. But if you think about it, the defendant has accused the plaintiff of something, so yes, it's up to the defendant to prove it.
Except that's not true. Simon said "science behind the treatment is bogus", not that the chiropractors were bogus, which means that tey are misinformed, not lying intentionally. And the science behind the treatments they propose is bogus.
An old journalists' proverb is "if in doubt, leave it out".
Yeah, that's what I say - if you can't prove that you don't molest children you must not deny the charges?
Expecting the plaintiff to prove the statements aren't true is ridiculous. Unless Darkness404 has been shadowed by numerous independent witnesses for his entire life he can't prove that he never ever indulged in a little caprine frolicking.
Well it depends if its libel. Simon said the treatments are not proven, which he CAN defend. The problem is the judge interprets his words as "chiropractors are lying to patient" which he did not say and did not mean.
Justifying the statement is not an exercise in proving its absolute truth, either.
If you can convince the court is true, then that's good enough.
You may remember the cases that Fat Bob Maxwell won against Private Eye; at least some of the accusations were factually true, but the magazine couldn't prove it at the time. So legally, they were false.
Yeah, the problem is the court actually misunderstood the words Simon was saying. They are trying him for the equivalent of saying "chiropractors know they are not helping people but lie to them" (which is not only not what he meant but is indefensible in every sense of the word) vs the actual words "treatments chiropractors give have not been proven to be scientifically sound". All the problems are the misinterpretation of the word BOGUS.