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British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh

thaiboxerken said:
I don't believe the BCA one bit, especially since they were offered a chance to write an article in the Guardian, free of charge, to present their evidence and counter-arguments. This is about stifling criticism and stopping those meddling scientists from looking into the claims of chiroquacktors.
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Just what happened when I was threatened with libel by a sCAMmer's university. The journal offered them space to respond but they never took it up. I used the justifiability defence and they faded away. These people very rarely are prepared to go head to head on the question of evidence.
 
BillyJoe said:
Eady is interpreting Simon Singh as saying that the BCA dishonestly and knowingly promotes bogus treatments. Therefore the accusation of libel stands unless Simon Singh can prove (that's right, Simon is guilty until proven innocent!) that the BCA dishonestly and knowingly promotes bogus treatments.

The legal opinion is that this is a difficult thing to prove (what is on someone's mind).
Also Simon has said elsewhere that he does not believe that the BCA dishonestly and knowingly promotes bogus treatments.

I still think the word "happily" was his downfall.
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I think Mr. Justice Eady's history of nearly always siding with the plaintiff in libel cases, irrespective of the evidence, was Singh's downfall.
 
Re the BCA's most recent statement -
http://www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk/gfx/uploads/textbox/Singh/BCA Statement 170609.pdf

Here's a link to the full text of ref.2 [Klougart N, Nilsson N and Jacobsen J (1989) Infantile Colic Treated by Chiropractors: A Prospective Study of 316 Cases, J Manip Physiol Ther, 12:281-288]:
http://www.dcscience.net/Klougart et al_1989_JMPT_colic.pdf

And this is what an osteopath has to say about ref.17:
...i see ref 17 (I think it was) referred to OSTEOPATHIC research by CLive Standen. Apart from any other faults it may have, I think , being fair to them, that even the authors would agree that one major fault was that the parents (probably unavoidably) were in the room with the children during ttt - hence possible placebo from effect on parent.

http://www.skeptics.org.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=65666&postcount=127
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Jack of Kent's take on the BCA's statement here:
http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2009/06/bca-v-singh-bcas-third-update.html

And with regard to the GCC, this is the latest from Zeno:
http://www.zenosblog.com/2009/06/moving-goalposts-part-two.html

Intriguing stuff.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Apparently, "jots" of evidence includes junk science.
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That, unfortunately, was always going to be the case. Simon's text was poorly worded. Even when I first saw it, that was the phrase I thought he was most vulnerable on. You or I might believe that only high-quality double-blinded controlled studies in reputable mainstream journals qualify as "evidence". However the legal profession are not scientists, and going simply on the statement as it stood, it wouldn't be hard to argue that a handful of satisfied individual patients - such as have popped up on some of the blogs extolling their personal chiropractic experiences - counts as "a jot of evidence".

However, if evidence emerges that the BCA as a body was indeed aware of the absence of sound evidence to support their treatments, then I don't see why Simon can't try to defend his article on those grounds, even if that wasn't what he originally meant.

Rolfe.
 
Well we now know what the BCA is prepared to accept as evidence and as such on that standard of evidence the case should be pretty easy for Simon to win.

All he needs is the following.

316 people 93% of whom can be convinced that the BCA is happily promoting Bogus treatments when presented with only one side of the argument. This to be written up and peer reviewed by the Jornal of Bogosity a journal set up by Simons friends with the specific intent of validating his claims.

Same procedure as above but this time discussed at a conference rather than peer reviewed.

A comparison showing that the BCA are no more or less bogus than the society of homeopaths. Also written up in the Journal of Bogosity

A preliminary study showing that the Unity of Psychic Surgeons might be bogus. Another one for the journal of bogosity. Actually that's getting tiresome. Just for the impression that there's a wide range of support lets call the same group of people somethins else and their publication the proceeedings of the Society of Bogaciousness.

Two people reporting on what it was like to go to a BCA registered chiropracter, written up in Whizzer and Chips.

A comparison analysisng whther the BCA are more or less bogus than the ACA.

Two more people writing up what it was like to go to chiropracter who aren't BCA registered. This one for proceedings of the S-O-B

Simon's own Trick or Treatment book.

A study of how many minutes of debate, (I say debate, I mean one sided harangueing) it takes before people are prepared to agree that the Bogus Chiropratic Association are in fact Bogus. This one can go in the Jornal of Bogosity.

That seems to be a rough analogue of the BCA's "evidence" for being able to treat colic.

I really had no idea it was going to be this easy or we'd have gathered Simon's mates to repeat that he was correct over and over again a long time ago.

Silly us for thinking that evidence required some sort of objectivity.
 
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BillyJoe said:
But read in that sentence, "the BCA happily promotes bogus treatments", it does seem to imply that the BCA knows they are bogus.
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If they do, they're quacks. And if they don't, they're still quacks. So why not go on the attack?

The treatments are bogus. That's already established.

So either the BCA is criminally fraudulent in promoting these treatments, or criminally negligent.
 
PixyMisa said:
If they do, they're quacks. And if they don't, they're still quacks. So why not go on the attack?

The treatments are bogus. That's already established.

So either the BCA is criminally fraudulent in promoting these treatments, or criminally negligent.
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Because the presiding judge ruled that "bogus treatments" meant "treatments that the purveyor knew were useless but promoted anyway", rather than "treatments that have no evidential basis".

Read Jack of Kent's blog for the full history.
 
volatile said:
Because the presiding judge ruled that "bogus treatments" meant "treatments that the purveyor knew were useless but promoted anyway", rather than "treatments that have no evidential basis".
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But that's just this libel case.

The broader point is that the BCA's actions are either fraudulent or negligent, and either way, they should be shut down and possibly arrested.
 
PixyMisa said:
But that's just this libel case.

The broader point is that the BCA's actions are either fraudulent or negligent, and either way, they should be shut down and possibly arrested.
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Of course.

But, sadly for us, the law doesn't work that way (for some unfathomable reason), and sCAM get free rides - cf homoeopathic remedies in pharmacies.
 
The latest from the BCA can be simply amended to reflect how they must now feel about their happy families leaflet.

IWe fully support and respect the right to freedom of speech, However, with this fundamental right comes responsibility. In the position of a popular science journalist Dr Singh representative body the BCA should not have published statements which they either knew to be unture or which they could not be bothered to check as true and which they must have known would be highly damaging to the BCA’s integrity and reputation
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Blue Wode said:
{snip} ETA: David Colquhoun on the BCA's 'plethora' of evidence: http://www.dcscience.net/?p=1775
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The BCA list (linked above, and in dcscience) is, as D Colquhoun writes, a pitiful collection of junk, some not even relevant. The "Journal" of Manip. and Physio. Pract. which they frequently cite is a joke. They call it "peer-reviewed" which, in a way, is true because quacks submit articles and quacks review them.

Reference #18 on the BCA list is incorrectly cited, it should be Clinical Chiropractic (2004) volume 7, 180—186. I am not registered to comment at dcscience. If someone here can do so, maybe he should be told.
 
Edzard Ernst responds to the BCA Vice President's rebuttal of recent criticisms of chiropractors:
http://trunc.it/h7kr (registration at Pulse is free and anybody can leave a comment)

JJM, I've left a comment over at dcscience re the Clinical Chiropractic ref.
 
Oh, PixyMisa, where have you been, that link is more than a week old.
There's been an avalanche of debate since then.

:)

BillyJoe
 
Blue Wode said:
Edzard Ernst responds to the BCA Vice President's rebuttal of recent criticisms of chiropractors:
http://trunc.it/h7kr (registration at Pulse is free and anybody can leave a comment)

JJM, I've left a comment over at dcscience re the Clinical Chiropractic ref.
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Richard Brown has certainly got Ernst's dander up! I like the barb at the end - "After all, when you are in a hole, stop digging!".
 
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