Inspired by reading about his tale in brief in an recent issue of Wired, I looked up a bit more about Simon Singh, who was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association and prevailed.
His egregious claims that led to the lawsuit and $200,000 legal defense? Read them for yourself in his Guardian article, Beware the spinal trap or see them quoted below, emphasis mine:
So did the chiropractors have a leg to stand on? Let the evidence speak for itself, which is exactly what the chiropractic association didn't want. From Dr. Ernst writing in the British Medical Journal, Chiropractic for paediatric conditions: substantial evidence?
His egregious claims that led to the lawsuit and $200,000 legal defense? Read them for yourself in his Guardian article, Beware the spinal trap or see them quoted below, emphasis mine:
Note the last footnote about a libel lawsuit brought forth by the BCA. The UK has very restrictive libel laws that place much of the onus on the writer and have been criticized by many for restricting free speech. In this case, the use of libel law to pursue a scientific writer--Mr. Singh has authored a book on alternative medicine and has a PhD from Cambridge in particle physics--was and is a clear affront to scientific discourse.Simon Singh said:This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let's be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.
In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.
[...]
This article was taken down in June 2008 following a legal complaint from the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) but was reinstated on 15 April 2010 after the BCA discontinued its libel action against Simon Singh
So did the chiropractors have a leg to stand on? Let the evidence speak for itself, which is exactly what the chiropractic association didn't want. From Dr. Ernst writing in the British Medical Journal, Chiropractic for paediatric conditions: substantial evidence?
Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty solid "no, the evidence does NOT support the use of chiropractic" for any of the conditions about which Dr. Singh supposedly committed libel. After this scientific whipping and much popular backlash, including formal complaints for false advertising with regard to treating asthma, colic and the like being lodged against 1/4 of all chiropractors in Britain, the General Chiropractic Council responded:Ernst in the BMJ said:The vice president of the British Chiropractic Association, Richard Brown, writes that there is substantial evidence for the BCA to have made claims that chiropractic can help various childhood conditions.1 The association made similar statements in a press release,2 because the science writer Simon Singh questioned statements made on the associations website about childhood asthma, otitis, colic, feeding problems, sleeping problems, and prolonged crying.3 To back up his statement Brown provided 19 references.4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Several of these references do not contain data relating to chiropractic treatment of the above named conditions.9 10 11 15 (See table.⇓ Of the remaining 15, eight articles do not refer to controlled clinical trials but to retrospective analyses, observational studies, questionnaire surveys, and case reports, which tell us little about effectiveness.4 12 14 16 17 19 21 22 [...]
Although the content of the British Chiropractic Associations list is important, its omissions are perhaps even more so. At least three relevant randomised controlled trials and two systematic reviews are missing from it.24 25 26 27 28 Arguably, these are the most rigorous papers in this area, but they fail to show that chiropractic is effective. The omissions are all the more curious as the association apparently knew of these articles. The association commented29 on our review30 that was based on this research, and the articles were part of Hawk et als review8 cited in the associations list of evidence.
The associations evidence is neither complete nor, in my view, substantial.
Finally, after the scientific and popular courts had "ruled," the legal system followed. On April 1, 2010, a British appeals court ruled in Mr. Singh's favor on the question of whether his statement of describing treatments as "bogus" was of fact or opinion. An excerpt from the courts' decision:wikipedia summary said:In a new report, the General Chiropractic Council "has disowned the claims of the BCA the same claims that lie at the centre of its libel action against Simon Singh.... Notably, the report concludes that the evidence does not support claims that chiropractic treatment is effective for childhood colic, bed-wetting, ear infections or asthma, the very claims that Singh was sued for describing as "bogus".[2]
Bravo, for making clearly the correct decision and allowing free speech and scientific criticism to prevail while invoking history.THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND AND WALES said:The opinion [about chiropractic] may be mistaken, but to allow [the BCA] to compel [Dr. Singh] to prove in court what he has asserted by way of argument is to invite the court to become an Orwellian ministry of truth. Milton, recalling in the Areopagitica his visit to Italy in 1638-9, wrote:
That is a pass to which we ought not to come again."I have sat among their learned men, for that honour I had, and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning among them was brought; . that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old a prisoner of the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."