Back in 2000, when I was a lowly undergraduate, the warden in charge of our halls called all the resident students to the bar for a meeting. There, he warned us of a terrible health and safety menace. Apparently, near the student village, there lurked a large crop of magic mushrooms. On no account, he informed us, were we to go near the mushrooms located in the field at the top end of the village, nor were we to pick the white ones with the brownish tops on them.

After the helpful meeting the field swarmed with a veritable herd of eager students. The mushroom market boomed, at least until the autumn frosts set in and the economic bubble burst, temporarily causing a mortgage crisis in a local Welsh bank; but I digress.

I mention this story because it's been a bad month for the chiropractic profession, and Singh vs. BCA is just part of it. The British Chiropractic Association - or rather, the BCA's lawyers - are the poor misguided wardens in this story. "Don't write bad things about chiropractic," they might have said, "and particularly don't write about chiropractic regulators' abuse of evidence," they implied, "or we'll defend ourselves with the shield of libel law while bopping you on the head with the mighty sword of misery," they were no doubt tempted to add.

But of course that just made us want to do it more. They slipped, and fell, and the mighty sword of misery went straight up their arse.

The inimitable, indomitable and indignant Jack of Kent pointed out the misconceived nature of the BCA's lawsuit many months ago, but recent events have surpassed - or perhaps underpassed - even his expectations.

The headline news is of course Singh's victory in the battle to be allowed to appeal Justice Eady's original ruling on meaning. It's one small battle in the broader context of the trial; but it means that we're back to square one, with the BCA's lawyers once again required to make the case that Singh "had made factual statements rather than mere comment", and that "the factual statements meant that the BCA were knowingly dishonest."

The BCA have already issued a statement, or at least a paragraph, which is somewhat more subdued than some of their earlier press releases:

14th October 2009: The British Chiropractic Association (BCA), notes the decision of Lord Justice Laws in granting Dr. Simon Singh leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

It looks forward to the opportunity of presenting its case where the issues can be heard and the BCA's position can be made clear.

Good luck with that. Of course, the British Chiropractic Association's last attempts at presenting a case, in this case for the efficacy of chiropractic in treating a range of childhood ailments, were systematically destroyed in the space of about 24 hours by a glittering cast of disgruntled science writers, with the handsome editor of The Lay Scientist noting that the BCA had managed to misrepresent a Cochrane review by removing key words from a quote. Evidence of deliberate deception perhaps? Perhaps lawyers, perhaps.

But it's not just the BCA that have gotten themselves into bother. The GCC, presumably envious of all the attention the BCA have received, have adopted a bizarre policy of striving to be even more stupid than their cousins at the BCA, like a sort of dim-witted monkey watching its troop leader falling off a cliff and thinking: "Hmm, that looks fun, me copy."

They haven't quite succeeded in this aim - yet - but my God they're trying hard. They've been helped in the last week by Alan "Zeno" Henness, and Leicester SITP's Simon Perry. Together they exposed the fact that the GCC is pushing a leaflet on its website and in paper form which makes a number of dubious claims about the benefits of chiropractic. Perry was able to obtain a copy and send it to the ASA, at which point the GCC wet their collective pants at the prospect of an ASA adjudication going against them and offered to remove the leaflet - something which would be rather embarassing since ASA compliance is part of their own Code of Practice. As Simon noted:

...if the General Chiropractic Council believed they had the evidence to back up the efficacy of using chiropractic as a treatment for asthma, headaches, migraine and infant colic – then they simply could have produced it.

They didn't, and so once again we were able witness (eventually) the sad and pathetic sight of chiropractors frantically rewriting and withdrawing claims. Just like earlier in the year, when a mass panic developed after an onslaught of complaints to Trading Standards, regulatory bodies and the brilliant Advertising Standards Authority.

Pathetic is about the only word to describe the leadership of the chiropractic industry. Dozens of writers and activists have shone a bright, ultraviolet spotlight on the seedy hotel bedsheets of the chiropractic industry and found stain after curious stain.

Back in June, the United Chiropractic Association whined about "a concerted campaign to discredit the profession", but as I pointed out at the time, the simple fact is that the chiropractic profession has discredited itself, by demonstrating that it is institutionally corrupted by quackery, that many in the profession are guilty of making unsubstantiated claims about health benefits, and that regulatory bodies have failed to maintain any sort of control over the situation.

Indeed, it's difficult to see how groups like the GCC and BCA can claim to have any credibility in chiropractic regulation when they are flirting with breaking their own codes, or engaged in misguided attempts to sue their critics. Far from protecting their interests, the interests of their members, or the interests of patients, they have engineered the worst publicity the chiropractic industry has ever seen.

Well done guys.

Update: The BCA have released a further statement, studied here http://www.layscience.net/node/694.

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