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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.
In Britain, libel laws don't have any presumption of innocence
Isn't Britain otherwise pretty anal about the presumption of innocence, to the point that accusations sometimes can't be even talked about in the press? Why the huge difference for libel?
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
McDonalds used to sue people who claimed that their food wasn't very healthy, until the McLibel two took them one, and won on most of the points. McDonalds won on a few minor points but decided not to enforce the judgement as that would just give them even worse publicity.
Coincidently, Ben Goldacre was presenting at the Royal Institution today on "Bad Science" - poor media reporting of science. You can view the stream from tomorrow afternoon at The Times Higher Education website: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/webcast.html . Event details for the RI debate here: http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayEvent&id=948
Babel fish.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This isn't a problem that is new for Great Britain nor is it limited to journalists. Indeed, the problem has gotten to be so bad that it has given rise to so called "libel tourism" where people who want to sue for libel go out of their way to find some connection, no matter how tenuous to Great Britain, so that they can justify suing in British courts (especially English or Welsh courts. Scotland and N. Ireland are slightly more sane about these things). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel_tourism. This is having serious chilling effects on what is even published in the United States and other places far away from Britain.
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.
While it may be good science, it is probably a very bad for the journalism business, and really would make things terribly inconvenient. A large enough section of the population is not at all interested in reading articles that take the time to painstakingly prove each assertion made in an article, and for the most part this is for good reason. Good journalism is about taking complex ideas from many disciplines and distilling them into consumable, simpler ideas for the masses. There are many who would describe this as "dumbing things down" and hate the impurity of it. The fact of the matter is that we can't all be purists about everything. The point of journalism is not to make everyone experts about everything that gets reported on, but rather just to offer primers and spark interest. Holding journalists to such high expectations is idealistic, and ultimately unfeasible. Sometimes they have to deal in broad strokes. As for the situation with libel law in Great Britain, as long as it's true in my book it's not libel. If your business or reputation can't stand up to the facts, then you need to change business or remake your repuation.
I got a catholic block.
That's not what the BCA is arguing. What they're saying is that "bogus" is defined as "intentionally deceitful", and are arguing that the author can't prove intent.
Basically everyone is calling everyone else a liar, and somehow a judge is going to make some very interesting decisions.
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.
"[...] 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."
That alone is not why Mr. Singh is being sued. The issue is specifically driven by his use of the word "bogus." The judge has taken it to mean "consciously dishonest." Not just peddling an ineffective treatment, but knowing that it's ineffective and still claiming otherwise. If Singh just claimed it was an ineffective treatment, he would not be criticizing the BCA directly, so it wouldn't be actionable... However, the judge and the BCA took him to be saying that the BCA are knowingly and intentionally dishonest in their promotion of the treatment.
I wouldn't think to interpret "bogus" in this way, but that seems to be the original meaning. I hope the judge realizes Singh was using it in a more modern sense, but if it's interpreted as the BCA claims, then it certainly explains how far this lawsuit has gone, and invalidates many of the comments here so far including the inflammatory summary. Singh can criticize the effectiveness of the treatments to his heart's content, as long as he doesn't accuse the BCA of fraud! You can read some more linguistic analysis of this lawsuit and the evolving meaning of "bogus" over at the Language Log.
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 wouldn't matter. IANAL, but I've looked into this sort of thing. Here in the US, the truth is an absolute defense against slander or libel. That is, if you can prove that you told the truth, you've won your case because that's the way the law reads. In Britain, the truth is an affirmative defense. That means that you're allowed to prove that you told the truth, but it might not be enough to save you. British law considers statements to be slander or libel if they are harmful and/or defamatory regardless of the truth of the statements.
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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
Note that Goldacre won against Rust. To me, and to most of /., I am sure that the case is obvious. But anybody is entitled to their day in court: you sould not be able to say that someone's claim is "obviously" false, no matter how much you respect the person being claimed against, as I respect Goldacre.
And the Singh/Chiropractors case is still in the courts: the chiropractors have not won.
I am afraid this is an example of the cost of Free Speech: the Black hats have as much freedom as the White Hats - and so it must be.
The case here is for a common defence fund for the White Hats. Private Eye, when it was fighting Sir James Goldsmith, had such a fund, known as the Goldenballs fund. Lots of people chucked in a tenner or so to support the defence costs of the good guys. And if anybody is running such a fund for Singh, or for any future complants against Goldacre, I will chip in. It would be good if their attackers knew that the defence was well funded.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
If you will read the Wikipedia article on English law about libel, you will see that the truth is only an allowable defense there, not an absolute defense as it is in America. In fact, in an English court, the statements are assumed to be false unless the defense proves them to be true.
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In Britain, the truth is an affirmative defense. That means that you're allowed to prove that you told the truth, but it might not be enough to save you.
I don't know whether the second part of that is true, but I do know that's not what an "affirmative defense" means. (Well, at least in the US. But the US gets its legal system largely from the UK, so I would be very surprised if it were different.) An affirmative defense is one the defendant has to raise himself.
Take self defense. During an assault trial, the prosecution is not required by default to show that the defendant did not act in self defense, just that he punched/kicked/threatened/whatever the victim. The defense attorney can't get up in the closing statement and go "the prosecution never presented any evidence that the defendant didn't act in self defense, thus you must acquit." If the defendant wants to use self defense as a defense, they must file a motion with the court (probably before the trial begins, but IANAL and that's the sort of detail I forget/didn't really know in the first place) and convince the judge that it has a reasonable chance of success before it will be allowed.
Basically what I'm saying is that if you read that truth is an affirmative defense in the UK and took away from that the interpretation that showing truth in court isn't sufficient for an acquittal, then there's a very good chance you're mistaken.
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
You got it wrong. In the US, it suffices that you believe your statements to be true. In the UK, belief isn't enough, you need to prove that what you said is actually true (it's this shift of burden of proof that characterizes affirmative defence, afaik).
For example, if I were to say "Techno-vampire goes out to bars dressed in drag", you could sue me for slander. In the US, if I could make a reasonable argument that I believed you to be a drag queen, I'd be off the hook. In the UK, actual proof that you had been in a bar while dressing in drag would be needed to successfully defend myself.
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.
I've checked further since posting that. In England, the truth is considered an allowable defense, and it is, in fact, an affirmative defense because the statements are presumed false until proven true. Even then, you can still lose your case because in England, libel and slander are about defamation, and if you've defamed somebody be telling the truth, it's still defamation.
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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.
Actually, the article summary is, as usual, incorrect. Specifically, it is not true that:
Rather, in defamation cases in Britain (and Australia, New Zealand and AFAIK Canada) a statement is first considered in its own right to consider whether it carries any defamatory imputation. If there is no defamatory imputation, there is no libel or slander claim. However, if the Court determines that there is a defamatory imputation on the face of the statement, then it is for the maker of the statement to justify it.
Which is as it should be - if I write "Darkness404 molests goats" then unless it is true why should I not compensate you for the resulting harm to your reputation? Whereas if it is true, then I have done nothing but convey the truth of the situation to the audience. I think that many people here are confusing "free speech" with "freedom from liability for any consequences of my speech howsoever I choose to exercise it" which are two entirely different things.
Justifying the statement is not an exercise in proving its absolute truth, either. Civil cases are determined on the balance of probabilities, not 'beyond reasonable doubt' or to some degree of logical or scientific certainty.
The suggestion in the article that all of this is new and has journalists "running scared" is bogus (ahem) too. Essentially the same principles have applied for several hundred years.
Read Pynchon.
Not so! As I've pointed out several times, if your claim defames me, it doesn't matter (in an English court) that it's true because the truth isn't, and never has been an absolute defense there.
Yes, you've pointed it out several times. But, as the GP was saying, you're wrong. The truth is an absolute defence here; you were, however, correct in your OP when you said it is an affirmative defence, i.e. you have to prove it.
See this useful summary. Relevant quote: "There are defences in law for libel. The publisher could prove the statement to be true [...]".
In your original post, you say this:
It wouldn't matter. IANAL, but I've looked into this sort of thing. Here in the US, the truth is an absolute defense against slander or libel. That is, if you can prove that you told the truth, you've won your case because that's the way the law reads. In Britain, the truth is an affirmative defense.
This is all correct.
That means that you're allowed to prove that you told the truth, but it might not be enough to save you. British law considers statements to be slander or libel if they are harmful and/or defamatory regardless of the truth of the statements.
But these two sentences are wrong. I believe you misunderstand what an affirmative defence is.
How do you prove something true?
You don't. To (really) quickly summarize Karl Popper's work: You can only falsify a hypothesis, not prove it.
Not so! As I've pointed out several times, if your claim defames me, it doesn't matter (in an English court) that it's true because the truth isn't, and never has been an absolute defense there. It is not true.
One counter-reference
Truth (justification) is a complete defence in defamation
Or from Wikipedia:
English law allows actions for libel to be brought in the High Court for any published statements which are alleged to defame a named or identifiable individual or individuals in a manner which causes them loss in their trade or profession, or causes a reasonable person to think worse of him, her or them. Allowable defenses are justification (the truth of the statement), fair comment (whether the statement was a view that a reasonable person could have held), and privilege (whether the statements were made in Parliament or in court, or whether they were fair reports of allegations in the public interest). An offer of amends is a barrier to litigation. A defamatory statement is presumed to be false unless the defendant can prove its truth. Furthermore, to collect compensatory damages, a public official or public figure must prove actual malice (knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth). A private individual must only prove negligence (not using due care) to collect compensatory damages. In order to collect punitive damages, all individuals must prove actual malice.
Now as I'm English I could sue you for saying that ;-)