{"id":2708,"date":"2010-02-24T14:09:05","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T14:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2010\/02\/science_on_tria\/"},"modified":"2010-02-24T14:09:05","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T14:09:05","slug":"science_on_tria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/science_on_tria\/","title":{"rendered":"Science on Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re quick, there&#8217;s still a chance to hear last week&#8217;s Radio 4 programme <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b00qps87\">Science on Trial<\/a>.<br \/>\nWith enormous topicality, it examined some of the very concerning legal cases that have been brought in British courts surrounding use of libel laws to restrict scientific debate, and effectively silence some of those who otherwise promote remedies for which there are significant questions of efficacy.<br \/>\nThis came to a head yesterday when <a href=\"http:\/\/www.simonsingh.net\/\">Simon Singh<\/a> appeared in the High Court in front of three of the most senior appeals judges in the country. He&#8217;s fighting a libel action brought by the British Chiropractic Association, after he authored a piece in The Guardian nearly two years ago.<br \/>\nIf you ever actually visit my site (and aren&#8217;t just seeing it in an RSS reader), you&#8217;ll have perhaps noticed the link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.senseaboutscience.org.uk\">Sense About Science<\/a>. This is an important freedom that we need to fight for.<br \/>\nIf you haven&#8217;t already, you really need to do a few things.<br \/>\nFirst of all &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.libelreform.org\/sign\">sign this petition<\/a> for the reform of this country&#8217;s unjust libel laws. Even today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm\/cmcumeds.htm\">Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee report<\/a> highlights the injustice of this.<br \/>\nGo on &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.libelreform.org\/sign\">do it now<\/a>.<br \/>\nFor more background on the Simon Singh case, you can do no worse than read the Jack of Kent blog. He has a nice summary of <a href=\"http:\/\/jackofkent.blogspot.com\/2010\/02\/simon-singh-and-court-of-appeal.html\">events to date here<\/a>, and a report on <a href=\"http:\/\/jackofkent.blogspot.com\/2010\/02\/good-day-in-court.html\">yesterday&#8217;s procedings here<\/a>.<br \/>\nSimon Singh had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/comment\/7294539\/Simon-Singh-it-is-too-late-for-me-but-libel-laws-must-change-for-the-public-good.html\">penned a piece<\/a> in the Daily Telegraph prior to yesterday&#8217;s appearance, and there was also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/comment\/columnists\/guest_contributors\/article7036871.ece\">a good primer<\/a> in The Times.<br \/>\nOr listen to the programme linked to above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re quick, there&#8217;s still a chance to hear last week&#8217;s Radio 4 programme Science on Trial. With enormous topicality, it examined some of the very concerning legal cases that have been brought in British courts surrounding use of libel laws to restrict scientific debate, and effectively silence some of those who otherwise promote remedies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-liberties","category-media","category-science"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}