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."
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So, the main institution responsible for scientific groupthink is going to be the arbiter of what's libel and what isn't? Brilliant!
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.
Corporations and the global warming deniers that they are bankrolling?
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.
In the name of science, will it be confirmed that African Americans have a lower IQ due to their genetics? That, and they have on average the largest penis among all other ethnic groups?
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.
...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...
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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