Jack's Weekly Round Up - 29 May 2009

I thought it may be useful to do a round up of stuff every week or so. We will see whether I keep this going...


The British Chiropractic Association v Simon Singh

The deadline for Simon Singh to file his application for appeal has been extended (I understand) until 8 June 2009. I don't believe there is anything exceptional in this, and such extensions are common in litigation.

I plan to do a substantive follow up to the BCA's extraordinary press release in the next week or so.


The Promotion of Chiropractic

Making complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority or to Trading Standards, or indeed to individual chiropractors, is not really my sort of thing. However, other bloggers and campaigners take a more robust view, and they are fully entitled to do so.

And it is interesting to watch what is happening.

Martin Robbins at the The Lay Scientist has been in correspondence with Russell Dean, Director of Windsor Remedy Centre.

I am not sure Mr Dean intended to write such an entertaining and telling response to Martin's initial email.

I was particularly interested in Mr Dean's implied suggestion that, because websites are outside the scope of the ASA, he had no reason to address Martin's concerns about statements contained on his site. But, as Martin points out, the position under the General Chiropractic Council's Code of Practice may not be as easily sidestepped as that.

To which I can add that the Unfair Commercial Practices Regulations, which are enforced by local Trading Standards or the Office of Fair Trading, will in any case apply in full to any commercial practice, whether it is on the internet or otherwise.

When Martin introduced himself before asking a question at the recent Simon Singh Support Rally he received a spontaneous peel of applause. He looked genuinely shocked, but it was richly deserved.

As well as Martin's exploits, do keep track of JDC325's similar engagement with Bassett Chiropractic Clinic

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Addition: now also see another blogger's exchange with Oxford Chiropractic Clinic.
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Simon Singh Support Rally

Extended video footage featuring Simon Singh, Dave Gorman, Nick Cohen, Prof Brian Cox, and Dr Evan Harris, at the Simon Singh Support Rally can now be found here.

There are also the messages of support from Prof Richard Wiseman, James Randi & Phil Plait of the JREF, and Dr Ben Goldacre, as well as a message of greeting from Dave Morris of the McLibel 2.

These videos were filmed by Nick Pullar and edited by Crispian Jago.


Beyond Singh and Chiropractic

Once upon a time this Blog dealt with other things, and this will happen again soon, as (I hope) a new self-standing website is in development to carry information on the case and to provide resources for the ongoing scrutiny of the British Chiropractic Association and chiropractors generally.

This new website would never have happened without this misconceived libel case and may be best seen as a lasting monument to the BCA's "Chiropractic Awareness Week".

Then, unless some silly CAM practitioner (or psychic or similar) decides to bring a libel case in response to what I view as legitimate criticism and scrutiny (and if so, expect fully in turn the anxious scrutiny of this Blog), I plan to move on to cover other abuses of law, especially intellectual property rights and police powers.


Recommended Blogs

I would like to recommend a couple of Blogs this week.

First, Dr Petra Boynton writes a favourite Blog of mine, and in my view is to media stories about sex and relationships what Ben Goldacre is to Bad Science.

Dr Boynton is also a longstanding supporter of Simon Singh and an eminent supporter on the ever growing Facebook Group.

Second, the incomparable Gimpy, who is rightly considered by mainstream journalists as a first rate investigative writer. If for some reason you have missed Gimpy's outstanding work so far, click and enjoy his stuff on Bad Science and the excesses of complementary and alternative medicine.