Language Log

The England and Wales Court of Appeals delivered its judgment this morning in Simon Singh's appeal of last year's libel verdict against him.  This all began on April 19, 2008, when Singh wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian containing these sentences:

The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

The BCA sued for libel, and won an initial victory in May of 2009, when Sir David Eady, the presiding judge in the English High Court, decided that Singh's piece involved assertions of fact rather than opinion, and that the word bogus in effect meant "fraudulent" and not just "ineffective". This decision meant that in order to defend himself successfully, Singh would have to prove that the BCA was deliberately and knowingly dishonest in promoting treatments that it knew did not work.

Although the Guardian withdrew the article, Singh chose to appeal Eady's judgment, and attracted considerable support for his goal of keeping libel laws out of scientific debate.

According to Eric Schmidt, "A different kind of company name", The Official Google Blog 4/01/2010:

Early last month the mayor of Topeka, Kansas stunned the world by announcing that his city was changing its name to Google. We’ve been wondering ever since how best to honor that moving gesture. Today we are pleased to announce that as of 1AM (Central Daylight Time) April 1st, Google has officially changed our name to Topeka.