British Chiropractic Association finally admits defeat in Simon Singh libel case

Simon-singh-001

 

Two years after Simon Singh's Guardian article that questioned the validity of the claims made by the British Chiropractic Association, the BCA have finally withdrawn the libel action they started against Simon Singh personally (but not against The Guardian).  Whilst this is undoubtedly very good news, there is still much work to be done mending the UK's broken libel laws.

Read more in today's Guardian article.

The BCA press statement is reproduced below.

 

Click here to download:
BCA_Statement_15th_April_2010.pdf (16 KB)
(download)

Politicians and drugs - why can't they get it right? Another expert resigns from the ACMD.

Eric Carlin is the latest expert to resign from the UK government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, clearly unhappy with the way the our politicians base important decisions on drugs on how many favourable tabloid headlines and votes they think they'll get out of it.  Read his letter of resignation here.

Actually, Facebook doesn't cause syphilis after all

2010 is shaping up as a good year for Facebook scare stories.  Earlier this month the rabidly right-wing Daily Mail exposed Facebook as a den of drooling paedophiles waiting to prey on its readers' innocent young darlings, only to have to correct the story later in the face of threats of legal action from Facebook.  Then this week a story that claimed Facebook use was responsible for an increase in the spread of syphilis was picked up by the usual suspects among the UK "news"papers.

Now I'd like to think that most readers of 23narchy.com are more than capable of spotting these kinds of silly stories a mile off, but for a complete dissection of the nonsense behind the headlines, have a look at Ben Goldacre's excellent post on his Bad Science blog.