British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh

Jack of kent said:
As an English media and communications lawyer, I am watching this case with keen interest.
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Cool - out of interest, what's your take on the logic behind this? Do you think they've got a case at all? I can't see they've a leg to stand on, personally, but this sounds like more your area than mine.

And what do you reckon are the chances this will actually make it to court?
 
It is good to see that there will finally be some kind of contest with profound results. It is sad that it will be a legal contest in which the best lawyers and expert witnesses can usually win. Unfortunately, only the legal pathway has the profound results.

Dr. Singh has my support and best wishes.
 
Rocko said:
Cool - out of interest, what's your take on the logic behind this? Do you think they've got a case at all? I can't see they've a leg to stand on, personally, but this sounds like more your area than mine.

And what do you reckon are the chances this will actually make it to court?
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I am sure they will say that not having a leg to stand on can be cured by skeletal massage! Everything else seems amenable to chiropractic...

The strength of a legal case is always difficult to assess from a newspaper report. If the BCA have external lawyers, one would presume that the claim form has been issued means that they think the case has some merits.

English libel law also favours the claimant. Once it has been established that the comment is defamatory (ie lowers the reputation of the claimant), it is for the defendant to show that a defence applies. This is expensive and complex. It is also very unfair. That is why charlatans and crooks often use English libel laws - Robert Maxwell, Jeffrey Archer, David Irving, Jonathan Aitken, etc.

As for whether this would go to court, from the newspaper report, it is really difficult to say. It seems a claim form has been issued. The next stage would be for a Defence to be served. It would appear this has not happened yet.

Once the parties set out their respective cases, then the case will either be withdrawn, settled, or go to court. However, few cases of any kind get to court - only about 1% of claim forms lead to trial dates.

One thing in English litigation is very different from US litigation. Over here, the loser has to pay both sides' legal costs. If this case goes to court then there will be a highly expensive legal bill for either Dr Singh or the BCA.

I will keep this thread updated with developments - and also on my own blog jackofkent DOT blogspot DOTcom (as a Newbie here, I can't embed the link!).
 
I am at the same time animated and worried by this development. Animated because, at last there will be public scrutiny of chiropractic, which has become embedded in the culture and widely accepted as main stream medicine - which it isn't. I am worried by what Jack says; the courts should be the place to test evidence, but when it comes to science they are not. Scientific evidence is routinely abused by lawyers, especially on matters of probability. Present company excepted of course Jack.
 
Rocko said:
As it stands, to me it just smacks either of a vendetta or done in the hope Singh will fold due to the personal nature of the threat.
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If the BCA or their lawyers are not very confident of a win, going after Singh rather than the newspaper has the advantage that if they lost, they wouldn't have a major media outlet which has been forced to prove that chiropractic practice is mostly woo.

If it doesn't go to court, I hope the reasons and any payments which are given in settlement are disclosed.
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Acleron said:
If the BCA or their lawyers are not very confident of a win, going after Singh rather than the newspaper has the advantage that if they lost, they wouldn't have a major media outlet which has been forced to prove that chiropractic practice is mostly woo.
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They may also have thought that, as a private individual rather than a national newspaper, he's less likely to be able to afford to defend the claim.
 
Asolepius said:
Scientific evidence is routinely abused by lawyers, especially on matters of probability. Present company excepted of course Jack.
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None taken! Any lawyer with the slightest grasp of science is off making a fortune in patent litigation!

I have long argued that (apart from in patent litigation) the Court room, with all the complex and counter-intuitive rules of evidence and procedure, is simply not an efficient forum for testing any scientific claims.

For example, most of the recent English miscarriages of justice have come down to the Court not properly asssessing scientific evidence.

A legal win for rationalism and skepticism is always a nice bonus (the Dover trial comes to mind), but such wins are sadly not inevitable.
 
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I honestly can't see what the case is about - has Singh actually said anything even slightly bordering on untrue?

From the BCA website:

BCA said:
As children grow, chiropractic can help not only with the strains caused by the rough and tumble of life but also with some of the problems that children can suffer in their first years:
Colic – sleeping and feeding problems – frequent ear infections – asthma – prolonged crying.
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Chiropractic techniques can help with colic, ear infections and asthma? Really? They'll be happy to produce the evidence then. Oh wait.....
 
Worm said:
I honestly can't see what the case is about - has Singh actually said anything even slightly bordering on untrue?

From the BCA website:


Chiropractic techniques can help with colic, ear infections and asthma? Really? They'll be happy to produce the evidence then. Oh wait.....
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The issue is what constitutes evidence. If you look hard enough you can find a crappy study somewhere in the world that looks positive. The courts are not interested in ethics, they only look at the letter of the law. The BCA's lawyer will argue that one single poor quality study is evidence, and Simon's lawyer will argue (presumably) that that's not how science works. It all depends on whether a judge can see the difference. That of course depends on getting a suitably experienced judge in the first place. A few years ago I took out an action against a business partner and the court scheduled it before a matrimonial judge!

But as Jack said earlier this is not very likely to get to court, although you always have to behave as if it will.
 
lionking said:
Truth is a pretty good defence. All power to Simon Singh's arm.
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BUt that depends on how you define "Knowingly"

They are performing potentialy dangerous procedures that are proveably ineffective at doing anything, but they might well not know or accept things like double blind trials.
 
ponderingturtle said:
BUt that depends on how you define "Knowingly"

They are performing potentialy dangerous procedures that are proveably ineffective at doing anything, but they might well not know or accept things like double blind trials.
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I don't think they are pretending to be that stupid. They will have an extremely hard time convincing any judge, however detached from reality, that they have never heard of a DB RCT. But I take your point in another sense. They will argue that their idea of evidence is perfectly reasonable so they are not `knowingly' promoting ineffective treatment. Again I think they are on a loser here as, if they try that in public, they will have to expose the poverty of their knowledge about medical research.
 
Asolepius said:
I don't think they are pretending to be that stupid. They will have an extremely hard time convincing any judge, however detached from reality, that they have never heard of a DB RCT. But I take your point in another sense. They will argue that their idea of evidence is perfectly reasonable so they are not `knowingly' promoting ineffective treatment. Again I think they are on a loser here as, if they try that in public, they will have to expose the poverty of their knowledge about medical research.
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That is possible, but if Singh has to prove in court that they are full of ****, then that could well be harder to prove.

As he has to prove what they know, it seems not unlikely that it could turn badly for him.
 
God forbid that they should appear ignorant as well as incompetent....
 
We are getting quite speculative here, especially as we don't know the details of the BCA claim. But they are forced to resort to the evidence issue. If they choose not to do that, and instead base the claim on whether they knew the evidence was bad, they abandon all credibility for their practice.
 
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