Friday, July 31, 2009

Google Bombing for Singh

Note: apparently, dissimenating the original article might get Singh into further legal trouble. So linking to the archived version is probably a bad idea. A good alternative is the (slightly edited) version on the Sense About Science website.

A large number of people supported Simon Singh's campaign to re-publish the article, "Beware the Spinal Trap", that the British Chiropractic Association is suing him over. The impact of this, however, is going to be somewhat limited because skeptical blogs and magazines (as far as I can tell, at least) predominantly reach already skeptical individuals. A successful Google Bomb, though, could affect far more people because it would push up skeptical information in search rankings. And what would be more delicious than having Singh's article high on the results page of a search for "chiropractic"? If that happens the BCA would well and truly have failed in silencing Singh.

So: take the word "chiropractic" and "chiropractor" and then link each of those to the following archived version of Singh's article: http://svetlana14s.narod.ru/Simon_Singhs_silenced_paper.html. (I chose this website because, the broken English at the top notwithstanding, it contains the original article in full and in context). So it should look like this: chiropractic and chiropractor. Note: it's important that we all link to the same article.

As an extra, you may wish to link "British Chiropractic Association" to: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=555. (I.e. British Chiropractic Association) and "libel law" and/or "English libel law" to: http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/333/. (I.e. libel law and English libel law).

Thanks to Jeff Martin for pointing out it's "Spinal Trap" not "Spinal Tap".

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