Libel reform

This (should) be a quick post, for those of you who haven't seen there is a new website that I think you should all go an look at:
http://libelreform.org
it is a lobbying group that aims to improve the way libel cases are dealt with in the UK, have a read about on it have a look here for Ben Goldacre's info on it (he's one of the founders).

If you live in the UK and in any way care about science this is important, if you live elsewhere and care about science its important. If you don't care about science you should and then this is important.

Essentially our current libel laws are crap. The cost of libel in the UK is about 170 times that of mainland Europe, and the burden of proof is upon the defendant: ie when someone sues you for libel you are guilty until proven innocent.

For better (and probably correct) arguments about why you should give a fig about libel laws look around on the libel reform page as well as Ben Goldacre's blog or Jack of Kent's blog or just read up on what's happening to Simon Singh.

Please look at it and come to your own decision; this is important.

Chiropractic and other fun

Two interesting posts that I'm linking to today. First is a very funny letter being sent out to various chiropractic peoples informing them that they should be very careful about what they claim to be able to help with. Second is an interesting (American) post on the break-down of their government's spending.

Starting with the latter (the government spending) click here the blog itself is a favourite of mine with lots of interesting physics and astrophysics posts but what is genuinely interesting is how the break down of spending appears: only 0.8% is on science and technology combined. all it beats is general government. That's NOTHING, I find it highly annoying when people complain about the costs of for example the LHC; especially as they rarely realise that the $5 billion (I think ~£4bn) is spread over about 25 years of total R&D compared to the Olympic games which will no doubt run to more than its predicted £4bn budget for not even 1 year of heavy use. Anyway an interesting post and one well worth sending to the 'science is a waste of money' brigade.

The former post I won't comment on other than to say that considering that Simon Singh currently has to prove that the claims of the BCA were deliberately misleading this seems to be a wonderful piece of evidence that they may have been...