Hurray for blog power. Professor David Colquhoun of University College London
had his
Improbable Science webpage
removed from the university server after the
husband of a nutritionist
threatened the school with legal action. It seems that nutritionists don't like having
their statements described as "gobbledegook", not even when they pepper their writing
with meaningless phrases like "blood cleansing" and "chemical balance".
Bam! Enter the superheroes of science, Frank Swain of
SciencePunk and Ben Goldacre of
Bad Science. They,
and many other science bloggers, brought this
story to international attention. After receiving comments from around the world,
the university relented and Improbable Science is back where it belongs.
Some of you may know that I have a thing about quack
medicine, so I'm glad to see Dr.Colquhoun emerge victorious. I also have a thing about
freedom of discourse, and get riled when people threaten litigation just to silence their
critics (as in
the
Fleen/Todd Goldman affair). Plus, one of the blogs involved is named
Science Punk, and how cool is that? The only way this story could be more
appealing to me would be if it involved giant robots and had a catchy theme song.
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