I sue in your general direction

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First, familiarize yourself with Simon Singh’s situation.

Then, go read Crispian Jago’s take on it.

Mynd you, chirøpractic subluxatiøns Kan be pretty nasti…

June 13th, 2009 8:00 AM by Phil Plait in Antiscience, Cool stuff, Humor, Piece of mind, Science | 41 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

41 Responses to “I sue in your general direction”

  1. 1.   Pete Says:

    A chiropractor once adjusted my syster…….

  2. 2.   Bigfoot Says:

    No, Realli!

  3. 3.   Susan B. Says:

    What this needs is a song about Brave Sir BCA, who bravely sued away, away…

  4. 4.   Woof Says:

    I got better!

    (But not because of the chiropractor…)

  5. 5.   Sili Says:

    Nice “ø”s.

  6. 6.   Adrian Lopez Says:

    The judge overseeing the case has been sacked.

  7. 7.   Sticks Says:

    Are you sure you want to add a court case regarding breach of copyright as well?

  8. 8.   Torbjörn Larsson, OM Says:

    It’s not Pythonesque unless the judge gets hit over the head with a chicken.

    The judge overseeing the case has been sacked.

    Well, maybe he was?! Tease; references, pretty please, with sugar on top.

    Nice “ø”s.

    Somehow I thought spinal damage would bypass Dense Danes all the way to Stupid Swedes™. Öh, maybe I was wrong, just this once.

  9. 9.   TheBlackCat Says:

    Monty Python -- Enough

  10. 10.   MPG Says:

    No-one is to sue anyone until I blow this whistle, even – and I want to make this absolutely clear – even if they do say “bogus”!

  11. 11.   Michael L Says:

    HA! Phil, just like a chiropractor, you CRACK me up! :)

  12. 12.   Mount Says:

    “Less yakin’ more crackin’!”

  13. 13.   CelticGoddess Says:

    Fabulous. Just fabulous. When will the perpetrators of woo ever learn?

  14. 14.   Sir not-appearing-in-this-alphabet Says:

    I can heal all yøur ills by pricking certain points on your body with a sharpened tøøthbrush.

  15. 15.   Buffalodavid Says:

    I will treat your sublimation with this plate of snails. (I am French, why do you think I have this OUTRAGEOUS accent.)

  16. 16.   Buffalodavid Says:

    “4. Woof Says:
    June 13th, 2009 at 9:10 am

    I got better!”

    You win the subtle joke of the week award.

  17. 17.   Damon Says:

    Yes, because one incident in Britain automatically discredits the entire Chiropractic profession. Nice going, Phil.

    And you know, I really don’t blame them for suing. Chiropractic is too important a practice to be torn apart by some gold-digging naysayers.

  18. 18.   TheBlackCat Says:

    @ Damon: Yes, I agree completely. Suing whistle-blowers to shut them up is always the best course of action. No need to actually address and try to fix the problems the whistle-blower unveiled, everyone should just stick their fingers in their ears and say “nya nya I can’t here you”. No, that’s not right, we need to follow the BCA’s plan and duct tape the whistle-blower’s mouth shut, and then stick our fingers in our ears and pretend the problems don’t exist. Trying to actually solve problems is just too difficult, right? If no one knows about the problems they really don’t exist, do they?

  19. 19.   Phil Plait Says:

    Damon (#18): Congrats! You have managed to totally mischaracterize this entire issue while also being gratuitously wrong about “gold-digging” and the efficacy of chiropractic. Well done!

  20. 20.   The Yamm Says:

    Chiropractors are evil – they made my grandma walk with a limp and she still goes back — do they hypnotize these people?

  21. 21.   Gold Says:

    @Damon: Way to miss the point! Well done. :)

    Where’s Geo when we need him? I think we have a contender for the Interesting Fauna section.

  22. 22.   Kash Says:

    Step one; Call some charlatans bogus.

    Step two; get sued by witch doctors.

    Step three; rake in all that cash!

    Brilliant!

  23. 23.   Davidlpf Says:

    I do not think chiropractors are evil, they just don’t know better.

  24. 24.   stringph Says:

    Singh doesn’t have much of a case though. What meaning can you attribute to his sentence other than ‘They promote certain treatments despite knowing them to be ineffective’? The word ‘happily’ is the key.

    If I were to say ‘The restaurant serves rotten salads’ it would be a defamation of their food, but could be fully justified if the salads were actually rotten – whether or not the rottenness was deliberate. If I say ‘The restaurant happily serves rotten salads’ it is likely to mean they were happy to serve the salads despite – and in the knowledge of – their being rotten. ‘Happily’ implies that they know that there is a problem, but go on nevertheless: it is a defamation of character.

  25. 25.   Femmostroppo Reader - June 15, 2009 — Hoyden About Town Says:

    [...] I sue in your general direction [...]

  26. 26.   Alice Says:

    @stringph To continue your analogy, to fail to actually *look at* the salads during their preparation and serving isn’t very impressive either. Since the chiropractic lot are claiming to be able to cure all sorts of things despite there not being any evidence to support this claim, perhaps we might agree that although they don’t necessarily consciously disagree with themselves, they also haven’t bothered to check and are just relying on faith? If I tell you the sky has gone bright green, because I haven’t looked, will you believe me?

    “Madam, I am proud to present you with this shining piece of lettuce. I know it is perfect so I have avoided looking at it”.
    “Euwww, that smells swampy, has a brown leaf and is full of slugs! You lie!”
    “That is defamation of my character! I did not look at it! I did not know! I will sue!!!!!”
    Monty Python-esque rewrite to be thought up in due course . . .

  27. 27.   Rogue Medic Says:

    @18 Damon,

    Very bad form. You stepped out of character and ruined a wonderful Pythoning.

    What will your excuse be?

    He turned me into a nut.

  28. 28.   Nigel Depledge Says:

    Damon (18) said:

    Yes, because one incident in Britain automatically discredits the entire Chiropractic profession.

    Erm, well, one example involving the organisation that represents all British chiropractors, yeah.

    And you know, I really don’t blame them for suing.

    Well, I do blame them but I can see their reasons for doing so.

    After all, Singh was perfectly correct in what he said – the BCA does indeed promote the use of chiropractic as a treatment for all sorts of conditions where there is not the slightest bit of evidence that it achieves anything.

    So, since they didn’t have any data with which to gainsay him, their only recourse was either to ignore him and hope he would go away, or to sue him.

    Chiropractic is too important a practice to be torn apart by some gold-digging naysayers.

    This is pure baloney.

    Chiropractic is, for the most part, a way of conning people out of money. There is some evidence that it helps with back and joint problems, but apart from that it achieves nothing that a bit of TLC and attention couldn’t do, and do better and with less risk of inducing a stroke.

  29. 29.   Nigel Depledge Says:

    Davidlpf said:

    I do not think chiropractors are evil, they just don’t know better.

    And, as people selling a purported health care, do you not think chiropractors have a duty to their customers to know better?

    I do.

    What annoys me about this situation above all else is that the chiropractors, rather than accepting that Singh had a point (even if they disliked the way he made it), they are pretending that either they have evidence (which is not true) or that evidence for medical treatments does not matter (which is not acceptable for healthcare in the 21st century).

  30. 30.   Nigel Depledge Says:

    stringph said:

    ‘Happily’ implies that they know that there is a problem, but go on nevertheless: it is a defamation of character.

    It isn’t defamation if it is true, which all available evidence indicates that it is.

    Singh has a genuine point, and rather than accept this the BCA is trying to shut him up with a libel suit based on semantic arguments.

    In fact, I believe that chiropractors in general, and the BCA especially as a professional body that represents chiropractic, have a duty of care to their customers to
    (1) Understand the basis for their profession, i.e. that it has evidenciary support in only limited areas;
    and either:
    (2) Explain that in most cases the treatment has no basis in either evidence or scientific rationale, and that it may or may not do anything beneficial;
    or:
    (3) Deliver only those treatments for which there is some evidenciary support.

    So, based on this duty of care (which, admittedly, is a moral one, not a legal one), the BCA is indeed “happily” recommending treatments that it knows to be worthless.

    Organisations such as the BCA should be leading chiropractic into the realm of evidence-based medicine, and proving their detractors wrong with hard, rigorous science, not protecting a useless and potentially harmful quack practice.

  31. 31.   Nigel Depledge Says:

    Oh, yes, and, just to join the throng…

    Death awaits you with nasty, big, pointy teeth!

  32. 32.   rob Says:

    Oh, what sad times are these when passing chiropractors can sue science writers at will. There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design science experiments are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.

  33. 33.   Patimus Says:

    @ Damon

    Why do you even read this blog if you disagree with logic? How was Singh a gold digger? He simply tried to inform the public not to take their babies to the chiropractor. He wasn’t suing them. Next time your child gets the sniffles just crack his back. I am a doctor and I’m super smart, so you should listen to me.

  34. 34.   Daffy Says:

    I suffered from intense, chronic low back pain for 20 years…and tried EVERYTHING short of surgery for relief. On the advice of a friend—and, really, just to shut her up—I had a few sessions with a (Palmer Method) chiropractor that cleared it up; and I have no no trouble since (15 years).

    The claims of many chiropractors for curing other illnesses are certainly and obviously bogus…but don’t let that mask the fact that for relieving back pain it can sometimes be the best, most effective treatment.

  35. 35.   Lars Says:

    But Daffy, how can you trust someone who talk bogus, even if they’re good with their hands?

  36. 36.   Daffy Says:

    Lars,

    I don’t…any chiropractor who talks like that I would shy way from. There are many honest chiropractors who are just as disgusted with the bogus claims as the rest of us are.

  37. 37.   hughcumber Says:

    “Susan B. Says:
    What this needs is a song about Brave Sir BCA, who bravely sued away, away…”

    Not a Python song but one to support Simon
    Simon Singhs

  38. 38.   Nigel Depledge Says:

    Daffy said:

    I suffered from intense, chronic low back pain for 20 years…and tried EVERYTHING short of surgery for relief. On the advice of a friend—and, really, just to shut her up—I had a few sessions with a (Palmer Method) chiropractor that cleared it up; and I have no no trouble since (15 years).

    The claims of many chiropractors for curing other illnesses are certainly and obviously bogus…but don’t let that mask the fact that for relieving back pain it can sometimes be the best, most effective treatment.

    Yes, back and joint problems are the area where chiropractic actually does have some evidenciary support.

  39. 39.   Nigel Depledge Says:

    Daffy said:

    There are many honest chiropractors who are just as disgusted with the bogus claims as the rest of us are.

    Yes. Isn’t it sad, however, that the BCA’s members didn’t ask it to remove the unsupported claims from its website?

  40. 40.   Crispian Jago Says:

    More Python rip-offs, this time to hopefully raise scientific awareness during homeopathy awareness week:

    http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2009/06/homeopathy-sketch.html

  41. 41.   Todd W. Says:

    @Crispian Jago

    The homeopathy bit is priceless. Well done, sir!

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