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."
It would seem that if he emerged victorious, the other side should have to cover the $200K -- plus something for his time.
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?
You forgot economics.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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."
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.
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
Weather forecasting seems to work most of the time (at least well enough that I know what to wear and whether to carry an umbrella that day). Back when I lived in Cleveland, the snow predictions were eerily (and unfortunately) accurate to a reasonable enough degree. Since the arrival of doppler radar, it's become even more useful.
Considering that it's based on probabilistic models and no one is stupid enough to insist that it's based on magical crystal balls that always work :p, I'd say people are far too harsh on the poor ol' weatherman :p. And no, I'm about as far removed from the profession as anyone could possibly be - just stating facts.
Oh, and here's the obligatory "ha ha, that's funny" to forestall the inevitable "whoosh" from some drive-by moron (gawd those cretins are annoying :p).
Hate to snow on your parade, but that's a myth.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thanks for bringing up Global Cooling so quickly, so I know that you are either ignorant or choose not to pay attention to facts.
This makes me very uncomfortable. I believe that global warming is real and anthropogenic, but the reason I believe it isn't just that somebody with a Nobel prize said, "global warming is real and anthropogenic." Authoritative scientists told us that margarine was better for us than butter; in that miscegenation laws were necessary for public health; and that electromagnetic waves were not quantized (Bohr's school said this) and that they were vibrations of a luminiferous aether (most textbooks said this, decades after Einstein published relativity). All of those claims turned out to be false. Some of them were extremely harmful to large numbers of people.
I teach physics at a community college for a living. The hardest thing to get my students to do is to think for themselves. Some come in already doing it, some will do it with encouragement, and others are incapable of doing it. Some will do it and come up with conclusions that I consider incorrect. But despite all these difficulties, we're far better off as a society if 10% of the population can think for themselves than we are if 100% accept authoritative opinions on faith.
Find free books.
I'm glad Singh brings up the issue of GMOs in his interview. It's my opinion as well that the vast bulk of the evidence sited by GMO opponents is pseudoscience at best.
It is high time start recognizing what is going on with the anti-GMO campaign.
Minor correction for you - be careful not to mix up "England" and "Britain", they are different things. There are "English" courts and English law but there are no such things as "British courts" or "British law". In Scotland, which is part of Britain, Scottish courts and Scots law prevails, a different legal structure exists. So we're talking about the situation in England here, not Britain.
cheers!
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.
That's what statistics are for. Every single measurement needs not be wonderfully accurate. In the same way that we define a certain height as "sea level" when the surface of the sea isn't level, we can talk about average temperatures when we lack precise measurements at each point.
Unless you can demonstrate that this bias in thermometers has a trend towards showing higher temperatures as time goes by, you cannot say global warming is an artifact of measurement error.
'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?
1) yes, the data indicates so
2) yes, the data indicates so
3) yes, if we're doing it, we certainly can stop doing it. There's the question of whether we started a runwaway effect or not, but in that case we still could slow things down. And in this case, the speed at which it happens is most important.
Two things:
First, the current consensus seems to be against the idea of global warming on Mars, and on the Sun causing it.
Second, your lifestyle doesn't have a damn thing to do with global warming. It either exist or it doesn't, no matter how convenient or inconvenient would that be for you, me, or anybody else.
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."