The Great Beyond blog recounts how the blogosphere and Internet search engines are being used to debate scientific claims. Reporter Lucas Laursen has been following the activities of several bloggers commenting on the case of UK science writer Simon Singh, who was sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for libel (http://tinyurl.com/m43bf3).

In The Guardian newspaper last year, Singh questioned the scientific validity of using chiropractic techniques to treat children with ailments such as colic and asthma, and chided BCA members for promoting the treatments. (For more on the case, see http://tinyurl.com/m4ejy2 and http://tinyurl.com/maruzn.)

The BCA has now released a list of 29 studies that it says “support the claims which Dr. Singh stated were bogus”. But several bloggers, such as Martin Robbins on Lay Scientist (http://tinyurl.com/kj7268), have pointed out some of the list's failings. Laursen notes that some studies “failed to conform to the statistically powerful, randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind standard to which many medical studies are subject”.