British libel laws are outdated and need to change if we don’t want to stifle scientific debate, says Emily Vaughan-Williams.
The campaign to reform Britain’s libel laws gained momentum this Wednesday, with the appearance of Simon Singh in the Court of Appeal to fight libel action hurled at him by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA).
The BCA began suing Singh for libel in May 2008, after he wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper that they claimed, was accusing chiropractics of knowingly peddling bogus treatments. Singh denied such intentions, but the High Court still brought preliminary rulings against him, so this year he has turned to the Court of Appeal. His case was heard last Thursday by three of England and Wales’ most senior judges; the lord chief justice Lord Judge, the master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger and Lord Justice Sedley. We can expect their judgement in 6-8 weeks.
The BCA first demanded an apology from Singh in April 2008 after the publication of the article which criticised those chiropractors who claimed that they could treat childhood asthma, colic and ear infections, with no solid scientific evidence to support their declarations.
Singh, who was awarded an MBE in 2003 for services to science and science communication, inevitably, and properly, refused to apologise.
Half-hearted attempts the resolve the dispute in a scientific manner, were made by the Guardian, who offered the BCA the chance to write an article in response to Singh.
This the BCA ignored, choosing instead to threaten suing the newspaper for publishing Singh’s article. The Guardian retreated and issued an apology faster than a squid can release ink, removing Singh’s article from its online pages. When questioned as to why the Guardian was so quick to surrender, it replied meekly that it was being sued by both Elton John and Tesco at the time, so couldn’t afford another clash with a major organisation.
Chiropractic treatment, as a leading form of alternative therapy, has battled with mainstream medicine for almost all of its existence, and practitioners long to be held in the same prestige as ‘proper scientists’. Unfortunately by suing Singh they have proved (or at least convinced the scientists among us) that they have yet to realise that most scientists use experimental evidence to disprove other theories, not legal intimidation.
How could a clash in scientific opinion, so frequent and essential to the progression of our understanding of the natural world, have been so easily dragged from its proper place in our common rooms and journals, into our courts? The answer is in the nature of British libel law.
As explained by Singh, libel law is “super expensive” as it requires specialist London lawyers. Therefore fighting a libel case requires the accused to be very rich and; under the assumption that most scientists aren’t; large associations such as the BCA and drug companies have started to prey on scientists with the knowledge that if they sue, the accused won’t have any choice but to pay up and back off. This is why 95% of libel cases in the UK are won by claimants.
No wonder then, that suing for libel obviously appealed to the BCA much more than embarking on a scientific debate with the Guardian, or for that matter, simply letting tensions go with a spinal-adjusting massage!
According to the BBC radio 4 program Science on Trial, threats of libel action are on the increase, and the public are increasingly, and correctly, sensing that there is something wrong with our libel laws. This is an opinion that Simon Singh shares.
“More important than my particular case is the case for libel reform [in general]…my greatest desire is that journalists in future should not have to endure such an arduous and expensive libel process.”
The kind of robust debate that goes on in our academic common rooms and is published in our journals, needs to be permitted and protected, not dragged into our courts or stifled through fear of libel action.
