Managing Your Reputation

Simon Singh is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association. Go see all the gory details here.

I can't be accused of being anti-chiropractor. I visit one regularly for joint problems. They are literally palpable (you can feel that the joint is misaligned). The chiropractor re-aligns them. The pain goes away. This all makes a great deal of sense.

Using chiropractery to fix an infection is a considerably less obvious idea, and deserves a lot more evidence. I am not aware that there is any good evidence for this, but for the purposes of this post let us say that the jury is still out.

The BCA could have responded to Singh's article in a number of ways. They could have published the results of well-designed clinical trials that showed he was wrong. This would have taken time, but it is the best option. They could also have taken up the Guardian's offer of a response in the same column, which would have been entirely fair. It's what I would expect a BCA-style organization to do.

Instead they chose to sue, in the British legal system that puts the burden off proof on the defendant in such a case. This is not how science works; and it should not be how evaluations of medical treatment work. It is, in my opinion, an attempt to shut Simon Singh up. This lowers my opinion of the BCA considerably. But they were not finished yet.

The BCA chose to argue that Singh had implied that they knew chiropractery didn't work, but promoted it anyway - an opinion that he himself explicitly disclaims. If this were simply about reputation, this is all that needed to be said.

What that says to me is that, even with the burden of proof on Singh, the BCA is not confident that it can argue that chiropractery cures infections, colic etc. Imagine how that would look if I substituted "aspirin alleviates headaches" or "antibiotics treat infections" in that sentence. If they are so distrustful of the legal system, why are they inflicting it Singh?

Before hearing about this case, I would have assumed that whatever the truth really was, the BCA was strongly convinced that they could treat these things; and that maybe the studies just weren't being done properly, or the evidence was being ignored, or whatever. Ironically, by their tactics in court, the BCA have made me more inclined to think that they really don't believe it works. I'm sure there are chiropractors that do, but I'm no longer sure the BCA does.

The more I hear of this, the less I can think of a reasonable motivation for the BCA's actions other than shutting up a critic while they rake in the money for treatments they don't believe in.

Of course, all of this is only my opinion. All I know of it is what I read on the net.