British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh

The last few days has seen another flurry of blogging…

Simon Singh Criticizes Chiropracters & Gets Censored, “Beware the Spinal Trap”
http://miedvied.com/?p=62

Simon Singh sued and silenced; Svetlana and Steinberg's speech surmounts suppression
http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/08/simon-singh-sued-and-silenced-svetlana.html

The case of Simon Singh
http://dinoquest-3.blogspot.com/2008/08/case-of-simon-singh.html

UK chiropractors sue author Simon Singh
http://www.healthwatcher.net/chirowatch.com/cw-cervical.html

Entry on the British Chiropractic Association’s action at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Singh

And the Quackometer has produced yet another great blog post, this time taking a close look at the role of UK universities in chiropractic, taking a particularly close look at the McTimoney chiropractic course…
One of the recurrent criticisms of chiropractic is that it is founded in mystical ideas and has a very poor evidence base for the efficacy of any of its treatments. The McTimoney Chiropractic Association, based a few miles from Abingdon in Wallingford, sheds little light on the evidence for the efficacy or superiority of their chiropractic variations on thier web site.

The philosophy of McTimony…..looks like pretty fundamental chiropractic with their mysterious and unproven 'subluxations' being the cause of illness - and not just bad backs, but the health of all 'cells and organs'. The college appears to adopt this worldview.

More…
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/08/role-of-uk-universities-in-chiropractic.html
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And David Colquhoun has a piece in today’s Times asking why we promote either untested or ineffective alternative remedies. Here are his very incisive comments on the regulation of chiropractic in the UK:
The Government should be warned by the case of chiropractors about the dangers of granting official recognition before the evidence is available. The General Chiropractic Council already has a status similar to that of the General Medical Council, despite it being based on the quasi-religious idea of “subluxations” that nobody can see or define. Recent research has shown it to be no more effective, and less safe, than conventional treatments that are much cheaper.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4628938.ece

http://dcscience.net/?p=251
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Finally, bearing in mind that the General Chiropractic Council is fond of pushing the European Guidelines for the management of acute low back pain (which briefly recommend spinal manipulation as part of a package of care http://www.gcc-uk.org/page.cfm?page_id=4 ), here’s the woo-packed syllabus that has been drawn up by the three presenters of the 2008 International European Chiropractic Symposium which is being held on 11th and 12th October in Tuscany, Italy:
http://www.internationalchiropracticseminars.com/rooms.html

The first presenter, Tedd Koren, has, as the European distributor for his ‘patient education materials’, a UK chiropractor called Richard Lanigan. This is Mr Lanigan’s website:
http://www.vaccination.co.uk/

For those not familiar with Tedd Koren, DC, he is a notorious anti-vaccination chiropractic lecturer, researcher and publisher who lives in Pennsylvania, USA:
http://www.korenpublications.com/kp/category/vaccine-information
 
Anyone who fancies giving the chiros a kicking while we await news on the BCA and Simon Singh, they could go herewhere the CEO of the GCC has replied to David Colquhoun's article.

You only get 300 words. Think of it as writing a haiku.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
Anyone who fancies giving the chiros a kicking while we await news on the BCA and Simon Singh, they could go herewhere the CEO of the GCC has replied to David Colquhoun's article.

You only get 300 words. Think of it as writing a haiku.
Click to expand...

Tried, but it's not up yet.

I find my irony meter heating up when I see a quack trying to tell Colquhoun to read the Cochrane database.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
Anyone who fancies giving the chiros a kicking while we await news on the BCA and Simon Singh, they could go herewhere the CEO of the GCC has replied to David Colquhoun's article.

You only get 300 words. Think of it as writing a haiku.
Click to expand...
I dropped one in, and so did David but neither has appeared. Some other good ones did though. Actually it's only 300 characters which means a very high signal:noise ratio is required. Perhaps that's why no chiros have replied yet.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
Anyone who fancies giving the chiros a kicking while we await news on the BCA and Simon Singh, they could go herewhere the CEO of the GCC has replied to David Colquhoun's article.

You only get 300 words. Think of it as writing a haiku.
Click to expand...
I added a comment almost 24 hours ago, and it is not shown. They may have objected to my observation that chiro is a cult, not a profession.
 
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After over a day, the Times has only five comments. Four of us have failed to get a response posted and normally I would call foul. But all of the five comments are antagonistic to chiropractic practise. Has the Times finally woken up?
 
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Acleron said:
After over a day, the Times has only five comments. Four of us have failed to get a response posted and normally I would call foul. But all of the five comments are antagonistic to chiropractic practise. Has the Times finally woken up?
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Maybe they are looking for some posts from the Chiroquack side in order to provide some "balance to the comments"? :eek:
 
Acleron said:
After over a day, the Times has only five comments. Four of us have failed to get a response posted
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Make that at least six. My comment wasn’t published, and neither was this one which was submitted by Gimpy from the Bad Science forum:
Ms Coates claim that "chiropractors are competent to diagnose, manage and prevent musculoskeletal disorders" is at odds with the GCC's own literature that states "chiropractors also diagnose and treat [...] a number of other conditions"

http://www.gcc-uk.org/page.cfm?page_id=432
pwned!

the link I provide mentions asthma & colic btw
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http://www.badscience.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6014&sid=04fc3263f73c4b0c89919727635edde8


Whilst we await further developments, here's a little more blogging:
http://my.opera.com/Heathen Dan/blog/2008/08/28/this-is-spinal-trap
 
Just a quick post about the seeming lack of activity in this case.

One way litigation is like warfare is that there are long boring bouts where it appears (wrongly) nothing is going on and then very public dramatic bursts of activity.

(Other simlarities are that it is expensive, ultimately unpredictable, and often started and carried through (at least to begin with) by stupid stubborn people who did not properly explore the other options.)

Unless the BCA have dropped the case, the lack of visible activity does not mean there is nothing happening behind the scenes.

I am sure more will be revealed in due course...
 
Another example of the Quack Lawsuit Hammer in action...

Looks like one of the 'Myofascial Release' gurus, a Mr. John F. Barnes, P.T. has begun suing people for posting opinions about his favorite 'science', 'Myofascial Release'.

Practitioners of 'Myofascial Release' are close cousin to Chiropractors. They just have different tangled, make-believe pseudoscience gibberish to explain how massaging your foot can cure blindness (literally).

Oh, poo. I'm a noob and can't post a link for 15 days, it says.

Do a google search for 'Myofascial Release post retracted', and up will pop some of my original links. A couple you'll have to look in the google cache, because even the 'We were forced to delete it' message was removed.

I was able to piece together some of the article from other mirrors/sites... but can't find the first three parts. :(

I had to delete those links, too. Maybe this will be more educational. Let's see, how did I find those?

Do a google search for 'Myofascial Release Quack'

Look a little ways down. There is one hit called 'Myofascial Release - Real Harm Done Manual Therapy and Physical' which contained the titles of all five parts. Dead links to the original story, of course. I was only able to find copies of the last two parts by pasting the titles into google.

Sorry for no direct links. I suppose that people used to come in and carpet-bomb the place with spam. So bear with me and copy/paste the words into Google and the interesting tidbits will reveal themselves.

The other websites I've seen about/for it... just read like the A-B-Cs of quackery. The only practitioner I've spoken to... behaves like a rabid cultist. Especially when I didn't take her word for How Things Are. Silly benighted me. She sort of inspired me to go tilt a certain Windmill. So I've been trying to do my bit by trying to raise some awareness that this kind madness is on-going on.

So much for science! "Shut up, or we will SUE!" isn't a valid scientific argument, but apparently an effective legal dodge for quacks who are making good money fleecing vulnerable people.

You don't have any free speech on the web if someone can just threaten
the site you blog on or your ISP with a lawsuit in order to silence you.

Looking over all this, OK, maybe I've derailed this topic, but I'm pretty sure if I can't post a link, I won't be able to post a new topic, either. Sorry!
 
pingnak said:
Looks like one of the 'Myofascial Release' gurus, a Mr. John F. Barnes, P.T. has begun suing people for posting opinions about his favorite 'science', 'Myofascial Release'.

Practitioners of 'Myofascial Release' are close cousin to Chiropractors. They just have different tangled, make-believe pseudoscience gibberish to explain how massaging your foot can cure blindness (literally).

Oh, poo. I'm a noob and can't post a link for 15 days, it says.

Do a google search for 'Myofascial Release post retracted', and up will pop some of my original links. A couple you'll have to look in the google cache, because even the 'We were forced to delete it' message was removed.

I was able to piece together some of the article from other mirrors/sites... but can't find the first three parts. :(

I had to delete those links, too. Maybe this will be more educational. Let's see, how did I find those?

Do a google search for 'Myofascial Release Quack'

Look a little ways down. There is one hit called 'Myofascial Release - Real Harm Done Manual Therapy and Physical' which contained the titles of all five parts. Dead links to the original story, of course. I was only able to find copies of the last two parts by pasting the titles into google.

Sorry for no direct links. I suppose that people used to come in and carpet-bomb the place with spam. So bear with me and copy/paste the words into Google and the interesting tidbits will reveal themselves.

The other websites I've seen about/for it... just read like the A-B-Cs of quackery. The only practitioner I've spoken to... behaves like a rabid cultist. Especially when I didn't take her word for How Things Are. Silly benighted me. She sort of inspired me to go tilt a certain Windmill. So I've been trying to do my bit by trying to raise some awareness that this kind madness is on-going on.

So much for science! "Shut up, or we will SUE!" isn't a valid scientific argument, but apparently an effective legal dodge for quacks who are making good money fleecing vulnerable people.

You don't have any free speech on the web if someone can just threaten
the site you blog on or your ISP with a lawsuit in order to silence you.

Looking over all this, OK, maybe I've derailed this topic, but I'm pretty sure if I can't post a link, I won't be able to post a new topic, either. Sorry!
Click to expand...

Edit your links:
Instead of http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums (for example) type forums . randi . org
or just use "dot" instead of "."
 
Myofascial Release is nothing like Chiropractic whatsoever. It is a technique that is very similar in nature to Soft Tissue Release.
 
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