Slashdot Mirror
Simon Singh Talks With Wired About His Libel Battle
smellsofbikes writes "Wired has a short but pithy interview with Simon Singh about his defense against a libel suit brought by the British Chiropractic Association, in which he spent more than $200,000 and emerged victorious."
Sorry... I hate seeing numbers thrown around as if it somehow makes this case more important than others. I'm glad to see that Simon Singh stood up for his comments and also that he is now extremely famous and has furthered his career by this episode.
Also, can someone enlighten me if British law allows him to sue for his defense cost?
Yeah - a victory that cost him $200k of his own money - so that he doesn't have to issue a retraction or pay even more of his own money.
Or, maybe if he is lucky he might get reimbursed some or all of it - quite some time after having spent it. Of course, he won't get any interest on the money or anything like that. Most ordinary people would lose their homes in the process of trying to pay these kinds of fees, and I'm sure courts would not reimburse those costs either.
That will teach them!
Europe at least is far better than the US in this regard, but I'd go a step further. I'd envision a system where when a suit is brought a court would require an escrow of funds from the plaintiff if they had greater than a certain amount in assets. Regardless, the attorneys would be paid by the court (for both parties) - it would be illegal for attorneys to receive money from their clients. The fee rate would be set by the court, and the budget for both parties would be the same, and the budget would be based on the nature of the case and the amount at issue. Both parties would then battle it out in court or settle. Individual participants (whether defendents, plaintiffs, witnesses, or jurors) below a certain income level (moderately high) would also be paid by the court a per-diem based on their annual income. In the end the court would assess the loser of the case for the amount of court costs (which now includes all client legal costs and the cost of the time of all parties as well), plus interest sufficient to ensure the government comes out at least even. This would be a public debt that the government would have the power to collect on.
This would ensure that merely being sued would have no negative financial impact on somebody, and that people will think twice before filing frivolous lawsuits. People who are out time and money also don't have to try to badger the other party to pay - the government would pay them as they incur costs, and now the government can use all its usual methods to recoup its loss just as if the losing party didn't pay their taxes/etc.
The bottom line is that the court system needs to stop punishing people (effectively) merely for being sued.
I happen to know a few people who are really.. well, they love Jesus more than most. They seem to attack science, not to learn anything, but to merely shoot down their "adversary".
I really wish those people could understand this quote (last 2 lines of the article): "People start off with a belief and a prejudice—we all do. And the job of science is to set that aside to get to the truth."
The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth. Sir Karl Popper
Actually, it is the UK legal system that doesn't work. Neither does the US legal system, or the AU legal system. But for this we can focus on the broken UK legal system.
Basically, what is broken is that the truth is effectively restricted to people with money and wealth. It's good that we have people like Simon Singh who have enough money to make it work, and make it work the right way. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those with money and wealth also tend to be those who perverse and corrupt the system with lies and untruths. So it is a very biased system, even if it might well be balanced and just when those facing off are well moneyed. In other words, it's not a system for ordinary people. So unless we can find a new system to replace it, or at least supplement it, there is no justice, and no truth, for ordinary people most of the time.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The guy makes a great point although at the same time if applied everywhere is totally wrong. I'm sure some of those chiropractors are "experts" in their "field". Why wouldn't we trust them over some journalist. After all, the journalist isn't an expert!
The point being everyone seems to be labeling themselves as an expert these days, even when they're not (social media experts, haha). There was an artist on a TV program I watched the other day labelling himself a "climate expert" demanding that everyone should stop flying, right now! Regardless of how people feel about global warming I start not giving I shit when it turns into the big circle jerk that it has become and everyone starts the "look at me!" game.
Hate to snow on your parade, but that's a myth.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Quote from Wikipedia:
The publicity produced by the libel action has led to a "furious backlash",[2] with formal complaints of false advertising being made against more than 500 individual chiropractors within one 24 hour period,[3][30] with the number later climbing to one quarter of all British chiropractors.[2] It also prompted the McTimoney Chiropractic Association to write in a leaked message to its members advising them to remove leaflets that make claims about whiplash and colic from their practice, to be wary of new patients and telephone inquiries, and telling their members: "If you have a website, take it down NOW." and "Finally, we strongly suggest you do NOT discuss this with others, especially patients."[2][3] One chiropractor is quoted as saying that "Suing Simon was worse than any Streisand effect and chiropractors know it and can do nothing about it."[2]
Linky.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
As a matter of fact, demonstrating that CO2 is a greenhouse gas is very simple and can be done at home. I've seen a video from some BBC educational program demonstrating this, with a couple of clear plastic bottles, some vinegar and baking soda to generate CO2, and two digital thermometers.
I repeated the experiment and, yes, it worked. Therefore, I can assert from my own experience that Anthropogenic Global Warming is, at least, a plausible hypothesis. It's up to the denialists to come with a better experiment proving the contrary if they want me to believe them.
Yes. This times a hundred. Times a million. Pseudoscience at best, dishonest at worst. I too am really glad he gives genetic engineering it's props, because anti-GMO really is the new anti-vax. Just because you can't be bothered to listen to a valid source doesn't mean that the people who know what the hell they're talking about are in some grand Monsanto/Shadow Government conspiracy to be evil. The scientific evidence is in. It's been it. The idea that they are inherently dangerous to human health is laughable (and growing even less plausible every day), they are a benefit for farmers, and they are a net positive to the environment. Deputing these facts without adequate information to go against them, which is what pretty much every anti-GMO group on the planet does, is not insightful or thought provoking, it's denialism, plain and simple. The modern controversy surrounding GMOs is is no longer a scientific debate, it's a popular one, largely with biologist, horticulturists, botanists, microbiologists, zoologists, toxicologists, geneticists, biochemists, and farmers on one hand, and people who think that an appeal to nature is a valid argument on the other, and even that doesn't make sense considering that we selectively breed crops for various mutations for thousands of years (as anyone who has even a passing understanding of corn genetics will tell you) and that the odds are pretty darn good that every plant we eat has picked viral, bacterial, and fungal DNA at some point, probably insect DNA too. Human DNA is at least 3% virus. We are, in a sense, genetically modified organisms ourselves.
Here's a good example: A few weeks ago, some anti-science arsonist assholes burned down a GMO grape test field in France. They were government developed, so the claim that they're against corporations doesn't apply. They were virus resistant, so the claim that they're against chemicals was out. They were rootstocks, and since roots don't produce flowers, their claim that they're afraid of cross pollination and wild GMOs is out. The health concerns, even if they had any merit to begin with, are also out, because again, the GMO part was only the root, not the grape. Why are they against them? Because they're GMO. They're against genetic engineering because it's genetic engineering. They've decided that genetic engineering is bad, and base everything else on that decision. They start with the conclusion, and make everything else fit that. Hundreds of studies showing they're wrong is part of the conspiracy, scientific consensus is part of the conspiracy, and every relevant expert who knows what they're talking about is in on it too, and therefore, anything that disagrees with their premise is easily dismissed, knowledge because a vice, ignorance a virtue.
This topic deserves more publicity than it gets, it really does. I think that this is a truly fascinating area (as a look at my comment history will reveal). I love plants and horticultural science, and I think it is just amazing what we can do with them now, what we might be able to do in the future. We are living in interesting and exciting times. We can increase output, decrease need for inputs, help preserve the soil and the environment. We can help the people who need it most grow more nutritious food. We can lessen or eliminate the problems caused by pests and diseases. Someday I might have a mango or cashew or cacao or coffee or lychee tree here in the northeast US. This is what people are really working on. This isn't sci-fi, it's real, and it is just a shame that we have people with all the intellectual integrity of your average homeopath attacking it and generally trying to influence the general population with cheap scare tactics. And it's almost funny, these people think they're being insightful when all they're going is displaying their own ignorance. It would be like someone claiming that the moon must be hollo
'Zero-point energy' is a confusing term.
What the GP probably meant is, yes, that idiot and others claiming they are generating power from zero-point energy, or what I guess could be called 'zero-point energy energy'.
For people here who don't want to spend any time reading up on stupidity, 'zero-point energy' has become the modern way to say 'perpetual motion machine'. "No, this system can't produce power forever with no outside energy, that's a violation of thermodynamics. It's using zero-point energy!"
Actually, what they're talking about is called 'vacuum energy', which is the energy difference between the energy level of 'nothing' in this universe, which is full of virtual particles and whatnot, compared actual nothing nothing. The Casimir effect demonstrates that if you remove (some) of the virtual particles, you can get to a lower density than vacuum. The universe itself, without anything in it, has a density, or at least a pressure.
To actually harness that could be incredibly dangerous, akin to living in a balloon and poking a hole in the wall to use the air rushing out as a power source. Luckily, to do such a thing would require...well, let's just say it starts with the ability to create wormholes, and put one end outside of space/time(1), so it seems unlikely that someone's magical car battery is doing it.
Zero-point energy is just the lowest possible energy state of a system, because even absolute zero system have some energy. But there's not any way, even hypothetical, to produce power from that fact. Because if you removed that energy, you would, ipso facto, demonstrate that wasn't the zero-point. (And there's no way you can make any net gain in usable energy by moving around minute amounts of heat at absolute zero anyway!)
'Vacuum energy' is the 'zero-point energy' of the universe, but as the universe isn't at the lowest energy state, it's sorta stupid to talk about it in that context. In the real world, we use the energy that actually exists in this universe compared to other places in this universe, not microscopic amounts of energy compared to some ideal 'no energy' state which we have no way to access and thus can't use for 'work', which is just moving energy around.
But it's not surprising that pseudoscientists use the wrong term for something, or pick something that actually can't be used to do work and claim it's powering their stuff.
1) Hilariously, it's so dangerous they can't even do it on Stargate...where they actually can create interdimensional transtemporal wormholes. They have 'zero-point modules' that create an artificial universe and use that for energy...the few times anyone tried to do it to the actual vacuum energy here, they've blown up solar systems. It's so dangerous you can't even do it in science fiction! ;)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Does the EU Human Rights Convention act only protect liars, and not the people lied about?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."