British Chiropractic Association: Afraid of Criticism
Well I’m late to the party, but I’ve never been one to turn down an opportunity to highlight the cowardice of Alternative Medicine practitioners so frightened of legitimate criticism that they will run to the law to silence dissent – so here’s a bit more on Chiropractic legal threats. Sadly, Simon Singh is being sued. Holford Watch have a post up with links to coverage of the affair and some background to it (see also links to Frank Frizelle saga below), Dr* T has something on this: another back cracking quack attack and Gimpy has posted the full article and a separate commentary on the situation. Jack of Kent makes reference to the Derbyshire Rule and the right to freedom of expression in his commentary. Basically, Simon Singh wrote a piece for the Guardian that was critical of Chiropractic and the British Chiropractic Association have issued a writ through the High Court. This follows recent legal letters in New Zealand sent to Professor Frank Frizelle and the NZJM (also naming Professor David Colquhoun and Mr Andrew Gilbey). The Holford Watch piece on Frank Frizelle includes a fairly comprehensive list of legal threats from Alt Med types that should cover the ones I referred to in Legal Chill and Other Threats. I will also point to a couple of bits linked to from the NZJM response to Chiropractors, the brief piece Frank Frizelle wrote in 2005 titled Lawyers and Letters and a couple of webpages on publication ethics at icmje.org: Uniform Requirements and Sponsorship, Authorship and Accountability. As Frank Frizelle said to the Chiropractors’ Association in New Zealand, so I say to the British Chiropractors’ Association: Show us your evidence, not your legal muscle.
Dr* T said,
August 18, 2008 at 1:45 pm
“…so frightened of legitimate criticism that they will run to the law to silence dissent…”
That is it in a nutshell! I look forward to reading the wording of the writ when it gets published.
T
Jack of Kent said,
August 18, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Thanks for your kind comment. I have now added a brief guide to English libel law to my blog which may be helpful.
jdc325 said,
August 18, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Thanks are due to to Google cache and Svetlana for the provision of the full story:
The original Simon Singh article is published in full by: Svetlana
jdc325 said,
August 18, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Thanks for your comments chaps. Dr* T – I too will look forward to the coverage of this case. I can’t see it going well for the BCA. Jack – the link in your name seemed to be garbled. I’ve made it link to the “On English Libel Law” piece now. Hope that’s OK.
Jack of Kent said,
August 18, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Many thanks JDC.
British Chiropractors Join the Legal Intimidation Party « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science said,
August 18, 2008 at 6:37 pm
[…] jdc observes: British Chiropractic Association: Afraid of Criticism. […]
Norbury said,
August 18, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I’m also going to be late, I now have a load of posts to read before deciding whether I can add anything to the discussion!
jdc325 said,
August 19, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I look forward to reading your post Norbury. The more people laughing at the sense-lacking-back-cracking-quack-quacks the better.
I’ve already given up listing all the sites that are covering this, but I think Holford Watch have them:
BCA join the party
Tampa Chiropractor said,
September 29, 2008 at 3:15 am
Good article. Thanks
jdc325 said,
November 10, 2008 at 11:20 am
More from Jack of Kent on the latest BCA/Singh news .