An Important Day

I had planned to use today's post to pick apart the manifestos of Cam and Cleggy, particularly Cameron's worrying idea to allow ordinary members of the public a greater say in running the country (yes, that means your neighbour, the one with shaved head and the tattoos), but something far more important has happened today, an event which kind of puts the Big Debate into the shade.

I'm talking about Simon Singh's court victory over the British Chiropractic Association, which isn't just one man's victory over a censorious organisation, or of commercial interest over journalistic licence, but a linked victory of freedom of speech over censorship, and of scientific rationalism over the creeping stifling of debate in the UK by the forces of religious reaction and obscurantism.

In short, Simon Singh questioned the methods and motives of individuals who make their living peddling healthcare-based claims with absolutely no scientific basis. The BCA sued him to silence him. Once upon society, realising the benefits that science and technology brought, would have laughed the BCA out of court. "You want to make money out of the gullible by claiming that twiddling with people's backbones cures asthma, prove it!"

No longer. Complementary medicines are available on the NHS, paid for out of budgets which might be better deployed using demonstrably efficacious medicines. Tony Blair has permitted the utter non-science of "intelligent design" to be taught in UK schools. Religious and other cultural norms are allowed to trump education, healthcare and even public order. And with the BCA's attack on Singh, the alliance of religion, superstition and ignorance hoped to set a precedent which would allow them to operate unchallenged among an increasingly uninformed public.

However, the judge allowed Singh to use the "fair comment" defence - in other words, confirming indirectly that Singh has the right to free speech. Seeing that their aim - to stifle free speech - had thus been denied by the court, the BCA folded. If Singh's comments were "fair comment" as indeed they were, and as the generation before ours would have taken for granted, then the BCA could not win. So they surrended.

Good for Simon Singh! His victory gets his chestnuts out of the fire, but his stemming of the tide of snake-oil science is only a small step. Given that homeopathy continues to thrive (and be paid for by you) despite numerous controlled trials which show that homeopathic cures work no better than placebos, superstition and ignorance will be with us for a long time to come.