Category Archives: pensées

Misplaced childhood

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It’s lunchtime and the BBC newsfeed in the lobby still says “Breaking news: Michael Jackson is dead”. Well, it’s hardly going to change, is it? The news reveals the astonishing facts that (a) he’s dead and (b) his friends miss him. Well, did you ever.

Today I leaned a new word: Huxleyed. It means, roughly, to be reasonably famous such that your death should generate a few column inches, and then have that completely swamped by someone even more famous dying at the same time. The word originates from Aldous Huxley who carelessly died on 22 November 1963 shortly before JFK was shot. With slightly fewer knock-on effects for the future of planet Earth, Farrah Fawcett today found herself completely Huxleyed by the weird non-black guy.

I love the British sense of humour. During WW2, official Nazi news channels ranted about the alleged Jewishness and degeneracy of the royal family and Churchill. We retaliated by singing “Hitler has only got one ball”. We won. So it came as no surprise at all to log on first thing this morning and find a bulletin board already posting Jacko jokes. Now is not the time to repeat any, but some are quite funny.

What isn’t funny at all – in fact, heartbreakingly sad, once you’re past the vomiting – is this collection of memorabilia that he was selling off to pay his bills. A common theme, apart from the gag-retching awfulness of it all, is children having fun – rather, Jackson’s idea of what constituted children having fun, which isn’t necessarily the same thing at all. And it’s obvious he never had any at all. Fun, that is. Other interpretations will be up for discussion for a long time to come.

It’s not often you can genuinely say “I hope he’s at peace” but in this case I’ll give it a go. He was a hugely unhappy guy and the only people he really made happy himself were the ones who couldn’t get enough of him and therefore fed his unhappiness. I can’t say anything for his legacy, apart from making the Today programme presenters talk about him as if they cared and bringing high production values to the world of music videos. That latter is frankly a dead-end alley as far as the evolution of civilisation goes. All those videos today of hundreds of people dancing exactly the same way with joyless robotic precision probably come down to him. As for the actual music … well, “Billie Jean” had a certain toe-tapping something. I never could see the big deal about “Thriller”, and Lenny Henry’s version was much better.

 

Fulminate Against Chiropractic Twaddle

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I love FACTS. Not the Federation Against Copyright Theft (though I don’t dislike it, apart from its irritatingly obtrusive and unavoidable adverts on my legally acquired DVDs) but actual facts. I love the presentation of information that is clearly, unavoidably and sometimes interestingly true.

Part of this I might put down to the headmaster I had at a formative age, and the hurt and misery oft caused by his fantasised, evidence-free declarations of reality. But most of it is just who I am. It’s why I like quizzes. It’s why I have been known to play Trivial Pursuit. It’s why I’m not a Creationist and believe in democracy and freedom of speech and have always preferred working in some form of scientific publishing. Science is the ultimate playground of fact. If something is true then scientific method and experimentation will show it to be so. It’s inevitable. It can’t help it.

Hold that thought.

I can personally testify to the purely physical benefits of chiropractic treatment, i.e. adjustment to the spine, curing backache, aiding posture etc. If however my chiropractor told me it could also cure my asthma, I’d demand proof. Okay, I don’t have asthma anyway. Hayfever? Yes. So if someone made the same claim about hayfever, I might ask why I’ve been having the treatment for over 7 years now and, while my back is fine, I still get the odd itchy sniffle. Does my back need adjusting in a different way? Surely a reasonable question to ask.

Hold that thought too, and combine it with the first one.

So when journalist Simon Singh cast doubt on the ability of chiropractic treatment to cure childhood diseases such as asthma, the British Chiropractic Association surely just had to wheel out the results of a few double blind trials to prove him wrong. No?

No. They took him to court for libel, and it’s still rumbling on.

Read Singh’s account here. Read much more authoritative accounts than I can give here and here. None of it is happy reading.

Why? Well, reading this lot, I’ve learnt interesting things about English libel law. Libel is the only kind of court case where the burden of proof is reversed – the defendant is guilty until proven innocent. The plaintiff has to convince the court they have a reputation to defend in the UK, but then simply say that X has sullied that reputation. X then has to prove that no, he hasn’t. Further, preliminary hearings can define the scope of the actual trial way beyond the original cause. In this case, the preliminary hearing by Mr Justice Eady has decided Singh was maliciously accusing the BCA of deliberate falsehood – which he wasn’t, but suddenly that is what he has to prove he wasn’t doing, rather than stand by his simple original assertion that there is no direct evidence for the BCA’s claims. To use a complex legal term coined by one of my godsons, Mr Eady is a poo-poo head (capitus excretus excretus).

I’ve also learnt from today’s reading that “chiropractic” is an anagram of “critic – oh, crap”.

I confess I’m still not entirely certain why the case can’t simply run as follows: chairman of BCA put on the stand; given copy of article to read out with instructions to put his hand up when he gets to the bit where he’s called a liar; gets to the end without putting his hand up; judge throws the case out. It’s all more complex than that. Apparently.

But that is grounds for a separate rant. Grounds for this one are as follows. Facts are facts. Dogma is dogma. The two are irreconcilable. When a fact contradicts dogma it is the dogma that is at fault. There is no reputation at stake. There is no libel to be had. And libel laws should not be used to suppress science.

Sense About Science has published a statement to this effect, to which all sorts of famous and non-famous (like me) people have added their signatures. Go thou and do likewise.

Let’s give the last word to Stephen Fry, another signatory:

“It may seem like a small thing to some when claims are made without evidence, but there are those of us who take this kind of thing very seriously because we believe that repeatable evidence-based science is the very foundation of our civilisation. Freedom in politics, in thought and in speech followed the rise of empirical science which refused to take anything on trust, on faith, on hope or even on reason. The simplicity and purity of evidence is all that stands between us and the wildest kinds of tyranny, superstition and fraudulent nonsense. When a powerful organisation tries to silence a man of Simon Singh’s reputation then anyone who believes in science, fairness and the truth should rise in indignation. All we ask for is proof. Reasoned proof according to the established protocols of medicine and science everywhere. It is not science that is arrogant: science can be defined as ‘humility before the facts’ – it is those who refuse to submit to testing and make unsubstantiated claims that are arrogant. Arrogant and unjust.”

How would I feel being outed (as a blogger)?

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Well, first of all I would congratulate the outer on their hard work. My name is embedded in the URL of this blog, I never fail to plug my books where the possibility arises, and the column on the left contains a link to www.benjeapes.com, which itself has a headline feed from this blog. So, it would be good to know the art of investigative journalism wasn’t completely dead.

If I was Detective Constable Richard Horton of the Lancashire Constabulary, I might feel differently. He anonymously created the Night Jack blogger, giving an insider’s view of the workings of Her Majesty’s Northern Plod. It garnered awards and has been turned into a series. He took the Times to court to try and stop them revealing his identity, and failed. Now identified, he has been given a written warning, the blog has been deleted and no further action will be taken. I surprise myself to find my sympathies are with the police, in this instance.

Yes, bloggers should have a right to be anonymous, if that is their choice. If they commit libel, or the public interest or national security are adversely affected, a court should then be able to order their identity to be revealed. (Public interest and national security <> sparing the blushes of the powers that be or catering to the public taste for titillation – but that too is for the courts to decide.) It’s also up to them to make a reasonable effort, however. Horton wasn’t so much leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind him as several unsliced loaves. For instance, mentioning his jiu-jitsu activities, when the Lancashire Constabulary jiu-jitsu club only one lists member who is a detective. I have my suspicions as to why, after 17 years on the force, he’s still only a constable.

Under those circumstances, pleading a right to anonymity is just silly. Note that in this case it wasn’t the repressive forces of law and order that tracked Horton down – it was the Times, following a perfectly reasonable line of enquiry now that his blog had made the big time. I would guess Lancashire Constabulary was quietly ignoring the matter, until it became unavoidable.

So, why the reprimand? It’s a question of balance. I rarely name my friends or even family, though it’s no secret I live in Abingdon. I don’t deliver the juicy gossip from work or reveal stories about my colleagues – but I don’t hide the nature of my employer’s business or its geographical location, so Woodward & Bernstein would track it down in about 30 seconds (the Abingdon Herald, maybe a minute). Horton, apparently, was not only giving hints on how to act when arrested (not such a bad thing) but giving out information that could affect cases in progress (very bad indeed). Your work is your work, it’s not your hobby or your life; but even then, an employer can reasonably assume a reasonable degree of loyalty from its staff. 17 years on the force, remember – it’s not as if he was suffering in a hellhole with his blog the only outlet for his righteous resentment.

How could he have played it safer? Easy. Make up names for everything, including Lancashire. Leave out the links to the jiu-jitsu and anything else associated with him. Make it impossible to pinpoint himself or his activities. As long as the made-up names were consistent, the truth of his posts would be unaffected. Has Belle du Jour been positively identified? (No, she’s not Billie Piper.) I don’t think so. Does her discreet use of pseudonyms affect her veracity? Not at all. See, easy.