{"id":8436,"date":"2010-02-23T17:35:48","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T17:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=8436"},"modified":"2017-01-09T14:25:16","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T14:25:16","slug":"simon-singh-chiropractic-bca-libel-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=8436","title":{"rendered":"Judge ‘baffled’ by Simon Singh chiropractic case"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nThe Lord Chief Justice expressed surprise today at the BCA’s libel suit against Simon Singh. Padraig Reidy reports<\/strong>
\n
\nEngland\u2019s most senior judge today said he was \u201cbaffled\u201d by the British Chiropractic Association\u2019s (BCA) defamation suit against science writer Simon Singh<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Presiding at the appeal court in London today in a pre-trial hearing on the meaning of words in a 2008 article by Singh criticising chiropractic treatments, Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge said he was \u201ctroubled\u201d by the \u201cartificiality\u201d of the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe opportunities to put this right have not been taken,\u201d Lord Judge said.<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cAt the end of this someone will pay an enormous amount of money, whether it be from Dr Singh\u2019s funds or the funds of BCA subscribers.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to criticise the BCA\u2019s reluctance to publish evidence to back up claims that chiropractic treatments could treat childhood asthma and other ailments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just baffled. If there is reliable evidence, why hasn\u2019t someone published it?\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Lord Judge stressed that his comments would not affect the judgment of the case before the Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n

The Lord Chief Justice was presiding at a pre-trial appeal on meaning in the case of BCA v Singh. Singh is being sued by the organisation for comments in a 2008 article for the Guardian newspaper in which he criticised chiropractic and claimed the BCA promoted \u201cbogus<\/a>\u201d treatments, despite there not being \u201ca jot\u201d of evidence of their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

Judge is part of a panel which also includes the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, and Lord Justice Sedley — one of the most high-powered panels of judges ever to preside on a single case.<\/p>\n

Adrienne Page QC, representing Simon Singh, said it was wrong of the BCA to claim that Singh implied it \u201cknowingly\u201d promoted treatments it knew to be ineffective.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe least likely explanation [of the article] is that the BCA cynically and dishonestly engaged in peddling remedies it knew were of no value,\u201d Page told the court.
\nRepresenting the BCA, Heather Rogers QC said the organisation is a respectable one that takes its reputation seriously.<\/p>\n

Rogers argued that the use of the word \u201cbogus\u201d suggested that the BCA knew some of the claims made for chiropractic to be false.<\/p>\n

Lord Neuberger asked if it was not the case that Singh had outlined his interpretation of the word \u201cbogus\u201d in the original article, where he described how Professor of Complementary Medicine Edzard Ernst had been unable to find any evidence of the effectiveness of chiropractic in over 70 trials.<\/p>\n

Rogers conceded that had Singh written that there was \u201cno reliable evidence\u201d, the defamation suit might never have happened.<\/p>\n

But Lord Justice Sedley suggested \u201cisn\u2019t the first question as to whether something is evidence that it is reliable?\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, dozens of Singh’s supporters<\/a> had gathered outside the court to back the popular author’s right to free expression.<\/p>\n

A date has not been set for delivery of the judges\u2019 ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lord Chief Justice expressed surprised today at the BCA’s libel suit against Simon Singh. Padraig Reidy<\/strong> reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[581,21],"tags":[593,165,595],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8436"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8452,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8436\/revisions\/8452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}