Richard Brown, president of the British Chiropractic Association (BCA), has a tough task before him.  He presided over the BCA’s libel suit against Simon Singh for an article he wrote in the Guardian in which he specifically criticized the BCA, writing that it, “happily promotes bogus treatments.” The libel suit resulted in a magnification of criticism against the BCA by orders of magnitude, and the questioning of onerous libel laws in Britain that stifle free speech. The BCA ultimately had to withdraw the suit and pay for Singh’s outrageous legal expenses.

In a recent speech Brown reflected on the Singh lawsuit, now published in the Chiropractic Report with the title, “After the Storm – What Have We Learnt?” As Edzard Ernst noted in an article about Brown’s speech, “it makes fascinating reading.” To me it reads like desperate damage control, but in it there are some interesting admissions.

Regarding the Singh affair Brown writes:

Singh claimed that the BCA ‘happily promotes bogus treatments’ even though there was ‘not a jot of evidence’. The BCA was faced with a dilemma. Did it sit by and permit an assault on its reputation and good name, or did it stand up for its members and challenge the criticism? For years, chiropractic had been castigated in a succession of critical articles, but here was a published article which had explicitly named a chiropractic association and had made defamatory comments about it.

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I have been following the libel case by the British Chiropractic Association against Simon Singh on this blog, so it is a pleasure to report that the BCA has dropped their case – Simon Singh has won. The Guardian reports that the BCA filed a discontinuation with the court yesterday.

Congratulations to Simon – this is a huge victory. It comes on the heals of him winning his appeal regarding the defintion of “bogus” and whether or not his statements were commentary or fact. Simon won the ability to defend his statements as opinion, which doomed BCAs case, so it is no surprise they are now dropping the case.

What remains to be seen is how much money Simon can recoup from the BCA for legal costs. Even in a best case scenario, he stands to lose a lot of money and two years of his life fighting this case.

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We have been following the libel case of science journalist Simon Singh, and I am happy to report that there is a bit of good news on the case. But first, to recap: Simon was sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) over an article called Beware the Spinal Trap – which I and other bloggers have since reproduced.

The particular line of interest was Simon writing that the BCA “happily promotes bogus therapies.” The BCA contends that this implies they dishonestly promote therapies that they know do not work. This has become the first point of contention for the libel suit. Simon maintains, and this is backed up elsewhere in the article, that he never implied that and in fact BCA chiropractors are likely self-deluded.

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I have been following the story of the crazy libel laws in England, brought to public attention by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) suing journalist Simon Singh because he dared to (correctly) state that many of their treatments are “bogus.”

In England (if I understand correctly, these laws apply only to England and not to all of the UK) when someone is sued for libel they bear the burden of proof that what they said was true. Further, the process is so expensive that it is easy for deep pockets to intimidate those with fewer resources into silence merely by the threat of suit.

Simon has bravely stuck with his suit, at great personal expense, largely to use it as a platform to lobby for rational libel reform.

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Simon Singh was sued by the British Chiropractic Association for correctly pointing out that they promote therapies that are not backed by adequate scientific evidence – therapies which Simon called “bogus.” In a pre-trial hearing the judge ruled that was Simon meant by that statement was that all the members of the BCA know that their treatments do not work and promote them anyway, as an act of deliberate fraud.This means that if Simon is to go forward defending himself against libel, he has the burden of proof that the judge’s interpretation of what he said is true – an impossible task.

That is an absurd ruling, especially since Singh clarified exactly what he meant elsewhere in the article, that the chiropractors are simply deluded true-believers.

Simon announced today that he will appeal the judges decision and continue to go forward with his defense. This is good news for the cause of free speech, especially in the realm of educating the public about science and the fight against quackery and nonsense.

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As an American it’s very easy to look at issues from a narrow American-centric view (we have a well-earned reputation for this). I am often reminded of this by my many international SGU listeners, and I have had to discipline myself to keep this in mind.

For example, when it comes to teaching science in public schools, I do, of course, feel the most responsibility for my own backyard, but this is an important issue everywhere. But this is an issue in many countries, not just the US. Recent reports indicate that the teaching of evolution is under attack in Israel and Turkey. The Guardian also reports:

This news follows the astonishing statements made by India’s minister for higher education earlier this year. Satyapal Singh claimed Darwin was “scientifically wrong”, and is demanding that the theory of evolution be removed from school curriculums because no one “ever saw an ape turning into a human being”.

India has 1.35 billion people, which is 17.7% of the world population. (China is 1.4 billion, 18.5% – so India and China combined have 36.2% of the world population). I think it’s reasonable to say that it matters what happens in these countries, especially with our increasingly globalized world. Our efforts to curb climate change depend on cooperation from China and India, and having a scientifically literate population will help these efforts.

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Last week I wrote about a recent article claiming evidence for panspermia (the idea that life had limited origins and then seeded itself throughout the galaxy), and the underlying idea of panspermia itself. I concluded that the new paper provided no compelling evidence, and panspermia, while not impossible, is a fringe hypothesis with no credible supporting evidence.

In response one of the co-authors of the paper (Ted Steele) wrote me an e-mail, attempting to defend the paper. I welcome the opportunity to engage in a dialogue about any topic I blog about, and so here is my response. Here is the e-mail in full:

Dear Steven:

I can see you have got quite emotional (attached) – and I am sure you are therefore not thinking straight. I tried posting this reply to your Blog comment but for technical reasons( I think ) I was excluded. So I decided to email you directly and share my response with some of your academic colleagues.

I suggest you re-read our paper carefully as you read this note. See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2018.03.004

I am a molecular immunologist and evolutionist of 50 years standing. I am also the lead author of this paper on the “Cause of the Cambrian Explosion – Terrestrial or Cosmic? ” I do not publish scientific trivia, and apart from key books the main body of my work is published in peer reviewed journals – check me on PubMed searching “Steele EJ”. Many of my PDFs are also at my academia.edu site (below). My main field is the study of the RNA and DNA editing mechanisms in the somatic hypermutation and germline evolution of antibody variable genes – however I am very interested in pragmatically evaluating the evidence consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe Panspermia explanatory paradigm.

I have spent 10 years or more poring over and thinking about all the multifactorial evidence and all the explanations and criticisms. I expect serious critics to do what I have done – confront all the “extraordinary ” evidence in conflict with the terrestrial paradigm. Most of my co-authors have done that. Skeptics must do this – confront and evaluate the evidence and the primary literature. Here some examples from our paper, which are paradigm shifting (that is, pure nonsense under the terrestrial neo-Darwinism paradigm).

We now have a set of extraordinary facts to explain. The usual skeptical response in these situations is that “Extraordinary Explanations require Extraordinary Evidence’. The situation now is the reverse. Extraordinary, and multifactorial evidence exists now on Earth and its immediate environs. So now we must provide an “Extraordinary” explanation that fits all these facts and makes sense of them – this has been the aim of Science since time immemorial.

Four extraordinary set of biological facts are speaking for themselves:

• Eukaryotic fossils in meteorites > 4.5 billion years old ( e.g. Murchison)

• Interstellar dust Infra red extinction spectrum = infra red extinction spectrum of freeze dried E. coli (this is the most incredible scientific result I have ever seen, see Fig 1 in our paper)

• Bacteria in the cosmic dust on the external surface of the International Space Station

• Tardigrades

I have not added a list of other data, including space hardy biological data, Mars data, nor the Octopus RNA editing data, because I do not need to – four , quite unrelated, data sets are enough for biological significance. ( Statistical significance does not enter the picture). The skeptic and traditional Astrophysicist now needs to provide a convincing explanation of these data sets that avoids Panspermia.

I am a pragmatic Popperian – I deal in hard facts that require a unifying explanation.

Yours

Ted Steele

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There is a lot to be horrified about regarding the alternative medicine (CAM) industry. The industry largely trades in fraud and misinformation at the expense of the public’s health. But I often find myself most dismayed by what the industry says about the relationship between humans and reality.

I have discussed over the years the many ways, mostly revealed through psychological research, but also with many specific examples, in which people build their narratives about the world and how these narratives trump reality and often even basic logic. If you ever doubt the ability of people to erect a false narrative and worship it as truth, remember that there are people who believe, in the 21st century, that the Earth is flat.

Humans, however, also have science, philosophy, logic, and reason. We have managed, especially in the last few centuries, to collectively crawl out of a deep pit of self-deception and slowly accumulate real knowledge about the universe and how it works. As a species we have this weird dual nature, at times rigorously rational, and at others hopelessly gullible and ideological.

What is perhaps most concerning about the CAM phenomenon is what it tells us about the balance between reason and deception. Sitting on top of the last few centuries of scientific progress, it certainly seems like science and reason are winning. But perhaps this vantage point gives us a biased perspective. Over this period we have largely shifted from a pre-scientific view of the world to a scientific one. Science then showcased its power by picking a lot of the low-hanging fruit – answering the easiest questions to answer.

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Recently Harvard University geneticist Prof George Church announced that he and his team are close to making a mammoth-elephant hybrid. They have been reconstructing mammoth DNA from frozen remains.

They will not be able to make a 100% mammoth clone, but rather they are splicing mammoth genes into Indian elephant DNA and hope to grow a hybrid. The result would have, they hope, enough mammoth traits to be adapted to a colder environment, and therefore essentially spread the range of the Indian elephant north.

Such programs raise two question – can we actually achieve de-extinction with such techniques, and should we?

The answer to the first question is – we’re not even close yet. The reporting of Church’s announcement was highly sensationalized, with many outlets reporting that we will have mammoths in two year. The reality is that Church’s team has made 45 mammoth DNA inserts into the Indian elephant genome. This is insignificant.

Estimates of the differences between mammoth and elephant DNA indicate that several thousand genes are involved. In addition, there may be even more regulatory changes in the DNA outside of genes. You can make a lot of evolutionary change by turning on or off, or up or down, the expression of genes without changing the genes themselves.

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The British National Health Service (NHS) is considering blacklisting homeopathy prescriptions from general practitioners. While this would have an overall small effect on the homeopathy market, it is politically potentially very significant.

The NHS currently spends about £4m on homeopathy each year, of which only £110,000 is from GP prescriptions. The rest is from homeopathic hospitals (yes, hospitals). The real market, however, is in over the counter homeopathic products.

In the UK, Europe and the US homeopathy has ballooned into a multi-billion dollar industry. It is now potentially, it seems, the victim of its own success. When it was smaller it essentially flew under the radar – regulators and politicians didn’t think it was worth spending political capital to reign in a fringe treatment that people either wanted or did not know or care about.

In the US the FDA specifically decided to let the homeopathic industry regulate itself, because it was simply too small for them to spend their resources on. That has now changed.

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