As I suspect a great number of you will already know, the gathering in support of Simon Singh’s legal defence went ahead in the Penderel’s Oak this evening, with visible weight added by attendance from Tim Minchin, Dr Evan Harris, Prof Brian Cox, Dave Gorman, Nick Cohen and many others.

While Simon was expected to announce whether an appeal of his Preliminary Hearing will be forthcoming, his legal team are still working on the case and as yet cannot confirm the outcome. It would seem that an appeal will be made if legally possible, but with the deadline for this decision being 10 days from now (28th May), I suspect decisions and news will be will be forthcoming fairly quickly.

I’ll try to update this blog with notable news, links and updates as they come to my attention. Please do leave comments with info, or send me an email too: digest [at] skeptic.org.uk

For now, a running commentary of the event by its guests can be found here: #singhbca

A rather loosely-phrased petition aiming to prompt change in British libel law can be found here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/reformlibellaws

EDIT:

Links:
An interesting article from Wendy Grossman: http://www.newswireless.net/
From the Nature Network:
in-my-opinion-the-british-chiropractic-association-is-being-unscientific
From the New Humanist:
simon-singh-hopes-to-appeal-chiropracty

And a review of Trick or Treatment including the following, very pertinent paragraph:

“Singh and Ernst do not set out to comprehensively condemn alternative therapies, but rather to emphasize the importance of evidence. Properly conducted clinical trials (double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled) are the best way to ascertain whether or not a therapy or product provides benefit beyond the placebo, and this applies to all therapies, not only complementary ones. It seems obvious, but as the authors state, the ‘plural of anecdote is not data’; it seems that some alternative therapists rely on anecdote to ‘prove’ their success.”
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net

•