Does the end justify the means: are 'Libel Tourists' a real problem?

This post was prompted by something that has been annoying me for a while (since I read this excellent blog it goes into a lot of detail but is well worth the time) and in light of Simon Singh driving off the BCA (see my update earlier today) it seemed a good time to raise it. I fully support the libel reform campaign but I object to their 4th argument:

"4. London has become an international libel tribunal

We recommend: No case should be heard in this jurisdiction unless at least 10 per cent of copies of the relevant publication have been circulated here"

There is nothing inherently wrong with people coming here to settle libel cases; it is a sympton that are libel laws are in someway very attractive to other people but per say there is nothing wrong with them coming here to use them. It is the attractiveness of our libel laws that encourage people to come here to sue others nothing more. As campaign we do ourselves a disservice by falling into the trap of using people's inate xenophobia to promote our cause.

I doubt this is intentional on the part of those who lead the campaign but it does worry me the number of people who will happily repeat it without thinking about how it looks or even if its actually the problem they say it is. Who cares if people want to come here to sue each other

The only logical argument that I can see to reduce the number of people who come from overseas to sue here is if they were preventing residents from having access to the courts by clogging them up but as the number of libel cases in 2008 was 8 the made it to court from 259 that were brought this is obviously not the problem (although the apparent chilling is, even if some of these cases the defendant was obviously wrong I doubt they all were).

If anything all these people coming here with money can only be a good thing, so can we please drop the "libel tourism" and focus on what's important: that our libel laws cost 140 times that of equivalent cases in Europe, that even a successful libel defence will cost you money (to the tune of several thousand) and that more and more publishers are scared to publish here for fear of being sued or just don't publish at all.

Our libel laws are stiffling good journalism, stopping vital scientific debate and ultimately stopping the UK progressing as an educated nation; libel tourism is only a symptom of this and like homeopathy only treating the symptom does stop the problem.

Ten23: campaigning to get homoeopathy out of boots

Ten23 is a new campaign in the UK working to raise awareness of homoeopathic products, firstly that they don't work and secondly how they waste time, money and can prevent people seeking genuine medical advice when they should.

I won't go through the reasons that homoeopathy doesn't work, there's a wonderful explanation here so go read it. Simply put it's water. You spend a lot of money for a bottle of water.

Ten23 work to raise public awareness that it doesn't work and is a waste of money, they have an open letter to boots asking them to remove homoeopathic "treatments" from their shelves as they are a trusted pharmacist that many will go to as a first line of treatment, using homoeopathic remedies can put these people at risk and they will likely assume that boots, being a trusted party, will have their best interests at heart: stocking only treatments that work.

Talking of worthwhile campaigns this is another: Libel reform which is working to revise the libel laws in the UK. To reduce their cost and make them less plaintiff friendly (which is so bad that the UK experiences "libel tourism": people visiting the UK to sue others). The state of UK libel laws is so bad that they are putting journalists at risk of being sued for investigative journalism (see trifigua or Simon Singh).

Please sign both these petitions, they are important and without acting on them we put health and freedoms at risk.

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.