Slashdot Mirror
UK To Give Peer-Reviewed Science Libel Protection
scibri writes "England is finally getting around to updating its notoriously plaintiff-friendly libel laws, which have been extensively criticized for stifling scientific debate in the past few years, such as in the case of Simon Singh. The government introduced a defamation bill last week that would extend explicit protection to statements in scientific or academic journals — providing the work was properly peer reviewed. The protection would also extend to reports of academic and scientific conferences. The proposed legislation is popular among the UK's researchers and journalists, but a similar law on whistleblower protection has had mixed reviews in the U.S."
Now I can reveal Nickel for the evil backstabbing bastard element it is!!
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
There will probably be some wrinkles that will need to be ironed out down the road, but at least it should prevent things like the silliness that enveloped the whole chiropractor incident from a few years ago. Hopefully.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Slashdot: home of the false dilemma.
So, until the paper is peer-reviewed, it's still vulnerable to libel.
Next, a libel watchdog looks for search terms and reports papers recently submitted that are still open to sue.
Sue early, sue often!
They're going to need to be very careful on the implementation. Define "properly" peer-reviewed. Is the journal liable for libel (now there's a terrible turn of phrase) if it turns out the peer review wasn't "proper"? Can someone challenge the propriety of the peer review in court?
Don't get me wrong; sounds like a step in the right direction. I'd just hate to see it abused to discourage scientific publishing in England.
Unless I'm misunderstanding the Nature article and Google links, the title of this post is misleading: this is about England & Wales (which share their legal system) rather than the rest of the UK - there's an article here about the different implications that such a law would have on the Scottish legal system (English libel reform raises new Scottish question). I haven't seen any indication whether we'd adopt this in Northern Ireland.
Corporations and the global warming deniers that they are bankrolling?
No, much better would be the Green Party and the Alarmists they're bankrolling.
What about truth being imune?
You know, a paper that reports the results of a study, without jumping to conclusions, expressing unrelated opinions, or stating facts that aren't suported by the study being imune. While a paper that does those things being subject to libel acusations.
Rethinking email
If anything, it's the opponents of science that are guilty of groupthink. Have you ever read a peer-reviewed publication? The kinds of debate that you'll see around peer-reviewed articles makes political debates look like playground banter by comparison. Nothing gets reviewed with more scrutiny and no-holds barred snark than scientific studies.
Take the time to read a few journals, and to follow the debates between academics. Pick a subject, and follow it through the process. If you're honest with yourself, you'll have to come to the conclusion that it's scientists who put their ideas to the test, and it's people like yourself who use buzzwords like "groupthink" who cling to received ideas without a semblance of critical thought.
...but still just a bandaid on some pretty serious issues with censorship. It is almost a slap in the face for anyone who cares about free speech to see them realize there is a problem and then decide to only plaster over a symptom.
Great Intellect...
Truth does not offer immunity to libel in the UK.
Defamation is going to be reborn, "scientifically", in Britain by the rich and powerful interests against smaller fry. The problem will not just be "groupthink" but increased attackes by "respectable" peer reviewed British journals that are 95+% financed as captive or corporate whores already.
This is going further down the road to serfdom, "scientifically".
The penis thing is a myth. The average black dick isn't any bigger than the average white dick. However, there's more deviation, so there are 12" black dicks and there are 2" black dicks. It's same with height -- If you looked at the NBA, you'd think all blacks are 7" tall. But for every Manute Bol, there's a 4" pygmy.
The Slashdot article seems to single out a single part of the bill for some reason. The actual bill has a lot more, including a "truth" defence.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Now why would he want to do something like that, when its much better for his ego to buy into a big vast conspiracy theory.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This is a bad law because it grants extra rights for a group of people for no good reason.
In particular, English law already allows truth as a defense. If a peer reviewed article can't establish the truth of its claims in court then either (A) peer review hasn't worked in that case or (B) the court's standards are wrong.
In either case, the right of any citizen to make a claim based on some evidence should be the same as that of a professional scientist.
The law is already unequal enough as it is, without granting special privileges to a certain class of people.
The point is that the law is going to recognise that making a reasonable statement based on proper scientific data is demonstrably true, and as such cannot be libel. The internationally recognised process of peer review will be considered the arbiter of "proper scientific data" (my phrase). It leaves the door open for cases involving poorly collected data, I'm imagining something like one cosmetics company suing another because they do they suggest their product is better than the plaintiff's based on a biased sample of 300.
Bloggers, journalists and the like will have some protection if they're quoting peer reviewed data/comments in context because if the original isn't libellous then they can't be guilty of repeating it.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
"Main institution"? There are more than one scientific and academic journal.
A journal certainly isn't the arbiter of what is libel, a court does that.
This bit of the law only adds a defence to libel for scientific and academic publication that meets certain standards.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
In the name of science, will it be confirmed that African Americans have a lower IQ due to their genetics?
There are some highly intelligent black people. I have met more than a few and I treated them with the respect they deserve. But as a group, yes they do have a lower IQ than whites or Asians as a group. This is not politically correct so excuses must be made so no one's precious feelings get hurt. The popular excuse is that cultural differences explain their poorer IQ test performance. I think that's both very funny and a little insulting considering that they have been born and raised in the US for hundreds of years, meanwhile first-generation Asians outperform them.
Now let's just think about that rationally for a moment. Who has a bigger cultural hurdle, the bilingual son of immigrants from mainland China with parents who barely speak English, or the black person whose family has been in this nation for the past 10 generations or more? But we hate science when it doesn't say what we want it to say. Obviously as a whole we're a bunch of pansies who cannot face reality and work to change the parts we don't like.
We could admit that blacks have a problem here and give them remedial education, teach them how to reason, and stamp out by whatever means necessary the thug worship that's destroying their families. But you see there is a probelm - that would mean being honest about this subject. Being honest about this is the fastest way to be called a "racist" and shouted down, modded down, hated, etc. Because as we all know people with the facts on their side always have to use social pressure and manipulation to be convincing. After all, a real racist who truly hates blacks and wants to keep them down truly wants them to be smarter and more educated, yeah that makes perfect sense, that's exactly what a real racist would do, uh huh, just keep telling yourself that.
I have met reasonable liberals but things like this are why most of them are hyper-emotional psychotic people who simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge any facts they find inconvenient. They think truth is whatever they really want it to be, if they just wish hard enough, or something. They would tell you that 2+2=5 if they found the number 4 to be offensive. I think the ones who scream "RACIST!" the loudest have never met a real racist. You know what real racists are like? They want to lynch blacks. They don't want to identify problems blacks have and work to fix them. They hate blacks and don't think anything about them could ever be improved. Look even if blacks were totally inferior without question, that is no reason to mistreat them. But they are not. They can be quite equal, but to do that they have to love knowledge more than they hate Whitey. Ever met educated, successful blacks? They all have one thing in common - they think race-pimps like Jesse Jackson are idiotic clowns and they don't hate whites or anybody else - they're too busy looking after their families to have time for that.
And his wallet. You get paid a lot more as an astroturfer than a researcher.
We have the same unfair and unjust libel laws as the US, where the plaintiff has no protection against a defendant with deep enough pockets?
Defamation and slander laws choke the free flow of true information. Nowadays everyone can have a blog, and any libelous info can be quickly confirmed or denied by the checking out the website of the alleged miscreant.
I find that incredibly hard to believe, the truth is an automatic defense against libel..that's the whole point after all...truth is the automatic defense against libel...so maybe you meant 'truth does not offer immunity to being SUED for libel in the UK'. The articles clearly indicate that under current UK libel law all statements are presumed false (which is bad ), but that you can still defend yourself and 'prove' your assertion...so 'truth of an assertion' does provide 'immunity' to being found guilty of libel...even if it won't stop the lawsuit...but that's an entirely different question...presumably even in NA I could be sued for libel over a 'true' statement...but I would hope that I can quickly get such a suit dismissed simply by demonstrating the truth of the statement...I'd further hope that I could counter sue for 'court costs', but I'm not sure in NA you can...in which case in theory it's no different than current UK law...
"Groupthink" isn't a buzzword. It's an actual term used in sociology, political sciences, and psychology. And /. is full of people who live and thrive on it. Look at a global warming thread, a thread on 'nix or MS, Sun or Oracle. Don't be ignorant of what groupthink really is, science in general is chalk full of it. Everyone has seen it, especially the guy who gets shafted because his 'views' aren't with the mainstream.
Om, nomnomnom...
I was thinking the same thing. I guess one man's regress is another's progress.
What is NA? Nambia? Or do you mean AN? In the US you can sue for anything. My understanding is there is something more to UK law than what you describe.
"Groupthink" isn't a buzzword.
That's just the current Groupthink. I the individual think it is. ~
Who has a bigger cultural hurdle, the bilingual son of immigrants from mainland China with parents who barely speak English, or the black person whose family has been in this nation for the past 10 generations or more?
There are more factors. The Chinese immigrant came here intentionally. That means they garnered at least the will to come here. That will can go a long way towards bettering ones self. So from a genetic standpoint most races in the U.S. have had a selection process by the mere difficulty of getting here. Thus the genes passed on by most races include seeing the long term benefits versus short term. Only two groups didn't have this selection process and that is African-Americans and Native Americans (okay they did at one point but that gene became less important over many generations). These tend to be the groups at the bottom of U.S. economics. If we considered that how should we shape education?
About time the new church got the same protections as the old church. Peer-reviewed doesn't mean factual. Reality is not running for a re-election.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Citation needed.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
There used to be fierce debate about that too. Didn't make it Science.
I guess that means that all scientific submissions made from labs in England have to be automatically rejected. This would make any questioning of consensus a slander. Which means that all scientific skepticism would be effectively prohibited. This would not just undermine, but effectively forbid the scientific method of inquiry. No journal should give any credence to research produced under such circumstances. It might finally dethrone Nature from being the most respectable scientific publication (because it's published in England).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The truth is an automatic defense against libel.
Not in all times and in all jurisdictions! Though I understand that current UK law 'justification' (truth) is already a complete defence without any additional requirement such as 'public interest;' and that s2 of the present Bill is merely reformulating (and renaming) rather than introducing a truth only defence. But them INAUKL, but an Australian one.
Until 2006 in a number of states in Australia, the older situation persisted, namely truth alone was not a defence to defamation. You had to show truth+X (where X is one of several criteria, usually 'public interest'), and since much of the news media published nationwide, this situation kept them somewhat in check. Then in 2006 all the states adopted a uniform code which created a Truth Only defence. A terrible mistake IMHO. But then I'm a judicial conservative, I realise most people disagree (as did I when I first learnt that truth was not an absolute defence).
...but still just a bandaid on some pretty serious issues with censorship.
The scientific paper exclusion is just one aspect of the bill. It also introduces truth as a defence. So, as long as you are telling the truth, there will be no censorship from libel.
when its much better for his ego to buy into a big vast conspiracy theory.
in order to defend this:
If anything, it's the opponents of science that are guilty of groupthink.
You do realize that it is those who think that scientific skepticism amounts to "opposing science" are the ones seeing conspiracy theories and not the other way around, do you not? Skepticism is part of the scientific method. This law would effectively forbid continued inquiry after any claim of consensus can be made.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The point of this provision is that scientists would be able to publish things which have passed peer-review without fear of being sued for libel. That enables questioning of consensus, it doesn't diminish it at all.
One, you don't have immunity to, you have immunity from.
Two, the legal term would be "defence against".
Three, it actually is a defence against any form of defamation, since by definition a defamatory statement is untrue (though it's necessary to prove the truth of the statement).
Four, there's no such thing as "UK law"; Scotland has a different system to England and Wales.
Stop spreading this shit. You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I can see why a puppy-huffing kiddy-fiddler like you would think that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Bit of a non sequitur there. A person can oppose science based entirely on their own beliefs. A conspiracy involves several people working together on a secret plan. The two things are completely unconnected.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The point is that the law is going to recognise that making a reasonable statement based on proper scientific data is demonstrably true, and as such cannot be libel.
The better view is that it makes "scientific or academic journal[s]" (one presumes bona fide journals, though the Bill doesn't make it clear how that might be assessed.) a privileged forum, much as courts and parliament already are.
The internationally recognised process of peer review will be considered the arbiter of "proper scientific data" (my phrase). It leaves the door open for cases involving poorly collected data
By s7(5), a "fair and accurate copy of, extract from or summary" of the article is also privileged (again as is currently the case for court and parliamentary reporting).
The problem, which you point to is that it somewhat misconstrues the role of peer review to understand it as a guarantee of finality (ie. the truth of the publication). Rather peer review is a threshold, a seat at the table of the expert debate. We, the ordinary "(wo)men in the street," need to put some time between publication and acceptance of the conclusions in order to allow the expert community to render their judgement.
Not to take issue with much of what you wrote, but ...
by definition a defamatory statement is untrue
No, by definition a defamatory statement is one which injures the reputation of a natural person. Justification is a defence.
Four, there's no such thing as "UK law"; Scotland has a different system to England and Wales.
Genuine question: Can you explain the difference between the various categories of primary legislation, such as UK Public General Acts, under which classification both the 1952 and 1966 Defamation Acts are found; UK Local Acts; Acts of the Scottish Parliament; Acts of the English Parliament; Acts of the Old Irish Parliament; &c.? Non-UK/English/Scottish/Welsh lawyers could be forgiven for some confusion.
Slashdot: home of the false dilemma.
And the nigger joke. And the pasty obese white guys who mod them down as fast as they can to prove how cool and not-racist they are.
Even though niggers don't browse this site.
Of course they do. You're here.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You're using the common definition, not the legal one.
"Any intentional false communication, either written or spoken, that harms a person's reputation; decreases the respect, regard, or confidence in which a person is held; or induces disparaging, hostile, or disagreeable opinions or feelings against a person."
If it merely meant "saying bad things" it would also include mere insults and vulgar abuse, which are not legally defamatory.
As to why Scotland has a separate system, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe vested interests prevented them being merged along with the Parliaments back when Jimmy took over from Liz. Maybe they forgot.
But the point still stands that when someone makes that mistake it's a good indicator that they don't know what they're talking about, and are probably more than a little overweight.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I know f all about UK vs British vs Scottish law so I could be wrong, but according to the obligatory wikipedia reference Scotland only got their Parliament in 1999. Surely both aforementioned acts would be part of the Scottish law, at least until Scotland decides to repeal them?
"Groupthink" isn't a buzzword. It's an actual term used in sociology, political sciences, and psychology. And /. is full of people who live and thrive on it. Look at a global warming thread, a thread on 'nix or MS, Sun or Oracle. Don't be ignorant of what groupthink really is, science in general is chalk full of it. Everyone has seen it, especially the guy who gets shafted because his 'views' aren't with the mainstream.
I agree!
You're using the common definition, not the legal one.
Very funny, you tell a lawyer (albeit a non-practitioner) he is using the common defn and not the legal one and then you quote from an online dictionary. Now it may be the legal defn in the US, I would not want to venture an opinion.
How do you explain that at common law truth was an irrelevance in criminal libel? Moreover in my jurisdiction, NSW, until 2006, truth by itself was no defence to defamation. More to the point, the UK [sic] 1952 Act and the proposed Bill, are explicit about justification and truth respectively being defences.
The distinction between a tort (and also a crime) and a defence may seem like a fine one, but it relates to the mistake the "puppy-huffing kiddy-fiddler" made in observing that "all statements are presumed false."
My understanding is this: The onus of proof lies upon a plaintiff to make out that the elements of defamation, namely that the defendant published defamatory imputations. While the courts (and we here rely on British as well as Australian precedent) have come up with a number of tests, perhaps the most accepted is that the imputation would lower the estimation of plaintiff in the eyes of a reasonable member of the community, or some similar formulation.
It is open to the defendant to raise a defence. Because they are the party raising it the affirmanti principle applies, i.e. the onus of proof is on the defendant to establish the substantial truth of the statements. Hence it appears to the legally naive that statements are presumed false. As an analytical type you will perceive the difficulty inherent in the notion of a "defence of justification/truth" existing and the necessity of a plaintiff to establish untruth as an element of defamation, no?
The current Bill makes this situation clear:
2 Truth
(1) It is a defence to an action for defamation for the defendant to show that the imputation conveyed by the statement complained is substantially true.
My emphasis
If it merely meant "saying bad things" it would also include mere insults and vulgar abuse, which are not legally defamatory
I never said it meant "saying bad things". Simply put it means injuring the reputation of a natural person. Should you care for a real dictionary defn, (as opposed to my simplified legal one), the OED has "the action of defaming, or attacking any one's good name." If insults and vulgar abuse sufficiently damages an individual's reputation then they are defamatory of course.
As to why Scotland has a separate system, your guess is as good as mine.
That was not my question. My question was what distinguishes a UK General Public Act from either an Act of the Scottish Parliament or an Act of the English Parliament?
It's only a non sequitur in as much as only dichotomies are allowed to be present within this realm. If you allow a sliding scale with health suspicion on one end and conspiracy theory on the other end, then my statement holds more true than the ggp's.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
He means a tendency to assume, without consulting evidence, malicious intent rather than good faith.
I could come up with hundreds of plausible sounding theories: Slaves were captured. They only bred with other slaves. Therefore their descendants have the same genetic makeup of people who were more likely to be captured. Another hypothesis: African-Americans are at the bottom of US economics. Therefore, they are much more likely to live in a bad neighborhood, and be a victim of a violent crime, which might lower their academic performance. But doing any type of research on a hypothesis like this is a great way to get labelled a racist and blackballed from the scientific community. They would both be pretty simple to check. (eg. How do natives and immigrants of the same race compare, after you correct for socioeconomic factors? What about second or third generation immigrants?) But merely bringing the hypothesis up is enough to set off all sorts of red flags for most people. Even the culture thing could be tested. Compare adopted twins based on their adoptive parents' race and socioeconomic status.
Incidentally, I don't believe either hypothesis, and I don't care how you feel about them. I just put them there to push your buttons, so I could point out how hard it is to do science or public policy on such an emotionally charged subject. I just want to follow the scientific process of "identify interesting anomaly, create hypothesis, test hypothesis, repeat", then apply public policy based on the resulting science.
However, your examples confute your last clause, " the guy who gets shafted because his 'views' aren't with the mainstream". Looking at Great Scientific Disasters, it is usually the non-mainstream guy who gets promoted by the media and then real science takes a long time to be recognised. There is no shortage of journalists trying to raise their profile (and income from right-wing newspaper owners) by AGW denial. In the UK, Lovelock, Wakefield and Laithwaite are all examples of non-mainstream view holders who have turned out simply to be wrong - though Lovelock has recently admitted this. It is quite hard to find someone whose views were non-mainstream and was subsequently found to be right - opposing the non-scientific mainstream doesn't count (e.g. Galileo was one of the foremost pre-scientists of his day and other pre-scientific workers were his enthusiastic supporters; the opposition of the foot-draggers in the Church doesn't count, they were simply the local equivalent of Limbaugh or Beck.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
No. Scotland has always had a separate legal system, largely due to being an independent country until 1603. Neither legal system was imposed on the other nation at the time, and they've mostly remained separate since.
Since the Scottish legal system is built on different principles to the English one, not all English Acts of Parliament apply to Scotland, although some do. Needless to say, it's complicated.
In terms of libel, England and Scotland are very different, to the extent that libel isn't even a specific offence in Scotland. Rather, it's counted (along with slander) as defamation, with no distinction made between written and spoken defamation.
It was still an independant country after 1603. Jamie Sext (James VI being his Sunday name, or James I if you're English) inherited the throne of both countries in 1603 (known as the Union of Crowns) but each still had a seperate government. It was the Act of Union in 1707 in which the Scottish government was disolved and the nation was offically incorporated into the United Kingdom.
Despite that, many systems, law being one, just trundled on the same as they always had been and remained different from the rest of the UK. It's probably all written into the Articles of Union, which is what the negotiation settlement is called.
In Europe, truth is not an automatic defense. You can't talk about certain things, even if true.
In France some years back, back when "family values" were all the rage among politicians, two guys were running for the same office. One was cheating...with the other guy's wife. So the other guy brought it up as a campaign issue.
It was illegal to drag someone's dirty laundry out, even of a public politician, and even if true. So it went to court, and in this case, the court ruled it Ok because the cheater was running around claiming to be a family values guy, and his cheating was clearly valid evidence that he wasn't.
Remember that not every place has iron-clad constitutional protection for freedom of speech, so merely being "true", or even true, without the quotes, isn't good enough.
It should be, but isn't.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Even the culture thing could be tested. Compare adopted twins based on their adoptive parents' race and socioeconomic status.
It's a shame, really, that no one can do the research. Does anyone think Barack Obama would be president if he was raised by a single black woman instead of a single white woman?
So, the main institution responsible for scientific groupthink is going to be the arbiter of what's libel and what isn't? Brilliant!
So, you're saying that scientists will be responsible for determining what science is? Madness! Next, they'll have doctors telling us what medicine is! And mathematicians telling us what math is!
I8-D