British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh

[Blue Wode]

http://chiropracticlive.com/how-coa...council-and-leaking-information-like-a-sieve/

Wow.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Chris French in today's Guardian:

'Witch hunt' forces chiropractors to take down their websites
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jun/19/chiropractic-bca-mca-singh

That deserved its own thread! (It beats all the Bigfoot nonsense. )

http://chiropracticlive.com/how-coa...council-and-leaking-information-like-a-sieve/

Wow.

Splitters!

Thanks for all the updates, Blue Wode et al. This is a very important and interesting thread.

 

[Blue Wode]

Lifted from New Scientist:

Open letter to all UK chiropractors
25 June 2009 by Edzard Ernst, Exeter, UK

This is an invitation to all UK chiropractors to stop the confusions, misunderstandings and animosities that arose during the recent debate about the effectiveness of chiropractic for non-spinal conditions such as asthma and otitis. I herewith invite all of you to state clearly where you stand.

Many of your websites promote chiropractic as a treatment of these conditions, and the General Chiropractic Council's own survey of 2004 shows that 57 per cent of you believe that asthma can be "treated or managed by chiropractors".

For other non-spinal conditions, the figures are similar. I have seen no convincing evidence that chiropractic or chiropractic spinal manipulation is effective for these conditions. For asthma, the evidence I have seen is even squarely negative (Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, vol 99, p 192).

However, the same survey demonstrates that 90 per cent of chiropractors support evidence-based practice principles and that 99 per cent of you use spinal manipulation - producing a somewhat contradictory overlap.

I therefore invite you to let the British public know, through your professional organisations, which of these three possible explanations is correct: you no longer hold that chiropractic is an effective treatment for non-spinal conditions like asthma, you admit that the inclusion of treatment of non-spinal conditions in chiropractic means that it can no longer be considered an evidence-based profession, or you can provide good evidence that chiropractic can treat non-spinal conditions.

I await your response with interest.

Complementary Medicine Group, Peninsula Medical School

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227140.100-open-letter-to-all-uk-chiropractors.html

 

[shuttlt]

The chiropractors issued their challenge first, I'm afraid:

May I issue a direct challenge to any doctor, health worker, scientist or professional to put forward any argument against doing unbiased, independent, open research in to the effects of chiro, the placebo effect or any other alternative medicine.

If no arguments are forthcoming then I think every reader of this blog can easily make up their minds of the distorted thinking of the medical profession.

http://www.newscientist.com/commenting/browse;jsessionid=86A4B3DF7E8D68A12BD94C2CF4E5A69C?id=mg20227127.000

I tried to answer this guy (as 'sceptic'), but I think he wanted a firm commitment to his program of research from an official representative of the WHO or something. Eventually it turned out he had his doubts about the scientific method (if you REALLY understood quantum mechanics, you'd understand apparantly), so quite what form this research would take was a little confused and he refused to be drawn on it.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Shuttit, it's the typical believer mentality. "Prove me wrong!" In this case, it's a little modified to sound a bit more PC "Prove that we shouldn't do research!" I think the problem here is that they haven't realized that no one is saying that chiropractic research shouldn't be conducted, just certain practices and claims until there is adequate research to support it.

These Chiroquacks are, in essence, building up straw men to attack and trying to convey an image of a witch-hunt based on those straw men.

 

[BenBurch]

thaiboxerken, if you look at the case of the hypertension pilot study that prompted so many of them to go off doing Atlas manipulations to treat that malady, you realize that they do not really want research. They want the facade of research. They want a justification for doing things that make them money. Because if they wanted science, they would absolutely never even consider treating any patients at all on the basis of a pilot study.

-Ben

 

[thaiboxerken]

Oh, I know. They pretend to be scientific, but actually despise science. This is a common thread among all alt-med proponents, and many religious cults as well. Science is only a marketing tool to these people.

 

[Worm]

May I issue a direct challenge to any doctor, health worker, scientist or professional to put forward any argument against doing unbiased, independent, open research in to the effects of chiro, the placebo effect or any other alternative medicine.

Have they gone mad? This is just bonkers.

In what way is any scientist, skeptic or critic arguing against doing research? It's a complete strawman.

The whole crux of this argument is that when research is done, it shows that chiropractic 'medicine' is pretty much useless in all the areas of contention. For back pain - sure, there is potentially some benefit from a good massage, but everything else appears to be in placebo territory.

The argument above is not even worthy of consideration. It's a complete strawman.

 

[Mojo]

Have they gone mad? This is just bonkers.

In what way is any scientist, skeptic or critic arguing against doing research? It's a complete strawman.

The whole crux of this argument is that when research is done, it shows that chiropractic 'medicine' is pretty much useless in all the areas of contention. For back pain - sure, there is potentially some benefit from a good massage, but everything else appears to be in placebo territory.

The argument above is not even worthy of consideration. It's a complete strawman.

Ah, but they're talking about "unbiased, independent, open research", by which I suspect they mean "research that shows that chiropractic works". Allowing for the possibility that it doesn't work would be "closed-minded", you see.

 

[BillyJoe]

Ah, but they're talking about "unbiased, independent, open research", by which I suspect they mean "research that shows that chiropractic works". Allowing for the possibility that it doesn't work would be "closed-minded", you see.

And, even then, the point the scientists are making is that they should not be using chiropractic for these conditions unless and until the research is actually done and shows that it works.

(That applies to "conventional medicine" as well, of course. As the saying goes, there is "science-based medicine" and then there is the other kind)

 

[Blue Wode]

Jack of Kent's summary of the BCA's reply:

Back on 3 November 2008, the British Chiropractic Association served a formal "Reply" to Simon Singh's Defence.

However, for some unknown reason this Reply was not on the Court File as late as 16 December 2008 (you may also remember the rather patronising response I got from the BCA's PR company when I chased this) and so I could not then obtain the Reply so as to Blog about it.

The Reply has now been obtained from the Court Office under the relevant provision of the Civil Procedure Rules.

(Any person can do this - just pop along to the nice staff at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, apply for the Statements of Case for Case Number HQ 08X02657, and pay for the photocopying.)

I set out my summary of this Reply below.

More...
http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2009/06/bcas-reply.html

 

[GlennB]

Jack of Kent's summary of the BCA's reply:

Just one snippet ...

""So far as the treatment of asthma is concerned, there is some positive evidence and some negative evidence. While, on the one hand, there is insufficient evidence to prove definitively that treatments is effective, there is, on the other hand, insufficient evidence to prove that it is not effective." (Para 9(22) of the Reply.)

Breathtaking.

 

[AndyD]

"So far as the treatment of asthma is concerned, there is some positive evidence and some negative evidence. While, on the one hand, there is insufficient evidence to prove definitively that treatments is effective, there is, on the other hand, insufficient evidence to prove that it is not effective." (Para 9(22) of the Reply.)

The same goes for sucking my big toe on Thursdays. I wonder if I can build a health empire around it?

Careful what you say, I might sue you.

 

[shuttlt]

Ah, but they're talking about "unbiased, independent, open research", by which I suspect they mean "research that shows that chiropractic works". Allowing for the possibility that it doesn't work would be "closed-minded", you see.

Yes, I eventually got him to admit that he was convinced by the anecdotal evidence, not by the science, and that if the two disagreed then the science was wrong. So, why did he want research to confirm something that he already 'knew'? I have no idea. He wouldn't say. He also wouldn't say why it was incumbant upon people who clealy believed that there was nothing worth investigating to do the research when the people who claimed this was a glorious cure-all couldn't be bothered. Neither would he say what would be the point of getting people, he claimed were involved in a Big Pharma conspiracy to suppress chiropractic, to do research on chiropractic.

Pure rhetorical ass gravy.

 

[BillyJoe]

And interesting series of quotes from Jack of Kent:

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2009/06/bcas-reply.html

the BCA is not, and does not purport to be, "a research establishment offering a complete guide to all research information published and/or available in relation to chiropractic."
[quoted from the BCA's "reply"]

Simon Singh "had a duty, as a scientist with Cambridge PhD, to acquaint himself with the state of the published literature as to the effectiveness and risks of chiropractic before making public claims about it."
[quoted from the BCA's "reply"]

Jack of Kent summarises this as follows:

The BCA are stating that Simon Singh has to meet a far higher standard of knowledge of chiropractic research in criticising the BCA than the BCA itself has to meet in promoting chiropractic in the first place.

 

[shuttlt]

How does the state of the research matter? I thought this was about whether the BCA believed that the non-lower back pain chiropractic didn't work? Unless the state of the research was such that it would stagger credibility to claim the BCA believed chiropractic was effective for colic, I don't see what the research has to do with it. My understanding was that the argument against chiropractic was that there was no reason to expect it to be effective, there was no meaningful evidence to say it was effective and no obvious desire to investigate whether it was effective.

 

[Blue Bubble]

A new, sickening twist in the tale. Blogger-hero Zeno seems to have been the target of some thoroughly disgusting tactics from within the General Chiropractic Council.

Procedure? What procedure? And more backlash!

 

[Wudang]

I would suspect the application for credit in "zeno's" name is more than a little illegal.

 

[shuttlt]

To which the woo response would be to point out that sceptically minded people have done illegal things too and moan that we are picking on them because of bias.

 

[Ocelot]

The credit applciation is a particular type of illegal. It's called fraud - or as Judge Eady puts it "knowing deception"

This should definitely be reported. the SFO can supoena the IP address of the fraudster from Littlewoods and their identity from the ISP. Wouldn't it be awful for the British Chiropractic Association if it turned out that one of their members was making bogus credit applications and I wonder if that would be a fact that could be brought up in court.