I hope that if this does go to court on defamation it gets summarily kicked out and used as example of how such cases will be treated in the future.

www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0706/07061303

Here is ad from his website:

Announcement 13 June 2007. UCL restores DC’s IMPROBABLE SCIENCE page.

After taking legal advice, the provost and I have agreed a joint statememt. Read it on the UCL web site.

“ . . . the Provost and Professor Colquhoun have taken advice from a senior defamation Queen’s Counsel, and we are pleased to announce that Professor Colquhoun’s website – with some modifications effected by him on counsel’s advice – will shortly be restored to UCL’s servers.”

I am grateful to UCL for its legal support, and I’m very grateful too for the enormous support I’ve had from many people, especially since Ben Goldacre mentioned the site move. Now all I need is a bit of help to get it into a more convenient format. The page will stay at its present address until there is time to sort things out.

MY CONGRATULATIONS, DEAR DAVID!!!
BE HAPPY AND HEALTHY!!!

“Despite the overwhelming support of the Disarm UCL campaign, Grant refused to genuinely engage with the issue of divestment from Cobham. Instead he concentrated on criticizing students and suggested we were campaigning against UCL.”

It’s been a rough week for poor Grant, and it’s still only Wednesday…

Hey! Defenders of freedom and real Science! Or will this problem leave in the air? Will it exist further in present state?

That will never do, IMHO. It’s unscientifically, after all.
It is necessary right solution of this question.

“…

New specialist electronic library on complementary and alternative medicine (NeLCAM)

The RLHH recently won the contract to provide the NHS’ new specialist electronic library on complementary and alternative medicine (NeLCAM) in collaboration with the Research Council for Complementary Medicine (RCCM) and the University of Westminster’s School of Integrated Health. ..”

This is, of course, the same Univ of Westminster School of Integrated Health that DC has been chiding on his blog and in the pages of Nature for awarding BScs in antiscience, and which awards a “B.Sc. in Homeopathy” for which the External Examiner is (surprise surprise) a non-scientifically qualified homeopath.

The RLHH appeal is for money to fund their “open access CAM Information Centre”. Oh goody. They say this Centre will “work with other bodies within the world of complementary medicine, including the Research Council for Complementary Medicine, the British Homoeopathic Association, and The Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health”.

Boosters all, of course. Now why doesn’t that leave me feeling reassured?

www.uclh.nhs.uk/New+developments/RLHH+redevelopment/

they need 1/4 million to house thier CAM library full of non evidence based periodicals of absolute bullshit.

Please give generously

I have read the words about Walker and Lakin and their product very carefully, first with my amateur barrack-room lawyer’s hat on, then as a scientist with an interest in the use of words, and finally as a “member of the public” – and I still can’t see anything that could not be construed as “DC’s sincerely held opinion”.

I would still hope that in an analogous situation in the future a (any?) University would have the stones to put up the justification defence when the statements could be easily argued to be true. The point of pubically taking a stand specifically on justification would be, as mentioned by many here,

“We stand by our guy and his right to try and inform the public about a matter of public interest, no matter what”.

If Universities don’t stand for stuff like this, then mch is right and they are just businesses. But when they admit that, they are on the slide, because their business is based at bottom on their academic REPUTATION, which is based on their not being “biddable” by financial considerations alone. That is why, in science, research from Univs is by and large more trusted than research from drug companies.

Stanford, though a private institution (and thus more of a “business” than UCL), seems to have understood this, judging by the tobacco company example the Stanford prof gave on DC’s blog:

www.dcscience.net/quack.html#move1

UCL has misjudged the same, IMHO.

What I sincerely HOPE is happening behind the scenes is UCL offering DC legal advice about how to avoid problems going forward with his now “privatised” blog. That would go some way to restoring my faith in my old alma mater.

UCL has an obligation to defend the freedom of its academics. If it doesn’t, then it reduces its role to that of a degree factory.

I don’t know what the situation is in the UK but the universities act in Ireland (quoted below) is clear on the issue, I presume you have similar principles and laws over there.

14.—(1) A university, in performing its functions shall—

( a ) have the right and responsibility to preserve and promote the traditional principles of academic freedom in the conduct of its internal and external affairs

…

(2) A member of the academic staff of a university shall have the freedom, within the law, in his or her teaching, research and any other activities either in or outside the university, to question and test received wisdom, to put forward new ideas and to state controversial or unpopular opinions

Because the basic argument seems to be “a lawyer says this bad thing _may_ happen” or even “a lawyer says this bad thing cannot be said never to happen”. That’s exactly the argument that idiots use about wifi: “can you tell me it’s absolutely safe with no caveats? No? Then we should assume the worst”.

“libel law is abused as you correctly point out by the affluent. In this case the accusers are relatively wealthy.”

I may be mis-judging the finances of alternatives, but I seriously doubt that the people making the theats have pockets as deep as would be required. UCL could quite justifiably demand that measures be taken to ensure their costs are paid should they win: that’s where the rubber meets the road.

“I’m assuming that libel is the main legal argument being used against UCL because breaches of copyright rarely stand up in court if swiftly corrected and apology issued (which has been done in this case).”

The same’s true of libel, because…

“In this country the burden of proof in libel cases is on the defendant”

No, it isn’t. If the defendant opts to run a defence of justification, the burden is on them (albeit only to a civil, “balance of probabilities” standard). But the burden resides with the plaintiff to show that the words are capable of having a defamtory meaning (which might be _very_ difficult in this case) and that the plaintiff suffered harm to their repution. And there’s a whole stack of defences which might apply in this case (notably a Reynolds defence, see Reynolds vs Times Newspaper) for which the reverse burden doesn’t apply in the same way.

“UCL obviously think there is a reasonable possibility that they may be liable for such damages and have taken what they consider appropriate action while they review the facts.”

I don’t see where `reasonable’ comes from. I might just as (in)acurrately say `remote’ in the same place. A case in which a University was held to be vicariously liable for the public statements of a professor, writing in a field which is his exact speciality, requires a sequence of events all of which have a probability distinctly less than one (the writ being served, the case making it to court, the case being held to be answerable, the judge being prepared to join UCL to the case, the case making it past a jury, the case making it past an appeal, the case having damages greater than the hundred quid that UCL will have paid into the court).

But this just brings back to the “Is what DC said true?” issue.

Quoting from a site talking about the law of defamation:

webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/2005/issue3/lewis3.html

“Where defamation is alleged, the first step is to consider the ordinary and natural meaning of the words used and what an ordinary person will infer.”

“If a defendant can prove the substantial truth of the words complained about the defence of justification is established.”

“Another defence in the law of defamation is that everyone is allowed to comment so long as the subject is a matter of public interest and the views were honestly held. The public interest has never been satisfactorily defined for these purposes but it is clear that it is to be broadly construed.”

All these seem to offer fairly obvious defences.

Of course, the UCL Provost has stated for the record that it was the “admin bother and nuisance” that was the issue, rather than the risk of liability at law. I still think, though, that they had some sort of wider moral obligation, as an institute of learning and “enlightenment”, to be SEEN to defend the right of scholars to oppose obfuscation and inaccuracy, especially when the latter were being used to sell things.

However it is sad that the woo’s have used similar tactics to the animal rights mob in simply harassing organisations into doing their bidding. Perhaps UCL could redress the balance by looking into the subject and publishing something in its own name instead

… which I would have said put it well into the territory of fair use for the purposes of comment or criticism.

“Article 12 [of the E-commerce Directive] provides that each member state shall ensure that service providers (which will include ISP s, VISPs and Web Hosts) will not be held liable for information transmitted on their sites provided that the relevant service provider:
- Does not initiate the transmission;
- Does not select the receiver of the transmission; and
- Does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission.
In other words, if the above criteria are met a service provider will be treated as a mere conduit as opposed to an author, editor or publisher. However, a service provider will still be required to remove unlawful and/or defamatory material from its site once it has received a complaint.”

All I’m saying is that I’m not qualified to comment on how it applies in this case, you’ll have to make of it what you will.

I think what worries us here is the possibility that UCL, and other comparable institutions, will seek to position themselves to have NO conceivable liability.
I would imagine it is virtually impossible to utterly exclude liability unless (i) every page on a University’s website is scrutinized by a libel QC, or (ii) anything thought to be even vaguely “controversial” (read : “critical”) is blanket forbidden.

In which case critics of misinformation stand a good chance of being silenced.

On the other hand, for background info, outlaw.com is a solid source of information on internet law.
Here’s their stuff on “User-generated content”
www.out-law.com/page-7807

and on “Liability of ISPs for third party material”
www.out-law.com/page-488