The Law and Science Reporting
In February, I went to an event called Cardiff Skeptics in the Pub, where I listened to a talk about alternative medicine, science reporting and libel cases. The speaker was Simon Singh.
Singh was sued, in 2008, by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) after writing an article criticising chiropractors, who are members of the BCA, who promote their treatments for childhood conditions such as colic and asthma, for which there is no evidence. He then wrote, about the BCA, “This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.” The British Chiropractic Association then sued Singh for libel.
There were two years of back and forth in court, to decide whether Singh was stating a fact – that the British Chiropractic Association were deliberately deceiving patients. Singh stated that this was not his intention at all. An early judgement ruled against him.
However, Singh decided to appeal the decision. Appealing vastly increases the costs if the defendant loses the case. Thankfully though, two years after the lawsuit was filed, he won the key point – that he was stating an opinion. He won the court case.
What is libel?
Libel is a law that prevents people from making defamatory comments about another person that may harm their reputation. This applies to written word. Slander is the verbal equivalent.
The main issue with libel laws is that the defendant has to prove their innocence, as opposed to the accuser. This is a complete reversal of standard burden of proof. Another major issue is large court costs. Even though the British Chiropractic Association were ordered to pay court costs, it’s unlikely that Simon Singh will see all of his money back. This is because he has to put forward an itemised bill, the details of which will be debated. It is estimated that at the end of the whole process, Singh will be £20,000 out of pocket.
Even if you win, with libel, you still lose. Being sued is an extremely costly and stressful affair.
Simon Singh, however, isn’t the only science journalist to be sued for libel for critical writing. Ben Goldacre is another – he was sued by Matthias Rath, a vitamin peddler who sells his vitamin pills to HIV/AIDS infected patients in South Africa, telling them that they will cure them. Goldacre simply wrote that “[Rath’s] actions [are] extremely worrying.” Peter Wilmshurst is a third example. He was sued after questioning the safety of a medical device.
Britain’s libel laws are among the worst in the world. They invite lawsuits from around the world which causes another problem called libel tourism. This is where anyone who thinks they are being defamed takes their case to the UK, because the accuser has a reputation to defend in the UK. However, it is relatively easy to demonstrate a reputation, and it is obvious that people are exploiting our unfair libel laws.
Another damaging effect of the draconian libel laws is something known as libel chill. This is where people either don’t write an article due to worry about libel, or the article is withheld by lawyers who think the article is potentially libellous.
Combine libel tourism with libel chill and you have a worldwide problem of people in fear of being sued, simply for writing your opinion, or criticising somebody.
I spoke to Simon Singh on the issue:
Do you think libel laws can stifle the ability of science reporters to examine and report on evidence for claims?
“There aren’t very many cases of scientists going to court. I had a long-running case, as did Ben Goldacre, and Peter Wilmshurst is currently being sued for libel, but we are looking a handful of libel actions filed each year against scientists, rather than dozens of actions. However, there are probably ten times as many situations whereby scientists (and others) receive a threatening letter and then back down before a libel action is filed. You never hear anything about these cases. And then, even worse, there are probably ten times as many articles again that are gutted before they’re published, or which don’t get published in the first place. This is called the chilling effect of libel.
For example, I gave an interview about homeopathy to an Australian journalist, Nick Miller, who works for The Australian Age - one of the biggest Australian newspapers. I was already being sued for libel, so I was being cautious and I know that everything I said was justifiable, and yet the in-house lawyer wouldn’t let him print the interview, because he couldn’t take the small risk of being sued for libel on the other side of the planet, in London. So Nick couldn’t publish his interview and instead, he decided to publish an article about how tough it was being a science journalist in Australia, where he had to be scared of English libel law. So, it’s hard to know how many articles are gutted before being published. I just received an email from an American academic, who wanted to publish an academic paper that would be relevant to any scientist in the world. He offered it to a British journal, who wouldn’t publish it for fear of libel. He then took it to a US journal, where the editor said “OK, we’ll publish it.” The editor ran it past the in-house lawyer, who made various edits. However, the edits had nothing to do with American libel law. Every single edit was made in order for that article to be compatible with English libel law. English libel law has a global chilling effect.” – Simon Singh
It is clear that something needs to be done about British libel laws. A campaign, the Libel Reform Campaign, was launched, in a bid to put pressure on the government to change them. So far, it seems to have gone well as a draft defamation bill has been published for MPs to pledge support to. The question is does it go far enough?
According to their website, the Libel Reform Campaign welcomes the new defamation bill. They’re still calling for a better public interest defence, whereby if something was important to report on, e.g. critical reporting of a scientific paper, then if the writer was sued, they’d be able to point out the necessity to report on the issue, for the sake of the public. They also call for the end of corporations suing for libel and finally for the protection of web-hosts from the liability of others.
Clearly, although the draft defamation bill is a step in the right direction, there is still a long way to go.
IMAGE: planetc1 and englishpen
1 Comment – Post a comment
Dan (Sub-Editor)
Commented 61 months ago - 20th April 2011 - 23:30pm
I am totally featuring both of your articles on our national site (CLIConline.co.uk). They are amazing.
Keep fighting the good fight.