Slashdot Mirror
In the UK, a Victory For Free Speech
Forget4it was one of several readers to note that British science writer Simon Singh, whose prosecution for libel we have discussed on several occasions, has won an interim victory in a UK appeals court. "The landmark ruling will allow the writer, whose battle has become a catalyst for demands for libel law reform, to rely on a 'fair comment' defense of his statements about chiropractors. It will also strengthen the position of others — from science writers and medical professionals to bloggers — who face libel suits, as the judges made clear the court was not the place to settle scientific controversies."
So when can we start having honest discussions about chiropractors and global warming scientists?
Well, he can soon publish his papers, meaning you can make your own informed opinion.
Before, it was suppressed, not allowing anyone to make their opinion.
Trolling or just not reading the previous discussions? The issue is indeed about making claims without evidence to back them up: Singh observed that the British Chiropractic Association claims that they can cure a laundry list of medical issues but that there was no evidence to support this. The BCA responded by suing him.
I'm not a scientist. But I do know that going to the chiropractor leads to feeling great.
What could he have been saying about them? It seems that if you're going to bad mouth an entire profession, there should be some kind of evidence to back it up. It sounds like he's just got it in for chiropractors. And I'm not so sure we can consider it anything but hate speech.
You know what else leads to feeling great? Reading TFA. He had commented on some claims that the industry made and not about what they do or an individual chiropractor.
Just to be clear, Dr Singh is not being "prosecuted for libel" - that's only for criminal offences, and libel is not a criminal offence, but a civil wrong. He is being sued for libel, in the civil courts, by the BCA.
And that, in a nutshell, is why you are not a scientist. The efficacy of any treatment needs to be judged by reliable trials, not by what some guy on slashdot said. What did Singh say? The libellous words were "there is not a jot of evidence that chiropractic works", or something to that effect. That's a pretty reasonable summary of the scientific evidence. I'll leave it to you to explain why it's better to respond to such a statement with a lawsuit than a study of your own.
[FUCK BETA]
Yup, the Court used that phrase. The observations on the side aren't legally binding, but they do give a pretty strong indication that the Court was not happy with the insane British libel laws which lead to (as the Court observed) attempting to settle scientific disputes in a court of law.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It seems to me that if you're going to run a for-pay business that purports to "heal people" then you ought to have at least a little evidence to show that what you're doing is actually working. There is currently no evidence to support Chiropractic's "subluxation" theories. I used to live above a chiropractor who claimed that he could cure diabetes via direct spinal manipulation.
Many of them also refuse to acknowledge Pasteur's Germ Theory of Disease. I'd say that they could use a little bit of evidence on their side instead of hiding behind ridiculous libel laws. I wonder if this post will get me sued in the UK?
A copy of his original article, has been archived here: http://svetlana14s.narod.ru/Simon_Singhs_silenced_paper.html
Freedom of thought of absolute. Action can be regulated by government. Speech is closer to thought than action, and should be as lightly regulated as possible (e.g. forbidding threatening someone with physical harm). It is interesting that no society has explicitly recognized through law freedom of thought. I would guess this is because it seems obvious and what can government do about it anyway? With new technologies coming such as fMRI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fmri, we should be carefully considering these assumptions. Should someone be imprisoned (or perhaps subject to mandatory treatment) for having sexual thoughts about children? Should airline passengers be subject to brain scans to see if they are terrorists? This technology could well come sooner than society and law can adapt.
My SIG is a P226
Chiropractic is quackery. Of course, in the UK, they spend tax money on homeopathy, too.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So, you had a back rub and it felt great. Great, nobody is disputing that back rubs feel great. If you RFTA you'd see that isn't what this is about.
What this is about is claims by the BCA that a nice back rub can cure a laundry list of aliments that have no connection to you back whatsoever such as: ADHD/learning disabilities, dizziness, high blood pressure, vision conditions, asthma, baby colic, bedwetting, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, kinetic imbalance due to suboccipital strain (KISS) in infants and menstrual cramps.
If you can explain how a back rub can cure these conditions, then there's a Nobel prize in medicine with your name on it.
Hello BadAnalogyGuy,
I'm not a scientist. But I do know that going to my drug dealer leads to feeling great.
There you have your 'bad' analogy
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The appellate court didn't decide the case, they just reversed the lower court on the standard to be used: "fair comment" rather than "objective truth." He still has to go through a trial on whether his column was, in fact, "fair comment."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Freedom of speech? In my UK? It could be more common than you think!
It seems to me that if you're going to bad-mouth a profession, it should be understood that this is your personal opinion, it may or may not represent reality, and you're entitled to it. Anyone who is undecided about the efficacy of chiropractors and is looking for information about them -- and for that matter, anyone else participating in serious inquiry -- needs something a lot more substantial than one man's opinion. To put that another way, anyone who makes (or alters) medical decisions based on some random dude's personal opinions had no reasonable expectation of good results in the first place.
Well let's see. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. If you want to officially settle that, then we have two options here:
Option A: monitor the speech of everyone in order to track down occurrences of "hate speech", spend tax dollars prosecuting them or waste time defaming them, place a chilling effect on free speech, and tell adult people when they are or are not allowed to hate something. Side effects include the use of the police power of government in situations where no one is using force or fraud to infringe anyone's civil rights, as well as a population that is incapable of understanding that you get to choose whether or not the words of another are going to injure you or affect how you feel. This is otherwise known as having a spine, having some self-determination, and other things that are falling out of fashion these days. The popular practice now is to let your emotions and your general well-being depend on what other people do, and the next logical step (since everything is always evolving or progressing along its path) is to want more control over other people. Thus, we have concepts like "hate speech". The strange thing is that many people seem incredibly determined to never question any of this or to look very deeply at what motivates it.
Option B: teach people how to actually perform research. This would naturally equip them to differentiate between factual data and personal opinion. That would mean this person can say whatever he wants about chiropractors or any other profession, because anyone seriously considering hiring a chiropractor or any other professional of any sort would rightly ignore him in favor of better sources of information. Side effects include a population that can easily distinguish good information from bad, more free speech with fewer negative effects, and people who can explain what is wrong with even actual hatred and use it as an example of what one shouldn't do without feeling a need to use force (i.e. police) in order to censor it.
Having carefully examined both of the available options, I must say that I have a strong preference for the latter. If you still support the "hate speech" concept, and especially if you believe that legal sanctions (including arrest, a criminal record, possible fines, possible incarceration) are the very best way to deal with this person, then I'd like to know why you disagree with me.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Here's the pdf of the judgement
It's pretty damn scathing and looks like escalating this further up the court is pointless.
Hate speech, by definition is destroying freedom of speech. Also, note that hate speech is different than threats. No one person is targeted if someone said "I hate Mexicans" but if someone said "I'm going to kill Jose because hes a mexican" that is a threat, and Jose should be allowed to sue if the comment was not said in jest and the person had the means to kill him.
Why should we care what opinions people have? And why waste tax dollars on them? Same thing with "hate" crimes. If someone killed someone, thats bad and you charge them for murder, unless it was on accident. Why does it matter that the person killed them because they were of a different race? They are still just as dead. No one is more dead because someone didn't like their race. Are the Jews in the holocaust more dead than someone who died of old age? I think you will find both are equally dead. Similarly, someone has an equally broken arm if someone broke it in dislike of their race, or if they got into a fight.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
um... I thought that the issue in this particular proceeding was another judge's decision that by Singh's use of the word "bogus" he meant that chiropracters were intentionally dishonest (libelous), rather than an opinion (fair comment) of the scientific merits of chiropractic.
Any false and misleading statement made should then be actionable. If you want to sue Singh for questioning chiropracty's scientific validity, then if and when it is proved conclusively to have no scientific value, every single chiropractor should be civilly liable, even criminally liable, for telling the public that it is valid.
Hate speech. Where did they dream that phrase up, anyway? What's wrong with having an opinion, anyway? Should a person go to jail if he says he doesn't like teachers? Lawyers? Police? I don't think so. Why should chiropractors enjoy protection? I think chiropractors are overly expensive, much like doctors. There, have I pissed off almost everyone yet?
Oh, of course not. If I want to piss people off around here, I'll have to point out that nerds and geeks are wierd, IT people are pains in the ass, developers are mostly eccentric twits, and most support personnel (the kind you call on the phone) are totally clueless.
Hate speech. What a sissy concept.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"It is extraordinary that this action has cost £200,000 to establish the meaning of a few words."
Right. If you offend some person or group, you can be bankrupted.
--
BMO
Not exactly. What he said was:
The BCA latched onto the word "bogus". They claimed that it implied intentional deception, that the BCA knew it didn't work but promoted it anyway. It's still stupid, of course. No one reading the piece by Singh will think he accuses them of not believing what they teach.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
But there is no evidence to support any healing properties. You can go get a massage and feel great, but as soon as the masseuse starts saying he has magical healing abilities and can cure illness then they have crossed the line.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
With the bonus that many drugs are, in fact, as evidenced by trials, effective in curing or stabilising many of the ailments that chiropracty claims, without evidence, to cure.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Meanwhile, in another segment of UK law, free speech is being undermined by the criminalization of "child pornography" that does not include actual photos of actual children. Apparently depicting something harmful is as harmful as doing something harmful.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I think it matters, because the motive for a crime matters.
There's a difference between the following :
Killing by accident/carelessness
Killing in self defence
Killing in the heat of passion
Killing for revenge
Killing for money
Killing for pleasure
Those are in increasing levels of "danger to society" and as such, should be treated slightly differently by the courts.
When you have a case where, I dunno, say a bunch of kids kill another kid because he was gay. Where would that fall on the gradation?
It's somewhere in the last three. Democrats *tend* to think that such a hate crime/thought crime is analogous to the last (most serious) placement. In other words, killing for virtually no reason other than they wanted to, and it made them feel better about themselves.
I don't intend to convince you of the rightness of their opinions, just explain to you where they're coming from, since you seem to be coming from the "dead is dead, what does it matter the reason" school of thought.
Be careful not to think too highly of this "victory": it essentially says that what Simon Singh says is his personal opinion. That's not the same as saying that what he says is true or false. It's basically saying that whatever Simon Singh says is irrelevant.
Not EXACTLY what I would have liked to see.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=576
and here
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=485#more-485
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Your error is in assuming that the fact that BadAnalogyGuy used the phrase wrongly means that the phrase itself has no useful meaning. I noticed that both you and he used professions in your discussion, but that's not where "hate speech" is a useful term. It's when speech is used to generate hate about something that isn't reasonably changeable, like a person's skin color or religion, that it takes on meaning.
Virg
But I do know that going to the chiropractor leads to feeling great.
So does getting a blowjob. That doesn't mean prostitutes are medical professionals.
(Sorry for stepping on your territory, that was a pretty bad analogy.)
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
So what? The BCA claimed its members could cure just about anything with their techniques, despite these members knowing they can't, and not having "a joy of evidence" to back up their claims. Because the UK has crazy libel laws, the BCA was trying to go after Singh personally, and not the paper that published the piece, which is the normal practice, seeing as the papers have far deeper pockets. The BCA also declined to do a rebuttal in the same paper. I.e. they know they have no evidence that will withstand the slightest scrutiny.
Furthermore, the BCA also contacted all chiropractors in the country, telling them to remove anything advertising or suggesting they could cure what they previously claimed. Why? Because members of the public seeing what was going on started going into these places collecting evidence to demonstrate they were indeed deliverately making false claims. So yes, the chiropractors are being intentionally dishonest when they sell there services claiming they'll cure viral infections, whooping cough, ear infections, et al, and they knew it. Let's be honest, if you are an expensive professional, you have a pretty good idea what works and what doesn't in your chosen field.
The initial judge was a disgrace, he chose to make the worst case assumption, twisted common word usage, and selected archaic disused meanings. I.e. he was buddying up with the BCA, probably via of local lodge membership (yes, the UK is rife with freemasonry favours). Any common sense in this would have had the BCA prove their methods with standard scientific methods, they're the ones making the claims of success going against current science and medical knowledge. Know any real doctors? Ask them what they think about chiropractors.
Wow. Pretty good paper. I'm not British, so I don't speak quite like that - but it's more understandable than some of our US legal opinions and documents!
Very nice job by the court! A good decision, given in understandable language.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I spent 2 years - TWO - having so much back pain that I had trouble tying my shoes, picking stuff up, couldn't do dishes, vacuum... Feeling like crying, not so much because of the actual pain, as because of the despair of not being able to do much anymore.
I went to a regular doctor, gave me pain killers and muscle relaxants. Felt goofy, but not healed. So relaxed I had trouble holding anything, actually.
He then sent me to a Kinesitherapeute, which is the officially anointed cure for back pain in France. Massages, rubing stuff on it, pills again... same results. I felt a bit less goofy, the treatment hurt like hell, and I didn't actually feel much better afterwards.
A friend of a friend sent me to his Chiropractor. In 1 one 45-minutes session, that guy put me back to normal. I could tie my shoes, I actually still remember I felt like tap-dancing in the streets right out of that first session: for the first time in 2 years, I didn't hurt anymore. That was 8 years ago. I've gone back a few times, twice because I was hurting again, then every 3-6 months for an oil change. I once had to go to another Chiro, nowhere near as good results.
Best 75 bucks I ever spent. I agree that's not scientific at all, it just worked for me, may not work for you, may not work for me next time...
I did gave regular medicine 2 shots at my back pain before going rogue, and it failed me.
Back pain / headaches is really the core of what Chiropracy is about, so I'm a bit doubtful about claims in other areas. I'll be willing to try it just in case though. Worst case, it won't do damage, best case, it'll actually be as good as for my back.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I generally agree with the GP. When you read his post, I believe there is an implicit meaning that you have missed.
It's not "dead is dead, what does the reason matter". It's "intentionally dead is intentionally dead, except for legitimate self-defense, what does the reason matter". If someone intentionally murders another human being who was no physical threat to them, the purpose of arresting and incarcerating (or executing) that individual is to remove them from society, thereby protecting society from a known murderer and potentially deterring others who would murder.
I don't understand the concern and fascination with what a murderer was thinking. To punish one more severely than another, which would mean one might get out of jail sooner than another, makes no sense to me. To choose whether I want a guy who would murder for money back on the streets, or whether I want a guy who would murder over someone's skin tone back on the streets is like choosing from which bucket of puke to drink. Both are equally unappealing. I don't really want either person to ever walk the streets again.
I'll clarify. You are saying that the motive for the crime matters to "Democrats". So to them, a guy who comes home to find his wife screwing another man and murders his wife is "more understandable" or "less punishable" than a guy who murders a member of a racial minority because he was a member of that minority. But guess what? Other people get cheated on by someone who claimed to love them, and they don't kill over it. Other people have totally inappropriate racism and sexism and other "isms" and manage not to murder anyone. Other people see a rich man walk down the street and envy his wealth and manage not to kill that man.
To worry about the murderer's excuses and justifications is madness. I don't care what the reason is. The point is, other people also have reasons not to like someone, valid and invalid, and they manage to deal with them peacefully. If someone cannot do that, there's something seriously wrong with them and society needs to be protected from them.
Like far too many laws, these "hate crime" concepts were written, voted upon, and made law without first addressing the above. That's a weak form of "might makes right" reasoning. The message is, we have the votes, we have the means, we have the political clout, so we're going to make this law whether we can justify it or not, whether we can answer the objections to it or not. Anytime you're asked to have faith in a concept by a person who cannot address your objections to it, because it sounds good to them but they can't give you a truly good reason for it, what you are dealing with is religion. Even if it doesn't call itself that. To give a hypothetical, let's say that, heaven forbid, a guy is driving down the road, visibility is very low, conditions are bad, and he hits a pedestrian that he honestly did not see. This person had no intention of hitting anyone, and is quite horrified that this happened. That's an honest accident. I would not call this person a murderer.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
"A male masseuse"?
Isn't that what Julius Caesar said to Pompey before crossing the Rubicon?
I think that's crossing the line already.
As soon as the masseuse starts saying he has magical healing abilities and can cure illness then he will begin to attract disciples and followers. Of course, "masseuse" will have to be changed to "carpenter" later, to appeal to a broader customer base.
Carry on.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Bah, replying to myself. I meant to end that comment with "Even if it doesn't call itself that."
Note to self: don't brainstorm a paragraph at the end of your text and then leave it in the finished post.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Motive matters in some cases because we can hold more than a single, direct perpetrator guilty of the same crime. We can, for example, charge the get-away driver with bank robbery, even though he never entered the bank.
Right now in the US, there's a young girl accused of conspiracy to commit attempted murder, because she allegedly pointed out the victim to the assailant. Her motive certainly matters. Did she want at least a fight to happen? The principal assailant's motive probably doesn't matter as much in this case, maybe not at all.
As long as more than one person can be guilty for contributing the same single act, motive must be considered, or tremendous injustices would become not just possible but the norm. I'd suspect that's also the general case even where there is only one criminal, but I can see some counter arguments there.
Who is John Cabal?
For many years I couldn't sleep on my side (i'm only 29) so I'm not sure how it happened but after a few minutes of lying on my side it would hurt. I learnt to sleep absolutely still lying on back. Then I had to do a photography project about medicine, I spoke to my friend who was a chiropractor and while we were waiting for patients to photograph he gave me a free session. He clicked my spine so hard I started to laugh and since then I can sleep anyway I like, its amazing to have that freedom (no doubt you feel free as well by orders of many magnitudes). I couldn't believe it when I told him I could sleep like normal again and he was puzzled that he treated such a long standing problem because he was just showing me how he treats people. Anything to do with the spine and nerves I believe Chiropractory works wonders and I've been back to him twice for 5 bucks a go (mates rates ;)). Anything else like the above from the parent I don't believe can be treated nor is it something my friend said he could treat. Some of them are just bad apples in order to lie to people.
Jonathanjk.com
"The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen." - I don't know who said it but it seems the simplest solution.
Jonathanjk.com
Your error is in assuming that the fact that BadAnalogyGuy used the phrase wrongly means that the phrase itself has no useful meaning. I noticed that both you and he used professions in your discussion, but that's not where "hate speech" is a useful term. It's when speech is used to generate hate about something that isn't reasonably changeable, like a person's skin color or religion, that it takes on meaning. Virg
I wonder if you've thought that through. So it's wrong to hate a thing that is not easily changed, but okay to hate a thing that the person can change. If this is your guiding principle, what you end up with is a uniform society of conformists. They'll superficially look different (skin color, attire, etc) but any meaningful diversity will end there, because any real diversity of ideas, worldviews and philosophies is now on the "acceptable hatred" list. That's the problem with this notion, and more generally the problem with all of this focus on group identities instead of individuality.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
There is currently no evidence to support Chiropractic's "subluxation" theories.
You are right, of course, but it would be more complete and accurate to say 'there is currently an abundance of evidence that Chiropractic's "subluxation" theories are false and misleading'. Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack; but in this case there is plenty of evidence of lack.
I'm currently reading The Emergence of a Scientific Culture by S. Gaukroger. My interest stems from past readings in epistemology as a study of the methodology of science, and, my interest in Mediterranean death cult religions like Islam, Christianity and Judaism as patriarchal control mechanisms, not unlike induced schizo-affective disorders, that come into play in agrarian societies with controlling oligarchies (monarchies) ensconced in developing urban centres. It's my own take on things that's evolved from trying to understand to what extent corruption is fundamental and necessary to democracy. I'm throwing it out in this thread because I think U.K. libel laws are symptomatic of a transition from class structured, shame-face saving patriarchal societies to modern democracies that have successfully tested empirical findings and common law and are putting aside almost Shamanistic believes that words are effectively magical or Gospel.
Cleisthenes in Ancient Greek history is said to have instituted the first democracy. Sketchily put he did it by breaking up the political clout of existing clans by creating voting blocks that abstracted away from the clan bases and instituted time limits on political offices. He also, IIRC, enforced political participation. I'm sure that somewhere in the Federalist Papers there are presumptions that all of us are corrupt, or subject to corruption, and, the American Founding Fathers instituted articles and laws to form a democracy that reflected their belief in the fundamental corrupt character of us all. I'm trying to formulate a view of modern democracy from the underlying idea that as a political institution democracy best addresses corruption. This sort of links up to Churchill's famous dictum that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others because it best addresses the citizenry and politicians of modern democracies as the worst of all peoples except for all the others, and, this because it best addresses our corruptible natures.
I believe modern democracies with universal suffrage given majority and capacity on the part of it's citizens are the most viable forms of modern government because they've stood the test of history in transitioning from agrarian to post industrial urban societies. British libel laws and things like hate laws have considerable merit but reflect a more industrial/agrarian society where class structure and "face" reflect more primitive belief systems wherein words carry magical import. Going into language goes to far afield but mentioning the "debate" between Newton and Leibniz over the discovery of the Calculus and the tribal wars of industrializing Europe give some character to where I'm trying to go with this stuff.
Archeology has in it's body the idea of a three generation window for viewing past cultures. A generation is somewhere between 20 and 30 years. Three generations give a vivid insight into a culture because grandparents, parents and offspring are a highly sympathetic and even empathetic cluster that transitions cultural values. The U.K., like all viable modern democracies, is transitioning to a new perspective that has as it's foundation empirical findings in Science and tested wisdom in law but still has to deal with the fundamental corrupt nature of our kind.
je m'amuse
ideopath @ play
Alright, then, I hate short people for always getting underfoot. And, I hate extremely tall people, because I have to look UP, and get a crick in my neck when I talk to them. I hate stupid people. I guess hating on phat people wouldn't count, because they can change their phat content?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You mean: "Worst case, the chiropractor does significant damage, base case, placebo kicks in and heals me"?
The data suggests that the best case with chiropractic is just the placebo effect. And I haven't got hard data to hand, but I've read reports in the past of people being seriously injured by chiropractors.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
Mod parent up, please.
This is indeed the issue at hand - nobody can deny that they have claimed to be able to "cure" all sorts of things despite those claims being proven false.
The word "bogus" was latched onto as implying that the chiropractors were making these claims *despite knowing they were false* rather than actually believing what they said.
Had this recent ruling gone the other way, Singh would have needed to prove that they *knew* it was all lies which would have been nearly impossible. (Certainly he could have made a great case, but in the end no matter how much they should have known it's very very hard to prove that someone believes something.)
Some of them are just bad apples in order to lie to people.
But in this case, it's not a few bad apples, it's an entire professional organization that claims to represent chiropractors in Britain.
Nobody disputes that a good back rub can help with back problems. If something in your spine is out of place and causing (back) pain, a good whack could conceivably help. Just like a dislocated shoulder can sometimes be fixed through manipulation alone.
You have an interesting definition of hate speech. I don't know that I've EVER seen it used in accusation against a profession.
At BEST, it's a perjorative against someone's ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc...
So HOW can it be hate speech?
http://whatstheharm.net/chiropractic.html
Actually worst case you take your kid to a chiropractor to treat something for which spinal manipulation has shown no evidence to treat (see other posts for examples), rather than taking him to a physician who will be able to actually treat the ailment. It's the same thing people say about homeopathy: "Well, worst case scenario it doesn't do anything, so I'm no worse off right?" Wrong. If you do something ineffective then you're going untreated. Not all things go away on their own, and many things get worse over time. If you go see a chiropractor to cure your cancer (Dear England, I don't know if they have ever claimed to be able to cure cancer, it's just an example so please don't sue me) instead of going to an oncologist, your cancer will kill you. That's the worst case.
So to them, a guy who comes home to find his wife screwing another man and murders his wife is "more understandable" or "less punishable" than a guy who murders a member of a racial minority because he was a member of that minority.
The difference is that, as a culture, America has a long history of racially motivated violence and (this is the important bit) we want to do everything in our power to remove that impulse from society.
It's the exact same kind of reasoning behind luxury taxes or gas guzzler taxes on cars.
There are certain behaviors we want to discourage in society and so we put into place extra penalties to discourage them.
The message is, we have the votes, we have the means, we have the political clout, so we're going to make this law whether we can justify it or not, whether we can answer the objections to it or not.
No.
If you really care to educate yourself, go find a book. Endless pages have been written about hate crime laws.
If that doesn't suit you, find the specific law that you object to and dig through the congressional record &/or C-SPAN's archive.
I think the problem is not so much that your questions haven't been answered, but that you don't/wouldn't like the answers anyway.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It is, unless and until the quacks manage to overturn this decision, now legal to state that you think Chiropractic treatment is a croc-o-shite, as evidenced by the fact that the chose to defend themselves against people suggesting their services are a croc-o-shite using the legal system rather than any providing some good scientific evidencethat their treatments may in fact not be a croc-o-shite. This is indeed a GoodThing.
In the few cases that Chiropractic treatments have been shown to help, those relating directly to the spine, the same help could equally be given by any physiotherapist or in many cases anyone well trained enough to use massage theraputically.
The original "New Scientist" article can be found here:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18731-simon-singh-the-libel-fight-goes-on.html
There is a petition you can sign, anyone, from any country, here (also linked to in the article):
http://libelreform.org/sign
Wow! Somebody mod the parent up.
Worst case, it'll cause a stoke leading to paralysis or possibly death, best case, it'll actually be as good as for my back.
FTFY
Thanks to sFurbo below for the links:
Adverse effects of spinal manipulation: a systematic review
Adverse Events Associated With Pediatric Spinal Manipulation: A Systematic Review
FFS... "In the UK, a Victory For Free Speech" - what sort of bastardised subject is that? Perhaps stick the important bit up front, with the qualifier at the end?
Victory for Free Speech in the UK
Except that those drugs (the ones with trials, evidence, etc.) generally come from people called pharmacists or druggists (depending on which way you face to look at the Atlantic). While the people known as drug dealers generally peddle things with a less reputable track record that, best case, leave you "feeling good" for a while.
That said, I did visit a chiropractor for a while, and he did great work on my neck pain. I think chiropractic can be very helpful for nerve and joint issues (in your spine, where the trouble is). The other stuff? Not so much.
You are obviously a scholar of the American legal system
The UK was also responsible for ruling against someone who had on a website defamed (supposedly, as I think telling someone what a religion does is not defamation) the Scientology cult and making certain aspects of its religion known to non practicing people...
and ruled in favor of Scientology, which to me contradicts what this now has been ruled. The English have soo many
backward ways about them, I am part British, and so many times have to laugh at how assenine they are....they still have royalty, in today's day and age, talk about still living in the old world.
But driving a get-away vehicle, or otherwise taking part in a robbery, is already a crime. The person either drove the get-away car or they didn't. If they did, they are guilty of a crime. If they didn't, they aren't. What they were thinking, or why they drove the car, or why they want to take what doesn't belong to them is immaterial.
Like my above commentary on a hypothetical bank robber, I don't care why she did it. If she helped someone commit murder, then she's guilty of a crime. What difference does it make why she did it? I believe you're confusing this issue with motive. Motive might help a prosecutor build his/her case, but we are not talking about that because a hate crime is a matter of how to punish the perpetrator once guilt is established.
Why do multiple perpetrators give significance to what they were thinking when the crime was committed? The point is not why the perpetrator feels justified. The point is that other people have been tempted to punch someone out, or to steal something valuable, etc., and they chose not to do it.
Some people find out their spouse is cheating on them and they deal with it by getting a divorce or maybe some marriage counseling. Other people find out the same thing and they deal with it by committing murder. We hear about those on the news every day. The difference between those two groups is why we have a justice system. The latter group has demonstrated that they are not fit to be in our society and must be separated from it to protect everyone else. I really don't care what the murderer was thinking once they have established that they are a member of the latter group.
The time to worry about what tempts people to do harm to others is when your goal is crime prevention. We can and sometimes do recognize pathological behaviors and inclinations before they are acted upon. Those individuals may have psychological problems that can be treated and managed. Some of them may get such help and change their lives before they go too far down the wrong path. But after the crime has been committed and guilt has been established, it's too late to do anything meaningful with this concern.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
does anyone have comparable stats for regular medicine ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
1- It's even better if it's placebo. The only thing better that medecine that works, is non-medicine that works.
I got fixed for less money, side effects, suffering and hassle than by my 2 trys at regular medicine.
I'm 100% sure there IS some psychological part to any illness and cure, indeed. Your point is ? Placebo cures are bad, and non-placebo -non-cures are good ?
2- I've heard reports of people seriously injured by regular medicine. Plenty of them actually. My take is that medicine is not a perfect science ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
"Had this recent ruling gone the other way, Singh would have needed to prove that they *knew* it was all lies which would have been nearly impossible."
Not in the slightest, he simply amasses an army of QUALIFIED doctors who can simply say "No way in hell can they cure a viral infection by adjusting your bones, PERIOD. Even they should know that from the basics of medical school" and that's the end of that bullshit.
I know chiropractors that claim they can cure illnesses by adjusting your back, I saw several after my accident.
Chiropractors are primarily quack doctors that only make money by giving never-lasting relief. The FEW chiropractors that do realize they only provide temporary relief and are honest about it are almost universally fucked by the moron quacks that make their spurious claims.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
In the judgement pdf (see above post by by BeardedChimp) they mention that the issue was the "not a jot of evidence" and "happily" rather than the word bogus. It goes on to say that the BCA didn't "make a major issue of the word bogus. "
The question that the judge decided was whether the "not a jot of evidence" was fact or a value-judgement. Singh argued that it was meaning there was no worthwhile or reliable evidence, rather than no evidence at all, and the judge in this case agreed.
How is non-medicine that works 'better' than medicine that works? Surely in the first case, we hvae no idea what happened and don't have much of a chance of successfully repeating it in the future. Surely if it worked, we'd call it just 'medicine'? If we have a situation where the only conclusion we can come to is 'non-medicine worked', we're basically saying 'we don't know what the fuck happened'.
You may have gotten fixed for less money than 'regular medicine'. However, I'm sure you know, this doesn't mean that chiropractice 'works'. And by 'works', I mean we can go and get measurable reproducable results across all sorts of situations, and then actually use those results to help people.
My point about placebos isn't that there's inherently bad or good, but that we should know it when we see it. Doctors use placebos all the time to treat people, and they don't try to dress it up as something different. Chiropractice (and a lot of 'alternative medicine', whatever the hell that means) does exactly that sort of dressing up. If they came right out and said "It works by placebo", most people wouldn't have a problem with that.
Sure, people get hurt by medicine all the time. The key difference is that medicine also makes a demonstrable statistically significant positive difference to millions of people daily. Sure, there's a risk with everything that we try and do to make our lives better, that sometimes it'll go wrong. Usually, that risk is worth taking if the upside is big enough. I'm just saying that for me, the risk of being injured by a guy with no medical qualifications practising something that's never been properly demonstrated to be anything other than the placebo affect is not a risk I'm willing to take. I am willing to go to the hospital if I'm sick though.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
The best way to do that is through education. This has another benefit. Unlike hate crime laws, we don't have to wait until a person has become a victim of a racially motivated crime before we can use education.
It's a shame we take such an authoritarian route instead of teaching people that it's a virtue not to be so prone to excess. But then, we're generally not really interested in getting at the roots of our problems and concerns. We greatly prefer to use such carrot-and-stick methods to control behavior, don't we? So how has this superficial approach been working out for us? Do any of our problems ever really go away?
I'm not merely "for" or "against" a particular category of laws, because they did not come from a vacuum. I also examine the worldview that created them. I see plainly that this one is rather unenlightened. It does not seek to reason, convince, and persuade. It only threatens with punishment, which tells me it assumes the people will only respond to force. That is merely "do as I say or else", not true reform. That is not how you bring about meaningful, lasting change.
I think you fail to appreciate that I object to the concept, not any particular implementation. If you understood that, you would not mention specific laws. You'd probably be a bit less patronizing and lose the "if you were educated, you'd agree with me" tone as well.
You're correct on this one. I don't care for answers like yours because they fail to recognize the nature of my objection. I have tried in this post to clarify that for you. Here's my objection. Hate crimes are thought crimes, because they are based on what the perpetrator was thinking when the crime was committed. That's just a fact, and an integral part of the definition of a hate crime.
I don't want the government to create thought crimes for any reason. Such reasons as "for the children" or "to fight terrorism" are dangerous because they have been used to justify some seriously questionable laws and are nearly impossible to politically oppose. "To stop racism" is like this. Things like racism and terrorism are not just evil. They are so poisonous that if we aren't careful, our efforts to oppose them will corrupt our institutions, our justice system. Thought crimes in the "land of the free" are an example of such corruption.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
> Hate speech. Where did they dream that phrase up, anyway? What's wrong with having an opinion, anyway? Should a person go to jail if he says he doesn't like teachers? Lawyers? Police?
That isn't hate speech. Hate speech is that which incites others towards hatred of a group.
Oh, you mean the Picts, do you ? Right you are!
------------------
I really don't know if there were any first human sapiens inhabitants there - other then the "Picts" (general name. Comicbook "culture". Sorry.). If so, take them as those and don't fret over it.
I do suppose good old (#31705974) was not referring to the Neanderthals or Erectus' ( Erectii ? :) ) who might have actually been there even sooner. Let alone which clan, or clan-league.
But never mind. Better than all those 3rd world germanics (Angles, Saxons), latter Celts, oh-so-primitive Romans, Vikings, Normands (same, mostly)... You know. that rabble.
------------------
If you don't trust Wikipedia, check the references.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_malpractice
A recent study by Healthgrades found that an average of 195,000 hospital deaths in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002 in the U.S. were due to potentially preventable medical errors. Researchers examined 37 million patient records and applied the mortality and economic impact models developed by Dr. Chunliu Zhan and Dr. Marlene R. Miller in a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in October 2003. The Zhan and Miller study supported the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 1999 report conclusion, which found that medical errors caused up to 98,000 deaths annually and should be considered a national epidemic.[7] Some researchers questioned the accuracy of the 1999 IOM study, reporting both significant subjectivity in determining which deaths were "avoidable" or due to medical error and an erroneous assumption that 100% of patients would have survived if optimal care had been provided. A 2001 study in JAMA estimated that only 1 in 10,000 patients admitted to the hospital would have lived for 3 months or more had "optimal" care been provided.[8] A 2006 follow-up to the 1999 Institute of Medicine study found that medication errors are among the most common medical mistakes, harming at least 1.5 million people every year. According to the study, 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries occur each year in hospitals, 800,000 in long-term care settings, and roughly 530,000 among Medicare recipients in outpatient clinics. The report stated that these are likely to be conservative estimates. In 2000 alone, the extra medical costs incurred by preventable drug related injuries approximated $887 million – and the study looked only at injuries sustained by Medicare recipients, a subset of clinic visitors. None of these figures take into account lost wages and productivity or other costs.[9]
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
So why the chiropractors association went into campaign of removing advertising claiming they could cure...prety much everything?
Could it be because they perfectly knew it's bogus, and only now somebody is paying too much attention to their bullshit?
One that hath name thou can not otter
In a earlier ruling, the judge David Eady (already infamous for poor judgement in libel cases) gave the BCA a major victory by declaring that "bogus" meant "deliberately deceptive". The case would have been impossible to fight for Singh while that stood, since he would have to prove that BCA chiropractics are deliberately deceptive. That is not true, and he didn't believe it either.
So apparently that was rejected, or the BCA retreated to less favourable ground for some reason.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Wait, that bit about the blowjob is interesting. I mean it is a stress relief, and there are generally studies that suggest having a regular healthy sex life leads to longer life, better health etc. So, while I am getting my medical marijuana prescription filled why shouldn't I be able to get a medical blow job . . . prostitutes could well be considered health practitioners.
Good Day,
First off Chiropractic IS NOT Quackery, that is a Mechanism of Political Medicine to discredit the profession that is doing the most for medical failures of back pain treatment, surgery,chronic pain such as Fibromyalgia and similar pain syndromes. Second, verifiable research has been done on Chiropractic Spinal Manipulation since the 1960's and is the reason that the Political Medical organizations that declared Chiropractic Quackery is a result of the turf war aspects of chiropractic & medicine since it's inception. You might look at the research being done by Harvard School of Medicine and the Logan College of Chiropractic if you have more than three synapses working. Third, Homeopathy, while not as completely researched does exhibit that in certain conditions exhibits active results upon the condition. Fourth, while I'm not a fan of PT since they are trying to take over the practice of Chiropractic which is NOT PT on behalf of organized Medicine within it's practice parameters is helpful, but not as a treatment in and of itself if best pt. results is the goal, Last, Acupuncture has been around for at least 5000 years and the World health organization indicates it's effectiveness in 450+ conditions from all over the globe. Instead of trying to get all the healing arts practices to work together for the benefit of the patient there is no real effort to make the patient the basis of the care rather than the control most MD,s and almost all specialist's I've worked with in the last 35 years don't give a rat's tail about the pt. just their income. Having worked for 9 yrs. in EMS and a few yrs. in critical care as well as 31+ years in Health care as a Chiropractic Physician and Holistic practitioner, I've seen it all so perhaps it is time for change. What is the price of change? Responsibility! Something I've seen little of. Perhaps you were dropped upon your cranium as an infant.
In Service & In Health,
Captain Cautious, DC, DCM, Dip. NBCE, EMT-A, EMICT, DDh.
Okay but I can only speak for my own chiropractor.
Jonathanjk.com
Thanks for the figures, which are actually much worse than I thought. 200K deaths/year in the US alone, and 1.5m harmed / year too. Puts Chiropaxy's figures in perspective.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
1- Non-medicine that works is better than medicine that works because healing myself is better than being healed in the same way that getting back on my feet on my own is better than crying for daddy. Not knowing how something works does not make it worse than knowing, just more challenging. If you think about it, we don't actually know how most of nature works.
2- Yes, me getting fixed means chiropractic works. Maybe not always, maybe not for everyone, but at least in some cases. It even means it works better than regular medicine in some cases - at least mine-.
3- You seem to misunderstand what the placebo effect is: people have to believe it's real medicine for it to work.
4- Well, I was countering your " I haven't got hard data to hand, but I've read reports in the past of people being seriously injured by chiropractors", now you're changing your tune. There's hard data about classic medicine's deaths in another answer to my grandparent.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Very interesting read, indeed. Thanks BeardedChimp.
I am British, but I still don't speak like that ;-) It's a legal document after all...
While we're talking UK/US, I found it interesting that a US judge/case was cited in point 34. I was also interested to see Orwell and Milton referenced!
All in all, I agree, it is highly readable, and as such I would encourage all to read this pdf rather than comment on this story here or elsewhere on the basis of second-hand / journalistic accounts.
This essay is a classic.
My favorite quote: "The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover. This, obviously, is buncombe doubly damned."
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
My drug dealer carries marijuana that has shown a good deal better outcomnes in clinical trials than chiropractors and amphetamines which have a whole list of medical uses. Cocaine even has medically accepted use in the US.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
This is the pdf for todays judgement if you want to read it. It says about 2/3 of the way through that the BCA had "understandably not sought to make a major issue of the word bogus." In the context of what you're saying I guess they may have realised they had a less than favourable judge.
1. Not knowing how something works is better than knowing how it works because you did it yourself? You're right, we don't know how most of nature works. But we spend a great deal of time and energy trying to figure it out because the results might be useful to others.
2. No, you getting fixed doesn't means chiropractic works, the only thing it means is 'you got fixed'. We have no idea how. It may have been magic ponies. It may have been the previous doctor visits that you had. We don't know. You may think it works because you believe you had a good experience, but there's no reason to suggest that doing the same thing to others will have the same effect. On the contrary in medicine, there is evidence to suggest that if you have a headache, ibuprofen will help.
3. So you're saying that the false claims made by chiropractors about what they do and how they do it just a ruse that actually helps us?
4. You seem to have missed the point. I'll say it again. Everything can harm people. I'm sure there's plenty of data about people being harmed by medicinal drugs, as well as data about people being harmed by chiropractice, and playing football, and going to the moon etc. You original assertion about chiropractic was 'Worst case it won't do any damage'. This isn't true.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
1- Yes. Doing something yourself even if you don't know exactly how is better than having someone else do it.
2- Yes it does. I hurt for 2 years, regular medecine can not possibly have chosen the precise 45 minutes I spent at the Chiro, 6 months after my last 'regular' treatment, to suddenly work. And to work again 6 months later when I re-hurt my back help my brother move. I don't think it was magic ponies. Do you ?
3- In a way, yes. Same as all faith healers. That's wxhat the placebo effect is, look it up. The converse is also true: if you're convinced a treatment cannot work, it probably won't, or you won't realize/acknowledge if it does.
4- So one the one hand, you think Chiro can't cure people because it does nothing, on the other hand, you argue it harms people because it does do something ? Color me confused. I do agree that an incompetent Chiro could hurt me. I've had ample proof that mine is competent, and reliable. I wouldn't go to just any Chiro.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
im fairly sure studies have shown that a placebo can reduce perception of pain, eg when a (double blind and controlled) group is given something that is inactive but they are told that it is a painkiller there is a statistically significant effect.
furthermore i believe there is evidence that in one case this might be mediated through spinal neurons/ or spinal reflex systems.
there is evidence that some placebo effect is mediated by endogenous endorphins, because when the a group is given naltrexone/naloxone it blocks the pain reduction that is otherwise seen in the previous type of experiment.
also i have read that this type of placebo effect can be increased by using a particular regime, just as varying the regime in a skinner box can increase the effectiveness of operant conditioning.
so now, tell me that repeatedly taking tiny sugar pills or drops of high percentage alcohol under your tongue, which in itself might be releasing a small amount of dopamine and/or endorphines (dopamine might mediate or potentiate the endorphines) and so may be more effective in a repetitive or other particular regime, might not be a means of harnessing and enhancing a placebo effect in humans.
i think this is the point of the gp, homeopathy typically consists of the above type of repetitive administration of a "placebo" and the result might at least help people to deal with physical or psychological pain and discomfort.
all without taking any expensive or addictive drug, or risking side effects ;)
1. I think we'll have to disagree on what's better. In my view, anything that increases the amount of useful knowledge in the world is better than a sense of self-enablement.
2. The data suggests it's all in your mind. There's nothing to suggest that anything the chiropractor did could also have been done by someone in a wizard's hat waving his hands around and saying 'woooooo'.
3. Interestingly, there have been studies where the placebo effect has worked even when the participant knew it was a placebo. It's not an effect based in deception. As I said before, my irk is that chiropractors don't appear to acknowledge the placebo effect at all. And I'd wager that no matter how much I didn't want an antibiotic to work, chances are that it'd clear up the infection it was treating.
4. I don't argue that chiro does nothing, I argue that it does 'nothing beneficial'. That doesn't mean to say that it doesn't have the potential to cause great harm. In a similar way that smashing someone in the face with a brick may, in certain cases, fix their wonky front teeth, it's also a potentially harmful thing to do to someone.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
Here's the pdf of the judgement
Technically that is a judgment not a judgement. In legal English, the former is the word to describe a legal ruling - it's also the word used within the document. Don't ask me why.
The FEW chiropractors that do realize they only provide temporary relief and are honest about it are almost universally fucked by the moron quacks that make their spurious claims.
Just an FYI, in the U.S. licensing standards for chiropractors actually vary state by state, rather widely. So in some states the legitimate practitioners of musculoskeletal therapies are in fact rather common, while in other states it is as you describe.
(Late reply, been away for a week, apologies). Actually, Justice Eady is the most knowledgeable judge around on libel and privacy issues, having spent his career as a barrister working on both sides of the fence. His name comes up on controversial cases precise because they *are* difficult cases. Read his judgements sometime: while we may disagree with his conclusions, his reasoning is sound and well evidenced and narrowly ruled within existing case law.
[FUCK BETA]