The BCA's press release on today's shambles (I was there as well) can be read here: http://www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk/gfx/uploads/textbox/Singh/Press%20State....

If concludes:

After the hearing BCA President Dr Tony Metcalfe said, "The BCA brought this claim to preserve its integrity and reputation. I’m delighted that the Judge has vindicated the BCA’s position."

The BCA's position can never be vindicated by this travesty.

Im not sure about this. Don't get me wront, I completely support Simon Singh and everything he is saying, and I understand the arguement he is making.

However, if you look up bogus in any dictionary, you find "false", "untrue" etc. By using the word bugus, he is effectively saying "these treatments do not work", as opposed to "these treatments have not been proven to work". I think this would count as libel, even without the "delibate intent to deceive" interpretation, which I am far less comortable with.

Does this make sense to anyone? I still think it's awful that he's getting sued, and I wish him all the best. I guess the lesson is to choose your words very carefully.

Yes, Tom hit the nail on the head. You report CKavenaugh as saying,

"Singh’s statements meant that the BCA and Chiropractors in general were aware that their treatments do not work and were thus promoting treatments they knew to be false. The judge also defined a’ bogus treatment’ as not being one which later scientific evidence has shown to be ineffective but instead as one which is known to be false and is meant to intentionally deceive."

That is the usual sense of the word “bogus”, which was originally strictly synonymous with “counterfeit”. Indeed, the Jargon file reference for bogus in Dictionary.com notes,

By the early 1980s `bogus' was also current in something like hacker usage sense in West Coast teen slang, and it had gone mainstream by 1985. A correspondent from Cambridge reports, by contrast, that these uses of `bogus' grate on British nerves; in Britain the word means, rather specifically, `counterfeit', as in "a bogus 10-pound note".

So does “bogus” always imply deceit? No, just nearly always. Given that this element of deceit is nearly always implied in this slangy word, (as opposed to the precise word, “unproven”), the judge would look at context to see if any such neutral meaning could nevertheless be taken here. He would find that Dr. Singh had just used such words as “respectable face”, which implies a seamy underbelly, and “happily promotes”, implying a lack of compunction, and reasonably conclude that “bogus” was used in its generally construed sense of “sham” or “counterfeit”, which implies deceit. My understanding is that British libel law does not permit the publication of unsupported aspersions, so the judge did no more here than apply the law.

Your argument that this finding makes the statement
Group A is promoting Treatment X
There is no evidence that Treatment X is effective
libelous, is thus without merit. Even if you disagree with the judge’s interpretation of the word “bogus” in this case, he did make this interpretation, and thus the case hinged on that very word, yet it is noticeably absent from your fearmongering construct.

Martin, a worrying development indeed. The problem does of course lie with this Judge's interpretation of the word bogus, which as you say many bloggers use to mean 'unproven' rather than deliberately fraudulent.

The issue is this - does this ruling now set a legal precedent such that quacks can sue for libel against any usage of similar language? If so, everyone from prominent commentators to part-time bloggers will have to look through their archives and prepare for legal proceedings.

A truly sad day for science communication and personally for Simon - let's hope the Appeals system shows some heart...

That having been said, although I’m not a lawyer, I think that it was a tactical error on the part of the defence to try to argue the long-shot proposition that “bogus” as used here, was a neutral term. They might have been better off to argue that in light of their contention that the BCA had no reasonable basis for its claims, it made them in bad faith, hence the claims were indeed bogus. The onus would then be on the BCA to provide scientific backing for their claims. The judge can only rule on the arguments made before him, not hypotheticals that might or should have been made.

At the end of the day, though, Singh should have avoided the loaded term “bogus” altogether. He didn’t need to impute immorality in order to make his case against the BCA. Even as a Canadian, I know that British libel law is notoriously harsh. So should Singh and his Guardian editor, one would have thought.

While I support Simon Singh, I think the quote from his article does constitute a claim that the BCA is deliberately dishonest. The interpretation of the word 'bogus' isn't important. If the sentence read "This organisation ... happily promotes unproven treatments", it would still imply the BCA was being deliberately dishonest. It's the word 'happily' that implies they know the treatments are unproven and are still happy to promote them. You can argue that that's not the literal, logical meaning of the sentence, but that's what most readers would take away from it. There's really no other reason to use the word 'happily' there.

Is there a difference between deliberate dishonesty and wilfully ignoring evidence? I would suggest that a selective misreading of evidence to support an ideological standpoint is dishonest.

It is a crass comparison, but David Irving failed in his libel action against Lipstadt.

Teek, I just searched dictionary.com, and the far looser thesaurus.com, but could not find "unproven" or anything close to it as a synonym for "bogus". As for arguing special usage of the word for bloggers, this case was brought against an article in The Guardian, not a blog, hence there is no special bloggy meaning in this instance, if ever.

Also, it's not the role of the Appeals Court to show heart. Rather it will review the case strictly to find possible legal errors in the judge's ruling. If science writers find the libel laws to be onerous, then the solution is to lobby the government to change them.

@ekcol If the sentence read "This organisation ... happily promotes unproven
treatments", it would still imply the BCA was being deliberately
dishonest.

It doesn't logically follow - it could imply dishonesty or ignorance "he happily carried on regardless."

Bogus is the key word here, according to the Judge. The definition of bogus from The Free Dictionary is "Counterfeit or fake; not genuine." Saying that Chiropracty is not a genuine treatment, that it's a fake treatment, is not the same as saying that everybody who practices it is deliberately deceiving people. No more than pointing out that somebody is wearing a fake Rolex implies that they are trying to deceive people, rather than simply being ignorant.

Is there a difference between deliberate dishonesty and wilfully ignoring evidence?

Excellent question! On the face of it the answer seems obvious. But humans have an almost unbounded capacity to deceive themselves. Hence, millions of people flock to churches, mosques and temples to pray to imaginary gods, and pseudoskeptics do mental gymnastics in order to deny the overwhelming statistical evidence for the existence of psi phenomena in ganzfeld experiments. Are these people dishonest? Some, perhaps, but mainly not. The best remedy to avoid libel is to stick to a discussion of what is evidentiary and what is unsupported. One doesn't need to cast aspersions in order to make a powerful case against a fact-free belief system. On the other hand, proving mens rea in a court of law is a difficult business.

Interesting point re: religion - how would Dawkins arguments agains say the Church of England or the Vatican be any different from Singh's arguments against the BCA?

No,Martin & @ekcol. I assure you the judge didn't look at any one word in isolation. In order to determine the meaning of "bogus" as used in the Guardian article, he would have looked at general usage (and noted that it usually had a non-neutral connotation), as well as looking for context. Here he would have found the phrases "respectable face" and "happily promotes", suggesting that "bogus", as used here, implies malice aforethought on the part of the BCA. Martin, the original definition (and the first word of the definition you gave) for "bogus" is "counterfeit". Something which is counterfeit is always intended to deceive. That's a pretty significant hurdle to overcome. Sorry, I wish it were otherwise, really. My arguments aren't based on what I want to believe, but upon facts and logic.

I expect that his publishers' lawyers combed his mss before publication, to make sure that he could back up any potentially libelous allegations, or that they would likely be deemed fair comment. I understand that large publishers do this as a matter of course.

As I stated above, I think it's possible that Singh's lawyers got hung up on trying to deny the rather clear contextual meaning of the word "bogus" rather than making the case that the word was justified here (i.e. fair comment, etc.) but not having read the transcript, I could be in error.

Sorry, my comment above is in response to Martin on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 09:05: Interesting point re: religion...

@Martin It doesn't logically follow - it could imply dishonesty or ignorance "he happily carried on regardless."

The difference being how you phrase what it is that he happily did. Assume he is unwittingly running over some children: "He happily carried on regardless", "He happily drove on", etc, imply ignorance, and are true. But "He happily ran over some children", "He happily killed several people" imply he's doing it deliberately, are false and probably defamatory, even though they are just two ways of describing the same situation.

Singh's quote is similar to the latter. It is true that the BCA happily promote certain treatments, and it's true that those treatments are bogus, but it's only true that they happily promote bogus treatments if they do so knowingly.

One thing is certain: regardless of why the BCA didn't pursue the Guardian, the damage has been done in that people have read the paper and the online article and will have been left with an impression of what Simon said. If they finally win, they get no more than the satisfaction that they have won and that their lawyers have made a packet or too.

If they had pursued the Guardian as well, then it would seem likely that they would have to have published an apology of some sort. They way they have done it - just going after an individual - they get no such public apology and the 'harm' that was done to them never gets corrected as far as most of the original readers are concerned.

Does this make sense? Have the BCA complained to the PCC? If not, why not?

If you were in charge of the reputation of such a membership organisation, would you not owe it to your members to do everything you could to get a public apology? Perhaps the damage done was just not that great after all?

Or was the Guardian just too big for them to take on?

The BCA has 1,029 members (including 6 abroad). (The GCC have 3,110, so the BCA don't represent half the GCC members as was claimed yesterday.) I can't find their fees mentioned on their website, but let's take a guess at £100 per annum, although this does seem very high - perhaps £50 is nearer the mark. Anyway, this gives them an annual income from fees of £100,000. It doesn't look likely that they have any other significant source of income (a check on their Companies House records would confirm this - I've just bought them, so I'll look through them and let you know). They were awarded costs of £23,000 (plus VAT) yesterday, which is what their lawyers would have charged them. I they had taken on the Guardian as well, this could have been significantly more! Could they really have afforded to risk half their annual income on this?

OK. Their income from subscriptions in 2007 (FY to 31 December) was £1.65 million. Their membership certainly seems to be 1,029 (http://www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk/members.aspx?adv=true&surname=%25), making their average subscription £1,600. Does this seem right? Even providing 'professional insurance' and whatever else they provide, this seems steep, particularly bearing in mind every quack still has to register with the GCC. Can anyone compare that with other similar (!) organisations?

Their total income in 2007 was just under £1.9 million (so the vast majority comes from subscriptions), their expenditure just over £1.7 million, giving a surplus for the year of £112,000. They had £695,360 in the bank.

Some other figures:

They have 9 employees, earning an mean salary of £17,000.

They forked out £745,992 for 'Professional insurance'.

They paid £105,000 for 'Public relations expenses'.

£78,437 for 'honoraria'. To whom is not specified.

They paid out £10,924 in unspecified 'donations'.

£150,000 for membership of other organisations.

£7,189 for 'X-rays'! (Perhaps they x-ray their staff every year to ensure they are all healthy?)

£50,000 on 'Research'. (Not much really, but they spent zilch the previous year.)

£19,826 on 'Legal and professional'.

So, their lawyers bill, if Simon hadn't had to pay it would have more than doubled their legal bill, but, considering their total reserves of just short of £1 million, they are well placed to fight several Simon Singhs!

They still haven't filed their 2008 accounts (to 31 December), so we don't know if anything has changed significantly since 2007.

The GCC charge £1,250 for the first year and £1,000 subsequently. We've heard a lot about other quacks not wanting to pay £45 to join OfQuack, so are chiroquacks willing to fork out another £1,600 to join the BCA?

@Ekcol

Ah, but ignorance is bliss...

Again, however you try to phrase it, this relies on the judge making is own decision about what Singh meant - a decision that actually flies in the face of the fact that Singh goes on to explain what he means by "bogus" in the next paragraph of the same article.

@Zeno

Thanks for some interesting information there..

On the point about fighting several Simon Singhs, it's worth pointing out that the £23,000 costs they've been awarded so far only covers their expenses getting through to the preliminary hearing - if this goes to trial, those expenses will increase exponentially, into the hundreds of thousands. From that point of view I'm honestly quite surprised that they bothered to sue considering the risk vs. the tiny benefit that you pointed to.

Regarding the membership fees, I think this has to do with the status of chiropracty as a profession. Most homeopathy "practitioners" are basically just talkative shop-keepers, who sell water for a few quid a time. Chiropractors charge much larger amounts, and their professional membership costs seem to be more in line with, well, other professions' professional membership costs. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Chiropracty is a "professional" occupation and the organisation can pitch professional level fees, whereas it's hard to do the same with people selling vitamins.

Also, from the outgoings, it looks to me like the membership includes professional insurance and other memberships, although I'd need to check that. OfQuack provide no such benefits of membership...

If anyone wants more details from their 2007 accounts, let me know!

On a note of minor pedantry, there is no such thing as chiropracty. Palmer had a brief liason with Greek, and the unwieldy 'chiropractic' was the result.

Hence one can, if one were to abandon reason and all the gifts of the Enlightenment, become a Doctor of Chiropractic, practising Chiropractic, as a licensed Chiropractor.

Thanks for that, I've been wondering which was right for ages now!

That there are several interpretations of the tenor of Singh's article, and that terms like 'bogus' have a particular meaning in the science blogosphere, does not prevent the Judge from deciding upon one of them. Issues such as reasonable doubt aren't particularly relevant here as this is under Tort law and not criminal law.

As far as I'm aware the task of the judge is to assess how a typical reader of the Guardian would interpret the passage in question. What Singh intended, or how the passage would have been interpreted among the sceptical community, really aren't relevant. Again, as this is a tort case, the thorny issues of intention that apply in criminal cases don't apply.

It's the judge's job to decide whether and how the reputation of the BCA has been damaged by the article. It would appear that he has decided that the general usage of 'bogus' is synonymous with an intent to deceive. Looking up my old paper dictionary, that is pretty much how the word is defined there.

If bloggers don't want to suffer the same fate as Simpon Singh, they need to go out of their way to state that they believe that the subject of their post is not lying and believes what they say. That may not be true, may stick in the throat, but will keep people out of trouble.

PS I'm not a lawyer, so all the above may be wrong.

I agree and disagree with what you've said. In terms of the application of the law, I think you're right that there is nothing technically wrong with the verdict. To my mind, that highlights why the law is fundamentally broken. There's a complete failure to look back at the big picture, and at the public good. In this instance, justice has found against the common good.

In terms of intention, it's a difficult one. I don't accept that I should be able to be sued for something that I've not specifically said. On the other hand, I've criticised newspapers in the past for using sneaky ways of making assertions without actually saying them. I don't know the answer, but I think it's ridiculous that the veracity of the initial claim hasn't been considered. For me, for a public health issue, that should be the single most important starting point.

In terms of what bloggers need to do, to say that I don't believe many quacks are simply dishonest is a lie, and I won't do it. What genuinely frightens me is that in the last year or so, Singh had been sued, Ben Goldacre has been sued, and it seems like a question of when not if I find myself in the same predicament.

Thus far bloggers have largely escaped the fear of libel cases that grips newspapers and TV. IMHO that's mainly because they have been viewed as being under the radar - too small to bother suing.

But as blogs become more widely read people are going to decide that its worth taking them to court. At the moment its easy to portray someone suing a blog as the powerful trying to quash the powerless. But were said blog, or collection of bloggers, to pull in 100 000 readers a month and large quantities of revenue, then people might not be so sympathetic to the blogger.

If bloggers are to replace the dead tree media then they are also going to have to contend with the costs that newspapers and TV stations currently face - part of which is the need to employ lots of very expensive lawyers.

"But were said blog, or collection of bloggers, to pull in 100 000 readers a month and large quantities of revenue, then people might not be so sympathetic to the blogger. "

Well Ben is getting I believe in the region of 80-90k uniques per month, and I'm at around a third of that here, with both sites growing steadily (and of course my column on LibCon gets way more readers than this site). So we're not in Private Eye territory, but we're not a million miles away either. Without the revenue though, it's hard to see how bloggers can go to the next level.

I'm also aware of the potential for hypocrisy. I think there's a tendency for a lot of bloggers to say "why should things like contempt of court apply to us?" Well, you can't have it both ways, you can't be big enough to make an impact and then protest you should be under the radar.

Martin, while I share your concern for the common good, this case was never about that. Rather, it was whether Singh implied that the BCA intended to deceive. The judge concluded that on the balance of probabilities (as opposed to the standard of “reasonable doubt” of criminal law) he had made this implication, despite his lawyers’ arguments to the contrary. IMO, he should have conceded the point then proceeded to justify it, rather than try to argue that he didn’t make such an implication. You say that there was nothing technically wrong with the verdict, yet you contrarily continue to insist that Singh made no such implication, which must mean that you believe the judge got it wrong.

The problem with believing that Singh should have been able to make the case for the public good in this case is that the BCA initiated the action, thus it largely controlled the parameters of the case. It doesn’t follow from this that the law is broken. If science writers feel that their case can be made in court, they need to initiate a civil action dealing with the specific claims the BCA has made. I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping that they look at the feasibility of just such an action.

Sorry, the above comment is mine.

Martin

Thank you for this excellent commentary.

I have now set out what I think are the options for Simon Singh. What would be the rational response to this difficult legal situation?

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-should-simon-singh-do-next.html

Best wishes
Jack of Kent

"Well Ben is getting I believe in the region of 80-90k uniques per month, and I'm at around a third of that here, with both sites growing steadily (and of course my column on LibCon gets way more readers than this site)."

Probably why Ben's blog has been getting attention from lawyers .

One passing thought, one of the roles of unions or professional associations is to provide their members with legal assistance (funded by membership fees).

You might want to look into whether you could be protected by an existing organisation if you were to join up.

In the long run, bloggers might need to set up their own. (But then it would have to be pretty selective as there are some who go out of their way to be defamatory).

@Jack of Kent: Many thanks for the compliment, I'm particularly glad that somebody who actually knows about the law liked it!

@Woodchopper: That's an interesting idea. I've no idea what sort of existing organisation would protect us, or whether setting up a body would be feasible, but the idea of some sort of blogger insurance (which is basically what it would be) is interesting...

"Singh must defend the claim that the BCA have been "deliberately dishonest" in their promotion of chiropracty for various diseases."

One thing is clear: the BCA must be completely aware that any claim that chiropractic is effective for colic, etc, is highly disputed. It's not as if there is overwhelming evidence that it does work, with only a few quiet voices expressing a wee bit of dissent!

Put yourselves in their shoes. They (presumably) believe in the subluxation nonsense. They have their research that they believe concludes it is effective for all sorts of conditions, but they are also aware of - and I suspect deep down they do really understand - the reasons why people are critical of the research, whether it's to do with small sample size, poor methodology, poor use of stats, etc (never mind the non-existence of any mechanism).

Do they firmly believe they have killer answers to all those criticisms (which I never seen published anywhere, but then again, they might just not think it's worthwhile answering their critics)? Or perhaps they really do know that they just can't answer them?

Can their position really be described as being honest? I suspect that if they did have good arguments that slapped down their critics, they would be lauding it all over us. The fact that they don't doesn't mean they don't exist, of course. However, if they do know they have no answers to the critics, surely they are being dishonest and knowingly so (because their job is to support their paying members, whatever the evidence, after all)?

But there again, if they really wanted to protect the integrity of their members, why didn't they force the Guardian to issue an apology (they didn't, did they)? After all, the damage (whatever that was) was done and the best they could hope for was a public apology in an attempt to correct the injustice.

Then again, why didn't they go after Steven Poole, who said:

"chiropractic does nothing except maybe for your spine (but it might sever your arteries)" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/may/24/5). Or did they think that was just fair comment and not fact?

On the issue of what Simon Singh meant when he used the word 'bogus' I think there would be room for the judge's interpretation were it not for the paragraph following on from the one complained about.

In the follow on paragraph Singh explained that he was confident in labelling the chiropractic treatments mentioned 'bogus' because he had done the research along with Edzard Ernst and found no evidence that chiropractors could treat such conditions successfully.

This essentially defines why he uses the term bogus and it is related to the lack of evidence and not intentional fraud. I think the paragraph also makes it clear that it is he who recognises them as bogus not the chiropractors themselves. As such when he said 'happily promotes bogus treatments' I think it's quite clear that he is criticising the BCA for their lack of interest in what the evidence shows not for malicious dishonesty.

His writings in Trick or Treatment also make it clear that he is well aware that many proponents of chiropractic treatments believe in what they are promoting as such it's very unlikely that's what he meant to imply in this article.

Good summary and interesting discussion by the way.

Good point, Chris. However, malice isn't an issue, just dishonesty. Also, the alleged libel was against the BCA, not individual chiropractors. I would argue that if a professional body is making claims for the veracity of treatments when the evidence allegedly shows that these treatments don't work, then they surely must know that they have no scientific basis for their claims, ergo they are knowingly promoting bogus treatments. Assuming for the sake of argument that this is the case, I would think that Singh's lawyers might have been better off to have made that point, rather than try to argue that "bogus" in this case is a neutral term. Keep in mind that in strict usage, "bogus" means "counterfeit", and counterfeiting is never done out of ignorance. Although the word is now usually used metaphorically, the underlying implication of intent remains in most usages. As I mentioned in a previous post, that's a pretty heavy burden to overcome.

“Something which is counterfeit is always intended to deceive.” --and many similar points.

It isn't, and many are the times I have happily handed over counterfeit coins to unwitting shopkeepers.

Indeed - bogus does not imply intent. Singh stated that Chiropractors used a technique that was bogus - this no more implies intent than pointing out that I might have handed over a bogus coin. And once again, Singh defined bogus in the following paragraph.

If I say, "Hayes, despite his respectable air, happily handed out bogus coins," does it sound to you as if he did so unwittingly? No? Well isn't this an accurate analogy to stating, as Singh did in his article, "This organisation [the BCA] is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments."? You see, as I explained in my previous comments, the judge would have considered the context of the remark in order to reach his conclusion. "Respectable face...yet it happily promotes" would appear to have sealed Singh's fate, yet those words are missing from Martin's analysis.

PL Hayes, when you happily handed over counterfeit coins to unwitting shopkeepers, did you do so despite your respectable face? If you did so unwittingly, then what is the contradiction requiring the use of the word yet, which means despite?

If this seems to be hair-splitting, I can tell you that in my knowledge of arbitration, which is analogous to legal proceedings, in deciding the intent of a sentence, every single word is given meaning. Nothing is considered superfluous. That is as it should be.

@Carl: The reason I didn't consider those words above is because the judge, Sir David Eady, very explicitly stated that it was the definition of the word "bogus" that was the key point in the case. Of course he considered the whole text, but it was specifically his definition of "bogus" that decided the case, according to the man himself.

Regarding the wider point, of course you can interpret what Singh said a variety of different ways. But just because you can draw a conclusion out of an argument doesn't mean that the argument logically leads to that conclusion.

But Martin, it was assuredly the whole text that provided the context which lead to the judge to define "bogus" as he did...one which also happens to be the usual definition of the word. This was unfortunate, as it was, as you said, the key point of the case.

As far as interpreting what Singh said in a variety of different ways, I really don't think that's possible if you ascribe meaning to every word Singh used. I mean Singh presented the "happy promotion" of bogus treatments as the flip side (as signified by the word "yet")of the BCA's "respectable face". Even if you tortuously manage to ascribe some other sense to these words in order to describe "bogus" so as not to imply intent, what sense is the more likely?

Further to the above, I'm not familiar with Simon Singh's writing style, so I could be way off base here, but I think it's reasonable that Singh used the words he did, not in any particularly measured way, but rather to present a pithy opinion piece on the subject. Furthermore, he may have become caught up in the mood of the moment. Hence, when he proof-read his words, rather than saying, "is this exactly what I mean to say?", his primary consideration was more, "am I forcefully making my point?" I suspect if some-one had pointed out the implications of his words, he might well have said, "No, I didn't mean to imply intent on the part of the BCA. I guess I got a little carried away."

This is just speculative on my part, of course. Unfortunately, in these cases, a judge looks at what a person wrote, not what he might have intended to write.

@Carl Olsen

“If I say, "Hayes, despite his respectable air, happily handed out bogus coins," does it sound to you as if he did so unwittingly? No?”

No - the invitation to reach a fallacious conclusion is clear there, but if you are going to use that argument w.r.t. the actual 'offending' statement:

“This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.”

you also destroy it by saying “the judge would have considered the context of the remark in order to reach his conclusion”. In that case the analogy with bogus coins no longer holds: there is no second, honesty conserving, branch of the implication with bogus coins, whereas there clearly is with bogus medical treatments. Quacks happily and honestly dish out bogus medicines all the time.

“PL Hayes, when you happily handed over counterfeit coins to unwitting shopkeepers, did you do so despite your respectable face?”

Yes. :)

This is, indeed, a very worrying case and it does completely swing on the way "bogus" is interpreted by the average reader (which is what the libel test is meant to be - whether a reputation is damaged in the eyes of a reasonable third party). I have to come to the sad conclusion that a lot of people would have interpreted this as the BCA deliberately misleading people over the effectiveness of the treatment. However, in a sensible society, there would be a simple remedy involving a clarification of what Simon meant. Maybe a public declaration in a press add or some such and it would have gone away.

The actual tangible damage to the BCA and its members in the first place must have been minimal. After all, I suspect that Simon's book is primarily read by people who don't need convincing. As it is, the publicity now is now far wider and the stakes have been raised. If the BCA lost this then they would, effectively, have now been found guilty of deliberate deception. Further, the legal costs will vastly outweigh any damage that would have been done to the interests of the BCA from the initial publiciation.

Anyway, I hope that Simon wins this particular bit of the argument on appeal, but it is going to be difficult.
Many of us are going to have to be very much more careful over using certain terms. Describing somebody as a "quack" is clearly going to be interpreted by many as somebody pretending to have medical knowledge, rather than just being mistaken (worth reading the dictionary definitions).

It is a general rule, that it is much safer to call somebody an idiot than that they are a teller of lies. Generally speaking, the former falls under "fair commment" whilst the latter requires a fair degree of proof.

WTF???????????????????????????????

Submitted by PL Hayes (not verified) on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 15:23.

"...there is no second, honesty conserving, branch of the implication with bogus coins..."

Submitted by PL Hayes (not verified) on Sun, 05/10/2009 - 19:38.

“Something which is counterfeit is always intended to deceive.” --and many similar points.

It isn't, and many are the times I have happily handed over counterfeit coins to unwitting shopkeepers.

Oh dear, I'm so confused!

Right on Steve! I agree with everything you say, in particular:

However, in a sensible society, there would be a simple remedy involving a clarification of what Simon meant. Maybe a public declaration in a press add or some such and it would have gone away.

Aha! Busted!!! :)

Above comment was submitted as a reply to PL Hayes (not verified) on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 15:25. Not sure why it didn't appear directly below it.

Carl, I'm rather surprised you're confused. You seem like an intelligent chap and the logic is really not so difficult to follow. Perhaps it is my (lack of clarity) fault.

Whatever... I'm sure you'd agree that the fundamental point is this: Eady's (rationale for his) ruling was debatable (I'd say eccentric), at best. More to the point, his ruling - whether it is legally sound or not - (and I do not dispute that it may well be) is a sickening travesty of justice and the (England/Wales) libel law is intrinsically unjust.

So I take it you're saying that "bogus" as used by Singh probably didn't imply deceit, but the judge's ruling that it did may well be legally sound.

This seeming contradiction would only be true if you intend legally sound to mean not an error in law, despite what you believe to be the judge's faulty analysis.

That may well be true in theory, however, I haven't seen my analysis agreeing with the judge's conclusion convincingly refuted here. Good discussion, though! I'll be interested to hear the final resolution of this matter.

@Carl Olsen "That may well be true in theory, however, I haven't seen my analysis agreeing with the judge's conclusion convincingly refuted here."

I think you're confusing the issue here. The issue isn't that bogus can't be interpreted the way that the judge did, it's that it can be interpreted in many ways, of which the judge's interpretation is only one. Therefore you cannot logically conclude that Singh's use of bogus implies deceit, only that it's one possible interpretation. You're argument only works if there is no other definition of "bogus", and of course there is.

Martin, the relevant interpretations of "bogus" in this matter concern whether, as used by Singh, it implied deceit. The judge concluded that on the balance of probabilities, it did, and I concur, parsing the relevant sentence to back up my contention. It is that analysis that I have not seen convincingly refuted. I certainly didn't mean to imply that the judge's interpretation was the only one, but I do think other interpretations are problematical. Just my opinion, of course. I wish it were otherwise!

Singh explains the meaning of the term "bogus" in paragraph of the article immediately after he uses it ("I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because...").

As for what you think he may or may not have intended to mean, the point is that regardless of how convincing you may believe your interpretation to be, you cannot logically conclude it from the article. In any other aspect of law, Singh would be presumed innocent until proven guilty. In this judgement he has been presumed guilty and must prove his innocence.

Martin, you contend that the following paragraph explains Singh's use of the term "bogus" as not implying intent to deceive:

I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

I hardly think that calling the allegations bogus because the BCA has no basis for them disproves intent to deceive. Indeed, when the evidence from 70 trials is contrary to the BCA's claims, how could there be a legitimate basis for this professional body for making them?

Perhaps there are other trials that support the BCA's contentions, which would then provide a basis for their claims, however contentious they may be. But if so, Singh didn't indicate this. As Singh clearly implies that the BCA just made their claims up out of whole cloth, I find it quite bizarre that you take any of this as evidence that Singh didn't imply intent.

As for being presumed guilty, that is just rubbish. Singh hasn't been found liable even now, after the judge's ruling. If Singh feels that the ruling undermines an effective defence, then that is a different matter (and perhaps the judge's apparent foregone conclusion on the matter could be grounds for appeal), but he is not presumed liable until and unless a finding to that effect has been made.

Martin, you say: As for what you think he may or may not have intended to mean, the point is that regardless of how convincing you may believe your interpretation to be, you cannot logically conclude it from the article.

I previously argued (Carl Olsen on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 11:51), that Singh quite possibly did not intend to imply malfeasance. Feel free to differ if you like. It was, as I said, a purely speculative comment. All that is beside the point, of course. What matters is what a person could reasonably be expected to conclude upon reading Singh's article.

I think the balance of probability (the rather weak standard in civil cases) tilts towards the judge's interpretation, for reasons I argued. Indeed, even if this were a criminal matter, I believe that probability is the criterion in matters of interpretation, (reasonable doubt being applied only to matters of innocence or guilt) though I could be wrong. No matter.

Martin

Singh's book on the same subject is titled 'Trick or Treatment?'

The use of the word 'trick' surely suggests that by 'bogus' he means deceitful or deliberately counterfeit.
Besides, if he is correct in saying that chiropractic is complete hokum, he should have little difficulty in establishing that the BCA knows it.

This is not a good ruling. Hopefully he'll contest this and keep going. Good to see he's generating support though.

Oh, and here's a shameless blog pimp: http://cargo-cult-science.blogspot.com/2009/05/chiropractors-shot-in-foo...