I love when groups of intelligent people can get together in support of a fellow skeptic.
Simon Singh spoke to 200-300 supporters about the chiropractic libel case today. To summarize, Singh criticized the methods of chiropractics in a newspaper article last year but a judge recently claimed that he was attacking the practitioners of it (not true) and thus Singh lost his preliminary hearing. He is now thinking about filing an appeal.
Paul Sims was in the crowd at Penderel’s Oak pub in central London and has an excellent roundup of what was said.
What [Singh] was able to say at the meeting is that if he does mount an appeal it will have been in part influenced by the overwhelming support he has received from the public, who in addition to turning out this evening have signed up to internet groups in enormous numbers. While mounting an appeal is risky because he may lose, he gave three reasons why it is the right option — 1) he might win, 2) he wants his day in court to talk about what the Guardian article actually meant, and 3) most importantly this case is about broader issues that the validity of chiropracty — it is “about the need to be able to write about issues fairly and reasonably without being intimidated”.
We should know if Singh will file an appeal by May 28th.
(via New Humanist Blog)
