Ben Goldacre: Mutual criticism is vital in science. Libel laws threaten it

[alp227]

Recently we have seen a large number of fairly high-profile libel cases involving scientists and doctors, including Dr Peter Wilmshurst, Dr Henrik Thomsen, Dr Simon Singh, and my own.

In many of them, lawyers have been dismissive of any special pleading for science in the libel reform movement: if you want to step out and criticise, they explain, you should be aware of the implications and ready to defend your point. But in science, the assumptions and traditions are different, and with good reason. In science and medicine, criticising each others' ideas and practices isn't an aberration, or a special occasion: it's exactly what you are supposed to do, all of the time, and with very good reason.

Medicine is almost unique among all human activities in that it's possible to do enormous harm even when you set out with the absolute best of intentions, and there are many examples of this, even in mainstream healthcare. On paper, for example, it made perfect sense to give antiarrhythmics preventively to everyone who'd had a heart attack, rather than just the people who had abnormal hearth rhythms. But it turned out that this practice had killed more Americans than died in the whole of the Vietnam war.

In medicine, when you make a mistake about whether something works or not, it's possible to cause death and suffering on a genuinely biblical scale.

That's why we have systems to try and stop us making such mistakes, and at the heart of all these lies mutual criticism: criticising each others ideas and practices. This isn't something that's marginal, or tolerated by the profession. It's something that is welcomed and actively encouraged. More than that, it's institutionalised.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/08/science-libel-laws-mutual-criticism

[marybourg]

1. Before the indignation chorus starts , this has little relevance to libel laws in U.S. nt.

[alp227]

2. I read about Simon Singh on PZ Myers's blog.

Read the article that got him in trouble here. I was outraged to learn how quacks abuse libel laws to silence critics. And another quack tried to get PZ to cease and desist.