consider, evaluate, act

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

2011-11-09T12:34:00.000Z

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They will be joined by many victims of the chill that our illiberal and outdated libel laws, including representatives of the Citizens Advice Bureaux who will share their experience of libel threats - discussed for the first time today, the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

2011-10-19T08:25:00.000+01:00

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

2011-09-26T09:12:00.000+01:00

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

2011-09-02T11:14:00.000+01:00

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

2011-06-01T15:44:00.000+01:00

"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

2011-05-26T09:39:00.000+01:00

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

2011-05-24T09:44:00.000+01:00

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.”

Libel Reform Coalition welcomes Government's draft Defamation bill as 'good step in the right direction,' calls on 'Parliament to go further in key areas.'

2011-03-16T08:09:00.000Z

Yesterday saw the long-awaited publication of the Government's draft Defamation Bill, with the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke MP recognising that

the increased threat of costly libel actions has begun to have a chilling effect on scientific and academic debate, and investigative journalism.

The Bill, which includes many of the substantial provisions called for by the Libel Reform Coalition last week, was welcomed by free speech campaigners as 'a great starting point’ to ensure the first overhaul of our archaic libel laws.'

Amongst the provisions successfully campaigned for are:

· Easier ‘strike out’ of trivial or inappropriate claims by raising the threshold of harm before a libel action can proceed

· A curtailment of ‘libel tourism’ with a stronger requirement to justify bringing a claim in this jurisdiction for claimants domiciled abroad

· A more effective and clearer defence of truth (justification)

· New clearer and wider statutory defence of honest opinion (fair comment)

· Extension of statutory qualified privilege to benefit NGOs and scientific conferences

· The introduction of a single publication rule with a one year cut

The Ministry of Justice also announced a major consultation exercise to complement the Bill, running from today until June 10th 2011, to canvass opinion on several key issues not tackled in the draft legislation. These include vital issues relating to whether corporations should be allowed to sue for libel, , and whether internet service providers will continue to be held liable for comments made through them.

The consultation exercise serves to demonstrate that although the draft legislation is an excellent start on the path towards a truly liberal defamation law, there remains work to be done before English and Welsh libel law is up to date, fair and capable of fostering open discourse. The Libel Reform Coalition will continue to press for the law, when eventually passed in a years' time, to be just that.

What do we want? Libel reform! When do we want it? Now! (or, as soon as the applicable Parliamentary procedures have been observed...)

2011-03-10T00:04:00.000Z

Later today, scientists, authors, comedians and journalists will gather in Parliament to lend their support to the Libel Reform Coalition's blueprint for the protection of free speech, setting out their priorities for libel laws that no longer stifle debate. I set out below a summary of how we've reached this stage.

The campaign to reform our unjust and illiberal libel laws has achieved a great deal to date; in just under two years, we've gone from raising awareness of cases such as Simon Singh's, which demonstrate all to clearly the need to defend fair comment, to seeing manifesto commitments on libel reform from all three major political parties at the last election.

As the evidence builds that our libel laws really do threaten legitimate public discourse on matters of public interest, the momentum behind the campaign has increased significantly in recent months, with a number of significant developments - not least of which was the publication of Lord Lester's draft Defamation Bill. The Coalition Government responded to Lord Lester's Bill by committing to publishing its draft legislation to be put before Parliament - a significant achievement, showing that Lord McNally and others in government truly are committed to reforming our libel laws for the better.

We understand that after a significant consultation the Government is due to publish its legislation at some point next week - in anticipation of that publication, the Libel Reform Coalition will later today release a blueprint for libel reform, setting out our priorities for reform. At the launch of this blueprint, entitled What should a defamation bill contain?, supporters of the Campaign will tell MPs that "public interest should be at the heart of the new defamation bill," and that, in the words of Sense about Science Director Tracey Brown, "The current laws work best for bullies. The new law must work best for the citizen."

The blueprint is designed to set out what the Libel Reform Coalition wishes to see in the Government's legislation; as Dr. Evan Harris from the Campaign said,

"From writers to scientists and from journalists to editors, those who love free speech want next week's Government's draft defamation bill to match the contents of our blue-print and if fails to do so will be urging MPs and peers to amend it".

The Parliamentary launch of the blueprint will be followed by an opportunity for supporters to put their concerns to MPs.

Commenting on the blueprint's release, Director of English PEN said, "PEN's members have been calling for reform for more than 70 years. It's time to finish the job that EM Forster began in 1938."

As I'm lucky enough to be attending the launch, I'll update this post with photos and news later.

Health Secretary Lansley appears to have U-turned on price competition in NHS

2011-02-17T19:32:00.001Z

According to the Health Service Journal, the Government has performed a significant volte face regarding its reform to the National Health Service - it appears healthcare providers will not be able to compete with NHS services on price.

Under the original proposals, outlined in the Equity and Excellence White Paper, independent sector providers would have been permitted to compete for business with NHS Trusts on the basis of price (they are currently restricted to competing on quality). According to the HSJ, the reforms have been watered down to prevent price competition. The following is from the HSJ article:

The government has performed a significant U-turn on allowing price competition between NHS trusts and independent providers.

A letter to senior staff from NHS chief executive David Nicholson today said there was “no question of introducing price competition” – contradicting the Health Bill which refers to the tariff being only “a maximum price for that service”.

Ministers have spoken about encouraging competition on price. But a senior Department of Health source told HSJ ministers had “changed their minds” on its dangers, although they added the real test was whether or not they changed the wording in the Health Bill.

Last month Sir David told the Commons Public Accounts Committee price competition would be “extremely dangerous” without strong safeguards to protect quality.

The DH now plans to develop guidance which will make clear offering NHS services below the national tariff will only be permitted in exceptional circumstances and subject to approval by strategic health authorities or their sucessor bodies.

Whilst the turnaround would be a welcome recognition of the dangers of sparking a 'race-to-the-bottom' with private providers cutting costs to secure commissioning contracts, the details remain to be determined - crucially, we await the Department of Health's definition of the 'exceptional circumstances' under which services may be offered at rates below the national tariff.

[Hat-tip to Alex Marsh (SodanAlexM on Twitter) who alerted me to this story].

Got a spare £50m? Fernando Torres or regenerative medicine - your choice...!

2011-02-02T13:31:00.000Z

I'm more than aware that in writing a blogpost comparing extravagant expenditure by football clubs to the money needed to support vital medical research I may make comparing apples and oranges feel like, well comparing apples and apples, but here goes nonetheless - forgive my rather tortured premise if you may...

As the January transfer market in football players came to a close, two dramatic signings caught the spotlight - firstly, Andy Carroll moved from Newcastle United to Liverpool for a (then) British record transfer fee of £35 million - not to be out-done, Chelsea promptly smashed that record by signing Liverpool's Fernando Torres for £50 million.

I don't plan to discuss the merits of the player transfers themselves - much... I can't resist the temptation to question the pricing of the two Carroll and Torres; the former is injured, is talented but surely isn't more valuable to his new owners than the explosive David Villa is to Barcelona, and has a chequered off-field temperament; and the latter has had a terrible 12 months, failing to impress in Spain's World Cup triumph and scoring just nine goals in this lacklustre season thus far.

Regardless of whether Liverpool and Chelsea overpaid for their particular new acquisitions, the question that occurs to me is whether any footballer can truly be "worth" £50 million (or £50,000,000 - writing it out makes it hurt more...). Undoubtedly they "cost" that much, it's a question of whether they're worth it...

I ask because the £50 million figure also made another appearance in the news this week, albeit in a different context. The Twittersphere informed me that the British Heart Foundation has launched a new appeal, in support of research into encouraging regeneration of heart muscle following injury from heart attack.

The appeal aims to raise £50 million so the BHF can fund ground-breaking research into why the human heart fails to regenerate muscle cells following ischaemic injury (i.e. cell death after being starved of oxygen), whereas the heart muscle of lower animals such as the zebrafish does its own repair job.

Clearly the aim is to understand the mechanisms behind regeneration of heart muscle in organisms like zebrafish, and to try and devise treatments for oxygen-starved human heart tissue using either by activating repair pathways which we may have but don't use, or by delivering stem cells to the heart and hoping they develop into mature, functioning muscle cells that replace the injured tissue.

The latter is a much-explored option, with encouraging reports from early clinical studies using adult-derived bone-marrow stem cells - and more recent trials have shown that not only is the injection of such stem cells well-tolerated, but that it can lead to improvements in clinically relevant outcome measures such as the volume of blood pumped by the heart at each beat (ejection fraction).

Exploring mechanisms of tissue regeneration in lower animals is not exactly a surefire way of developing new treatments for human diseases that involve cell death - it has been known for decades that salamanders regenerate limbs following injury, but little progress has been made in translating that knowledge into treatments for patients - to date at least.

And yet the BHF's appeal strikes a chord not only with its undoubted ambition, but with its solid scientific basis too - there is little doubt that an increased knowledge of the developmental and regenerative pathways in zebrafish, pufferfish (Fugu), salamanders and all sorts of other organisms will shed light on whether humans retains a capacity to repair our own heart muscles, and if so then how we can tap into said capacity.

As the recent Science is Vital campaign showed so successfully, even blue-skies research with little predictable benefit is of immense value - which is even more true of research of the sort that the BHF aims to back with their new campaign as it could well lead to a much-needed treatment for conditions that are both life-threatening and increasing in prevalence. Such research needs to be backed by public and private funding, as it has the potential not only to push back the boundaries of human understanding but to improve the quality of lives of millions of people.

Which brings us back neatly to Fernando Torres. I'm not suggesting that Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich should have spent his oligarchical spoils on fulfilling the BHF's appeal in full (well, perhaps I am after all...), it's just that his extravagance on the Spanish striker throws the appeal into sharp relief - I wonder if those fortunate enough to have hearts healthy enough to power a top career in professional football appreciate just how little of their collective 'net worth' in the transfer market would adequately fund leading-edge research for those suffering from the burden of disease.

The two lots of £50 million - one spent on a footballer, the other needed to pay for medical research - demonstrates neatly that we as a society have the wherewithal to fund quality research into matters of life and death, but sometimes our priorities can be somewhat muddled...

Stem cell therapies, visual disorders and dangerous clinical practice

2010-12-17T12:11:00.000Z

Yesterday I blogged about the story of Izabelle Evans, a girl who received a stem cell transplant to treat septo-optic dysplasia. Following comments on that piece by Prof. Stephen Moss, Prof. David Colquhoun and Suirauqa, I've done a little more digging around the use of stem cells for treating visual and other disorders - here I try to separate the maverick from the marvellous.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, my research centres around inherited visual disorders - I'm interested in the mechanisms that lead from genetic mutations to disease, and in developing gene therapy treatments. I am fortunate enough to work in one of the very best research groups in one of the very best institutions in vision research in the world - fortunate because I can see first hand (if not always produce myself!) scientific research of the highest order.

Much of that research hints at the enormous potential that stem cells hold for the treatment for an assortment of disorders - not least those affecting the nervous system - by replacing cells lost due to disease.

But, to coin a phrase, I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that...

Genuine stem cells originate from the inner cell mass of the early blastocyst-stage embryo - that is to say, they are the small group of cells which can give rise to all the different cell types of the body, from stomach and lung cells (derived from the endoderm), to muscle, skin and blood cells (which derive from the mesoderm) and neurones in the brain and eye (originating in the ectoderm). For a more detailed description of stem cells and their properties, I'd recommend the National Institutes of Health resource for stem cell research, brought to you by the folks behind the scientific publications gateway PubMed.

Aside from these 'true' stem cells, many adult tissues contain cells that are partly developed into 'progenitor cells;' these are often referred to as adult stem cells, and can give rise to most if not all cell types of that particular tissue.

A key development in the last few years has been the creation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells - adult cells, usually take from skin, that are reprogrammed in a dish to behave like actual embryonic stem cells that can give rise to any cells type in the body, even whole organisms in the case of mice.

Stem cells display key behaviours that make them of real interest as potential treatments; they can divide indefinitely (at least on paper), giving a potentially endless source of cells from very few original cells; depending on the environment they are placed in, they can differentiate into any cell type you require; and because they mature in the same way as normal human tissue, when transplanted the differentiated mature cells that arise from can form connections with host tissue and restore function to a diseased tissue. At least, this is what the latest peer-reviewed, scientific literature intimates.

So picture a disease such as Parkinson's, where dopamine-secreting cells in the brain's subsantia nigra degenerate; or muscular dystrophy; or any of the myriad inherited retinal degenerations, where mutations in hundreds of different genes lead to the death of the light-sensitive cells of the retina. These are all diseases where cells die for various reasons, and potentially could be replaced either by stem cell transplantation - in the hope that the undifferentiated cells mature by virtue of finding themselves surrounded by mature brain/muscle/eye cells - or by coaxing stem cells to develop into the mature cells in a dish and transplanting those. And my list of diseases is hardly comprehensive - common conditions such as stroke, heart disease and diabetes could all benefit from stem cell-derived technology.

Little wonder then that there is a great drive towards developing stem cell-based therapies. And real progress is being made, at what is a remarkable rate in terms of medical research. Just taking my own field of eye research as an example, it is now possible to take fibroblasts (a general-purpose cell type) from the skin of a mouse, reprogramme it into an iPS cell in a dish by expressing a few key genes, add in a cocktail of factors known to encourage development into many of the cell types found in the eye (see this excellent review from a current and a former colleague for details), and isolate cells from the resultant mix that look remarkably like mature photoreceptors. On the other hand, progenitor cells from a newborn mouse retina can be transplanted into a degenerating recipient retina and restore - to some extent - sensitivity to light - it's nothing like a complete cure as yet, but proof-of-concept studies show that cleverly manipulating both the donor cell and the recipient retina can allow thousands of these stem cells to integrate and form connections with host cells. Combining the two techniques - generating induced pluripotent stem cells and developing them in a dish to resemble adult retinal stem cells for effective transplantation - remains the elusive goal.

Thousands of such studies show that stem cells of all flavours have great potential as treatment - but they also show how difficult they are to work with, how little we understand of how they work, and the dangers they represent.

Which is why careful, rigorous, scientifically robust studies are needed before stem cells are widely applied to patients in the clinic. There are hundreds of official clinical trials using stem cells underway, for many diseases - partly the number is inflated due to a loose definition of stem cells - and these vital studies will provide answers to many important questions over safety and efficacy. Without systematic trials of this nature we really can't say with any confidence that stem cell therapy is safe for humans, let alone effective.

This is what makes the behaviour of certain clinics and doctors, seemingly more so in China than anywhere else, disturbing. As I wrote about yesterday, a Chinese clinic is offering spinal injections of stem cells from the umbilical cord as a treatment for a host of diseases. Commenting on that piece, Prof. Moss said he found nothing on PubMed suggesting the clinic has a publication track record to speak of. Looking for more details, I found this website which is an astonishing mixture of anecdote, patient testimonials and extraordinary claims - and not one mention of a properly conducted, peer-reviewed and published study.

To quote the great Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - and I see lots of the former and virtually none of the latter.

The blogger Suirauqa (whose own latest blog post links to another scientific study linked to a story on NPR which cast a somewhat skeptical eye on the claims of efficacy for Chinese stem cell treatment in the case of Laylah Teague. The story is still on the credulous side for my liking, but at least discusses the possibility that any treatment effect may be placebo-driven (patients tend to receive massages and other 'alternative' or palliative care alongside their stem cells), and/or short-lived - as well as the spectre of dangerous side-effects.

I despair at this sort of thing - along with the enormous potential as therapies, stem cells carry with them unknown dangers which could easily be fatal. Medicine is not perfect and even the safest looking treatments can turn out to be fatal - let's hope that the irresponsible, cavalier by-passing of the scientific method and lack of respect for due process on display at these clinics doesn't harm the patients desperate enough to pay massive sums demanded.

Stemming the tide of cell therapy stories, or, Where are the Methods and Materials in this journal?

2010-12-16T14:51:00.000Z

Thanks and hat-tip to the outstanding blogger @gimpyblog, who Tweeted the story in the Sun on which this post is based; thanks also to the brilliant @stephenemoss for encouraging me to write this post; and apologies for the headline...

Time after time bloggers criticise newspapers - mostly but not exclusively the red-top tabloids - for their coverage of science stories. Ranging from the baseless scaremongering around MMR to the PR fluff of wacky equations and bogus (careful...) 'trials' of dietary supplements, the media's inability to report on scientific material accurately or fairly is not news in itself - just take a look over at badscienceblogs.net and you'll see dozens of press articles pwned for indulging in bias, statistical error or just plain idiocy.

To the roll-call of infamy in science journalism we may add stories from earlier in the week (in The Sun and The Mirror amongst others) regarding four-year-old girl Izabelle Evans, some stem cells, and China.

The Sun reported that

LITTLE Izabelle Evans who was born blind has seen her mum and dad for the first time at the age of FOUR — thanks to a miracle procedure carried out on the other side of the world.

Brave Izabelle can now see up to three feet and recognise her parents' faces following groundbreaking stem cell treatment

(emphasis original).

Curious, I read on in hope of finding out what cell type was used in the treatment, what the mode of delivery and dosage were, how efficacy was determined - alas, no luck.

Helpfully, The Mirror went into more detail, describing how septo-optic dysplasia caused Izzy's visual impairment:

[Izzy] only has a few hundred optic nerves (sic) sending information to her brain. A person needs millions to be able to see. Her family heard about the stem cell treatment which involves injecting the spinal canal with cells taken from umbilical cords of healthy babies. The cells are then used to rebuild optic nerves.

Leaving aside the technicalities - we only have one optic nerve per eye, made up of the axons of millions of neurones - several questions arise. Was the injection of umbilical stem cells carried out under a clinical trial protocol or offered as a commercial service? What precautions were taken to ensure that Izabelle's immune system did not react adversely to receiving cells from another person - or were Izzy's own cells, perhaps frozen down at birth, used? How was the patient's vision tested before and after treatment?

Of course, had we been reading about Izabelle's case in a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal, we may well have had the answers. As it is we're left with the tantalising story of a little girl (cue pictures of her with family in front of seasonal decor) and her anecdote of 'improved vision' following 'stem cell therapy.'

Having seen at close quarters how a genuine clinical trial is carried out - with rigorous pre-clinical testing of the treatment lasting years, massive regulatory hurdles to be overcome (rightly) and the thorough post-treatment reporting that is required to qualify for publication in a high-flying journal - I feel the need to express my disappointment. Not only does The Sun put in jeopardy it's otherwise decent record on reporting health issues (not least the waste of money that is NHS-funded homeopathy), stories like Izzy's unjustifiably raise people's expectations of what medical science can deliver.

Another aspect of both the Sun and Mirror's reporting concerned me - the focus on the non-availability of such treatment - whatever it constituted - in the UK, and the fundraising that allowed the Evans family to head to China where she was treated. There may well be good reasons why direct injections of stem cells into the spinal canal are not carried out in the UK - it may be for lack of the very safety and efficacy data missing from Izzy's story. What we don't need is for families of patients with rare disorders - despite being understandably desperate for anything that might help - to jet off to jurisdictions with lax controls over clinical protocols and less regard for patient safety - which may well be the case here.

By reporting an isolated anecdote such as this, without corroborating evidence on safety or efficacy, journalists do science and medicine a huge disservice. There's nothing wrong with reporting genuinely exciting advances in medical science in the lay press - in fact it's a vital part of making scientific progress for the population at large to understand the likes of gene and cell therapy - it's just that this kind of reporting distracts from the real deal - and makes it that much harder for properly conducted trials and their outcomes to get the recognition they deserve.

Extrapolation in extremis, or, How the Daily Mail went all Homer Simpson and claimed that 'purple is a fruit.'

2010-12-10T10:28:00.001Z

A big thank you to @Evidencematters on Twitter for pointing out this story...

'Remember to eat your purples: Fruit can 'ward off Alzheimer's, heart problems and cancer,' or so the People's Medical Journal (aka the Daily FMail) tells us.

So, I won't bother writing the rest of this post - instead I'll just head off to buy shares in growers of purple fruits...

Oh, wait...

The Mail story is an object lesson in how to take seemingly sound science and extrapolate its findings to the logical (or illogical) extreme; a picture-perfect example of the art of insinuation, conjecture and wishful thinking. Oh, and it's also an addition to the honourable Oncological Ontological Project (the mammoth classification of which has been completed by Paul Battley) whereby, according to Bad Science maestro Ben Goldacre,

The Daily Mail, as you know, is engaged in a philosophical project of mythic proportions: for many years now it has diligently been sifting through all the inanimate objects in the world, soberly dividing them into the ones which either cause – or cure – cancer

This time, it's purple fruits which may 'cure' cancer, and help 'ward off' diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's - and according to Mail reporter Fiona Macrae it's all there in black and white, written by a scientist no less. No ordinary scientist either - Prof, Kell is a prolific scientist interested in the biochemistry of metabolism, and serves as the Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The article cites a paper by Prof. Kell from the University of Manchester, and says that the polyphenols contained within purple fruits (and green tea, curcumin and chocolate, although sadly not the Mail's favourite anti-cancer compound, red wine) may help

fight the harmful effects of iron, which can damage cells if it makes its way through the digestive system in the wrong form.

We've been here before on this blog, with a Mail story that linked perfumes to male infertility - again based in some way on studies by Professor Richard Sharpe but that bear no resemblance to the science contained therein.

So I did a little digging - I emphasise the little, as it doesn't take too long to dig for the absurdities in Ms. Macrae's article.

Prof. Kell recently published a review article in the journal Archives of Toxicology, to which I assume (given the Mail's insistence on not linking to original sources...) Ms. Macrae's article refers. If you're interested you can read the full article here, or just the abstract via PubMed here.

Prof. Kell draws on extensive evidence (his review is one of the most thorough and heavily-referenced I've ever seen with over 1,700 references...) regarding the role of iron - specifically, iron that is 'poorly liganded' - in the progression of many seemingly disparate diseases. Poorly liganded iron? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Iron, as Mrs. Teekblog the chemistry teacher had to remind me, is a transition metal that can exist in several valencies - in other words, it can choose to make bonds with any number of ligands (other atoms/ions/molecules) up to six. Iron is said to be fully liganded when it's bound to its full complement of six ligands - according to Prof. Kell's review, iron within cells that is bound to fewer than six ligands can cause the production of highly reactive hydroxyl radicals (free radicals) through the Fenton reaction, which are well known to cause damage to DNA and proteins and play a significant role in cell death during disease.

Prof. Kell goes on to take a 'systems biology' approach to the role of poorly-liganded iron in disease, postulating that the build-up of the incompletely-bound form of iron may be the 'nexus' that links diseases with apparently unrelated causative factors with seemingly disparate outcomes - that poorly-liganded iron and the free radicals it creates may be the gatekeepers channel various insults to cells - whether genetic or environmental - to causing cell death by myriad mechanisms.

As ever, pictures say much more than words ever could, and this elegant diagram may help you in understanding Prof. Kell's view of the importance of iron's valency in disease:

The review article meticulously trawls through data regarding poorly-liganded iron and its potential contribution various disease processes - and yes, at one point Prof. Kell does indeed mention that

the only way to stop the damaging activity of free or partially liganded ‘iron’ is to ensure that all of its six possible liganding sites are satisﬁed, whether by endogenous chelators or those added from the diet or as pharmaceuticals

Prof. Kell then lists a sizeable chunk of literature that points to the positive effect that many polyphenols (rings of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen of varying properties found in plants) may have on the chelation of iron - largely these studies are in cells in culture or in animal models that recreate aspects of human disease, using purified dosage of the polyphenol under consideration. The theory is that dietary intake of such compounds may boost the body's anti-oxidant capacity, negating the creation of excess free radicals by poorly-liganded iron - but it remains just that, a theory, and there's already evidence that anti-oxidant supplementation is of little or no benefit when taken in the forms cited in the Mail.

At no stage that I could tell does Prof. Kell mention studies looking at the effect that purple fruits, or green tea, or curcumin (all of which do indeed contain polyphenols) have on the pathology of any disease that may have poorly liganded iron as a contributory factor - presumably because no such studies exist.

To go from Prof. Kell's position to the suggestion in the Mail that purple fruit may be protective is, err, somewhat ambitious. What's clear from the studies Prof. Kell reviews is that when iron is poorly liganded it creates high levels of free radicals, which may be a link between lots of different diseases - but that's about it. I'd say that the evidence to date regarding the use of polyphenols as iron chelators suggests it might be worthwhile conducting prospective trials to determine the effect of fruit-derived anti-oxidant on disease progression - but then how's a sub-editor ever going to boil that down to a catchy populist headline?

A letter to my MP Iain Duncan Smith regarding scientific advisers and drugs policy

2010-12-08T08:30:00.006Z

I have written this letter to Mr. Iain Duncan Smith, my constituency MP and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, regarding the proposed shake-up of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and the relegation of scientific advice in the formulation of drugs policy. I decided to write the letter following the publication of an Early Day Motion tabled by Julian Huppert MP (Lib Dem, Cambridge); should you feel inspired (!) by what you read, please copy/paste the letter, alter as appropriate and send on to your MP using the funny little box below courtesy of MySociety.org as well - I know Mr. Duncan Smith will not sign given that he is a Minister of State, but the more signatories this EDM gets the clearer the message to the Government - it is not acceptable to pursue a drugs policy based on whimsical populism, nor to relegate scientific evidence to the background. If you do send a letter to your MP regarding this issue, please do come back to the comments below and let me know how it goes - you could even link to the text of your letter...

Dear Iain Duncan Smith,

I write as a constituent concerned about the Coalition government's plans to downgrade the status of scientific advice when formulating policy on drugs.

The previous government had a strained relationship with the scientific community, exemplified by the summary dismissal of Prof. David Nutt, Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), for speaking in favour of an evidence-based approach to drugs policy. The advent of the Coalition brought with it renewed hopes for evidence-based policy formulation, not least with respect to drugs where we've seen decades of failed policies based on little more than populism and a desire to appear 'tough on drugs,' policies which ignore the core aim of harm reduction.

Sadly those hopes appear dashed with the news that the Police Reform Bill seeks to amend the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act (which established the ACMD and its terms of reference) such that the statutory requirement for six scientific experts to be appointed to the Council is to be removed - leaving the Home Secretary to decide its makeup as they see fit.

The Minister for Crime Prevention James Brokenshire MP claims this is necessary " to add greater flexibility to the provision of advice given to government, in order to ensure that we are able to get more effective policies, given the changing nature of the drugs threat" I fear that this is little more than a cover story for the removal of expert scientific advice from the process of formulating drugs policy; and Paul Flynn MP agrees, as his question to Mr. Brokenshire in Parliament clearly demonstrates (http://bit.ly/hnqpKo).

Moreover, the proposed Bill creates new powers for the Home Secretary to impose seemingly arbitrary temporary bans on substances they chose in the absence of evidence that they cause harm; last year saw a fiasco when the Government rushed to ban Mephedrone in a knee-jerk reaction to exaggerated media reports of its lethality, and these new powers make such baseless bans more likely.

I would therefore urge you to signal the government's support for a rational, evidence-based drugs policy with science at its heart - many people are asking their MPs to sign Dr. Julian Huppert MP's Early Day Motion 1148, the text of which is as follows:

That this House expresses its concern that the proposed changes in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill to the membership of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs remove the requirement to have any members on the Council with specific scientific knowledge; recognises the importance of evidence-based policy making, especially in the area of drugs policy; and requests that the Government brings forward amendments to the Bill to ensure that a reasonable proportion of the members of the Council have relevant scientific experience.

I am aware that Members of the Cabinet do not usually sign EDMs, but would request that you indicate your support regardless by return of post. It is vital that Parliament passes legislation on matters of public interest based on sound scientific evidence, and these measures undermine that goal; I request that you seek a way for the ACMD, and other advisory committees, to retain their integrity and scientific rigour.

I eagerly await your reply - for your information, this letter will be posted on my blog (teekblog.blogspot.com), as will - pending your permission - any reply you send.

Yours sincerely,

Teekblog

Fat Chance - the hidden inequalities in public health

2010-12-07T08:27:00.006Z

An edited version of this post is cross-posted at The Vibe Online, an excellent political internet magazine. I also have a letter published in The Guardian along the same lines.

The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley MP has been a busy man since taking office. Not content with driving through radical reforms to the NHS – including controversial plans for healthcare budgets to be handed over to consortia of GPS – he recently unveiled the Department of Health’s White Paper on Public Health – Healthy lives, healthy people. Whilst this White paper sets out a compelling case for the need to improve public health outcomes, I want to highlight one policy measure in particular which may well worsen the picture considerably – that of putting major food corporations in charge of setting policy, which the blogger Dr. Aust says is akin to putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.

The case for improving public health revolves around the recognition of the intolerably large inequalities in mortality and morbidity that exist within the country. By now the statistics are probably familiar to the reader; studies lead by UCL’s Prof. Sir Michael Marmot shows that there are ‘gaps of up to 7 years in life expectancy between the richest and poorest neighbourhoods, and up to 17 years in disability-free life expectancy.’

The previous government did of course have policies in place to tackle poor public health, defended with great vigour by Prof. Joe Millward in The Guardian last week. Of particular concern for Prof Millward is the government’s intention to place major fast-food and beverage corporations at the heart of setting public health policy; he argues that

the increase in childhood obesity has now stopped

and that

[t]his is almost certainly because of a coherent, effective policy on diet, implemented by the Labour government following decades of opposition from the food industry.

As evidence for his former claim (which he repeats later in his article, suggesting that the “prevalence of obesity is falling in girls and no longer increasing in boys”), Prof. Millward cites a study published in the International Journal of Obesity. This study does indeed show that the proportion of children who are overweight and/or obese didn’t increase between 1997 and 2007 and so appears to support Labour’s record on public health – until we look a little closer at the data.

The authors of that study describe a disturbing underlying trend – in scientific terms it’s more than a trend, it’s a significant finding – that seriously undermines Prof. Millward’s championing of the previous government’s success in curbing obesity; moreover it poses serious questions about the current government’s approach as well.

Stamatakis et al. show that the odds ratio (a measure of how likely an outcome is) for children being overweight and/or obese was no greater in 2007 than in 1997 – an apparent vindication of public health policy at the time. But when they separated the subjects they studied not by gender but by socio-economic position – in other words, by income and class – those in the lowest bracket were nearly twice as likely to be overweight and/or obese in 2007 than they were ten years previously, whereas there was no significant difference for children in the highest bracket.

The finding is worth re-stating and emphasising. More deprived children were overweight in 2007 than was the case 10 years before then, whereas children from better off families were no more likely to be of overweight – put bluntly, under the last government poor kids got fatter and rich kids didn’t. Any overall trend towards better weight control in the population at large – which Prof. Millward claims is a result of Labour’s health policy – appears to mask a significant worsening amongst the poorest in society. The deterioration of this marker of public health may well be hidden as widening of inequalities rather than worsening overall trends, but it’s there nonetheless – and it’s vital we don’t miss this point as Prof. Millward seems to have done.

So here’s the crunch. With the poorest already suffering from lack of affordable means for exercise and poorer diets, the authors devastate Labour’s approach to improving public health:

As lower socioeconomic groups tend to be wary of measures and messages aimed at changing their lifestyle because they see them as ‘nanny-statism’ that erodes their autonomy it is possible that policies targeting children's eating and physical activity habits have been perceived less favourably by lower-income and social-class groups.

This is where Mr. Lansley’s White Paper gets things both nearly right – by devolving funding and responsibility for improving public health away from the central State to local authorities and focusing on results not fancy campaigns – and so very wrong – by drafting in the very vested interests that fuel the obesity epidemic to dictate health policy. Because if a policy that purports to tackle inequalities in health recruits as its executive arm the corporate entities responsible for widening the gap between the rich and poor, whose aim is to maximise their profits by selling to people whose health they are now charged with improving, who’s to say that in another 10 years time we won’t be looking back at the co-opting of the junk food industry as the point at which the poor, already getting fatter than the rich, finally saw the government make their health subject to the vagaries of market forces.

Policy-based evidence - Government proposes to remove scientists from drugs advisory committee

2010-12-06T08:31:00.008Z

Government's relationship with the scientific community has been strained for some time; whether over the provision of empty sugar pills on the NHS, the future of research funding or the proper place of evidence in formulating government policy on drugs.

There is particular concern amongst scientists that scientific evidence is wheeled out in defence of a political viewpoint when it is deemed convenient, and ditched in favour of dogma, expedience and ideology when it isn't. The sacking of Prof. David Nutt as Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs encapsulated the breakdown of trust between government and the scientific advisers it appoints - and it appears the Coalition government is prepared to travel further down the route of downgrading scientific advice when it comes to formulating drugs policy.

News reaches us via Imran Khan, Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), and via The Guardian, that buried in the new Police Reform Bill is an amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971 - which established the ACMD and its terms of reference - that removes the obligation for the Council's members to be chosen from specified professions.

Furthermore, the Bill as drafted gives the Home Secretary powers to institute temporary bans on substances that he/she feels are worthy of banning - no matter what the scientific evidence may suggest - much like the fiasco over Mephedrone that unfolded nearly a year ago.

Far from placing scientific evidence at the heart of government policy-making, the Coalition appears prepared to discard the experts it has hitherto relied upon - at least rhetorically - for advice on harm reduction with respect to drugs. The implications for other areas of policy in which scientific evidence ought to play a big role - policy on climate change and public health for instance - are disconcerting to say the least; marginalising scientific considerations when forming policy is simply unacceptable.

Whereas previously the government appeared on occasion to set policy according to the whims of tabloid editors and pressure groups in defiance of scientific advice, they will no longer have to - defy the advice, that is. In relegating the status of scientific advice in setting policy, the government will be free from the constraints of evidence and science as it decides what to ban and what to permit.

Before the reader thinks I'm some sort of evidence-fundamentalist, let's get one thing clear. Often the evidence may be politically unpalatable, tough to sell to the electorate and/or counter-intuitive. On occasion, policy has to take into consideration more than 'bald statistics;' there may be economic, ethical or moral considerations to be made when setting policy, which is unavoidably a political (if not necessary a party-political) exercise.

But that doesn't mean that scientific evidence for or against a political position can justifiably be rejected or ignored. It doesn't mean that the Home Secretary should be able to convene a panel of advisers devoid of those who understand harm reduction and best practice. And most of all, it doesn't mean that these proposals are welcome - it falls to those of us who believe in placing evidence and the heart of policy to lobby, cajole and convince Westminster that removing the scientific basis for policy is just not on.

An open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron: #libelreform needed to protect free speech online

2010-11-19T09:20:00.007Z

Despite significant advances made by the libel reform coalition over the past twelve months, including a commitment to new legislation to reform the illiberal English and Welsh libel laws, it is still vital that all those interested in defending freedom of expression and the uninhibited movement of ideas maintain pressure on the government to deliver.

The latest boost to the momentum behind the libel reform campaign is an open letter, written by Yahoo!, the discussion forum Mumsnet and the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA), calling on the Prime Minister to urgently reform the unfair libel laws in this country.

The signatories to the letter are particularly concerned by the current 'multiple publications rule,' which holds that an allegedly defamatory statement is considered to be a new libel against a claimant not just upon publication, but every time said statement is downloaded or accessed online - potentially thousands of times a day in the case of high-traffic websites such as Mumsnet.

Justine Roberts, CEO of Mumsnet, also raised the unfair implications the current libel laws have for large websites with many comments posted by third parties, for which hosts are currently responsible and potentially liable; Justine said:

Mumsnet Talk receives around 25,000 new posts each day; it is impossible for us to pre-moderate each one, even if we wished to do so. It is both impractical and unfair that we should be threatened with legal action (and the attendant costs) over individual posts by third parties.

Stating the case for web service providers, Nicholas Lansman, Secretary-General of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA), said:

ISPs are currently in a position where they may have to decide what bears defamatory meaning, putting the intermediary in a position of judge and jury over content. We therefore support the call for an innocent dissemination defence, that ISPs should only be forced to remove defamatory material that has been decreed defamatory by a court or competent authority, and to bring libel law into the twenty-first century through the creation of a single publication rule.

ISPA's position is particularly delicate given the current government's position towards net neutrality, which is set to allow the creation of a tiered internet service with those willing and able to pay more gaining access to the fastest and selected content - the rest of us presumably having to make to do with a more threadbare worldwide web. In combination with the libel laws' requirement for ISPs to effectively censor potentially defamatory content, the free expression of information and ideas faces a pincer movement - and the open letter to the Prime Minister aims to draw attention to the impact of the latter.

The open letter is published to coincide with the publication of a guide to the libel laws as they stand, written by Sense about Science (pdf), which aims to inform bloggers and online journalists of the options they have if they are threatened with libel litigation. As the potentially disastrous consequences of facing legal action - including financial ruin and suppression of information of vital importance to public well-being - become more widely apparent, the guide sets out how to deal with being sued for libel and is essential reading for those who post online.

Two chilling reminders of the urgent need for #LibelReform

2010-11-11T08:20:00.025Z

Just hours after bloggers united to urge their readers to sign up to the Libel Reform Campaign's petition*, news reaches us via Sense about Science of yet another chilling deployment of libel law to silence the discussion of evidence in the public interest - and as I write this post, I've learned of another libel case attempting to settle matters of scientific interest through the High Court.

More on that story later - first, boobies.

It appears that Dr. Dalia Nield, a consultant plastic surgeon at The London Clinic, has been threatened with legal action by the cosmetics manufacturer Rodial; this action follows Dr. Nield expressing doubts over the efficacy of 'Boob Job,' a £125 cream made by Rodial - Dr. Nield was quoted in a Daily Mail article on October 1st (published online September 30th), and in taking exception to her comments Rodial chose to sue her and not the Mail.

In sharing her doubts over the claims Rodial make for their cream (that two months topical application would lead to a larger, firmer bust), Dr. Nield said

The manufacturers are not giving us any information on tests they have carried out. They are not telling us the exact ingredients in the product and how they increase the size of the breast.’
The doctor even claimed the gel could be ‘potentially dangerous’.
‘It may even harm the skin and the breasts – we need a full analysis

This is the latest in a long line of cases where apparently legitimate concerns over a product or treatment are treated as libellous, with comments made in the public interest being shut down by threatening heavy-handed legal action; as Sense about Science said,

Dr Simon Singh was sued for criticising the lack of evidence for chiropractic in the treatment of some infant disorders; consultant cardiologist Dr Peter Wilmshurst is being sued by NMT Medical for speaking about data from a clinical trial of a medical device; Dr Ben Goldacre was sued by a vitamin manufacturer for questioning claims to treat HIV/AIDS with vitamins.

Adding to this growing list of libel victims, you can read a moving and sobering account of the chilling effects of libel law on one of the most respected bloggers around - Andy Lewis of the Quackometer blog recalls his libel troubles and shares a never-before-talked-about case, demonstrating just how pernicious the current law and its use in silencing critical debate are.

This list of defendants, to which Dr. Nield is now to be added, share in common their desire to debate evidence surrounding medical practices or products that they believe could cause harm. Their accusers, those who bully them with libel threats, are just as united in their conviction that critical commentary is to be silenced via the courts and ruinously expensive legal battles.

In chosing to sue Dr. Nield and not her publishers, Rodial follow the tactics of the British Chiropractic Association in targeting Simon Singh for his article criticising the claims made by their practitioners and not the Guardian who published it - and that of NMT, who chose to sue Peter Wilmshurst and not the American magazine who published his comments. And yet as Andy Lewis says, in his case(s) it was his internet service providers who were threatened. The pattern if there is one appears to be one of targeting the weak, those least likely to defend themselves and most likely to cave in to bullying.

In a further development, Simon Singh has just tweeted about another case where a dispute over the scientific validity of a study has spilled over into the High Court. Respected charity the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is being sued for libel by a Cheshire couple who claim that when the RSPB criticised their methodology in a study on black grouse, they libelled them. In defending the RSPB and calling for the case to be struck out, Adam Wolanski made a succinct argument that I for one find compelling:

scientific disputes are not for the courts.

Whether boob jobs or birds, miracle cures or medical devices, it is vital that scientists and writers are free to discuss the merits of the evidence before them without the chilling threat of libel action. Whilst the libel laws exist in their current form, companies and individuals will continue to deploy them as a reputation management tool, attempting to silence those who dare to criticise them in public - both Dr. Nield and the RSPB stand accused of libel for doing nothing more than discussing scientific evidence (or lack thereof) in the interests of the public, and if we don't want to add to their number we must fight for the libel laws to be changed.

*I took part in this 'mass blog event', as did so many other bloggists. Apart from the Quackometer's brilliant blog linked to above, you can find other excellent contributions from Jack of Kent, Dr*T at Thinking is Dangerous, Dr Aust's Spleen, the Lunchtime Legend (who has a list of other contributors too), Apathy Sketchpad, and Dr. Stephen Curry. Please read these blogs, please sign the libel reform petition if you haven't already done so, and please please resolve to get at least one other person to sign today - now more than ever we need to emphasise the need to make our libel laws fairer and more liberal.

[NB this post was edited to correct a spelling error that meant I got Dr. Dalia Nield's name wrong - and for an HTML fail - apologies, and thanks to @zeno001 for spotting the errors! Serves me write for rushing this post out in about ten minutes so early in the morning!]

The Mass #LibelReform blog - Fight for Free Speech!

2010-11-10T13:24:00.004Z

This week is the first anniversary of the report Free Speech is Not for Sale, complied by the Libel Reform Coalition, which highlighted the oppressive nature of English libel law. Now, my own blogging is neither of sufficient quality, nor is it high-profile enough, to attract libel suits - and yet many of the bloggers I consider amongst the best writers in their field have been threatened with chilling legal action in response to them publicly discussing material that is in the public domain and in the public interest.

In short, Free Speech is Not for Sale concluded that the current English (and Welsh) libel laws are extremely hostile to writers, while being unreasonably friendly towards powerful corporations and individuals who want to silence critics.

The English libel law is particularly dangerous for bloggers, who are generally not backed by publishers, and who can end up being sued in London regardless of where the blog was posted. The internet allows bloggers to reach a global audience, but it also allows the High Court in London to have a global reach.

You can read more about the peculiar and grossly unfair nature of English libel law at the website of the Libel Reform Campaign. You will see that the campaign is not calling for the removal of libel law, but for a libel law that is fair and which would allow writers a reasonable opportunity to express their opinion and then defend it.

You'll know about the most prominent cases of libel law being used to silence criticism, either through reading my own posts or through those by excellent bloggers and journalists elsewhere - with immense strength of character and sheer determination to fight for the right to free expression, the likes of Drs. Simon Singh and Peter Wilmshurst have helped highlight just how pernicious our libel laws are and the urgency with which they must be reformed for the public good. What you'll know less about are the myriad instances of self-censorship, where for fear of being landed in hot water a writer decides not to publish their thoughts - it's this chill which needs to be lifted if open, evidence-based and honest discourse is to be defended.

The good news is that the British Government has made a commitment to draft a bill that will reform libel, but it is essential that bloggers and their readers send a strong signal to politicians so that they follow through on this promise. You can do this by joining me and over 50,000 others who have signed the libel reform petition at

http://www.libelreform.org/sign

Remember, you can sign the petition whatever your nationality and wherever you live. Indeed, signatories from overseas remind British politicians that the English libel law is out of step with the rest of the free world.

If you have already signed the petition, then please encourage friends, family and colleagues to sign up. Moreover, if you have your own blog, you can join hundreds of other bloggers by posting this blog on your own site. There is a real chance that bloggers could help change the most censorious libel law in the democratic world.

We must speak out to defend free speech. Please sign the petition for libel reform at http://www.libelreform.org/sign , share this and other blog posts that are part of the Mass Libel Reform blog on Twitter, Facebook, water coolers or noticeboards, and keep the momentum going for a campaign that aims to protect what is in my opinion the hardest-fought and most precious of our civil liberties - the freedom to speak out mind, to debate the facts and to hold power to account, without the fear of persecution.

If #ScienceIsVital, then despite all the caveats, so is (carefully regulated) animal research

2010-11-09T08:05:00.020Z

An edited version of this post is cross-posted at The Vibe Online, an excellent political internet magazine.

To many, science and politics just don't mix - oil and water, polar opposites, as the classic primary school experiment holds. Looking at the sacking of drugs adviser Prof. David Nutt, the continued public provision of magical empty placebo pills, and the apparent relegation of clinical evidence in deciding which drugs to provide to patients, recent evidence would hardly suggest otherwise.

And yet science is very much at the heart of the political discourse, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the likes of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE), who in the run-up to the 2010 UK General Election managed to put science centre-stage as a key battleground.

Further proof that science plays a role in political life came with the recent Science is Vital campaign, which successfully mobilised thousands of clinicians, lab scientists, lecturers and passionate supporters of the scientific world-view to affect real influence on government policy - as a direct result of the excellent work Dr. Jenny Rohn and her team did in such a short space of time, science now faces a cash freeze, which given the counterfactual of 25% cuts that were mooted, is some result.

The role of science in society once again emerged as a matter of political controversy yesterday as Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay Adrian Sanders wrote of the need for a targeted reduction in animal experiments.

Had he left it at that, I contend, there would be no controversy, no argument - it is crucial that animal experimentation be restricted as far as possible to the necessary, the useful, the justifiable - indeed, a central tenet of the Home Office regulations relating to scientific animal experimentation is the 3Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recyc... oh no, wait, it's Reduce, Refine, Replace.

Mr. Sanders chooses to focus on the final R, that of replacing animals with experiments in vitro (cells in dishes), in silico (computerised model systems) or in homo (non-toxic tests on human subjects such as skin-tolerance tests). Again, had he chosen to do so on the grounds that such testing is more effective, had he presented evidence to back up his claim that

[d]espite the fact that many governments, international bodies and researchers are encouraging non-animal alternatives, they are not being implemented even though these tests are more reliable,

his stance may have been more credible. Instead, Mr Sanders chose to rehash some tired myths about the use of animals in research, and mistakenly conflated the use of animals for cosmetic testing with that for medical purposes.

Take the following examples:

Mr. Sanders says,
The numbers of animals used in experiments has been rising steadily over the past few years; up to 3.6 million in 2009 (whilst the number of individual procedures is far higher).
The fact is this is the number of procedures carried out and not animals used, and represents a reduction from 2008 of around 1%. The more long-term trend has been for a marked reduction in animal testing since its peak in the 1970s (at over 5.5 million), with a small rise since 2000 - again, according to official Home Office stats (Figure 1 in this report),
There has been a significant reduction in the annual number of scientific procedures since 1976, this trend levelled out in the second half of the 1990s and in recent years there has been an increase in the number of procedures. The total number of procedures was a third (+33% or +905,000) higher than in 2000, mostly accounted for by breeding to produce GM and HM animals (+834,000 higher, of which mice +734,000). Excluding such breeding, the total was slightly higher than in 2000 (+3% or +70,000)
Mr. Sanders says,
A recent poll conducted by YouGov in the UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Italy and the Czech Republic showed that the majority of people are against the use of primates, cats and dogs in animal testing, because causing severe suffering to any species for experiments which are not for serious or life-threatening human conditions is unacceptable.
According to Home Office statistics (pdf),
Dogs, cats and non-human primates combined were used in less than half of one percent of all procedures, with a combined total of 10,500. This was 600 lower than in 2008.
indicating that they represent a very small and decreasing fraction of the totality of animal research - this doesn't negate the public's aversion to the use of such animals entirely, but is a point to which we shall return.
Mr. Sanders says,
Targets [of how many animals should be used in research] may be able to signal that less suffering will be tolerated and certain types of experiments excluded, such as experiments that are motivated by commercial advantage.
And yet, although I don't have the statistics to hand, I am willing to wager that the majority of the public would not reject out-of-hand commercially available treatments that have been tested on animals if they thought the benefit from those treatments were sufficient.

And here we reach the crux of the matter. In citing public opposition to the use of dogs, cats and non-human primates, Mr. Sanders seeks to justify his call for a blanket reduction of animal research - in his words - 'regardless of its scientific merits.' In using an emotive argument detached from the facts, Mr. Sanders falls into the trap that animal-rights groups all to often deploy - pulling on the heartstrings from the perspective of the animals, and failing to communicate the positive contribution that research on animals has had in modern medicine.

Indeed, I'd go as far as to say that if animal experimentation is unpopular, it is the responsibility of the scientific community to publicise the advances in their fields that are taken from granted but would not be possible without at least some animal testing. Of course some organisations such as Pro-Test and the Lasker Foundation do just that in some form, but clearly there is a long way to go to win over the public, and the harder that animals rights campaigners such as the BUAV make it for scientists to stand up and make their case the less chance there will ever be of us doing so.

Besides which, the public popularity or otherwise of animal research, whilst not an unimportant consideration, is only one of the variables we need to take account of in deciding how scientific research proceeds. Whilst the use of animals is not simply a utilitarian matter of pragmatic matter of cost-benefit analysis, the benefit to wider society must be accounted for when government sets its policy.

Which brings me to my final point. The government's current policy on the use of animals in research results in a robust regime, in which animal use is tightly regulated and controlled; as such it represents an excellent framework that insists on the 3Rs, whilst allowing medical research to progress towards a greater understanding of disease and of potential therapies - if we consider science to be vital, so is the judicious use of animals therein.

Dr. Peter Wilmshurst faces second libel suit as NMT escalates its libel action against him

2010-11-03T13:16:00.008Z

Cardiologist Dr. Peter Wilmshurst will be well-known to readers who are engaged with the movement to reform English and Welsh libel laws - Peter was sued nearly three years ago by the medical device manufacturers NMT, over comments made to an American website regarding a clinical trial of an NMT product and its effects on migraine patients.

As the libel reform campaign has made clear, this represents an unacceptable abuse of English libel law to silence critical debate that is being presented on scientific terms - and disputes regarding the scientific merits or otherwise of drugs, therapies and devices ought to be conducted through lab research, academic conferences and peer-reviewed publications, not through expensive and intrusive legal wrangling in the high court.

It's now emerged that NMT is threatening to sue Dr. Wilmshurst for a second time, this time over comments he made in a pre-recorded piece for the Today Programme on the chilling effects of England’s libel laws on scientific and medical discussions. The interview was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 27^th November 2009.

Made just weeks before Dr. Wilmshurst's original case was due to appear in court, this new threat compounds the legal chill cast upon Dr. Wilmshurst and his ability to raise concerns over NMT's medical device in public - and demonstrates that despite significant progress made by the Coalition government in seeking to address libel reform, without root-and-branch reform the current libel laws remain a significant barrier to the dissemination of scientific ideas and the communication of medical information to doctors and patients.

The new threat of libel action drew strong criticism from activists seeking to defend free speech. Tracey Brown, Managing Director of Sense About Science and part of the libel reform campaign said:

We should be very grateful that Peter has been willing to fight on to defend the importance of open discussions in medicine. But we should be very worried about the many cases where people have no chance of standing up to the threats of organisations with legal and financial muscle and have no choice but to fall silent

Jonathan Heawood, Director of English PEN, said:

It seems odd to be suing someone now for comments they made almost a year ago. It's called the Today Programme because it's topical. Peter Wilmshurst went onto the programme to discuss the original libel action which NMT brought against him. At this rate, the only option for Peter Wilmshurst appears to be total silence on the subject - which would go against his public spirit and his integrity as a scientist

Mark Lewis, solicitor for Dr Wilmshurst said:

There is something wrong with a system where it is cheaper to let someone die than to speak out about what might not make them better

Jonathan and Mark's comments are particularly telling - if topical items cannot be discussed; if medically relevant information cannot be disseminated; if the scientific discourse is shut down - all for fear of the libel sledgehammer slamming down on your livelihood, how can we claim to live in a civilised democracy that nurtures evidence-based public debate?

Peter's fight to defend his comments, and more importantly his right to make such comments - and that of so many others - continues, and we can only wish him all the best as he stands up for free speech.

GUEST POST: Health inequalities in the UK – our most pressing problem

2010-10-31T09:30:00.003Z

This is a Guest Post by Rachit Buch, and is an edited version of an article published originally by The Vibe.

The burning issue

On Thursday the British Medical Association held a debate on Health Inequalities. Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, Professor Sir Michael Marmot and Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley MP were members of the distinguished panel. They discussed the most pressing contemporary problem for British society – why there is such a gap between the health of different sections of our society and what can be done about it.

Why is this society’s most pressing problem? Professor Marmot has the answers to this. The evidence he has helped to collect shows a 7 year gap in life expectancy and a 19 year gap in healthy life expectancy from lowest to highest socioeconomic group. Education, housing, alcohol-related and obesity-related harm and numerous other social factors cause this gap – meaning that in some meaningful way, other important social problems are in reality also health inequality problems.

Take the economy as an example. Professor Marmot's estimates show that approximately 2.5 million life years would be gained if everyone had the life expectancy of the best-off and that the economic cost of this gap is £31-33 billion per year. Granted, as he acknowledged, these figures come close to back of the envelope calculations. But the numbers are staggering and no-one has any evidence to fairly suggest that they are significant overestimates.

Improving health inequalities (by which I mean bringing the health of lower socioeconomic groups to levels achieved by higher groups) would go some way to meeting other major challenges we face. As Professor Gilmore noted, the health agenda fits with the environmental agenda in encouraging walking, cycling and moderating meat consumption. Increasing access to work would also improve the health gap, which would benefit the economy. And fundamentally, being alive is a necessary condition of doing anything.

Given this importance, is our failure to make progress the result of a lack of will? It seems not – recent Governments have placed reducing health inequalities high up the agenda. So is it a lack of know-how? The answer to this is a classic, academic yes-no. There is evidence of policies that can reduce the gap in health achievement but with such a broad scope, what politicians have struggled with is how to implement changes that are integrated and mutually enhancing across the

spectrum of Government departments. A sure-fire way of achieving this is yet to be discovered.

A lack of will is certainly not evident in Andrew Lansley's rhetoric. Having met with Professor Marmot whilst in opposition, Mr Lansley is aware of the gravity of this problem. He also conveys a genuine desire to tackle the problem and has a grasp of how to do so. These include working with local authorities and the third sector to develop local strategies, as opposed to mandating changes from the centre which often creates antagonism.

So are we to expect a revolution in health inequalities, with real improvements? It seems that to do so would be a little over-optimistic. The fundamental problem with Mr Lansley's approach is that, despite the cross-governmental work on health inequalities and public health, the actual policies delivered by his Party may well not support a reduction in health inequalities.

Mr Lansley believes in working in partnership with industry to achieve better health (though he excludes the tobacco industry form this). But it remains to be seen whether allowing food manufacturers effectively to pay to avoid laws restricting junk food with contributions to Government public health programmes is helpful. As someone who seems to be signed up to Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge movement, one would have thought Mr Lansley would believe that making the bad effects of poor nutrition instantly visible, rather than allowing them to manifest themselves as a pain in the chest and a tingling in the left arm 25 years later, was an indispensible tool.

Handing over responsibility for public health to local authorities at a time when councils are radically reducing their expenditure would seem to be another example of a lack of 'joined-up thinking.'

In Professor Marmot's ideal world, every Government policy would have to pass through a 'fairness filter' to see whether it is likely to decrease health inequalities before it is passed. Mr Lansley solemnly nodded his head at this remark but will make no attempt to work towards it. Though an actual fairness filter may be an unreachable goal, a better approach is needed. Now that health inequalities are on the agenda we cannot allow Government to talk about them without working on them across the board.

Professor Marmot talked about working on 'the causes of the causes.' Treating the health problems leading to early morbidity and mortality is not enough. This means a systematic attempt to decrease social exclusion, improve social cohesion through strong public provision of education, training and employment opportunities, aim for rehabilitation in criminal justice rather than marginalisation, re-instate the voice of the disappointed and apathetic majority into the public sphere through democratic reforms and devote more resources to evidence-based, proactive public health improvement rather than reactive illness management.

This may sound like a left-wing agenda, unachievable because of the impact of business interests and political inertia. If it was, then it would not be a tenable, and arguably fair, approach to reform. But it isn't. Humans tend to believe that whatever is currently the case always was the case and always will be. This mindset is the reason why we think of this approach as a left-wing one.

To make real advances, rather than making the case in the face of opposition from the business community’s ‘wealth creation agenda,’ we need to make this the arena within which differing interests compete. Currently, policy is directed towards creating economic growth – specifically, as measured by GDP. Business advocates and social inequalities campaigners argue that they are best placed to achieve this goal – vying for politicians' favour. As long as the social and cultural ties of politicians with business interests remain so close, there will only be one winner.

But instead, we should accept that for many countries this period of wealth enhancement has had its day. What we need now is for the best possible mental and physical health to be made achievable for the whole population, so that everyone can make use of our material wealth in ways which they feel will improve their lives. And big business can still compete for its own interests, as can trade unions, environmental activists and anyone with a bright idea and a loudspeaker/blog. But there needs to be a public debate as to how they can achieve this goal; how they are best placed to answer this, the burning question of our times.

Fairness is, err, vital...?

2010-10-29T08:39:00.010+01:00

UCL scientist Dr. Jenny Rohn, instigator of the whirlwind Science is Vital campaign that successfully lobbied to protect UK science funding, began the battle to save Britain's scientific excellence with a call to arms on her Nature Networks blog. I say this in order to preface the following comments with a disclaimer - I don't expect the remarks below to be anywhere near as effective (not least because the readership of this blog is probably orders of magnitude smaller than Jenny's!) but I do hope they'll make the reader think...

"It's not fair!" cries the child as his favourite toy is confiscated. As parents will no doubt recognise, even the youngest amongst us have a near-instinctive reaction to anything that is perceived to be unfair - at the risk of invoking some of my own Bad Science, I'd argue that the gut reaction that makes us find unfair things repulsive is hard-wired into our psychology.

So it is with unfairness in the wider world - when we hear of workers in a far-flung country exploited for their labour in terrible conditions, or of the lack of access to basic healthcare that afflicts millions in even the most advanced nations, we immediately recoil at their unfairness.

I felt such a gut reaction yesterday when I learned that the pay awards of Directors in FTSE 100 companies in the UK rose, year-on-year by an eye-watering 55% . Admittedly, in the previous year that saw the UK in the depths of its worst recession in living memory, executive pay went down by a whopping - oh no, wait, make that, derisory - 1.5% (one-point-five, one and a half...).

Consider that in the same year as their total pay went up by 55% (2009-10), the companies these Directors oversee increased in value by around 10.2% (the FTSE Index stood at 3,137 points a year ago and is at 5,648 at the time of writing, with a peak of 5,825 and a trough of 4,838 - data from here).

Consider also the heights from which the 55% increase originated - sky-high pay, rocketing every further upwards.

Boardroom pay has long been a bug-bear for those concerned by growing income inequality - the remuneration packages offered to the bosses of large companies have soared such that they now earn over 130-times as much as the average employee in their corporation - up from a 47-fold multiplier a decade ago, according to the thinktank Compass.

So if the pay gap between workers and bosses has bothered us for so long, why get riled by it now - why is it now that we feel the gap is at its most unfair, if not its widest?

For me, its because of the disconnect between the forthcoming austerity in the public sector - together with the likely consequences for the whole country - and the apparently rampant executive pay in the private; it's the disdainful disregard for the reality that fewer, worse-paying jobs will probably replace those lost through the public spending cuts just as the fabulously wealthy get that little bit wealthier; the iniquity of seeing the (largely white, male) Executive class pull yet further away from the millions of ordinary employees whose livelihoods may well hang in the balance in coming weeks and months.

So - what to do about it? It's often said that private sector remuneration is just that - a matter for the private sector, in which Joe Public neither directly nor via government, has a say. Fine - unless the pay itself becomes an externality - incurring costs on the wider society that otherwise has no input in the Superstar pay market.

What then? Will exhortations from the likes of Business Secretary Vince Cable MP - welcome though they are - suffice in 'bringing executive pay back down to Earth?' Unlikely, given that the pleas for the banks that landed the country - the whole world - in such dire straits have largely fallen on deaf ears. No - what's needed is a visible, effective public show of dissatisfaction - Jenny Rohn called on scientists to march on London to protect their funding; perhaps we all need to march to show just how fed up we are of seeing a vanishingly small minority of already-rich capitalists enrich themselves whilst the rest of society makes do with scraps from their opulent table.

Enough. No more of this.

And for a blogger interested in evidence-based policy, here's the clincher - there's evidence that I'm not some lone conspiracy loon that wants to break the system - there are others out there equally put out by blatant unfairness in the economy. Vodafone's flagship store on London's Oxford Street was forced to shut down on Wednesday due to protests - albeit over tax avoidance and not sky-high executive pay - and there are similar protests planned this weekend.

And it isn't just that a ragged band of Twitter people (or tweeps as I believe we're meant to be referred to...) can shut down one branch of a mega-sized mutli-national - as Johann Hari points out, effective democratic engagement often begins as a protest movement and culminates in positive social progress.

The key - as the Science is Vital story reveals - is to put pressure on those in power in a language they recognise. For politicians, it's about reminding them that if they pursue policies that alienate the electorate, there will be consequences at the ballot box. Equally, for companies engaged in unfair practices - whether tax avoidance or spectacularly high pay - the public could demonstrate just how badly they'd be hurt if their customers deserted them.

Don't ask me how to do this, or where or when - all I'm saying is that

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

UPDATE: The inestimable economics blogger Chris Dillow has a cracking post exploring the relationship between company performance (as indexed by the share of profits in GDP) and executive pay. Worth a read, and worth contemplating just what underlies the apparently growing disconnect between the reality of how companies perform and the surreality of the remuneration for their executives

My letter to Rt. Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP, explaining why #ScienceIsVital

2010-10-12T08:23:00.003+01:00

Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition (you have until 1.30pm on Wednesday October 13th to join them) criticising the government's proposed cuts in the science budget - and over 2,000 scientists, medics and engineers came together at the Treasury last Saturday to demonstrate their support for UK science - you can read a round-up of all the bloggers' reports here. As part of the Science Is Vital campaign we've all been asked to write to our MPs expressing our concerns, ahead of today's Lobby of Parliament where activists will hear from MPs from all three main parties as to their stance on science funding.

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to my MP, Conservative Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith.

Dear Mr. Duncan Smith,

I write to you as one of your constituents, and also as a scientist concerned at the large-scale cuts to the UK science budget that have been proposed by the Coalition government.

I would like you to:
- sign EDM 767 – Science is Vital (http://bit.ly/edm767)
- sign the Science is Vital petition –
(http://scienceisvital.org.uk/sign-the-petition)
- and attend a lobby in Parliament on 12 October (15.30, Committee Room 10).

The evidence is clear that investing in research brings a range of economic and social benefits, and that severe cuts at the very moment that our competitor nations are investing more could jeopardize the
future of UK science.

On Saturday October 9th over 2,000 scientists, engineers and doctors came together outside the Treasury to show their concern at cuts that are planned (http://bit.ly/science-cuts-rally). We made very strong statements of support for UK science, but not purely as a special interest lobby that is seeking to protect jobs.

There is clear evidence that public investment in scientific research can be an excellent driver of economic growth, and the contributions that scientific advances have made to society do not need to be recounted here - suffice to say that the quality of life we enjoy today would not be possible without extensive scientific endeavour in the past, nor will we be able to surmount the significant economic, environmental and social challenges we face without a world-class
science in the future.

Indeed, as things stand the UK makes an enormous contribution to scientific knowledge (we are responsible for 14% of the world's top citations) on a shoestring budget that is just 0.55% of GDP - significantly less than the amount spent on research in most other developed nations.

We understand that the government's finances are not healthy, but in attempting to remedy the deficit by cutting investment in a way that puts at risk one of the most vital sources of growth and prosperity, the Government's strategy has the potential to achieve the opposite.

We must not forget that a dangerous dependence on a volatile financial services sector for growth created the economic crisis we now face; cutting investment in the one sector we must now heavily expand to achieve sustainable, equitable and green growth will simply make our nation's economy more lopsided.

The Science is Vital [http://scienceisvital.org.uk/] coalition, along with the Campaign for Science and Engineering [http://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk], are therefore calling upon the Government to set out a supportive strategy, including public investment goals above or at least in step with economic growth. Without such investment and commitment the UK risks its international reputation, its market share of high-tech manufacturing and services, the ability to respond to urgent and long-term national scientific challenges, and the economic recovery.

I have signed the petition at
http://scienceisvital.org.uk/sign-the-petition/. I hope to speak toyou in person about this on 12 October, where many scientists will aim to remind those in Westminster that the economic future of our country depends on a well-funded and well-supported scientific base.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Teekblog

Some thoughts on why #ScienceIsVital

2010-10-08T21:13:00.006+01:00

Jenny Rohn, scientist and instigator of the Science is Vital campaign, has given the battle to save UK science funding its most memorable slogan (Science - it beats living in caves) - but the article following that magnificent headline is even more valuable as Jenny shares with us her reasons for wanting to be a scientist.

I recall very clearly reading an article - thanks to the wonders of t'interweb I've found it on the New Scientist archives (login required) - during my days as a GCSE student. The article concerned the creation of human artificial chromosomes - synthetic lengths of DNA that host cells can assemble into replicative and heritable genetic packages - which at the time was a truly remarkable achievement. My interest lay less in the chromosomes themselves and more in the implications they raised for a new-fangled therapeutic paradigm that was still in its infancy.

Gene therapy is the delivery of genetic material to cells in order to correct a disease-causing defect, and the artificial chromosomes were seen as a potentially useful tool for gene delivery; according to the New Scientist article,

such chromosomes might provide a way of smuggling beneficial genes into patients undergoing gene therapy. The gene shuttles are usually viruses, genetically engineered to be harmless.

These gene shuttles - or vectors as they're more commonly referred to – have come a long way since the late ‘90s. Unknown to me at the time, just a year earlier a team from UCL (a team I’d end up joining years later) had managed to safely deliver genes to the light-sensitive cells in the retina of mice – at first, just a few cells were reached by the vector, but with much painstaking effort over the years we can now deliver cells to virtually every photoreceptor in an eye, and can use similar vectors to effectively treat a host of conditions from retinal degeneration to haemophilia. Worldwide there are hundreds of clinical trials underway to study the efficacy of such vectors in patients of all ages – a huge leap from the benchside studies of a decade or so ago.

The New Scientist article on artificial chromosomes helped inspire me, convinced me that gene therapy was where my future lay; that I wanted to do my bit to research better treatments for disease, helping to translate the application of basic scientific findings into clinically useful therapies. With hindsight it’s clear that unforeseen technical challenges have thus far limited the use of artificial chromosomes in gene therapy, whereas viral vectors – which come with safety concerns of their own – have become the delivery method of choice for many potentially life-saving therapies.

And here’s the crunch. There was no way that anyone, without the benefit of hindsight, could have known which gene delivery method would be more effective – just like there was no way to predict that Charles K. Kao’s work on primitive fibre optics (for which he won the Nobel prize for physics last year) would revolutionise telecommunications decades later, nor that sticking bits of Scotch tape to pieces of graphite would produce a Nobel either – or indeed whether that research will itself lead to commercially useful applications. And yet this predictive game is exactly what the UK government wants to play – restricting funding to research that is ‘commercially useful.’

There’s just no way of knowing what will end up being commercially lucrative, and even if there were that would be no basis on which for the public sector fund scientific research – you could argue it’s precisely those areas of research that the private sector rejects as not commercially viable that government funds need to focus on.

The unpredictability of the fruits that research will bear is the main reason that I will be at the Treasury tomorrow, joining the masses as we proclaim that Science is Vital. Jenny asked at the end of her article for more suggestions for slogans – I hope Richard Dawkins (and possibly Evan Harris) looks away now, as the most appropriate one I can think of comes from a religious text, the Bhagavad Gita, which roughly translated reads:

You have a right to perform your duty, but not to the fruits your duty may bear; never make the fruits of duty your aim.”

We have a duty to explore fully the world around us through science, but no claim on the fruits that exploration may result in – nor should those fruits be our motivation. Not as catchy as ‘Science – it beats living in caves,’ but so very true nonetheless.

Bloggers interview with Minister of State at the Cabinet Office Oliver Letwin MP

2010-10-02T16:07:00.003+01:00

Forgive the personal anecdote, but I felt you should know that I grew up in Eccles, a less-than-salubrious suburb of not-salubrious-at-all Salford – nestled within the conurbation most of you will know as Manchester. I feel this is relevant to what follows; as the son of Indian immigrants, who grew up in Red-as-Red-can-be territory, I admit to feeling queasy about a coalition with the Conservative party – indeed I'm with Tim Farron when he says he joined the Lib Dems in the '80s for the same reason others joined the Tories – Margaret Thatcher. And yet pragmatic politics and the chance to implement so much of what our party believes in sees Lib Dem MPs sit around the Cabinet table and for the Coalition government – and so it was in the spirit of good faith and cross-party collaboration that a group of bloggers – the Millennium Elephant (accompanied by his loyal Daddy Richard Flowers), Alex Wilcock (better known online as author of Love and Liberty, a Lib Dem blog post of the year award nominee), Councillor Mary Reid and Helen Duffet interviewed Oliver Letwin MP, Minister of State at the Cabinet Office.

Immediately before our interview began Mary and I attended a fringe meeting with Oliver, Danny Alexander MP (Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber discussing 'how the balance of public to private sector jobs is likely to change as the economic recovery progresses' – in other words, the path from economic failure to success. Mr Letwin's views were part classic Tory – the prioritisation of deficit reduction was prominent, although only marginally more so than in Mr. Alexander's eyes – and part 'soggy liberal' - Mr. Letwin's own words. Indeed, there were times in the fringe meeting when I couldn't nail down the real Oliver Letwin – the deficit hawk determined to rid the nation of its debts, or the thinking liberal, conscious of the effect that spending cuts may have on the poorest, not only domestically but throughout the world.

The interview itself that followed help clear a lot up – not least because Mr. Letwin was forthcoming and engaging. We began with a double-barrelled question that was a revised version of one that Alex asks Lib Dem interviewees - what does the Tory party stand for, and why should people vote for you? Mr Letwin rolled the answers to both into a package that wouldn't sound unfamiliar or uncomfortable to any Liberal Democrat - that the Conservatives stood for a shift of power from the centre down to individuals, and that a major reason to vote Tory is that they took the step towards Coalition, demonstrating that they could govern in the national interest as well as in their own. So far as intentions once in government go, then, not a millions miles away from the Lib Dem position on things - not too surprising given the praise Mr. Letwin heaped on his coalition partners, not least Danny Alexander, in the preceding fringe meeting, speaking of their 'intellectual prowess some of us [Tories] would be proud of.

A clever ruse to win favour or genuine admiration? Judge for yourself from what followed...

Richard Flowers followed with a question about timing - why, if the Big Society was to be the Tory manifesto's centrepiece, did we not hear about it a year, two years ago? Mr. Letwin contended that the media simply didn't bite - until a few weeks before the election, when they suddenly shone a light on what the Big Society would mean for public service delivery.

In addition, Mr. Letwin told us that despite Labour's talk of decentralisation, they retained a faith that central government was the key to reforming the nation; something that the Coalition parties hold to be untrue, and that, in Mr. Letwin's view, would be seen as a truism in five years time.

Speaking of the Big Society, Helen asked whether people really did want to take control of services for themselves; don't most folks just want the government to run schools/hospitals/parks and so on? Letwin's response was simple - services should be run by those who know how. Fine, said Mary (who retired in 2010 as a councillor in Kingston upon Thames); what about democratic accountability - what is the role of local government if the Big Society is rolled out? Mr. Letwin used the opportunity to wax lyrical about empowering local government by releasing them from central diktat; that accountability would increase once payment by results was introduced; that by increasing patient information, there would be 'no decision about me, without me' in the NHS; and that with local authorities acting as advocates for people in a competitive marketplace, it would be like having a lawyer represent your best interests in court.

This is where I feel Mr. Letwin's Conservative vision has a lot to answer for; it's all very well offering choice and competition in public services, as long as everyone - and that means everyone - has the capability to exercise said choice - because failing that there's the risk the vulnerable will be left behind. I noted an absence detail in how the poor, the marginalised, the vulnerable will fare in the Big Society - just as well we're in government with them then :-).

A question I raised gave rise to an interesting discourse; Mr. Letwin criticised Labour's 'faith' in centralised institutions - how do we know the Big Society isn't faith-based as well? Well, Mr. Letwin's answer was enough to keep me interested: this, Oliver said, is where evidence-based policy-making comes in; once the reforms we heard about came in, their effect must be reviewed - and only on the basis of efficacy should they be continued. This reliance on evidence and not dogma was repeated when Richard pushed the line of questioning to the fiscal tightening to come - yes said Mr. Letwin, we must make sure that cuts are monitored, so that we base policy decisions on what works, not what we think will work.

He then said that savings can come in the form of structural policy changes rather than just cutting services - what I found interesting was that the example he gave was that of drugs policy; that in shifting drugs policy to harm reduction, and introducing localised payment by result, we could save millions on prison bills, emergency hospitalisations and so on. Enlightened, evidence-based, liberal - you had to remind yourself you were hearing all this from a Tory...

The most interesting of all answers was to questions from Alex and Helen on the differences/commonalities between our two parties - Alex asked whether, having seen the democratic and deliberative way the Lib Dems make policy, will he recommend changing how the Conservatives work? He stopped short of saying yes but was full of praise again for Lib Dem procedures - comparing our democratic structure to the Tory 'authoritarianism tempered by regicide.' It was good to hear too that if Lib Dems passed into policy something that clashed with Conservative thinking - as in fact we had earlier in the day with the Motion calling for equal marriage for lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender people - that if Lib Dem Ministers pushed for it to become government policy then Tories would have to discuss it, in good faith, and find ways of implementing it. Heartening!

I end (if anyone's still reading...) with comments Mr. Letwin made when Helen asked him why, seeing as though he was a Young Liberal at university and he has so many views aligned with those of his coalition partners, how come he ended up a Conservative? Well, he said after a long thoughtful pause, I'll only be able to answer that once I write my memoires- until then, let's just say that I have enough in common with my fellow Conservatives to make it work. Suggests to me that the description of Mr. Letwin as a soggy liberal is taken as compliment!

I know that, had I met someone from the Tory far right it may have been a difference experience - but I have to say that if the cordial, enlightened and mature attitude of Mr. Letwin is anything to go by, the Coalition has a really healthy future ahead of it.

BREAKING NEWS: MigrationWatch use libel threat to silence criticism from Sally Bercow

2010-10-01T16:42:00.005+01:00

News just in from the Libel Reform Coalition and the outstanding lawyer and blogger David Allen Green: Sally Bercow, Labour political activist and wife of House of Commons Speaker John, has been threatened with a libel suit by the right-wing immigration think-tank MigrationWatch - Mrs. Bercow is being sued for allegedly libellous comments she made relating to a Daily Express article that quoted a MigrationWatch study linking immigration to unemployment in the UK.

According to the Index on Censorship blog, Mrs. Bercow was on a Sky News programme

commenting on a Daily Express story migration and youth unemployment [when] Bercow said the article grossly oversimplified the migration debate, and that such oversimplification was “dangerous propaganda”. She claimed that arguments linking immigration to unemployment had been used by fascists such as Adolf Hitler and British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley. The Express article had quoted figures from a MigrationWatch study.

Note that it is MigrationWatch suing Mrs. Bercow, not the Express - details as to the Express's position on the issue are unclear at this stage.

This use of a libel threat to silence what appears to be perfectly legitimate criticism of opinion is yet another stark reminder of the urgency with which English and Welsh libel laws must be reformed. If we are to ensure that free speech is not suppressed by those wishing to silence 'open and honest debate' - a concept that, according to author and blogger Richard Wilson, is well-known to MigrationWatch's Chair Andrew Green - then the ease with which free speech can be silenced in this country must be addressed.

It just isn't right to call for an open and honest debate, particularly on divisive and contentious issues such as immigration, only then to suppress the very debate you call for by invoking draconian legal threats against those who hold opposing views.

Nor is it right that the High Court has become the arena where disputes, discussions and debates are settled - just ask Simon Singh, Peter Wilmshurst, Rachel Ehrenfeld or any of the myriad victims of our odious libel laws. Given the centrality of transparent public reasoning in a vibrant democracy, the use of libel legislation to silence critical debate is nothing short of illiberal and unjust posturing - against which I wish Mrs. Bercow all the best as she defends her right to an opinion - and our collective right to free speech with it.

Bloggers interview with Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne MP

2010-09-26T10:58:00.011+01:00

The Liberal Democrat Conference in Liverpool last week was different from previous Lib Dem congresses on so many grounds – the stricter security, the media attention – mostly welcome – the Northern accents... But perhaps the most notable difference between this Conference and earlier incarnations was th

e thrilling fact that so many familiar faces had recently take on new roles in government – campaigns volunteers were now Parliamentary Assistants, think-tank wonks were now Sp
ecial Advisers (SPADs), and most impressively of all, the word Shadow was conspicuously absent from so many job titles – no longer were we to interview our opposition spokespeople, but Ministers and Secretaries of State.

So it was that I joined the Millennium Elephant (and his Daddy Richard Flowers, joint winners later that night of the Lib Dem Blog of the Year that I helped judge), Alex Foster (councillor, blogger and splendidly bearded Lib Dem), Helen Duffet (co-editor of Lib Dem Voice, bloggist and PPC for Romford), Joe Jordan (feisty author of politicomaniac.net, another BOTY nominee), and Alex Folkes (aka A Lanson Boy, and winner at of the best blog by a Lib Dem holding office) to interview Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne MP.

We started with a chance for Chris – who seemed relaxed, confident and really engaging from the word go – to outline his vision for the greening of our economy in response to Richard's first question, “Nick Clegg told us that it will be a big Autumn for green policy – could you expand?'

Chris told us that the Green Deal, proposed by the Liberal Democrats in our manifesto, will be implemented in full – that is to say, every home in the country will be fully insulated to the highest standards of energy efficiency, at no immediate cost to the home owner. The implications of this policy really are difficult to overstate – with around a quarter of our carbon emissions emanating from the home, a concerted drive to insulate homes will of course boost the UK's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint; but along the way it will create some 250,000 jobs, across the country, pump-priming a sector of the economy we would all be happy to see expand. In addition, as there will be no up-front cost to home-owners and subsidies for those living in fuel poverty, the policy will ensure equal access across demographic groups – essential if take-up is to be high. Additionally, the Green Deal will apply to small business premises too – a radical departure from previous thinking on the remit of government green policy.

In promoting the Green deal, Chris made two salient points. Firstly, I asked whether the scheme will be extended to all publicly owned buildings at some point – to which the Secretary of State replied that central government buildings had already begun to reduce their energy usage by implementing changes having signed up to the 10:10 pledge to reduce CO₂ emissions this year; changes such as retrofitting movement sensors to replace light switches to make sure light-bulbs are only on when they're needed. Secondly, he emphasised that studies show the best way to reduce energy usage is to reduce demand, not just by focussing on methods of energy production – critical when it came to the N-word – nuclear – as raised by Alex Folkes.

Chris reminded us that whilst between Labour and the Conservatives there is a Parliamentary majority for the building of new nuclear power stations, not only has the abstention of Lib Dem MPs been built into the coalition agreement, the only way these nuclear stations will be built is explicitly without public subsidy – and entirely privately-funded stations will happen, delivered as part of the Coalition deal. But the absence of public subsidy is crucial – it should free up government to focus on paying for renewable energy sources, in which the UK's record is woeful – Chris lamented that with only Malta and Luxembourg producing a lower proportion of their energy from renewables, the UK needs to move from 3% to 15% to meet its legal target as set by the EU, and fast – so in delivering this target on renewables we will show that a low-carbon economy is possible, not just rhetorically but practically.

Joe Jordan moved onto more international territory, by asking what the aims were from the forthcoming climate summit in Mexico were; whether we could expect a 'Copenhagen-II,' or something different. It was clear from Chris' answer that the failure of the Obama regime to push climate change legislation domestically will scupper the chances of a global deal on reducing carbon emissions in Mexico – but that nonetheless Chris will push hard for a united European position, which will help 'crystallise the thoughts of our EU colleagues' on aiming for a more ambitious 30% reduction in emissions and not 20% as is currently the aim. Another interesting point raised was how certain nations (*ahem* China *ahem*) were being irrational about reporting on their progress on climate change on grounds of sovereignty – Chris said, “Having come from the economic area... I don't see why carbon emissions should be more sensitive in sovereignty terms than your foreign exchange reserves or balance of payments or the general development of your economy.' Can't argue with that – but the likes of China and India may well try! The whole area of international cooperation was one where the most work is needed, and Joe's persistent questioning was well-directed and well dealt-with.

Alex Foster then asked about the government's stance on renewable energy generation, referring to a fascinating scheme in his council's jurisdiction – Chris admitted that the Renewable Heat Incentive may be a victim of the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review but if the overall incentives for generating renewable energy remains then schemes to do so should go ahead. He rejected the idea of giving local authority targets for generating renewable energy – on the reasonable grounds that Southwark and Somerset have different geographies and hence capability to deliver – but with the frankly ridiculous ban on councils using feed-in tariffs being overturned, good local authorities will continue to produce renewables.

We ended on an interesting note regarding cooperation between Lib Dems and the Conservatives – that even though 'Liberalism is the only nineteenth-Century -ism left standing,' that particularly on green issues with the need to encourage investment 'over massively long time-periods,' it is crucial that the politicians show cross-party consensus instead of playing party-politics – a mature stance that was a recurring theme throughout Conference.

All in all I have to say just how positive an experience this interview was – not only was Chris approachable and open, he showed genuine appetite for the task at hand, enormous though it is. Commentators have questioned just how influential the Lib Dems are in this Coalition; if the agenda on energy and climate change is anything to go by, we can safely say that not only is our stewardship of the green economy is good hands, Liberal Democrat influence on government policy is alive, well and vibrant – thanks in no small part to Chris Huhne.

Libel laws stifle debate - will the coalition stop the chill?

2010-09-16T12:52:00.003+01:00

It's almost exactly a year since the Liberal Democrats became the first political party to commit to reforming the outdated and unbalanced libel laws of England and Wales - a year that has seen a hugely effective public campaign for libel reform culminating in Lord Lester's Defamation Bill being debated during a Second Reading in the House of Lords - with the Coalition government now firmly committed to reforming libel legislation, the momentum behind the campaign has never been stronger.

Nonetheless the urgent need to rebalance the law in favour of free speech requires us to keep applying pressure - not least to ensure that, having created the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for reform, the laws that emerge are robust enough to transform libel law from a chilling instrument that silences debate to a last-resort for those seeking redress for genuine reasons.

Which is why, at the upcoming Liberal Democrat annual conference, the Libel Reform Coalition will lead a debate on whether and how the government will deliver on its pledge to reform libel laws. Chaired by free speech campaigner and former Lib Dem MP Dr. Evan Harris, the panel will include John Kampfner from Index on Censorship and Tracey Brown from Sense about Science, whose organisations have done so much to further the cause of free speech and open scientific debate in recent months.

Joining the panel will be Liberal Democrat peer and Minister for Justice Lord Tom McNally, who will share his vision for libel reform and discuss how the government plans to enact new libel laws in the next Parliamentary session (2011-12).

If I understand it correctly the event itself will only be open to party members, although as with last year's meeting I'll try my best to record it in some fashion and make it available here.

If you're a party member, please do make sure you attend this exciting meeting - if not, please look out in the near future for coverage of what was discussed - and either way please, please please stick this post on Twitter, Facebook, the nearest tree or lamppost - we'd like as many people to hear about the event as possible!

The politics of science funding, in two parts: Part Two - what 'the scientific community' does next

2010-09-09T15:09:00.014+01:00

On Wednesday September 8th 2010 the Business Secretary Dr. Vince Cable laid out his plans for the future of science and technology funding in the UK in a speech as Queen Mary, University of London. I'd like to contribute to the debate the speech has sparked, in two parts - Part One looked at two concepts likely to be at the heart of the Coalition Government's approach to science funding; the Spin-Off, and commercially useful research. Part Two focuses on the science community's reaction to Dr. Cable's speech, and the implications for the relationship between science, government and the economy.

There has been an extensive, and on the whole negative, reaction to the Business Secretary's speech on the future of science funding - here are my thoughts on that reaction.

William Cullerne Brown, over on his Equisite Life blog, has gathered much of the reaction as found in the immediate aftermath of Dr. Cable's speech in a timeline-style description of a day on which the Business Secretary went from Saint Vince to, in Cullerne Brown's words,

an object of ridicule and loathing

As you can see from his post, much of the reaction was indignant and laced with (gallows?) humour - Andy Lewis, author of the excellent Quackometer blog, lead the way with jokes about cutting the value of pi and the number of planets in the solar system (because, of course, Neptune and Mercury were not proving to be "commercially useful").

Bloggers such as telescoper (the physicist author of the In The Dark blog) and Dr. Evan Harris on the Guardian Science Blogs took a somewhat different tack, dissecting particular elements of the Cable speech, focussing especially on the claims that a high proportion of grants are awarded for research that is not of sufficiently high quality - a disturbing claim that does not stand up to much scrutiny as Drs. Harris and Stephen Curry showed.

Given the high stakes in the battle over science funding I can understand the use of cutting satire for emphasis - but, without wanting to be a killjoy, I'd like to see a somewhat more constructive stream of criticism emerge, and for good reason.

For better or for worse, scientific endeavour in this country depends largely on public funding and/or subsidy - the government remains one of the (if not the) central pillars of funding for science, through the Research Councils and various associated bodies. It is vital, for the interests of science and those of government, that a wide schism doesn't appear in the relationship between the two - and given recent the turbulent times, epitomised by the sacking of Prof. David Nutt from his post as chief drugs advisor amongst other troubling episodes - these are precarious times for the way government and the scientific establishment interacts.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's vital (as the Twitter hashtag #ScienceIsVital shows) that scientists communicate to the those in government, particularly to those in the Treasury, that research is a worthwhile endeavour that deserves continued backing. There is every need to campaign against arbitrary measures of economic utility; against the impression that lots of money is spent on non-excellent work; and against the likelihood of damaging cuts in the (relatively meagre) science budget when so much public spending (think Trident, many PFI schemes, subsidies to bonus-paying banks and so on...) is worthy of being sacrificed first.

So let's gather the forces of scientific thought and campaign like never before - but not in a way that borders on the ad hominem against political personalities; not because scientists represent just another special interest group, frightened of change and protective of our comfortable status; or because science is a sacred cow that on some moral principle should never be introspective and reflect on how to make better use of its resources (ironically it's the ring-fencing of the NHS budget, because it's seen as untouchable, that's lead to science coming under such pressure).

Rather, let's make out voices heard because the evidence shows that spending on science generates wealth; because scientific research has enabled society to progress in myriad ways, from improved health and well-being to communications technology; because despite its shortcomings and imperfections, science remains the best way humans have for understanding the world around us and as world leaders in scientific discovery it falls to the UK to safeguard a legacy of well-funded research facilities for future generations.

The politics of science funding, in two parts: Part One - Spin (offs)

2010-09-09T08:24:00.010+01:00

On Wednesday September 8th 2010 the Business Secretary Dr. Vince Cable laid out his plans for the future of science and technology funding in the UK in a speech as Queen Mary, University of London. I'd like to contribute to the debate the speech has sparked, in two parts - Part One looks at two concepts likely to be at the heart of the Coalition Government's approach to science funding; the Spin-Off, and commercially useful research. Part Two will focus on the science community's reaction to Dr. Cable's speech, and the implications for the relationship between science, government and the economy.

Spin – where science, business and government interact.

This summer has been full of spin, from Graeme Swann flooring Pakistan’s batting order, to the political type relating more to budget deficits, and free schools – perhaps more prominent than ever in our brave new world of coalition government. But it seems one type of spin – or rather, spin-off – may be in retreat; moreover, opinion is divided over the merits its apparent decline.

Spin-off companies, start-up business ventures (usually) originating in academic institutions, are a means to commercialise the fruits of research; patenting molecules, materials and more to cash in on the often lucrative intellectual property that scientific research can give rise to.

Not unnatural, one might think; having invested millions in highly specialised research, institutions look to profit from the sale of resultant technology – many say that’s as it should be. However, some see the attraction of IP-driven commercialisation as putting the profit motive before research aims, making science subservient to commercial interests – often to the detriment of scientific and medical progress. It’s this subversion of the scientific process which drives critics of the spin-off model as it’s currently applied, who rightly worry about academic independence.

So why the interest in spin-offs and the links between academic research and business? The rise and fall of the spin-off has largely mirrored the availability of easy credit in recent years, with new companies far thinner on the ground since the financial crash. This matter all the more given the financial pressures research institutions are likely to face in the near future: fans of the spin-off will advocate greater, more lucrative commercialisation of research, arguing that institutions can offset government spending cuts, whilst critics will fear even greater dependence on market forces and a greater focus on what makes money rather than what we as a society deem of importance.

The Business Secretary Vince Cable, under whose auspices university and science funding falls, argues that as central government funding for science is cut, institutions should take three mitigating actions: one, concentrate on research that is rated as internationally excellent, two, focus on commercially useful research. and three, increase the rate at which they spin-off their research into commercial entities and products. Two broad problems arise.

Firstly, internationally excellent and commercially useful research is made possible by the unglamorous work of so-called lesser labs, on whose shoulders the giants of world-beating science stand; take away the work that is, in Dr. Cable’s words, ‘neither commercially useful nor theoretically outstanding,’ and you risk the whole enterprise of scientific endeavour from collapsing (and this is to say nothing of who or what decides on what is of either commercially useful nor theoretically outstanding). Of course, the way to judge Dr. Cable’s position on the level of funding is to see what comes out of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR); but as Dr. Evan Harris wrote in analysing Dr. Cable's speech,

it is hard to measure the theoretical breakthroughs let alone the commercial utility at the outset, and secondly because – as Cable says elsewhere in his speech – there is a false dichotomy between the theoretical and the commercial
which makes it all the more important that the CSR doesn't impose an arbitrary standard of commercial utility on publicly funded science.

Secondly, tying research to commercial interests risks recreating the private-sector’s profit-driven approach in the public sphere; society would in fact benefit if publicly-funded research focussed precisely on those areas which corporate chiefs deem commercially unviable, such as mental health, technology to mitigate climate change and eradication of infectious diseases in the Third World.

Which is not to say that links between commerce and research are to be avoided – there are many successful examples of such links, particularly in the Research Triangle in North Carolina and Palo Alto’s faculty-business links. But it’s crucial that spin-offs remain just that – side-effects if you will, not the goal itself. Because a world without knowledge that cannot be patented would be a poorer place, perhaps not in the narrow economic sense that scientists now fear their work will be judged upon, but in a way that makes it that much harder for the Newtons and Darwins of tomorrow to expand the horizons of human understanding – something that’s hard to put a price on.

Today, I am ashamed to be British (#IanTomlinson)

2010-07-22T14:41:00.008+01:00

No, the title isn't a cynical and sensationalist ploy to get more hits on this blog - I had rather hoped never to have to write such negative sentiments, but on this day I really do feel ashamed to live in a country where the rule of law and the pursuit of justice feel, on occasion, to be foreign concepts.

The facts first. Fact: on April 1st, 2009: at a demonstration in London showing the public's displeasure at the policies pursued by the G20, Ian Tomlinson was struck by a police officer and subsequently died. Although a post-mortem examination conducted immediately after the incident attributed the 47 year-old's death to a heart attack, two subsequent analyses - one conducted on behalf of the police officer in question - concluded that Tomlinson had in fact died of

abdominal haemorrhage from blunt force trauma to the abdomen

Fact: On July 22nd 2010 - which, with bitterly coincident timing, is the 5th anniversary of Jean Charles de Menzes' death at the hands of the Met Police - the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that 'Officer A' as he is now known will not face any charges in relation to Tomlinson's death - citing that there is no realistic prospect of a conviction against PC 'A' for any offence arising from the matter investigated.

Now, the opinion.

Whether or not PC 'A' actually caused Tomlinson's death is debatable - but that's the point, it ought to be debated, with all available evidence made a matter of public consumption, before a court of law - not pre-judged by a Director of Public Prosecutions that appears to pre-empt how a jury would view the apparently conflicting evidence from different post-mortem analyses in saying that

the CPS would simply not be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that there was a causal link between Mr Tomlinson's death and the alleged assault upon him.

I understand the CPS has a function in preventing frivolous and speculative prosecutions being actioned - but in a matter of such grave public interest, surely the evidence gathered should at the very least be put to the test in a public court in front of a jury?

I am very much aware of how the reader could criticise my choice of headline for this post - that the death, albeit in tragic and suspicious circumstances, of one person does not constitute grounds for feeling ashamed of being British - that despite it all, we don't live in some crackpot backwards hell-hole where atrocities on unimaginable scales are a daily occurrence; that we do live - issue of freedom of expression aside - in a free country, a country to be proud of.

To which my answer is simple. The fact that we live in a nation that thinks of itself as a bastion of freedom, an exemplar of democratic society, a place where we are free to pursue our hopes and dreams free from oppression or persecution - the fact that we export, often at the barrel of a gun, the ideal of an open democratic society united by the rule of law, all this only makes it that much more galling that justice can be denied to victims of what appears to be the brutal actions of an unaccountable police force.

For if the police cannot be held to account for what appears to be a death they are responsible for - in the face of clear documentary evidence of their involvement - where do the limits of their powers lie? Remember, I am not arguing that Officer 'A's actions necessarily caused Tomlinson's death - just that the decision on his guilt or otherwise should be taken by an open court - without that, we'll forever see this as yet another case where those charged with upholding the rule of law appear to be above its remit.

A big day for #libelreform in Parliament

2010-07-09T14:37:00.007+01:00

Lord Lester's Defamation Bill received its Second Reading in the House of Lords today, footage of which is available in full on the Parliament TV channel.

In an encouraging development, Lord Tom McNally announced that the government is to give priority to the reform of English and Welsh libel law by bringing forward a Libel Reform Bill in the 2011/2012 Parliamentary session following consultation this summer.

The libelreform.org campaign team have responded by welcoming Lord Mcnally's announcement, urging broad and bold reforms based on but not restricted to those put forward by Lord Lester. Commenting on the prospects for reform following today's debate, Jonathan Heawood - Director of English PEN and co-author of the PEN/Index on Censorship/Sense about Science report Free Speech is not For Sale - said:

Until the Libel Reform Bill is actually passed, the right to free speech in this country will be conditional on writers or scientists having deep pockets or a willingness to fight for years through the Courts. It should no longer be a matter for judges but Parliamentarians should decide on how we balance free expression and reputation.

As I've been busy with my day job I haven't had time to watch the debate myself, but have been following the #libelreform Tweets on and off - from which it appears many members of the Upper House have grasped the need for wholesale reform, and is now appears as though the Coalition government is taking the defence of free speech seriously enough to map out its plans for new legislation to be passed.

Suffice it to say at this stage that the Second Reading of Lord Lester's Bill is a significant milestone in the movement to reform the outdated and unfair libel laws of this country -let's hope the momentum for change continues so that free speech and honest reporting are protected.

#libelreform is necessary to protect free speech and scientific enquiry - but is it sufficient?

2010-07-05T08:34:00.009+01:00

There's little doubt that English and Welsh libel law needs to be reformed to redress the balance between those looking to protect their reputation and those engaging in an open, free discourse - a balance that is currently so skewed towards the former that recent years have seen cases such as Singh vs BCA, NMT vs Wilmshurst and Michael Jackson's bodyguard vs Channel 4.

There's also little doubt that the law as it currently stands would benefit not only from incremental changes but rather from a complete overhaul, beginning from first principles that enshrine in law the right to free speech - and as I wrote recently, Lib Dem peer Lord Lester has launched a draft Defamation Bill that attempts to do just that.

The question for Parliament, as it debates Lord Lester's Bill later this week, is the nature of those first principles - on what grounds do we base our new defamation laws, where do we look to for a legal framework that retains the right of redress in cases of genuine harm whilst defending the right to critical commentary and honest reporting?

Many people answer this question by rather simply saying, 'Look to the USA.' Indeed, at last year's Lib Dem fringe meeting on libel reform that I chaired, the journalist Nick Cohen made a strong argument for copying America's approach to libel, with the intention of lifting the chilling effect of our current laws.

I do wonder, however, if we're looking across the Atlantic with rose-tinted binoculars.

For news reaches us, via Jack of Kent in my case, that the excellent skeptical website Quackwatch has been threatened with libel action by Doctors Data, a company offering a medical test for heavy metals. Further details emerge via the actionforautism blog, and from Quackwatch themselves. The offending article is available here, and is a detailed explanation why the tests that Doctors Data offer are useless at best, harmful and fraudulent at worst.

Now I don't claim to know a great deal about heavy metal testing in the context of autism, other than what I can infer from a brief scan of the published medical literature - and from this it would appear that a urine test for heavy metals, undertaken at a short interval after administration of a chelator (an agent that binds to said heavy metals and forces their excretion), may not be an appropriate way to assess the role of mercury or other metals in autism.

Trouble is, the only way a non-specialist like me can readily find out is through the work of bloggers and journalists willing to report on the use of these tests, telling us whether such testing is legitimate or, pardon the pun, bogus. And with all the publicity surrounding English libel law, it perhaps wouldn't be surprising if Quackwatch had somehow been sued for libel here - and yet this action is being brought in a jurisdiction with apparently superior legislative protection for free speech and open enquiry.

Now of course no libel law could ever prevent every single ill-advised threat of libel, nor could any piece of legislation perfectly prevent companies silencing critical thought. But the lesson for me from this episode is a lesson that classical liberals have known since time immemorial - that government cannot possibly legislate away all our ills, that there is a limit to the efficacy of lawmaking by government. Even if our libel laws were to be reformed, cases such as Doctors Data vs Quackwatch would likely emerge, as a result of lawyers finding other legal pretexts to engage in reputation management - better known to you and I as silencing those we disagree with.

So for those of us interested in reforming libel law not for its own sake but to help create a culture of free debate and open evidence-based enquiry, the lesson must be that the battle does not stop at the passing of a new Defamation Bill, but rather continues on beyond Parliament into the very heart of public discourse, because whilst libel law reform may be essential for protecting free speech and scientific enquiry, sadly it may not be sufficient.

Just imagine if Mosquito Devices targeted [insert name of minority group here]

2010-06-29T13:27:00.012+01:00

Breaking News from the Year 2030:

Scientists and police forces have today announced the deployment of an electronic device designed to keep public spaces clear of all black people. They say the discovery two years ago of a gene, a variant of which is found exclusively in black populations, enabled the development of their device - which during testing was found to effectively disperse crowds of blacks by literally making their skin crawl, leaving all non-black peoples unaffected. The Government's Chief of Keeping us Safe said that all police forces would soon possess these devices, reassuring whites everywhere that they would never again have to live with the menace posed by their coloured counterparts.

Preposterous? Maybe. Outlandish? Scientifically I'd say almost certainly (usual caveats about never-say-never apply...). And yet just such as device is already in widespread use, albeit targeting a different sub-group of the population; young persons, or as I believe they are colloquially referred to, da yoof innit.

We would all instinctively recoil at the very notion of a device, policy or law targeting any group that was defined by its ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or class - and yet councils up and down the country are using an equally illiberal tool to combat what is seen as the scourge of da yoof innit hanging around, lookin' 'ard, frontin', chillin' etc - a tool that discriminates not on the basis of skin colour or sex, but on the biology of our auditory systems. I refer of course to the notorious Mosquito Device, thousands of which have been deployed to deter da yoof innit congregating in case they, err, steal your babies and commit teh crimez.

So what is it that makes these devices socially acceptable - if not amongst European politicians then at least amongst the UK's local authorities, a quarter of whom have used the Mosquito to repel young persons, and other organisations that have bought the 3,500 age-specific sound-blasters sold in this country? As the George Monbiot article I just linked to suggests (in a cracking tongue-in-cheek parody of an article that makes me wonder whether he's trying to win #SpoofJenks or interview for a position at the Daily Fail...), we somehow can stomach blasting high-frequency noise at those under the age of 25 - never mind that pesky Gaussian probability of 26-year olds being tortured or rowdy 24 year-olds keeping calm and carrying on - but wouldn't (I guess) ask our local authorities to install boxes that scare off women, or Arabs, or gays, or infidels, or pie-eating left-handed mustachioed gardening enthusiasts or any other group. So much so that even a satirical article like Monbiot's wouldn't get past the lawyers had the phrase 'young people' been replaced by 'blacks' or 'midgets.'

Still, it does appear that the legality of such illiberal devices is being called into question, and not a moment too soon - let's be sure to kick up a fuss until they are outlawed for good, being careful not to be too boisterous lest we're targeted by a device that only campaigners for free expression are vulnerable to...

Cuts we can all be on board with

2010-06-26T19:48:00.003+01:00

A quick post, just to get someting off my chest.

Libdemvoice brings us news that the Treasury wants our suggestions as to spending cuts we'd like to see. Just by way of coincidence, I happen to be visiting my parents right now who bring me news, via their local paper, of just the sort of George Osborne and Danny Alexander may be looking for - an item of spending that it would prove popular to cut.

For it seems that Mr. David Dalton, the Chief Executive of Salford Royal Hospitals Trust (whose flagship, Hope Hospital, my folks live opposite), benefits not only from his extravagant remuneration (reputed to be £220,000 per annum), but from a BMW 5 Series that costs the taxpayer an additional £8,584. Add this to his deputy's salary (£150,000) and his 5-Series - another £6,156 - and a picture begins to build of supposed public servants not only earning astronomical sums, but being plied with additional perks.

Now I know I sound like an indignant tabloid twaddle-merchant, but WHY IN THE NAME OF SANITY DOES A GUY ON NEARLY QUARTER OF A MILLION POUND SALARY NEED A SUBSIDISED CAR?! And if you can somehow find me justification for giving Mr. Dalton a car paid for by the public, why on Earth get him one that costs £715 every single month? Yes there is an argument to say that because private-sector pay has grown monstrously over the last decade or so, public-sector pay (and perks) need to keep up - but would we really struggle to find someone willing to do Mr. Dalton's job on half the salary and with no car on top of that? Seriously, if he isn't spending some of his quarter of a million pounds on a car, what is he spending it on...?! [/tabloid-style impression]

So here's my first suggestion for savings to be made - swiftly passing over the inconvenient detail that Osborne's budget calls for no savings from the Department of Health budget - cut the ridiculous amounts of pay the likes of Mr. Dalton get, and if you don't find the courage to do that, at least cut his Beemer - pretty much everyone could agree on that, no...?

Satire is no use with Tredinnick and Dorries on the Health Select Committee

2010-06-26T16:38:00.004+01:00

Earlier this month I blogged about the Conservative MP David Tredinnick and his continued attempts to undermine rationalist and evidence-based policy. Mr. Tredinnick's insistence on the validity of a host of alternative therapies, despite there being - to coin a phrase - not a jot of evidence to justify his claims, could until recently have been regarded as a minor irritation, Tredinnick himself as an eccentric voice far from Westminster's mainstream. That was then.

The last week have been most exciting for the Bosworth MP, and most concerning for those of us who remain of the view that magic water and chi meridians have no place in a publicly funded evidence-based healthcare system. First of all came the almost literally unbelievable news that Mr. Tredinnick has been elected as a Conservative member of the Commons Select Committee on Health; and that he is to be joined by Nadine Dorries MP, to form what is surely the most unlikely double-act since Lampard and Gerrard were picked for England's midfield.

Partly to avoid the threat of legal action, and partly to demonstrate I can be a grown up, I want to make clear that I do not for one minute doubt Tredinnick and Dorries' sincerity; far from questioning their character, I do call into question their ability to be effective members of a Select Committee charged with safeguarding the nation's health. jdc325's Stuff and Nonsense blog and Martin Robbins' piece in The Guardian cover many of the reasons their appointment may prove problematic. You don't need me to tell you why it's dangerous to have proponents of sugar pills taking evidence on health policy, nor why the Health Select Committee probably isn't the most appropriate place for an MP who simply does not understand what constitutes evidence, particularly when it comes to the contentious issue of abortion.

Seeing supporters of dubious nonsense appointed to such a crucial Committee may be galling, but that's part of the beauty of our Parliamentary system - no amount of complaining will alter that. Indeed, Mr. Tredinnick is on a roll when it comes to making use of the democratic machinery that Parliament affords him - following his appointment to the Health Committee, he set about publishing four Early Day Motions promoting the use of homeopathy (which you can read here, here, here and here) to treat conditions ranging from mild depression to breast cancer. Do take a look at them and draw your own conclusions - all I'll say is that I wonder how the residents of Bosworth feel, seeing their MP giving such pressing priority to promoting unproven and otherwise discredited quackery so soon after resumption of Parliament.

Credit where its due and all that - at least the EDMs in question do mention peer-reviewed published studies. Trouble is, there's peer-reviewed published studies and then there's peer-reviewed published studies - some more reliable than others. It's all very well citing publications as evidence to back your claims, but only if the studies are of acceptable quality - and suffice to say the ones chosen by Mr. Tredinnick are flawed - to such an extent that the claims made in the EDMs simply don't stand up to scrutiny. And we're not talking technical flaws visible only to experts in the relevant fields - but gaping great holes in some cases, meaning any claims based on them must be viewed with caution.

Given the power of the internets, no sooner were Tredinnick's EDMs published did the skeptical blogo-Twitter-o-sphere spring into action - prompted by the Cambridge MP Julian Huppert, and the former (it still hurts...) Oxford West and Abingdon MP Evan Harris, the hashtag #homeopathyEDMs quickly became the focus for a considered rebuttal to Mr. Tredinnick's original Motions - which had already been signed by a handful of seemingly credulous MPs - and are ready for your perusal.

Again, draw your own conclusions about whether someone with such clear disregard for quality scientific evidence is a suitable member of a body responsible for setting national health policy - what I learned from this episode is that with speed and great clarity the EDM amendments have exposed Tredinnick's flawed reasoning; it remains to be seen of course how many signatures each of the Motions and their amendments attract, and how the Health Select Committee's new members fare in their roles - this blogger, and no doubt so many others, will be watching with interest.

Lord Lester's draft Defamation Bill is launched

2010-06-22T20:59:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I had the good fortune to attend an event celebrating the launch of Lord Anthony Lester QC's Defamation Bill (pdf here), held at London's Free Word Centre. Here are my thoughts...

Lord Lester got together a team of senior lawyers to produce the draft legislation following a string of high-profile libel cases that demonstrated the chilling suppression of free speech affected by English and Welsh libel law - not least Singh vs. BCA, a case that collapsed so spectacularly in April. The result is a detailed Bill aimed at restoring the balance between free expression and the right to a reputation, currently so skewed towards the latter.

As a non-lawyer (a significant minority at today's launch), I really appreciated the openness that Lord Lester showed in discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the Bill as it stands - no grandstanding, no hyperbole, just an understated and assured argument for more robust protection in the face of libel action.

The Bill begins by establishing a so-called Reynolds defence, laying out the conditions of a defence in the case of matters of public interest - interestingly, applying such a defence

irrespective of whether the publication [being complained of] contains statements of fact or inferences or opinions.

There then follow clauses establishing defences of honest opinion and truth - sections that codify for the first time the right fair comment.

Other interesting clauses clarify that persons acting as conduits or intermediaries for potentially defamatory statements would not be held liable - a relief for bloggers and forum administrators alike. Also included is a rebuttal of the so-called Duke of Brunswick rule, whereby every time a defamatory statement is reproduced a new libel is committed - which in the internet age is simply preposterous.

In the discussion afterwards there was some concern as to what didn't make it into the Bill, particularly from Professor and media legend Roy Greenslade, as to the omission of a reversal of the burden of proof - which currently falls upon defendants in libel cases. Lord Lester's answer was that in part the burden would in fact shift with this Bill, with claimants required to prove substantial harm - or in the case of corporations suing, of actual financial loses. In all fairness Lord Lester did say that in a rational world the burden would indeed be reversed, but that such a radical reform would be unlikely to pass - so the Bill represents pragmatic reform and not just idealism. Still, many libel reform activists would like to see the burden of proof reversed entirely, and this may well prove to be an area that gets revisited.

I asked if the clauses on honest opinion and truth were likely to reduce libel law's chilling effect outside the courts, particularly given Lord Lester's admirably liberal intention not to be overly prescriptive and to provide a broad framework that the courts could utilise - which is fine, only my concern is that its the costs and anguish involved in even getting to court that cause the chill on commentary (viz. Channel 4's recent losses in their Michael Jackson documentary case, raised by C4's lawyer at this meeting) - but Lord Lester was clear in his answer, that these clauses are designed to put off frivolous suits and give courage to the Simon Singhs of this world who wish to stand by what they write. I sincerely hope this is how it turns out.

In sum then, what we have is an excellent starting point for the long overdue and fundamental overhaul of our archaic and illiberal defamation laws. With the second reading scheduled for July 9th, the process to enshrining our right to free speech is well under way, and with Lord Lester leading the charge, it falls to all us libel campaigners to continue to press for comprehensive reform - the goal is within sight, so the hard work must go on.

New Politics? For some MPs, not really...

2010-06-02T15:12:00.014+01:00

So here we are, coalition government in place, Queen's speech delivered, Dave's first PMQs negotiated - and with plenty of Liberal Democrat policies at the forefront of the government's programme, the era of New Politics (TM) is upon us, right?

Err, in some quarters, not so much - and no, this post will not attempt a deconstruction of the David Laws' departure from the Cabinet, other than to ask whether it's valid to place his admittedly ill-advised expenses claims under such intense public scrutiny given his motivation to maintain privacy over his sexuality. No, this post concerns quite another character in the soap opera that is Westminster politics, and his steadfast determination to stick to the politics of old.

I refer to none other than David Tredinnick MP (Bosworth) - a politician of some repute amongst teh skeptikul blogosfeer - he has enough of a reputation, indeed, that no sooner had @gimpyblog Tweeted a link to this story on ePolitix, he'd blogged on the very same - Quacks for Questions really is one of the best posts on that alwaysxcellent blog.

It's my opinion that for the electorate to truly believe that a new era of politics is upon us, Parliamentarians must be seen to depart from the discredited tactics of the past - not least the dogmatic, ideology-driven approach to policy-making that has given us the likes of homeopathy on the NHS, the sacking of David Nutt and the like. But rather than break with his credulous worldview - a worldview that once prompted Mr. Tredinnick to claim for software that claims to show a link between astrology and healthcare on expenses - the Leicestershire MP appears to have stepped up his pro-woo campaigning, and in doing so takes a sideswipe at his Parliamentary nemesis, former Oxford West and Abingdon MP Dr. Evan Harris.

In his ePolitix piece, Tredinnick insists that the enduring popularity of a

healthcare model that allows doctors to refer to other therapists such as herbalists, acupuncturists, homeopaths and aromatherapists

equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

is reason enough to sanction State-funded 'integrated healthcare,' by which one assumes Tredinnick means the integration of the likes of these disciplines into routine NHS treatment. Fine, say I - as long as these disciplines can prove, to the same standards expected of all so-called conventional medicine, that they are effective, that they have some discernible impact on patients' health - beyond the placebo effect.

In singling out Dr. Harris for criticism, Tredinnick raises an interesting issue whilst at the same time exposing his own twisted logic; the interesting issue being that Harris' defeat leaves Parliament desperately short of rationalist, scientific thinking (honourable exceptions aside...); his mention of EDM 908 reminds us of quite how flawed his thinking on alternative medicine really is, as Le Canard Noir eloquently wrote.

At a time when the public purse is under such strain, we need lawmakers who are willing and able to recognise that an evidence-based approach is indispensable, that sound values must underpin our public discourse. These are values that were fought for hundreds of years ago as part of the Enlightenment - unless the legislature adopts a more credible stance on such issues as taxpayer subsidies for magical ointments and tinctures, there is a risk that the New Coalition will go the way of the Old Guard - sliding down the scale of legitimacy into farce, with MPs such as David Tredinnick leading us down the path to endarkenment.

Brief analysis of the aftermath...

2010-05-07T18:50:00.011+01:00

Having campaigned all week for Sarah Teather and the Brent Liberal Democrats, a seat which we sensationally won with an 11% swing, I have only just had a chance to reflect on the goings-on nationally - sleep deprivation is my excuse - so here's my take on it all...

What's clear from the results is that with the largest share of the vote, and the largest number of seats, the Conservative Party does have a claim, in Nick Clegg's words,

to prove that it is capable of seeking to govern in the national interest
Clearly the Tories don't have a majority in their own right, and so seek the support of the Lib Dems to govern - but support in this case could well mean any one of several things.

In his pitch to the Lib Dems, Cameron said the following (which I must admit I missed as I was catching up one some shut-eye):
One option would be to give other parties reassurances about certain policy areas and then seek their agreement to allow a minority Conservative government....But I am prepared to consider alternative options.

It may be possible to have stronger, more stable, more collaborative government than that.

There is a case for going further than an arrangement which simply keeps a minority Conservative government in office.

So I want to make a big, open and comprehensive offer to the Liberal Democrats.
Details of what this offer constitutes are scant as yet, but two things appear clear to me. One, Cameron's posturing on electoral reform is inadequate, not just from a partisan perspective in that it's central to the Lib Dem ethos, but also from the public's perspective. Just look at the numbers: with 6% less of the vote nationally than Labour (23% to 29%, or 6.8 million votes to Labour's 8.6 million), the Liberal Democrats ended up with 201 fewer seats - 57 to Labour's 258. So to most Liberal Democrats, and I'm sure for most of the public, anything less than a serious shift in position from Cameron regarding electoral reform will n0t be compensated for by offers of ministerial positions and perks - sorry, but that has to be taken as a given. And two, such an offer is made not because of any fundamental common ground between the parties, but, as the words about 'going beyond a minority government' show, because Cameron needs Clegg's support to push his legislative agenda through - and yet somehow I don't see Lib Dem MPs traipsing obediently through to support any measures that Tory party HQ throws up, no matter what the consequences.

That is not to say that the Lib Dems and Tories cannot work together - the above is a real barrier only to a formal coalition in my view, and if the Tories showed the willingness to compromise somewhat on electoral reform, a range of other options are available. My preferred option? An agreement to abstain on a Tory Queen's speech, which would permit the business of government to proceed with a minority in charge, not only allows us to continue to press for the reform we stand for, but for the nation to get what it voted for - a Conservative government, lead by David Cameron, but without the majority that would result in their policies being implemented regardless of the national interest.

That's what I'd prefer, whether that will happen is another matter. I don't think it's a viable option to prop up a Labour government even if the Clegg-Cameron talks fail to produce sufficient agreement for coalition - Labour just doesn't have the mandate to govern any more. So it really is down to Cameron and his party to accept that in order to get into government, they will simply have to work with Lib Dems in one form or another - the next 48 hours or so will prove whether this is possible. Be prepared for all sorts of scaremongering from the Tories about how anything less than a formal coalition, with a mandate to barge through economic measure which we know will only benefit the few not the many, will placate 'the markets' - be prepared also to defend the cause of collaborative government against the sectional interests of the markets, because it's high time finance stopped holding a gun to the head of democracy. The public has spoken, and it's now up to Tory and Lib Dem MPs to come to an agreement - better a stable one than one rushed out in time for the opening trading on the FTSE come Monday morning...

BREAKING NEWS - BRITISH CHIROPRACTIC ASSOCIATION DROPS LIBEL ACTION AGAINST SIMON SINGH

2010-04-15T10:17:00.006+01:00

News reaches us via intrepid legal blogger Jack of Kent that the British Chiropractic Association has dropped its legal action against science writer Simon Singh by issuing a 'notice of discontinuance.' As Jack succinctly puts it: The case is over.

Too right - a great many congratulations to Simon, and to the thousands of people that now support the Campaign for Libel Reform.

Simon's case may well be over, but he will still face an uphill battle to recover all his costs, estimated to have reached £200,000 to date.

And despite this welcome victory, there remains a pressing need to reform English and Welsh Libel law - all three major political parties are now committed to reforming the law, and in the run-up to the election we must continue to press for new legislation that prevents cases like Simon's don't happen again.

For now it is right that we celebrate Simon's victory as it represents a watershed in the defence of open debate and free speech - to say nothing of the impact this case and the publicity it has generated will have on the protection of fair comment and scientific discourse.

More later possibly!

UPDATE:

thanks to commenter John Collins (below), who alerted me to the BCA's statement on the issue - you can read the statement here.

UPDATE (II)

Sense about Science have now put up a detailed statement from Simon, SaS's Tracey Brown and Simon's solicitor Robert Dougans. Please do read the whole thing as it goes a long way to demonstrating just how vital wholesale libel reform is despite the case against Simon being dropped - here are a couple of highlights though... Simon said,

English libel law is so intimidating, so expensive, so hostile to serious journalists that it has a chilling effect on all areas of debate, silencing scientists, journalists, bloggers, human rights activists and everyone else who dares to tackle serious matters of public interest.

He went on to argue that reform is required to protect the likes of Dr. Peter Wilmshurst, who is being sued for raising safety concerns regarding a new medical device: If Dr Wilmshurst loses his case then he will be bankrupted. It is ridiculous that a respected researcher such as Dr Wilmshurst, someone who has devoted his life to medicine, should be put under such pressure just for speaking his mind.
Robert Dougans said:
All that now remains to be settled is how much of Simon’s legal costs he can recover from the BCA, and how much he will have to bear himself. However well this process goes, Simon is likely to be out of pocket by about 20,000 pounds. This - and two years of lost earnings, which he can never recover - is the price he has paid for writing an article criticising the BCA for making claims the Advertising Standards Agency has ruled can no longer be made.

As has often been said, a victory of this sort comes at a price, a price that the Campaign for Libel Reform is adamant must not be paid in the future for the simple act of discussing matters of essential public interest.

BREAKING NEWS - Conservatives commit to new Libel Bill to reform libel laws

2010-04-08T16:10:00.008+01:00

The Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve MP has committed his party to reforming English and Welsh libel laws, confirming that their forthcoming manifesto will include

a fundamental review of the libel laws with a view to enacting legislation to reform them. This reform could best be done by means of a separate Libel Bill and this is the preferred approach for us

The Conservatives now join both the Liberal Democrats and Labour in promising to reform the widely criticised libel laws, demonstrating the far-reaching influence of the much-publicised Campaign for Libel Reform - according to the Campaign, 48,000 supporters have signed an online petition urging statutory reform, and have persuaded the majority of eligible MPs to sign a Parliamentary Early Day Motion calling for fairness to be put at the heart of libel legislation. The national campaign is believed to be the first campaign by an NGO this year to get a manifesto commitment from all three major parties.

It is worth dwelling on that last point - I plan to write a longer piece on the successes of the Campaign and the wider lessons to be drawn from it, but that will have to wait; mainly because, despite a significant victory for libel defendant Simon Singh at the Court of Appeal, and even though there is now cross-party consensus on the need for reform, the nature of said reform is still in the balance and it will likely require continued pressure on Parliamentarians for all 10 of the Campaign's recommendations to be implemented. We've already see one cross-party body taking on board a large proportion of the Campaign's findings, but how many of these proposals will be translated into exact details in each party election manifesto remains to be seen - a critic might point out that, honourable exceptions aside, the Tory party has been the most reluctant to get behind libel reform, and that today's announcement of 'a review' is not the strongest endorsement - nonetheless, Conservative support for the cause is indeed welcome.

The reform of one aspect of libel law, that of the success fees charged by lawyers as party of 'conditional fee arrangements' (CFAs), has already fallen by the wayside; a victim of the 'wash-up' at the end of Parliament, infamous for pushing through the 'draconian and oppressive' (not my words, but those of Andrew Heaney of the TalkTalk Group) Digital Economy Act, the reforms were initially blocked by several MPs and then not deemed high-priority enough to be revisited as Parliamentary business drew to a close.

The lesson, then, must be that whilst cross-party support for the principles of libel reform are welcome advances in the right direction, the Campaign will continue to press the government until reform is realised, until our freedom to debate is enshrined in a balanced law.

Appeal upheld in Singh vs BCA - a significant victory for Simon, the libel reform campaign and free speech

2010-04-01T12:44:00.008+01:00

As widely reported, Simon Singh has won his appeal against the pre-trail judgement on meaning in his defence against a libel suit brought by the British Chiropractic Association.

In a judgement welcomed by his lawyers as

a resounding victory before such an impressive court,

three of the most senior judges in the land dismissed the way in which the BCA reverted to libel action instead of accepting The Guardian's 'right to reply' offer, and rejected the submissions of the BCA case that the phrases

not a jot of evidence

and

happily promotes bogus treatments

represented libellous comment. Indeed, the Judges went further to say that

[plaintiffs] cannot, by simply filing suit and crying 'character assassination!', silence those who hold divergent views...

In a significant boost to the defence of scientific discourse, the judgement continued:

Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation. … More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models – not larger awards of damages – mark the path towards superior understanding of the world around us.

Let's take stock at this point, however. Simon's won his appeal on meaning, but the matter is far from over; according to the BCA's statement put out in response to the verdict,

we are considering whether to seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court and subsequently proceed to trial.

Now, it is up to the reader to decide whether they feel that, considering the BCA's statement concluded with the thought that

the BCA brought this claim only to uphold its good name and protect its reputation, honesty and integrity,

whether or not they have succeeded in this aim and would be wise to continue to trial in light of today's judgement. What is clear, nonetheless, is that whatever the outcome in Simon's own case, this judgement does two things. Firstly, it provides a precedent in case law to allow future victims of libel chill to bring a serious public interest defence - as Simon's solicitor Robert Dougans said,

Scientists have been – rightly – concerned about the consequences they might face if opponents seek to counter their arguments with a libel claim rather than by engaging in debate and research. The Court of Appeal’s brave decision today gives hope that important research on scientific matters will be protected against libel threats, and will hopefully make people think again before embarking on legal action hoping to shut down debate. It is clear from the judgment that the Court of Appeal is not satisfied with the current state of English libel laws, and recognises the absurdities and injustices that can result from them as they currently stand.

The second thing it does it highlight the pressing need for statutory reform - for Parliament to re-write English libel law to reflect the urgent need to protect freedom of speech from libel suits that threaten to quash responsible journalism and scientific debate. The Campaign for Libel Reform does not end here, even if today's judgement is seen as a turning point in Simon's case - as he himself says,

It is ridiculous that it has cost £200,000 to establish the meaning of a handful of words... I am still angry that libel is so horrendously expensive... There are hundreds more cases that never make it to court because people back down and apologise, and thousands more where writers, journalists and bloggers self-censor to avoid the chilling effect of libel law.

So in many ways today marks a significant moment not only in Simon's defence of his critical take on chiropractic, but a milestone in the battle to defend free speech - the Conservative MP David Davies, present at today's hearing, hoped that today would write a new chapter in the history of free speech. Here's hoping that his party will follow the Liberal Democrats in adding libel law reform to their manifesto, so that writers such as Simon no longer have to fear the iniquitous libel laws and can be free to discuss, debate, criticise and investigate the issues of scientific and political import that form our zeitgeist.

BREAKING NEWS - JUSTICE SECRETARY STRAW TO COMMIT TO LIBEL REFORM AT MASS PARLIAMENTARY LOBBY

2010-03-22T21:59:00.009Z

Breaking news from the Campaign for Libel Reform.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw is to address the Mass Lobby of Parliament organised by The Libel Reform Campaign led by English PEN, Index on Censorship and Sense About Science that is to be held later today (March 23rd). At the lobby, he will announce an historic commitment to reform England’s archaic libel laws, after a national campaign that has galvanised 43,000 supporters and persuaded 260 MPs to sign a Parliamentary Early Day Motion and its rider.

The campaign has already secured the backing of the Liberal Democrats, resulting from Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre, Nick Cohen, Sile Lane and Dr. Evan Harris MP joining Prof. Richard Dawkins in presenting the case for libel reform at last year's annual conference. More recently, the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee backed the cause by endorsing many of the libel reform campaign's demands in a report into Press Standards, Privacy and Libel.

Reacting to the news that Jack Straw will committ the Labour Party to reforming the iniquitous libel legislation, John Kampfner, the CEO of Index on Censorship said,

The Labour Party will show a commitment to actual reform to enhance civil liberties in this country. With two of the three major political parties now committed to reform, we ask David Cameron to back our campaign.

Tracey Brown, the Managing Director of Sense About Science said:

It would be ludicrous for any party to suggest we should continue with these unfair and ridiculed libel laws. We need freedom of speech that we can exercise confidently, to discuss science and medicine or any other subject of public interest. Not semi-feudal laws that tie people up in court for two years and chill public discussion.

Jonathan Heawood, the Director of English PEN said,

Over 40,000 people have signed the libel reform petition. The level of popular support for reform shows that this law is not just about journalists but human rights activists, scientists and academics, even mothers chatting online: free expression really is an issue for everyone.

Such a positive endorsement of the need for reform must be welcomed, and it now falls on the Campaign for Libel Reform and the thousands of people who have supported it to maintain the momentum gathered thus far, to ensure that this committment is translated into concrete and workable legislative reform. Let's hope that today sees the turning point in the battle to protect responsible journalism and scientific discourse from the chilling effects of English libel law.

Last call for libel reform - Mass Lobby of Parliament on Tuesday March 23rdh

2010-03-21T20:22:00.004Z

The Campaign for Libel Reform has organised a Mass Lobby of Parliament, to take place this Tuesday (March 23rd), offering people the chance to raise the Campaign's demands with their own MP and to make a public show of support to the likes of Simon Singh and Peter Wilmshurst who are bravely defending potentially devastating libel cases.

The Campaign has raised awareness of the urgent need to reform English libel law by engaging with the public and with lawmakers in arguably one of the most successful civic campaigns in recent years; through their petition (still open for you to sign if you haven't already joined the thousands who have already done so); through many supportive articles in the mainstream media written by those directly affected by the chilling effect of libel legislation and those who support the maintainance of free speech; and most recently through an outstanding night of comedy at London's Palace Theatre that saw the likes of Dara O'Brian and Robin Ince wow the crowd.

The real battle remains a political one, a battle to convince the authors of the laws of the land that the iniquitous legislation be reformed. Much progress has been made - the Liberal Democrats have pledged their support to libel reform, and a Parliamentary Select Committee report last month endorsed many of the Campaign's claims. And yet, with the General Election looming, there remains a pressing need to show our representatives that libel reform is urgently required to preserve our freedom of expression; to ensure that scientific discourse can proceed free of the fear of censure; that journalists can continue to hold those in power to account.

So if you can make it to Parliament on Tuesday, please write to your MP by visiting theyworkforyou, and asking you MP to meet you between 3pm and 4pm in Central Lobby. At 2pm there will be a meeting where leading campaingers will share their experience and prepare for the Mass Lobby.

Please try and come along if you're able to do so, we really do need to make a strong statement to to MPs from all parties - that we urgently need to reform our libel laws, in the interest of free debate - and we have one last chance to make our voices heard this side of the election.

Can we rely on the media to convey science accurately and fairly? A UCL Human Sciences Symposium

2010-03-11T08:36:00.008Z

[LONG, RAMBLING POST ALERT]

Yesterday I attended a symposium with the above title, where four very distinct and interesting speakers gave their perspective on science reporting in the media. Here's my brief take on proceedings.

The first speaker we heard was Professor Steve Miller, who described an international study he published in the prestigious journal Science regarding scientists' interactions with the media (you may need a subscription to see the full text, give me a shout in the comments if you want me to email you a PDF). Prof. Miller's point was essentially that whilst many scientists relay anecdotes of their horrible experience in speaking to the media (being mis-quoted, mis-understood, made to look like they were supporting position X when their research shows Y and so on), the survey they carried out painted a much more positive picture overall -

Overall, 57% of the respondents said they were "mostly pleased" about their "latest appearance in the media," and only 6% were "mostly dissatisfied"

To many people in the audience - who were mainly students of history/philosophy of science and human sciences - and perhaps to reader(s) of this blog, this is a picture we simply don't recognise - if most scientists are happy with the way their work is covered in the media, why do blogs like mine exist? How has Dr. Ben Goldacre - more on his work later - made a career out of debunking media coverage of science, and how is it that glaring failures of science reporting - whether on MMR (again, more later), GM foods or mobile phone masts ever occur? Prof. Miller suggested one - that whilst scientists rated their own experience of media interaction positively, they were less positive about coverage of science in general, indicating that somewhere the media can get science reporting wrong - but I'd like to put forward another caveat not really covered in his study. In the Science paper, Miller and colleagues treat all media interactions as the same - whether with the editors of Nature/Science/NEJM/PNAS/WTF, or the News of the World. I wonder whether a more detailed survey of scientists' interactions with the lay media, in particular the tabloid press that is prone to howlers that I'm sure you're familiar with, would be as positive. A strange contribution to the debate, I've no doubt that Prof. Miller's study was accurate (in that it reflected the views of those who responded), but it fails to square the circle of science in the media when one reflects on the various examples of Bad Science in the press.

We then heard from David Dickson, director of the scidev.net website - a collection of quality science reporting from across the world. He began with a theoretical look at what the media's role in science should be and vice versa - which contained the most frequent and gratuitous use of the word 'paradigm' I've ever witnessed - and went on to tackle an interesting phenomenon where the quality of science reporting is linked to who deals with it within a news organisation. Dickson's assertion - and one I largely agree with - is that most science stories start off as just that - stories about a scientific issue, reports on a discovery/study/trial that centre on published studies and are covered by science desk reporters. By and large, dishonourable exceptions aside, these stories are both accurate and fair. Stories such as MMR-and-autism, climate change and alternative medicine, however, migrate through time to becoming the responsibility of first news desks and then political desks, at which point both the accuracy and fairness can slip. Dickson's point was that this is because whilst the scientific community considers accuracy to be the correct reporting of the facts of a study, and fairness to be the reporting of said facts within the context of current consensus opinion in the field - whereas when a science story 'goes political,' accuracy becomes more about 'what person X said' and fairness becomes more about presenting two sides to each story - whether or not that means elevating fringe opinions (homeopathy cured my cancer, for instance, when reporting on the lack of efficacy of homeopathy) to the same status as the consensus, which creates the impression of genuine debate where there is none. Interesting angle, and one that perhaps underlies a lot of bad science reporting - not only that non-specialists cover essentially scientific stories, but that their methods in doing so distort their coverage - albeit unintentionally perhaps.

Then came Evan Harris MP, former medic and Lib Dem science spokesman. He took us through the various 'fight-backs' he has been involved with, from his involvement in the Pro-Test movement in Oxford that backs animal research, to the debate over the safety of GM foods, and of course his work during the debate of the use of human embryonic tissue in research (which I blogged about in three parts) and the recent Select Committee report into homeopathy and the NHS. Through these experiences Evan has come up with the following: that science journalism may not be perfect but it remains the most effective tool to inform the public of the facts surrounding issues in science, and that by using many of the same tactics used by those opposed to scientific progress (be they religious groups, CAM practitioners or scare-mongering anti- mobile-phone-mast-tin-foil-loons), scientists can in fact alter coverage of their work and the issues it raises in their favour.

The last contribution came from Brian Deer, the journalist who has heroically taken apart Andrew Wakefield's claims that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Here I will tread carefully, so as not to upset anyone...

Brian is clearly a passionate man - his presentation bordered on the jibbering rant, but was still a powerful demonstration of the failures at the heart of the MMR debacle. Failures which, in Brian's version, lie entirely at the feet of Wakefield himself and the massive cover-up of his fraudulent 'research,' details of which emerged in the recent General Medical Council's damming verdict. I have no doubt that Wakefield was a fraud, that he dishonestly manipulated both families and data in publishing his study, and that research fraud is a major issue in science - in a heated and fractious Q and A session following the talks, Deer pulled up this study on falsification of data that showed 2% of scientists admitting they made data up and 14% saying they knew colleagues who had - but I found Deer's angle on the whole debacle unsettling.

Yes Wakefield's behaviour was desperate - but Deer insisted that the media was innocent in the subsequent reporting of his research as they had been duped by a fraudster. Whilst I agree that the fraud was despicable, what of the credulous reports (hundreds of them) over the years that chose to back his position - and irresponsibly claimed that children were damaged by a vaccine when many, many large and high-quality studies showed the opposite? What about the editorial coverage and opinion articles that championed Wakefield and his work, written by non-experts, that newspapers chose to run and that caused a massive drop in vaccine uptake? Fraud doesn't turn this story into the monster it became, incompetent and irresponsible journalism, driven by headline-chasing editors and an explicit policy to focus on the personal (the maverick Wakefield standing up to establishment bullies) over the factual (MMR does not cause autism, never has, never will). Deer went as far as to criticise Ben Goldacre on this issue, claiming that Ben had shared a stage with him recently 'going on and on about how it was the media that failed in MMR.' (Perhaps, if by some chance Ben is reading this, you could clarify this...? What is Brian referring to, and is it accurate and fair reflection of what you said?)

Sadly if journalists take the position that Deer did - to let their profession off the hook entirely and blame a rouge researcher when in reality they share responsibility for the utter farce in this case - leaves science journalism open to subsequent abuse. Just look at the furore over the 'climategate' emails - masses of press coverage over the integrity of a few loose cannons threatens the entire edifice of public support for action against man-made global warming.

Science journalism is a vital tool in harnessing support for research and in fostering rational policy formulation. If the public is subjected to many more climategate/MMR-style scandals, trust in science is in danger of evaporating, and this is not helped by blaming unscientific reportage on the rogues that provoke it - scientists and journalists must all take responsibility to convey science accurately and fairly, or else the tension between the two professions personified in Deer's anger will only worsen.

[/LONG, RAMBLING POST]

Placebo - a discussion

2010-03-07T15:53:00.002Z

The spam filters at libdemvoice as obviously quite strict, as they seem to gobble up my comments on an interesting discussion happening there regarding the placebo effect. So here are my comments:

shame I've some late to this - at the risk of making this into a Sunday debate, here's me sticking my oar in.

I am in broad agreement with the 'lying is wrong' position many of you have taken - as was mentioned previously, if my GP can tell me that treatment X will make me feel better (X being homeopathy) when there's no evidence that it will, what's to stop them from saying that Y will make me feel better too (when Y is, as Jock via Ben Goldacre alludes to, is a drug that is being sold as efficacious in the absence of evidence)? Breaking the doctor-patient trust bond is a very dangerous road to go down in my opinion.

Another argument to go against the routine prescription of placebo is the one James Cole deployed - that in many cases people do not respond. If we are to decide on which treatments are acceptable for prescription by the NHS on grounds of efficacy, routine placebo prescription would fall at the first hurdle.

To deal with Jock's assertion, from Goldacre's work, that many currently-available drugs do not have evidence for efficacy, I would say this: we must be sure to hold all treatments, whether pharmaceutical or so-called alternative, to the same rigorous standards, and one-by-one eliminate those that do not have a strong evidence basis. If that means investigating the way in which some drugs are approved, and it means altering current clinical practice, then so be it - evidence-based medicine must not be afraid to ask difficult questions of anyone, homeopaths or Big Pharma included.

Nonetheless, I do think that using this as a defence of NHS homeopathy (the 'but-he-started-it' defence) is something of a straw man - yes we need to ensure that only those drugs that have a basis in evidence are approved for use, but that shouldn't distract from the fact that public money is being wasted on ineffective nonsense.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge this comment by Alec Dauncey:
scientific medicine should immediately take account of the apparent benefits of longer more comprehensive consultations with practitioners.
There is no doubt that the placebo effect, where it is found to be effective, is one of the most interesting aspects of medical psychology, and that mainstream medicine has much to learn from it. In the blog post that James Cole linked to, and in the Neuroskeptic post linked to therein, there is a discussion of medicalisation - were we prescribe a pill/intervention knowing that the condition is self-limiting and/or not overly harmful. In learning from placebo-based interventions, I would imagine medicine could apply some of the techniques of long consultation, along with the power of giving the patient the impression that what they're taking/doing/eating gives them control over their symptoms. These are aspects of placebo that medicine could integrate into its management of people with chronic, phasic, self-limiting conditions - I would hope this could be done without the need to knowingly dispense an inactive pill, which I still feel is deeply unethical.

Hmm, food for thought...

I'll try and expand on this during the week if I can, for now it's enough to say that whilst it's tempting to want to harness the seemingly powerful effect of placebo, if medicine is to remain an honest pursuit of evidence-based treatments then there seems little place for the routine prescription of empty promises.

Parliament endorses libel reform - on the day Simon Singh's appeal is heard

2010-02-23T19:03:00.015Z

The following post is largely based on a press release from the Libel Reform Campaign, which describes their reaction to the publication of the as-yet embargoed Parliamentary report into libel law, and on a statement from Simon Singh and Sense about Science regarding Simon's libel case.

The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee today publishes its findings following its enquiry into Press Standards, Privacy and Libel. The coalition of campaign groups that have been pushing for libel law reform have welcomed the Committee's findings, calling them

a great starting point to ensure a once in a generation overhaul of our libel laws.

According to the Libel Reform Campaign,

the report makes important recommendations on curbing libel tourism, strengthening the public interest defence, cutting the cost of libel cases by holding down lawyers per hour charges, and recognising the resources that corporations can use to bully charities, writers and scientists by reversing the burden of proof in cases involving corporations.

This news will be welcomed by the thousands of people who have supported the Libel Reform Campaign by signing their petition and writing to their MP, and will be keenly received by the scientists, journalists and bloggers who are currently experiencing the most illiberal libel law system in the world. Speaking for Sense about Science, the charity that has supported medics and scientists being sued for publishing scientific discussion, Tracey Brown said

We welcome the committee's recognition of the harmful effects of UK libel laws on the science and medical community. The proposal for a clear public interest defence is an important step toward the far-reaching reform that is needed.

The Editor of Index on Censorship Jo Glanville, the leading free-speech organisation that has campaigned for libel laws to be reformed, was adamant that any new laws must ensure that free debate is encouraged for all:

It’s important that a fair comment defence is available to everyone, not just for academic discussion out of the reach of ordinary people.

The publication of the Select Committee's report coincided with what may be a pivotal, historical moment in the libel saga. Yesterday saw the three most senior judges in the country hearing Simon Singh's appeal against the pre-trial judgement on meaning handed down by Mr. Justice Eady in April last year. This is arguably the most high-profile libel case in years, one of many cases that the Libel Reform Campaign has highlighted as exemplifying the unjust nature of English libel law - for its insistence that the defendant prove his innocence, for its staggering cost, for the ease with which writs can be issued to silence legitimately-made critical commentary. Although the judgement of Lord Chief Justice Judge, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger and Lord Justice Sedley is not expected for some weeks, Index on Censorship report Lord Judge's comments at the hearing:

I’m just baffled. If there is reliable evidence [regarding the efficacy of chiropractic], why hasn’t someone published it?

Which, if it weren't so easy to revert to libel in order to crush dissent, is what the British Chiropractic Association would have done - instead they sued, landing Simon with an expensive and sapping case. After his appeal, Simon reiterated that no matter the outcome of his particular case, the need for wider reform remained:

My greatest desire is that journalists in future should not have to endure such an arduous and expensive libel process, which has already affected the careers of health journalists such as Ben Goldacre, and which is currently bearing down on the eminent cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst. If Peter loses his case then he will be bankrupted. Please continue to spread the word about libel reform.

With the positive goings on in the Court of Appeal, and the encouraging Select Committee report emphasising the intention to reform the unfair libel laws within Parliament, those campaigning for free speech can take encouragement - much further work is no doubt required before free expression can be guaranteed, before scientific and political debate can proceed free of the fear of persecution, but this February week will surely be looked back on as a momentous time for the free speech movement.

A Liberal NHS - an opinion article for Liberal Democrat Voice

2010-02-17T13:24:00.003Z

This article first appeared on Liberal Democrat Voice on February 17th 2010. My other articles for ldv can be found here.

As people who know me well will tell you, I've always been something of an idealist, daydreaming about some abstract political philosophy whilst everyone else deals with more pragmatic concerns - or 'living in the real world' as I believe it's known. I make this point as what I'm about to write alludes to an apparent confluence - potentially at least - of strands of abstract political thought and practical everyday policy that I believe should gain prominence as the general election approaches.

First of all let's deal with the practicalities (unusual for me but there you go...). Last week Norman Lamb MP launched The NHS: A Liberal Blueprint, a Lib Dem policy briefing on the future of the NHS. Accompanying the launch of this paper was an article in the Guardian, detailing not only the specific policies but the overarching principles guiding them. There is a great deal to applaud in both, not least the recognition that large-scale and indiscriminate slashing of the health budget would lead to cuts in 'public health programmes and mental health services, hitting the most vulnerable the hardest.' Another welcome note was the way in which local democratic control over health services would make practitioners and service providers accountable to those using their services – a model that could well be applied to many public services, including utilities and transport.

The majority of both the policy briefing and the Guardian article focus on the fact that despite record government investment in the NHS, far too much goes to waste before reaching the coal face. Allow me to quote verbatim from the introductory paragraph to the policy paper:

A lot of money has been invested in health in recent years but too much of that has been wasted on bureaucracy rather than investing in frontline services. Doctors and nurses are forced to spend too much time trying to meet government targets rather than caring for patients. And government ministers make decisions about closing local services from the comfort of their offices rather than facing the people it affects.

It's worth emphasising that every word in this paragraph is true – despite the deployment of mountains of cash, far too little of it is being used for frontline clinical services. And yes, top-down targets and paperwork do impinge on healthcare professionals' ability to care for their patients. In fact the policy briefing goes on to discuss how unaccountable Strategic Health Authorities would be abolished, as an example of tackling the bureaucracy – a good thing, arguments over how the NHS' vital population-level health planning role would function aside. So I don't have a problem with what's in the paper as much as with what isn't – if we accept that the large sums of money thrown at healthcare are not being used effectively, what is the hulking great elephant in the room we're ignoring?

Norman himself gave us all the answer as it happens, in the form of a strong press release just a few days later. Detailing the enormous burden that the Private Finance Initiative has left the NHS with, this press release was picked up by a few media outlets including London's freesheet Metro, which said that the NHS was liable for paying £63bn for PFI projects 'worth only £11bn.' Now at this point I want to make clear that this isn't some ideologically dogmatic rant against private involvement in the provision of healthcare. For reasons I won't go into – some of you may be eating as you read this – I had to have an endoscopy this morning, and to speed up the process I was seen by a private hospital in Hertfordshire. Whilst my personal experience was pleasant and efficient, I was left wondering how much more this approach had cost the taxpayer. Allyson Pollock, author of NHS plc, may well know, much as she knows the impact PFI bills are having on frontline services across the health service.

As an alternative to the disastrous PFI, Norman's press release mentions setting up an infrastructure bank to ensure high levels of investment whilst retaining the fairness and accountability that comes with public-sector service provision. This is worth reiterating – the Liberal Democrats are proposing to create an infrastructure bank, to give us an alternative funding model to the PFI which threatens to cripple schools and hospitals with unaffordable repayments. And yet, throughout the policy briefing and the accompanying article, there's no mention whatsoever of what to my mind could be the single greatest factor in preventing the effective delivery of healthcare in this country – the insistence that PFI and private, for-profit providers become more and more integral to the ethos of the NHS.

In many ways the policy paper provides a strong, liberal model for how healthcare can be effectively delivered – locally accountable, flexible and with high levels of excellence for all. And yet I feel that we may have missed a trick as a party with the general election coming up – here is a policy that truly differentiates our plans for the NHS from the other parties, that puts fair funding at the heart of a fairer service – but no mention of it in the policy briefing, nor, disappointingly, of healthcare reform at all the draft agenda for the imminent spring conference. As far as this policy paper goes, then, it does well – trouble is, it just doesn't go far enough.

The Godless Delusion?

2010-02-11T13:38:00.004Z

Recent weeks have seen a great deal of controversy surrounding the role of religious institutions and symbols in public life - from the Papal criticism of Britain's equality laws, to the carrying of the Sikh kirpan in schools, via Cherie Booth's apparent display of leniency for a man of faith. As a committed humanist that still observes many cultural aspects of my religious background these episodes are illustrative of the way in which religious organisations and the secular goals of the society that hosts them can clash. So just as this blog post was forming in the nether regions of my thinkbox, I was fortunate enough to attend a really interesting lecture at UCL by Professor Lord Bhikhu Parekh, entitled 'Accommodating Religious Diversity in a Secular Society. Here's my brief take on the evening's discussion, and how I feel Lord Parekh's take on things relate to the aforementioned impasses...

Lord Parekh began by defining what it is we mean by secular State or society. Rather than an oppressive form of secularism, where all public expression of anything resembling religious beliefs are banned - we only have to look across the Channel to France's apparent embrace of this approach - Parekh argued that a State can be deemed secular provided that neither its institutions nor its stated goals are religious in nature. This seems at first to be a logical argument; that the aims and goals of a nation should be stated in language that all its citizens can relate to, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, and that the institutions through which those goals are expressed - legislature, judiciary, executive and so on - remain accessible to those of any and no religious beliefs. The question he went on to explore was how we accommodate religious sentiment and actions within a State so defined - to what extent should we make allowances for religious beliefs before the law, for example, or when considering who should deliver public services?

As Lord Parekh answered these questions in the context of the recent controversies I mentioned, I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with part of what he said, and decidedly uncomfortable at times too. He began by examining the issue of Catholic adoption agencies falling foul of the government's equality legislation - which requires that institutions receiving public funds do not discriminate on the grounds of sexuality amongst other things, and that according to the Pope 'violates natural law.'

Here Parekh's conclusion, if I understand it correctly, was that within any organisation, certain roles are central to its ethos and certain ones are more like layman's roles - the priest and the cleaner being examples of the two types. Whilst it would be unreasonable for any institution to discriminate along any lines when employing a cleaner, Parekh's argument was that it would be equally unreasonable for the secular State to force institutions to act in a way that would contradict said institution's ethos and stated aims. So as far as adoption agencies go, then, he feels that by refusing to fund Catholic adoption agencies that oppose gay adoption, the State is causing Catholics who wish to adopt to miss out. On the employment issue I was with Lord Parekh - where there is no harm to an institution's public aims, there must be no discrimination whatsoever, but some exceptions could be made to accommodate particular roles. But when it comes to adoption agencies, I beg to differ - if the State is to provide funding for the bodies, they ought to act according to secular values, which precludes discrimination against gays.

A similar pattern emerged when Lord Parekh discussed State funding of faith schools. His starting premise was that as long as the State acts to educate children in a secular manner, who delivers the education should not matter - whether the State funds faith schools or not is a matter for each nation to decide and one that does would be no less secular than one that doesn't. Which is all fine, until the inevitable happens - faith schools admit pupils and teach material in a way that contradicts the aims and goals of their secular host society. This of course must happen within faith schools - the State tries to treat all of it citizens equally, whilst a faith school insists that those who follow their brand of faith are the only worthy ones, that their chosen way of life is the only correct path to being a Good person - for me this contravenes the stated goals of a seuclar State and therefore should result in a withdrawal of public funds. In contrast, Lord Parekh used the example of German hospitals and care homes, many of which are run by faith-based organisations - his point being that the State needs hospitals and these organisations provide them, so why should we not allow them to do so? To which my response would be, that if they can provide a service independent of the faith-status of their clients then so be it - but as soon as they stop treating all comers as equal, as faith schools undoubtedly do, then the time for taxpayers to fund them is over.

Just to be clear, I agree that an aggressive pursuit of secularism, to the exclusion of all religious sentiment, is neither practical (imaging trying to ban Christmas or Easter, Eid or Diwali) nor desirable. Such that on the issue of the ceremonial Sikh dagger, given that it is ceremonial, a compromise would be for knife-carriyng laws to still apply but for Sikhs to carry a small, discrete plastic version - still symbolising their Kirpan, but not contravening the law of the country they live in. I agree also that the State should be agnostic towards what organisations do in their private remit. However, when it comes to a secular State (arguments over just how secular the UK is, with its prayer meetings and Bishops in Parliament, are for another day...), and the activities it funds or the decisions it makes, religion ought not to play a role at all. Indeed for me it's a little like homoeopathy in that regard - in a liberal nation people are free to pursue whatever they wish to on their own time and money, but the State should not fund anything that goes against purely secular aims - whether sugar pills or faith-based schools, the same goes.

My ten23 overdose

2010-01-31T10:29:00.019Z

Yesterday at 10.23 a.m, on what was a bitterly cold but beautiful winter's morning, hundreds of skeptics joined up to take a huge overdose of homoeopathic pills as part of the ten23 campaign - this blogger joined in with the London group, and here's a brief account of the morning's goings on - complete with pictures and everything!

With help from Westminster Skeptics in the Pub, we gathered at London's Red Lion Square, armed with various bottles of 30C strength - which according to the website Quackwatch

would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth.

So quite dilute then - and, according to the tenets of homoeopathy, really quite strong a remedy. I went along with Mrs. Teekblog and younger brother Teekblog, and between us we had 30C Arsenic, 30C Sepia and 30C something else - given that all we were really taking was sugar we didn't pay the supposed pseudo-ingredients too much attention... The three of us were joined by a host of skeptics, nerds, geeks, call us what you will - and by many high-profile overdosers such as:

Simon Singh, author of the book Trick or Treatment which looks at the evidence (such that there is) for the efficacy of alternative medicine;

Evan Harris MP, who got many a giggle for sharing with us his encounter with a leading practitioner of this fine art at the recent Parliamentary Select Committee hearings on homoeopathy;

and comedian Dave Gorman, who lead the countdown to the mass gulping of sugar pills:

So it was that at precisely 10.23 a.m. (at least according to press office Martin Robbins' watch, and considering he'd gathered what looked like the entire UK press corps who were we to argue...?), we all necked our sugar pills en masse:

In doing so, and - as expected - suffering no effects whatsoever, side or otherwise, what did we demonstrate? Well, firstly that the pills on sale at Boots - on offer at 3-for-2 by the way - really are harmless placebo containing nothing but lactose and sucrose (this post on the excellent Jack of Kent blog goes into more detail about the astute labelling on the pills themselves...). We also demonstrated that with excellent online organisation (props to Carmen D'Cruz amongst others!), and some well-engineered press coverage, pseudoscience can be exposed for what it really is - elaborate placebo interventions with no basis in reality.

As the tagline for the ten23 campaign says - Homoeopathy - there's nothing in it. Too right, and this fun event went some way to spreading that message to the wider world.

Iain Duncan Smith's response to the libelreform.org campaign

2010-01-23T10:39:00.005Z

As the campaign for reforming England and Wales' libel laws steps up a notch, signatories to the national petition to reform libel laws are being urged to contact their MPs and ask them to support the campaign by signing an Early Day motion calling for

a re-casting of the libel laws such that, while individual reputation is protected against malicious or reckless smears, lawful free expression is not chilled and there is a fully effective public interest defence for both scholarship and responsible journalism.

I signed up to the petition pretty much as soon as it was launched and contacted my MP, Iain Duncan Smith (Conservative, Chingford and Woodford).

Mr. Duncan Smith has now written back to me, and below is the full text of his reply:

Dear Teekblog,

Thank you for writing to me about EDM 423 and libel law reform. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me.

I understand your concerns on this issue. It is important that those who contribute so much to research and culture in this country so not feel restricted from publishing intelectually challenging and informative articles. Fear of libel action should not curb debate by scientists, academics and journalists. Freedom of expression is the hallmark of a free society and must be strongly protected.

If libel cases do succeed, the costs are often so crippling to defendants that even large newspapers are in difficulty in resisting some claims. It is evident that Britain has become an attractive place for individuals to bring about speculative libel action since lawyers will often bear the brunt of the cost in exchange for the potential rewards available to winning litigants.

You may be aware that the Secretary of State for Justice, the Rt. Hon. Jack Straw MP, has recently announced that the government is drawing up plans to alter libel law.

As a general rule, I do not sign EDMs as the seldom have any impact. Please be assured that I will continue to press the government on this issue, to ensure that any changes to the law adequately protect individuals without placing to great a burden on, for example, scientists, academics, journalists.

Yours etc,

First things first, a very many thanks to Mr. Duncan Smith for replying. It is clear from his response that he understands the issues at the core of the campaign - the protection of scientific debate and responsible journalism. It is heartening to see support for the principle of free expression from the Conservative party, following on from Jack Straw's recent announcement of a Working Party to investigate libel reform, and the Liberal Democrat commitment to rebalancing the law to protect free debate.

In all fairness, there is the possibility that Mr. Straw's plans that Mr. Duncan Smith refers to are more bark than bite, as the extraordinary legal blogger Jack of Kent points out - a working party whose work isn't followed up with genuine Parliamentary time and a concrete set of workable legislative reforms are nothing but political point-scoring this close to an election, and yet we musn't be too quick to dismiss the progress that both Labour and Tories have made on this issue lately.

As for not signing the EDM, IDS is not alone in taking the line that 'they're not effective.' Strikes me as a chicken/egg situation, in that if high-profile MPs don't give EDMs their backing they're that much less likely to achieve the media coverage they're designed to elicit. It would of course have been a boost to see Mr. Duncan Smith sign the EDM, but it is fair to say that despite not doing so the libel reform campaign can count on his support - what remains to be seen is that with the Lib Dems, many Tories and Labour politicians joining in the campaign for reform, whether the next government's resolve, no matter what its makeup, is strong enough to pass new legislation early on in the new Parliament so that our fundamental right to free expression and debate without fear of persecution is protected.

Making science an election issue - a bloggist's take on the CaSE debate (#scidebate)

2010-01-15T08:13:00.015Z

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend a debate chaired by New Scientist editor Roger Highfield and organised by the Campaign for Science and Engineering, that featured the science Minister (Lord) Paul Drayson and his Conservative and Liberal Democrat counterparts Adam Afriye and Evan Harris. Here's my brief take on the proceedings, which you can see for yourself here - rather than specifics, I'll try and deal with how I felt the protagonists did and what they had to offer the scientific community. At the same time I'll try and provide some cheer for blogger Joe D, whose take on the event you can read over at the layscience blog.

I'll start off with the issues that I felt were most illuminating of the parties' approach to science, and the respective spokesmen's standing within the party hieararchy.

Bearing in mind the debate's title (Making science and engineering an election issue), the points at which science and politics do already cross were sadly only covered in a rush towards the end. Arguably the most contentious of these was the notorious Nuttsack affair, when the government's chief adviser on drugs policy was sacked for expressing scientifically valid opinions that contradicted current policy. Lord Drayson, to his credit, did appear mildly critical of his colleagues, although he stopped short of outright censure of a cabinet he'd spent the rest of the debate reminding us that he was a part of. In response, Evan Harris, who has some form on this issue, reminded Drayson that he felt that in light of the dispute scientists and the ministers they advise should come to a 'shared position.' Eerie though that was, it was but an appetiser for what Mr. Afriye served up.

Now, before I get all indignant (righteously so, no less), I'll be the first to admit that sometimes politicians say one thing and mean another (no, really). Sometimes, in search of a snappy soundbite, they can let slip their true colours - which of these was the case when Afriye insisted on ministers' rights to sack advisers on spec, 'even if only because they don't like them,' I'll leave up to the reader. To me personally it showed a streak of contempt for the scientific method and the role of advisers to government. For starters, how many high-level research scientists would accept a role similar to that David Nutt was ousted from, given that not only could their advice be rejected if it didn't suit the government of the day's political agenda, but that in continuing to do their day job of communicating scientifically established evidence they risk losing their position altogether? Some may say that Afriye made a political error in expressing such an opinion to an audience full of scientists, engineers and educators - some would say that holding such an opinion at all, wherever one expresses it, shows poor judgement; again, I'll leave the choice up to you.

Another point where clear blue water emerged between the three amigos was on the issue of so-called 'impact assessments.' No time to talk details here I'm afraid - suffice to say that the government has introduced a requirement that funding applications should demonstrate how they will be economically beneficial. So much for the blue-skies research whose benefit twenty years hence it's impossible to gauge today (which funnily enough was roughly Harris' take on things) - and would have been Afriye's position too, had he not suggested that the Tories would retain the impact assessment, albeit as an 'interesting exercise.' Ahem. What emerged from this segment of the debate was that Westminster by and large sees science as an extension of the productive economy, productive in the sense that it produces widgets/drugs/patents that can be commercialised. Whilst this remains an important element of research, we must not allow political leaders to treat science being there to provide the raw materials for business - which in a sense, with universities now under the auspices of Lord Mandleson, they already do - but rather as a worthwhile pursuit of knowledge which not only produces improvements in lifespan and quality of life, but can enhance our understanding of the world around us and dig deeper into the very foundations of life, the universe and everything.

Where the parties agreed to a great extend was on the issue of funding - that there will have to be some belt tightening was clear from all three. And yet I was left with the impression that whilst Westminster is clear on how much smaller the pot of money will be in years to come, they're less clear on how we can still be world leader in science and engineering despite what appear to be severe cuts in funding. All three Parliamentarians restated their enthusiasm for science being at the centre of a new knowledge-based economy, and yet in a way failed to convince this listener that as the next science minister they would secure the funding we need to continue to produce world-class research. Labour's talk of ringfences and the like is of no substance if what's inside the ringfence isn't known and can be raided at no notice to bail out banks or fund military follies - even less convincing was the Conservative story that what science needs is stable funding, even if that means it decreasing predictably. Tell that to the post-docs whose grants won't be renewed...

But hey, I said end on a positive, and here it is. No matter how constrained the next administration is by economic failures and a lack of vision, there will always be a voice for the scientific community in Parliament. Adam Afriye's passion for scientific endeavour cannot be questioned, nor can the value that Lord Drayson undoubtedly puts on research as playing a major role in our country's future. And above all, there's Evan Harris, Phil Willis and the Science and Technology Committee, who will continue their excellent work in ascertaining the evidence basis for government policy. And as a real boost to scientists and their profession, Nick Clegg gave a rousing speech to the Royal Society yesterday (becoming the only party leader to accept the Society's invite to speak), outlining his vision for the future of science in the UK. Making all the right noises on libel reform, advice to government ministers and the place science has in our society, Clegg showed that science doesn't have to be made and election issue, it already is one.