Today, Simon Singh got what many skeptics around the world and in the skeptical blogosphere are celebrating as good news: the libel charges against him brought by the British Chiropractic Association have officially been dropped, after he recently won an appeal in the preliminary phase of the case.
And it certainly is good new in many ways. First, Singh won't have to spend another two years of his life defending his right to say that he thinks chiropractic does not result in the positive medical outcomes some chiropractors claim, as he did in the original article in The Guardian that incited the BCA to file the claim of libel against him in the first place. Second, there won’t be the continued exorbitant expense of the libel case itself: over $500,000 has been spent on the case so far by both parties, and it hasn't officially even gone to trial yet (the preliminary proceedings he won at appeal recently were only about the meanings of the words in his original article, and not a winning of the appeal of the libel trial itself). So with all this good news, is there a downside?
I think so, and for two reasons: First, Singh was perfectly willing for the trial to continue, since he was in a very strong position to win at trial in front of the the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which would have had very positive effect in scaling back the British libel laws. Singh considers England's libel laws to be the worst in the world since they stifle the free exchange of ideas more than any other Western nation's. They have been abused by dictators who sue human rights groups for criticizing them, and corporations who sue reporters for giving them bad press. The precedent that would have been set were Singh able to win his case at trial would have made future such claims of libel less likely. Second, because the case is over, the public’s attention on the matter may wane. Singh’s case has caused many leading thinkers and celebrities around the world, such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry, to speak up in defense of him, and to lobby for English libel law reform.
The task before the pro-science and skeptic community, therefore, is to avoid letting up. The fight is not over just because the British Chiropractic Association dropped their libel case against Simon Singh. You can get involved in the ongoing effort to repeal England's horrible libel laws by going to LibelReform.org.