{"id":8201,"date":"2011-03-10T12:43:13","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T16:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=8201"},"modified":"2011-03-10T12:43:13","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T16:43:13","slug":"an-opportunity-to-stop-english-libel-law-chilling-free-speech-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/03\/10\/an-opportunity-to-stop-english-libel-law-chilling-free-speech-around-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"“An opportunity to stop English libel law chilling free speech around the world”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon Singh<\/a> at the Guardian<\/em>‘s “Comment is Free” site explains just how much the chilling effect of English libel law can obstruct free speech:<\/p>\n

\n

. . . it is important to remember that for every case of a scientist or journal who dares to face the ordeal of a libel trial, there are dozens of (or probably hundreds of) others who immediately apologise and retract after a libel threat, or who self-censor in order avoid any risk of libel, which is the so-called chilling effect of libel.<\/p>\n

For example, I gave an interview to an Australian medical correspondent at the Melbourne Age<\/em> about the lack of evidence surrounding homeopathy, but he was unable to quote me in detail because his in-house lawyer was frightened of being sued for libel in London. The only reason this came to light was because the journalist in question wrote a blog describing how tough it was to be a health journalist in Australia when the vulture of English libel law was always circling above.<\/p>\n

More worryingly, I recently received an email from an American researcher (whose name I cannot mention) who had worked with a librarian (whose name I cannot mention) to write a paper on the subject of impact factors, the scoring system often used by librarians and others to assess the quality of a research journal. The anonymous researchers cited one journal (whose name I cannot mention) which may be using certain techniques to boost its own impact factor. Impact factors are an important issue, so the paper was sent to a respected British journal (which I shall not name in order to avoid embarrassment) with an international readership. The journal replied: “We regret that we are unable to publish after all because unfortunately it has potential legal implications under UK libel law.”<\/p>\n

The anonymous researchers then sent the paper to an American journal (which I shall not name), which also had an international readership and which did agree to publish the paper. Initially, there seemed to be no problem, because the in-house lawyer agreed that the paper did not breach US libel law. However, the lawyer went on to demand that edits were necessary or there would be a serious risk of being sued in London according to English libel law.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The British government is to introduce a new bill to (one hopes) address some of these concerns soon. Let’s hope that they’re paying attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon Singh at the Guardian‘s “Comment is Free” site explains just how much the chilling effect of English libel law can obstruct free speech: . . . it is important to remember that for every case of a scientist or journal who dares to face the ordeal of a libel trial, there are dozens of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,10,16],"tags":[459,186,270],"class_list":["post-8201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-law","category-liberty","category-science","tag-censorship","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-libel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-28h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8202,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8201\/revisions\/8202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}