Campaigners to tell Parliament "Now is the time to reform our libel law" as further evidence of the law's chilling effect emerges

Campaigners seeking to refine the Government's Defamation Bill will tell MPs and Peers why English and Welsh libel laws are in urgent need of reform - on the day that yet more evidence of the law's chilling effect is revealed and a separate case reaches the High Court. Having cautiously welcomed the draft Defamation Bill, and backed the recommendations of Parliament's Joint Scrutiny Committee that called for key clauses to be strengthened, the libel reform campaign will once again press upon key Parliamentarians the need for radical changes to the law to protect free debate.

They will be joined by many victims of the chill that our illiberal and outdated libel laws, including representatives of the Citizens Advice Bureaux who will share their experience of libel threats - discussed for the first time today, the what the CAB has had to endure illustrates how voluntary organisations can be silenced from discussing information that is in the public interest by powerful interests.

Citizens Advice has produced two reports into the practices of agents, some of them law firms, who chase those accused of shoplifting for compensation through so-called 'civil recovery demands' and threaten civil litigation in the event they don't pay. The two reports published to date have been incomplete because of threats of legal action against Citizens Advice, and in 2009 the CAB spent its entire campaign and research contingency budget on libel-proofing their limited reports leaving no money to investigate other matters.

Given that over 750,000 civil recovery demands have been issued and the Law Commission believes that in many instances consumer rights may have been violated by the practices of the agents involved, there is a clear public interest in reports such as those written by Citizens Advice containing full disclosure. If the public is to be kept informed about the bullying, possibly illegal activities of those pursuing alleged (not always proven) shoplifters, it is vital that those wishing to discuss this matter can do so without fear of libel action. This isn't the first instance of consumer advice being subject to threats of libel action by powerful vested interests, as Which? magazine's editor will tell MPs tonight - but it is yet another reason that a robust public interest defence must be incorporated into the Defamation Bill as the campaign has long stipulated.

Today also sees the scientific journal Nature defending itself in the High Court against a libel claim by the editor of a journal that they criticised. Nature reported that the editor of the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals had retired and highlighted controversies during his tenure. Nature has been preparing for this case for two years meaning hundreds of hours of staff time have gone into this instead of carrying out other investigations. Andrew Caldecott QC described the case last week as a “fundamental issue of freedom of scientific expression.” This case demonstrates the need for another one of the libel reform campaign's key demands - that genuinely peer reviewed scientific publications, and hence discussions about such publications, be subject to qualified privilege and thus ineligible for libel action.

The meeting in Parliament tonight, which will take place at 18.00, will see many more scientists, journalists, writers, bloggers, website hosts and NGOs demonstrate the importance of reforming our libel laws.

The timing of this meeting is designed to impress upon Parliamentarians that a re-drafted and strengthened Defamation Bill should be included in the next Queen's Speech and form a key part of the legislative platform of the next Parliamentary session. Failing to achieve this will kick this vital set of reforms into the long grass and see an excellent opportunity to defend free expression missed - those present will set out how crucial it is that the Bill isn't just improved upon but is brought before Parliament as soon as possible.

*I'll update this post with more info on the meeting tomorrow.*

Libel reform campaign welcomes Parliament's call to strengthendraft Defamation Bill, calls for Bill to be in Queen's Speech

A Joint Scrutiny Committee of both Houses of Parliament has reviewed the Government's draft Defamation Bill and recommended it be strengthened in key areas to provide a more robust defence of free speech. Campaigners seeking to reform the illiberal English and Welsh libel laws have welcomed the Joint Committee's findings as the changes they put forward would bring the Bill's provisions further into lines with the aims of the Libel Reform Campaign. The Campaign previously welcomed the draft Bill as 'a step in the right direction;' in welcoming the Joint Committee's report is as a significant positive development en route to new laws to protect free speech being passed, the Campaign has called on the Government to bring forward a revised Bill for inclusion in the next Queen's Speech, set to take place in Spring 2012.

The Joint Committee considered several ways in which the draft Bill could be improved, echoing many of the submissions made to the Ministry of Justice during the Bill's consultation:

• On corporations' ability to sue for libel, the committee accepted the Libel Reform Campaign’s concerns over the imbalance of resources between individuals and well-resourced corporations in libel and the “chilling effect” that libel claims from companies have on free speech. The Committee's proposals aim to introduce a new hurdle making it more difficult for companies to use their financial muscle and the threat of court action to silence critics, which the Campaign says may reduce the problem. Tracey Brown, Managing Director of Sense about Science, welcomed measures that would redress the "equality of arms in the courtroom," particularly important when "scientists are being dragged through the courts for discussing evidence. This report adds to the case that our libel laws are stifling open science."
• On the need for claimants to show serious and substantial harm had been caused, the Committee accepted that by revising Clause 1 of the Draft Bill the Government would: “ensure that trivial cases are weeded out at an early stage by introducing a stricter test for determining whether a case is serious enough to go to court.” The provision of an early strikeout clause would give authors more confidence that bullying libel threats would be dismissed before they incurred unmanageable costs.
• On the need for a separate and robust public interest defence, the Committee noted there was “universal support” for a dedicated defence. The proposals tabled would go some way to strengthening the draft Bill's provisions on a public interest defence, but campaigners said there was more work to be done in this area. In particular, Dr Evan Harris, free speech activist and advisor to the Hacked Off campaign, said, “The lack of proper public interest defence in the draft bill and this report, is a real barrier to necessary reform. All sides in the Leveson Inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal have accepted that a new public interest defence for investigative and other public interest publications is needed to nurture the best of British journalism, but the draft bill merely codifies the existing inadequate defence and the Joint Committee recommends complicating it further.”
• On the need for fairer procedures to deal with libel claims against online comments, a variant of the Court-based system of take-down notices proposed by the Libel Reform Coalition, aimed at  preventing extra-judicial censorship by threats to ISPs and web hosts, was adopted by the Committee. Regarding libel claims against online comments, Justine Roberts, CEO of Mumsnet, said, "Websites and hosts of user-generated comment risk becoming tactical targets for those who wish to clamp down on criticism or investigation of their activities. For the health of public debate in this country, it’s crucial that the government continues to pursue this issue actively, rather than kicking it into the long grass. We hope that the committee’s report will provide an opportunity for the serious attention that this issue deserves.”

The Libel Reform Campaign is keen to stress that to protect the freedom of speech in this country, the Government should act urgently to pass a revised Defamation Bill, reflecting the Joint Committee's recommendations, in the next Parliamentary session. According to John Kampfner, Chief Executive of Index on Censorship: “In the last decade, journalists have been hampered from exposing those with power because of our restrictive libel laws. With media reform high on the agenda, the government must include the defamation bill in the next Queen’s speech.” Simon Singh, science writer and defendant in BCA v Singh, added, “Many doctors, scientists, academics and journalists (like myself) have suffered at the hands of English libel law. The Government not only needs to heed the Joint Committee report, but it also needs to act urgently and pass an effective defamation bill at the first available opportunity, as promised in their manifestos. We urgently need a libel law that balances the right to reputation with the right to free speech.”

The Coalition Agreement committed the Government to reforming our libel laws, and following the Joint Scrutiny Committee's findings the Bill is almost ready to present to Parliament - the sooner it gets implemented the sooner scientists, journalists, authors and web hosts can rest assured that their freedom to engage in genuine debate in the public interest is assured.

Lib Dems affirm that drug law reform should be based on reliable, independent scientific evidence

Cowardice has prevented successive governments from reforming the UK's illiberal and malfunctioning drugs laws - this was the theme of Ewan Hoyle's outstanding speech to the Liberal Democrat conference last Sunday, in which he moved a motion committing the party to an independent review of current drugs law and policy. Ewan's speech and entire debate - conducted in a heart-warming and mature manner without hysteria and hyperbole - is available here and is well worth watching.

Ewan's motion (full text here) exemplified the sort of calm and rational approach to the harms cause by drugs that is required if any government is to even consider reforming its stance. Usually the national discourse on the matter is far more polarised and nasty; pro-prohibitionists argue for ever-tougher punishments for those who use drugs, painting those who back a more evidence-based approach as crazy crack-pushing pot-smoking lunatics.

Citing evidence from well-regarded international studies on drug harms, Ewan's motion began by dispelling the widely-held belief that push for decriminalisation is a mechanism to extend the availability of currently illicit drugs as they are 'a good thing.' On the contrary, by stating clearly that drug use is in itself harmful to both the individual user and the community they live in, the motion sets up a welcome premise - that it is precisely because of the harms that drugs cause that far-reaching policy reform is required.

This is because alongside the incontrovertible evidence that drug use causes health-related, economic and societal harms, there is also robust evidence that the very policies and laws in place to tackle these harms are themselves harmful. This is the argument I began my own speech with, in moving an amendment to the motion that sought to emphasise the importance of independent scientific advice when formulating drugs policy (you can see my speech, following on from Adam Corlett's contribution, here and read the text here).

The disgraceful sacking of Prof. David Nutt as head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) by the previous Labour government marked the nadir in the relationship between that administration and its scientific advisers in relation to drugs policy. Labour, and the Conservatives before them, had for decades summarily ignored robust scientific evidence on drug harms in favour of populist appeasement of tabloid headline-writers. They also systematically ignored evidence of the harms that the failed prohibitionist 'War on Drugs' was causing, including the needless fostering of a gang culture that manifested itself so violently on British streets this summer. This has lead to the absurd situation where drugs are classified according to the arbitrary whims of Ministers, not to mention those of the fear-mongering press that continues to moralise about the harms of drugs whilst undermining any evidence-based attempts at curbing those same harms.

My amendment called for the restoration of the link between government drugs policy and clinical, scientific and social scientific evidence of the harms caused by drugs and by current drugs policy. This should be achieved, I argued, by ensuring that the ACMD

retain a majority of independent scientific and social scientific experts in its membership and no changes to drug laws be made without receiving its advice as per the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. 

A simple enough call, but one that previous administrations failed to uphold, with frankly disastrous consequences. It is a damning indictment of the way that drugs have been discussed in our society over the past 30 years or so that Ewan's call for a full impact assessment of current policy, coupled with an insistence on a solid evidence base, could be considered radical at all - and yet here we are, the first and possibly only party of government to commit to such.

It's crucial that if we are to leave behind the failed drugs policies of the past we must learn from established examples abroad and from clear-cut scientific studies - and there's little doubt that both are only feasible if they're assessed and implemented using reliable and independent advice from those who 'know their onions,' so to speak. For any clinician, scientist or social scientist to be confident that their advice will be taken seriously, that policy will be based on their recommendations and that they won't be silenced, sidelined or sacked for communicating inconvenient truths, it's vital that the Coalition agrees to the evidence-based review of drugs law that this motion as amended calls for - the debate the Lib Dems had is a huge step along the way, here's hoping we see such a review sooner rather than later.

Legal threats against carer-support forum shows need for #libelreform and dangers of outsourcing public services

Index on Censorship reports that an internet forum for providers of care has been forced to shut down following a threat of legal action from a healthcare company. Although it now appears that the dispute has been resolved, this episode clearly demonstrates the need for wide-ranging reforms to English and Welsh libel law, as well as some of the dangers inherent to outsourcing and/or privatisation of public services.

The forum in question, CarerWatch, was suspended by its hosting company after they - the hosting company that is, not the owners of the forum - were sent a letter threatening legal action relating to an allegedly defamatory posting. The letter was sent on behalf of Atos Healthcare, a private company that is contracted to the Government's Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to carry out work capability assessments. This is the latest in a series of similar incidents, where supposedly defamed individuals and corporations sue, or threaten to sue, internet hosting companies for libel. Rather than simply asking the author of the offending post to retract the content that is objected to, libel-happy lawyers target website hosts by threatening to hold them responsible for the content on their servers. Facing potentially ruinous costs of defending their clients, hosts feel they have little choice but to suspend the blog, forum or site under attack - thereby extending the chill cast over free expression by bullying legal threats of this nature.

As it happens, on this occasion, the company concerned did contact the forum owners with details of the offending post, albeit after the threat of legal action had forced the closure of the site. The forum owners then consented to removing the post in question, even though it wasn't defamatory in itself but rather linked to an external website that was deemed libellous. The forum has now been reinstated. So if a simple email exchange was sufficient for the allegedly defamatory content to be removed, why did Atos, a multi-billion corporation with a £100 million contract with the UK Government, resort to sending legal threats? I'd suggest that it's because of the ease with which such threats can chill free debate - knowing the pro-plaintiff bias in English libel law, and the extortionate cost that comes with even successfully defending a libel case, recipients of such threats nearly always back down and shut up rather than risk being ruined.

The Atos threat illustrates the need for many of the vital reforms that the libel reform campaign has sought for nearly two years now. Firstly, at a time when internet hosts give a home to billions of comments and opinions, it is vital that the law regarding their liability is updated. It's unsustainable for the likes of CarerWatch's hosts, or any other Internet Service Providers, to be held responsible for the ocean of content they host. The Government acknowledged that ISPs' legal status in libel law needed looking at, but short of including a clause addressing the problem in their draft Defamation Bill, they chose to kick the issue into the long grass via a consultation; as we await the Government's response to the consultation, it's vital we keep up the pressure to amend the law with respect to ISPs and bring defamation law into the 21st century.

In addition, those seeking redress should be required to approach the authors of the allegedly offending material directly and have the matter resolved without recourse to heavy-handed threats of legal action. It's been proposed that for a libel action to proceed plaintiffs should prove that all reasonable steps had been taken to resolve the matter, including asking for the allegedly defamatory material to be removed by the authors. Had this requirement been in place, CarerWatch's hosts could have safely ignored the threat knowing that this hadn't occurred.

Finally, the fact that a multi-billion pound corporation was able to issue such a threat to a small voluntary organisation at all is a great concern, not least as the company in question provides a public service for which it ought to be held accountable. Activists within the libel reform coalition have called for the law to be changed, such that non-natural persons are no longer able to sue for libel. This stems from the fact that  Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, relating to privacy and free expression, should only apply to actual individuals and not to corporations who in other respects are regarded as persons under the ECHR. A technical legal argument it may be, but it's crucial here. Libel is intended as a form of redress for those whose reputation has been damaged - the libel reform movement's contention is that corporate bodies don't enjoy a reputation in the same way as natural persons do, and hence should be prevented from suing in libel. Should their financial position be damaged they could always sue for malicious falsehood, but libel should be out-of-bounds for corporations.

Here is where we see a real danger in the outsourcing of previously public functions to private entities.

Public bodies cannot sue for libel following a ruling in Derbyshire County Council vs The Times in 1993. The reasoning behind this ruling was that public bodies carrying out public functions should remain accountable at all levels and should not be able to wield libel law as a tool to silence criticism. A grey area opens up, however, when private companies are contracted to carry out governmental functions. Not only is criticism of said function now subject to silencing through the libel system, the remit of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 also suggests that these companies are immune from FoI requests as to their actions. As I reported in January this year, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg acknowledges that if more and more public functions are carried out by private companies, we may need to extend the FoI Act to ensure that these companies can be held to account.

Until and unless both the libel laws and FoI legislation of this country are radically reformed, we will continue to see unaccountable private corporations effectively silencing free debate; an overhaul of both is crucial if we are to prevent further episodes like Atos vs CarerWatch and countless other instances where free expression is suppressed.

Boris bungles bus crime stats

"There are lies, dammed lies and statistics," Benjamin Disraeli is supposed to have said. Perhaps years from now the citation will be modified - "there are lies, dammed, lies, statistics and Boris Johnson," for the Mayor of London has once again demonstrated a poor grasp* of numbers relating to crime.

In his campaign literature for next year's Mayoral election, Boris claims that under his watch crime on buses has fallen 30% - an impressive statistic, but one that doesn't stand up to all that much scrutiny.

According to figures from Transport for London, analysed by Liberal Democrat Chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee Caroline Pidgeon, any drop in the aggregate number of crimes on buses masks significant variation between boroughs - with 11 out of 32 London Boroughs reporting an increase in bus crimes.

Many of these boroughs experienced significant increases - bus crime in Southwark went up by 5.2%, in Merton by 9.4%, Tower Hamlets by 11.5% and Barking and Dagenham by a staggering 17.8%. You can take a look at the full statistics here, which include borough-by-borough and crime-type breakdowns as well as comparisons with previous years.

These stats show, of course, that in many places bus crime has dropped significantly - by over 20% year-on-year in some cases - but that it remains a serious and increasing problem for many passengers.

Boris has been in trouble before for his use of crime statistics - earlier in the year the the UK Statistical Authority felt moved to write to the Mayor, chastising him for making political use of crime statistics and warning that he risks eroding 'public trust in Government statistics.' Boris was asked by the UKSA's chairman Sir Michael Scholar to comply with their Code of Practice (he has refused) which says that official statistics should be presented without spin or political colour, and that Boris' press release trumpeting the drop in crime "was poor practice, and was damaging to public trust in the statistics produced by Transport for London."

There's another way in which Boris' use of the bus crime stats are a little naughty - as Guardian blogger Dave Hill points out, there had been a long-term trend towards a reduction in bus crime since before Boris took over the Mayoralty from Ken Livingstone, and that Boris' time in power is likely to have had little effect on that trend either way. For Boris to take credit for the fall in bus crime - where there has even been a fall - is stretching things somewhat.

Why am I blogging about the use of bus crime stats - why should this matter?

The public rightly pays a lot of attention to crime statistics - rightly or wrongly they give us a handle on how safe our neighbourhoods are, how likely we are to fall victim to a crime, how we decide to go home at night in some cases. Although we might not have a crime ready-reckoner to hand every time we board the Number 55, publication and reporting of crime statistics does impact on our behaviour, our psyche - it would be remiss of any politician or journalist to claim that our buses (or streets) were safer than they are just as it is for them to stoke our fear of crime by claiming the opposite.

For a geek like me (not a stats geek admittedly, I hardly know the difference between a Bonferoni post-hoc correction and a Mann Witney U...), the use of science and statistics in politics matters because I'd like to see public policy based on evidence - reliable, honestly presented evidence, not stats that are spun to make a particular case. I accept that politics and governance aren't as straightforward as mechanically implementing that which is statistically significant, but if we can't trust the numbers we read, whether or bus crime, drug use or the NHS, we can't evaluate whether public policy is based on anything other than dogma.

So this is why we need more transparent, honest reporting of crime stats from Boris and other politicians - because as things stand, all we have are lies, dammed lies and manipulated statistics.

The People of Ecuador have something in common with the People of Dorking, Surrey - oil, natural beauty and solidarity

Johann Hari, Independent journalist extraordinaire, has written extensively about the chilling impacts of man's disregard for his natural environment - impacts that range from disappearing polar ice caps to scrambles to capture scarce water and more. Yet we must hope that we can reverse the suicidal tendency of modern man to exploit every last resource no matter what the cost, and Johann writes about one such example from Ecuador - what's striking is the resemblance of Ecuador's stance to that seen closer to home - in leafy Surrey to be exact.

Johann reports that in a bid to fight the economic pressures to drill for $7bn worth of oil under the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest, the rest of the world has been made an offer - pay half that much and the nation of Ecuador will resist the temptation to cash in on the oil and gas lying under one of the most diverse areas of life on Earth. Johann's account of this laudable struggle against the dominant economic narrative of our times - that short-term profit trumps sustainable development - is well worth a read - in particular if you read it alongside a related tale from Surrey.

Earlier this week planners at Surrey County Council considered whether to permit Europa Oil and Gas to drill for oil in a region of the County designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. They refused the planning application, which in itself represents a victory for protecting our environment over the headlong rush to squeeze every last drop of oil from the planet no matter what the consequences.

What makes the Surrey decision all the more impressive is that just a week ago, the Council's own report recommended that the application for an exploratory drill site be allowed - but following impassioned interventions from concerned citizens the planning committee voted 6-4 against the drilling - and in favour of protecting the land.

The drilling would have been for a matter of weeks, in order to determine whether further extraction was economically viable - allowing such drilling wouldn't have been unique, given that onshore exploratory drilling has been permitted in Sussex despite objections. Unless demand for fossil fuels, at home and abroad, abates significantly, such battles between oil companies and the people will become more frequent.

But Surrey County Council sided, whether knowingly or otherwise, with their Ecuadorian counterparts, in deciding that the environmental impact of economic activity cannot always be treated as an externality to be disregarded.

These seemingly unrelated stories, at opposite ends of the world, might just show the rest of the world how to resist the tempting call to 'Drill baby, drill,' - here's hoping!

#NHSreform, it's emphasis on 'patient choice' and testing unproven remedies

It's been a while (alright, it's been ages) since I blogged on anything vaguely bad-science related or scientific here, for which I apologise given that it was my original (self-appointed) remit to do so. Well, here goes...

Simon Singh raises an interesting question via Twitter - Why waste limited research funds on proven pseudoscience? The proven pseudoscience in question here is homeopathy, and Simon's enquiry stems from an Early Day Motion (EDM) tabled by every skeptic's favourite MP David Tredinnick. Tredinnick's Motion calls for public funding to facilitate research into this important area to ascertain the effectiveness of homeopathy. The Motion has since been amended by the intrepid Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge Julian Huppert - Amendment 1820A1 in the previous link comprehensively refutes Mr. Tredinnick's premise and I hold out hope that more MPs will emerge as signatories to Julian's amendment than the 13 (to date) that support the Bulls$*t from Bosworth...

As it happens the funding of research into alternative therapies, homeopathy amongst them, was raised recently when I spoke at a political event (no wait, don't go...!) where I discussed the Government's reforms to the NHS - I was sharing the platform (or rather patio as we were in a beautiful garden in Hackney) with Liberal Democrat Health Minister Paul Burstow MP.

I've written about the political side of the discussion over on Liberal Democrat Voice, but it was in the Question and Answer session that followed our discussion that alternative therapies, and research into their efficacy, was raised.

We were asked about whether there was any enthusiasm to run publicly-funded, properly controlled clinical trials into alternative therapies, given that in his talk Paul had intimated that with greater choice and freedom for commissioning General Practitioners (GPs), they would be more flexibility to prescribe a variety of interventions that 'the patient felt would help them recover.'

Turns out the questioner was posing an interesting variation on the theme of 'should we pay to find out whether sugar pills/sticking needles into meridians etc works, and should they be available on the NHS,' intimating that if critics of alternative therapies were so certain that things that have been used for aeons don't work, why not fund large-scale high-quality trials to sort the wheat from the chaff - to show what works and what doesn't?

Paul responded by reassuring us that whilst GP commissioners would be free to procure whatever services they saw fit, they would still face guidelines from NICE and the MHRA on what they could offer the patient - he also suggested that if healthcare was to become more outcomes-focussed, then there would be more scope for prescribing interventions that patients themselves reported as being beneficial.

This has been the standard Government line for some time now, which leaves much room for interpretation to say the least. What if a patient reports they feel better following a nice foot massage? Or by having hands waved over them? Perhaps patients would like to have wax candles stuck in various orifices? If they say it makes them feel better, who are we to argue? Roll-up, roll-up, for the great Alt-Med giveaway - Department of Health funding for anyone who can convince a patient with a self-limiting condition to fill in a questionnaire favourably...

Flippant jokes aside, the question about publicly funding research into homeopathy needs answering - or rather, the answers that exist need to be articulated more forcefully. I'd recommend reading Andy Lewis' take on such matters, who's written extensively about testing alternative therapies in patients - particularly with regards the ethical problems involved.

My answer to our interlocutor was two-fold. Firstly I said that in times of plenty, we would love to study as many therapies as possible as extensively as we could, so that the best treatment options were available to patients - indeed that's how evidence-based medicine proceeds - but that such studies must, above all else, pass elementary criteria for plausibility, prior evidence of efficacy (perhaps in animal studies), and be demonstrably safe - not only in themselves, but taken within the context of discouraging the use of established treatments. As many (if not most) so-called alternative therapies fall at these hurdles, it's hard to justify stufying them further at public expense.

Of course, I said, at a time when public funds are constrained - with the NHS facing its toughest financial settlement since its inception - it is deeply unethical to divert scarce funding to enquiries into questionable practices. Secondly, I suggested that contrary to opinion - expressed most strongly amongst proponents of quackery - that because there's little or no profit to to be made from alternative therapies, Big Pharma refuses to do good clinical studies and that therefore the government should do so instead. This simply isn't true on two fronts - the Alt Med industry is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year and can be very profitable, and some good evidence does exist regarding the use of such therapies as homeopathy, aromatherapy, acupuncture and so on - it's just that when the studies are of good quality, they inevitably give an answer that quacktitioners would rather not hear.

Indeed the gentleman interested in studies of alternative therapies was surprised to hear that enough evidence as to their efficacy exists to allow systematic meta-analyses - mostly by the Cochrane Collaboration, and mostly showing that Alt Med therapies simply don't work better than placebo. This suggests to me that although the scientific method has been used to investigate whether homeopathy and its like are effective, the results haven't trickled down into the vernacular.

In sum, then, I think I managed to argue against public funding of research into 'proven psuedoscience,' partly because it's already been shown to be rubbish and partly because further studies would be expensive and unethical.

I could go on for ever - I could emphasise that for journalists and bloggers to adequately inform the public about the lack of efficacy and outright dangers of some alternative medicine we need to have our libel laws radically reformed so we can write without fear of being silenced; I could lament the seemingly forcible retirement of the inestimable Professor Edzard Ernst, he who has dedicated an entire career to systematically evaluating the evidence for or against alternative therapies; I could even harp on about the tyranny of choice, whereby when confronted by a smorgarsboard of options we often fail to choose wisely based on what's good for us...

But I think it's best to leave the last word to musical genius Tim Minchin and his exposition of alternative medicine in the form of his beat poem Storm - where he rightly says, "You know what they call “alternative medicine”That’s been proved to work? Medicine.”