But in doing so, it has been criticised for letting standards drop and allowing bogus institutions to award degrees in their name.

The BBC have been on the case for a while. Last year they investigated the University’s support for a Malaysian college run by a pop star who had questionable qualifications. Since then the University watchdog, the QAA, have asked Wales to review their accreditations. Government minister Leighton Andrews says “the University of Wales has let down higher education in Wales and brought the nation “into disrepute”.”

Closer to home, the University has been accrediting the controversial McTimoney Chiropractic College in Abingdon. When the British Chiropractic Association decided to sue science writer Simon Singh for libel, the McTimoney chiropractors reacted bizarrely by telling all its members to take down their web sites for fear of complaints being made against them. The college soon came under the spotlight for its MSc degrees in chiropractic manipulation for small mammals and children – treatments that “do not have a jot of evidence” behind them.

So, it looks like the McTimoney College will soon have its degree awarding rug pulled from under its feet. This is a very serious situation for it as their students need an accredited degree in order to register with the General Chiropractic Council and practice legally as a chiropractor. It is illegal in the UK to call your self a chiropractor without registration.

It is likely that current students may still be awarded degrees as other colleges affected are saying this is the case. However, this will need to be clarified. I am sure there are many anxious back cracking students wanting to know if their tens of thousands of pounds have been wasted.

For students about to start their degrees, the future is much less certain. The College will need to find another University to accredit their programme. This might take some time, and not least because chiropractic as a therapy has come under much criticism as a useless hang over from Victorian travelling bone-setting charlatans. It will be a brave or desperate institution that takes them on.

Quackery has many victims, and the first are the students who get fooled into training. We now know chiropractic is a largely useless therapy, with a history of pseudoscience and magical thinking. Many students will come to McTimoney as second careers and will not get direct funding. They will have spent tens of thousands of pounds on a four year ‘MSc’, long before this government decided that should be the norm. In order to repay that cost, students must work very hard as a chiropractor with some, no doubt, getting into the very dubious arts of ‘wellness’ chiropractic.

By accrediting these degrees, Wales has been doing these young people a disservice.  It has given these techniques an air of legitimacy that they do not deserve. When starting a degree, students ought to have confidence that what they are learning is based on sound principles, academic rigour and good evidence. Chiropractic lacks these vital features and so today’s announcement is good news for future students.

Update

DCScience picks up the news and gives lots of useful background.

Related posts:

1. The Role of UK Universities in Chiropractic The decision by the British Chiropractic Association to sue Simon Singh will undoubtedly bring increased scrutiny of chiropractic. I would like to start with a first look at the education...
2. The University of Wales is Responsible for Enabling Bogus* Chiropractic Claims to be Made The Simon Singh/BCA libel case is having the unintended consequence of the media being full of reports of the strange beliefs of chiropractors. They are a cult like body of...
3. McTimoney Chiropractors told to take down their web sites This letter has been issued from the McTimoney Association to all its members… Date: 8 June 2009 09:12:18 BDT Subject: FURTHER URGENT ACTION REQUIRED! Dear Member If you are reading...

The English law of defamation would disagree with me though. The law allowed the British Chiropractic Association to bring a libel case against the science writer Simon Singh for suggesting in the Guardian that many of the techniques they promoted were ‘bogus’ – that is, not based on a sound scientific footing and lacking credible evidence. Most people would have caved and apologised. It is not rational to defend a libel claim in the UK, as the economic considerations will mean that you will almost certainly lose a shed load of money – win the case, or not. But Simon Singh did not make an economic decision – he made a principled decision – that what he wrote was defendable, important and in the public interest. The BCA did not count on attacking a principled man – with money to defend those principles.

Two years later, and hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on lawyers, the BCA have now dropped their case. They state that this is for economic reasons, “to avoid further legal costs being incurred by either side”. However, they acknowledge that Singh was given a very reasonable way of defending himself in this case that would meant it would be unlikely the BCA would win.

But in dropping the case, the BCA are still insisting that they have been defamed and that they would still have a strong case if they chose to appeal. They are even claiming that they have been ‘vindicated’.

This is absurd and demonstrates the irresponsible and unthinking nature of the BCA.

They claim in their press release that “The BCA takes seriously its duty and responsibilities to members and to chiropractic patients.” This precisely what they are not doing. In their attempt to defend their reputation, their members and their customers are the very people who have been ignored and let down, with disastrous consequences.

Simon Singh made a very simple allegation: he stated that the BCA were happily promoting treatments for children and babies for which there was not a jot of evidence. If this claim was true then the BCA were involved in activities that could be seriously detrimental to public health. The BCA chose not to defend their approach to chiropractic but instead decided to sue the writer, knowing the outcome would almost certainly be his bankruptcy. Their chiropractic patients were never featured in their response – and they still are not.

The BCA would appear to wish to carry on as if they have been involved in legal error – not of their making – and nothing else. They have been the unfortunate victims of a byzantine legal process. But this is of course absurd. The BCA had many chances to restore its reputation – most notably by taking up the offer to publish their own account of their reasons for promoting chiropractic for children in the Guardian. But they did not. They could also have simply ignored the minor comment piece in the Guardian. Instead, their actions look like the deliberate attempt to punish a critic of their trade who has written books and spoken publicly about the shortcomings of chiropractors. Confident of an early victory, I am sure they felt that this would sent a message to people not to write about chiropractic in less than glowing terms. For this, they have been resoundedly and quite rightly condemned.

In failing to achieve their aims, they have now ensured many more people do not see chiropractic as just a small branch of the medical profession that looks after backs, but as a bizarre, cult-like pseudomedical trade who make spurious healing claims with little regard to evidence. Their reputation has been trashed. However, not all chiropractors can be characterised as medical know-nothing chancers. There are many who would appear to value the move towards evidence based medicine and want to work with other medical colleagues on the mutual basis of good evidence and responsible practice. The BCA are letting these chiropractors down badly.

Instead of trying to spin this defeat into what it is not, the BCA should be trying to repair the profession that now sees about a third of its members under professional investigation by the regulating authorities for making unsupportable claims. I cannot see how the current leadership of the BCA are in any position now to take chiropractic forward. If the leadership care about the reputation of their members they should resign and make way for new hands who are committed to evidence-based chiropractic, no matter how limited their scope of practice may then turn out to be. This is the only approach that is in the best interests of chiropractic customers. Any other path will simply be seen as either the protectionist practices of a guild of unscrupulous charlatans.

The reputation of the BCA is now worth nothing. But the wellbeing of their customers is well worth defending. Only new chiropractic leadership can ensure that the interests of their paying customers are placed at the heart of their trade and help steer reasonable chiropractors through the regulatory mess that the current incumbents have got themselves into.

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And on a personal note to Simon. We both became fathers three weeks ago. I believe our babies were born 10 hours and 23 minutes apart. I am sure that you are finding this is a time of great wonder. With the collapse of this case, I hope the only lost sleep you are now getting is when little Hari decides to complain about something. Far better than the back quacks complaining. Well done on this case. You are a true superstar.

Related posts:

1. What Next for the British Chiropractic Association? The BMJ has today published an exchange between the British Chiropractic Association and Professor Edzard Ernst examining the claims of the BCA that chiropractic is effective in treating childhood ailments...
2. How the British Chiropractic Association Targets Children The British Chiropractic Association do not appear to be too hot on evidence. Given that they are suing Simon Singh, a science writer, for saying that they promoted treatments for...
3. A Carnival of Bogus* Chiropractic One of the side effects of the BCA vs Chiropractic libel case is that there are a growing number of people who now realise that Chiropractic is bogus*. Even though...