Homeopaths organise mass letter writing campaign against Simon Singh and applaud BCA

Simon Singh is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) and has generated substantial levels of support for his predicament as many see this as an issue of free speech.  Sadly the Homeopathy Worked For Me organisation are not so fond of SImon’s freedom of speech despite being very much in favour of their own freedom to launch unsubstantiated criticism and personal attacks in a lenghty critique of Simon Singh’s and Edzard Ernst’s ‘Trick or Treatment’, of which Andy Lewis of the Quackometer comments

Its clumsy rhetoric and lengthy nitpicking is a disguise of the embarrassment that homeopaths have over the fact that they cannot produce any reliable evidence for the efficacy of their treatments and the validity of their hypotheses (not theories). This pamphlet may well please the homeopaths who continue to avoid acknowledging the genuine and urgent criticisms of their shabby trade (such as their refusal to condemn the practices of their colleagues who dish out sugar pills in Africa in order to ‘prevent’ malaria or treat HIV infection). More competent readers will not be impressed.

Homeopathy Worked For Me have a spectacularly snide piece up on their site that rejoices in mean spirited and inaccurate remarks about Simon Singh and doesn’t really seem to grasp the concept of free speech anyway.

Few homeopaths have found that Singh defends their right to free speech when they are attacked in the press. Indeed Singh has shown that he is quite happy to join with those who misrepresent the facts about homeopathy, the facts about medicine and the facts about science itself.

Clearly Homeopathy Worked For Me haven’t grasped that freedom of speech means the freedom to criticise.  In fact they have gone so far as to encourage their readers to submit complaints based on their template to the editor of the Observer who had the temerity to publish an article by Nick Cohen supporting Simon Singh.

Dear Editor

I am shocked/amazed/surprised to find that the Observer is willing to support Simon Singh in respect of the libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association.

Simon Singh made his statements about the BCA on the basis of Trick or Treatment?, a book he co-authored with Edzard Ernst. A detailed study by Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century has shown that this book ”has no validity as a scientific examination of alternative medicine”, which means that he had no factual basis for his remarks.

Alleging that an organisation “happily promotes bogus treatments” without having any evidence to back such a claim is not an issue of free speech, but of libel, and Simon Singh has justifiably been called to account. For a respected newspaper to defend groundless accusations as “free speech” is to make a mockery of its claims to report the world honestly.

We urge you to reconsider your support for someone who has shown himself prepared to refdefine[sic] science and to misrepresent the facts in order to defend his beliefs.

Yours faithfully

That last sentence alone would break even the strongest irony meter.

Homeopathy Worked For Me confirm once again that quacks are incapable of engaging with criticism in a reasonable and rational manner, preferring instead that debate be silenced.

[BPSDB]