Smash (well, hope the U.K. has the good sense to radically revise) the British libel laws!

I wasn't planning another post in the "Smash" series for awhile, but this just had to be titled so.  When I followed this up from Matt Leifer's site, I just had to draw attention to it.   British science writer Simon Singh is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic association for calling some of their treatments bogus.  Part of a broader problem of British libel laws chilling free speech, including discussion of so-called Islamist extremism in Britain, as discussed in this Daily Mail article.  More links at "sense about science".  Matt's post is from last August, so hopefully something strong has been done about this by now; I'll have to look into it.  This could seriously damage Britain if something isn't done about it.

2 thoughts on “Smash (well, hope the U.K. has the good sense to radically revise) the British libel laws!

  1. There is an active Facebook group associated with this (I think I found it thanks to Matt as well, though via his Facebook page). In any case, there are a number of petitions that have been sent around and they have been encouraging people from outside the UK to sign them as well as those inside the UK. The BBC and The Guardian have been covering this fairly extensively too, particularly on their various podcasts. The last I heard, some progress on Simon's part had been made, but unless something drastic happened in the past few weeks, the laws are still on the books. The UK unfortunately does not have anything equivalent to our First Amendment.

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