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…
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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June 13th, 2009 at 8:22 am
A chiropractor once adjusted my syster…….
June 13th, 2009 at 8:40 am
No, Realli!
June 13th, 2009 at 9:05 am
What this needs is a song about Brave Sir BCA, who bravely sued away, away…
June 13th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I got better!
(But not because of the chiropractor…)
June 13th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Nice “ø”s.
June 13th, 2009 at 9:53 am
The judge overseeing the case has been sacked.
June 13th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Are you sure you want to add a court case regarding breach of copyright as well?
June 13th, 2009 at 10:50 am
It’s not Pythonesque unless the judge gets hit over the head with a chicken.
Well, maybe he was?! Tease; references, pretty please, with sugar on top.
Somehow I thought spinal damage would bypass Dense Danes all the way to Stupid Swedes™. Öh, maybe I was wrong, just this once.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:11 am
June 13th, 2009 at 11:23 am
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”!
June 13th, 2009 at 11:40 am
HA! Phil, just like a chiropractor, you CRACK me up!
June 13th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
“Less yakin’ more crackin’!”
June 13th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Fabulous. Just fabulous. When will the perpetrators of woo ever learn?
June 14th, 2009 at 4:53 am
I can heal all yøur ills by pricking certain points on your body with a sharpened tøøthbrush.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I will treat your sublimation with this plate of snails. (I am French, why do you think I have this OUTRAGEOUS accent.)
June 14th, 2009 at 9:47 am
“4. Woof Says:
June 13th, 2009 at 9:10 am
I got better!”
You win the subtle joke of the week award.
June 14th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
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.
June 14th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
@ 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?
June 14th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
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!
June 14th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Chiropractors are evil – they made my grandma walk with a limp and she still goes back — do they hypnotize these people?
June 14th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
@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.
June 14th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Step one; Call some charlatans bogus.
Step two; get sued by witch doctors.
Step three; rake in all that cash!
Brilliant!
June 14th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
I do not think chiropractors are evil, they just don’t know better.
June 14th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
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.
June 14th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
[...] I sue in your general direction [...]
June 14th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
@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 . . .
June 14th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
@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.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:32 am
Damon (18) said:
Erm, well, one example involving the organisation that represents all British chiropractors, yeah.
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.
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.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:32 am
Davidlpf said:
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).
June 15th, 2009 at 5:48 am
stringph said:
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.
June 15th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Oh, yes, and, just to join the throng…
Death awaits you with nasty, big, pointy teeth!
June 15th, 2009 at 8:12 am
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.
June 15th, 2009 at 8:28 am
@ 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.
June 15th, 2009 at 9:54 am
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.
June 15th, 2009 at 10:55 am
But Daffy, how can you trust someone who talk bogus, even if they’re good with their hands?
June 15th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
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.
June 15th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
“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
June 16th, 2009 at 3:17 am
Daffy said:
Yes, back and joint problems are the area where chiropractic actually does have some evidenciary support.
June 16th, 2009 at 3:21 am
Daffy said:
Yes. Isn’t it sad, however, that the BCA’s members didn’t ask it to remove the unsupported claims from its website?
June 16th, 2009 at 4:58 am
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
June 16th, 2009 at 8:01 am
@Crispian Jago
The homeopathy bit is priceless. Well done, sir!
August 15th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I’m French. Why do you think I have this OUTRAGEOUS accent-a?
Good lord. I wish I was British; American humor is pathetic by comparison. Anchorman is an obvious exception, though.
August 15th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Also, to win the appeal case, BCA will have to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest wiiiiith… A HERRING!