Reply #10: Smith didn't just say "trivialised", she accused Nutt of "making up a link"

[muriel_volestrangler]

The British “government” has a colourful record of commissioning independent scientific advice and then blithely trashing it when it does not conform to ministers’ prejudices, particularly on the subject of the WAD (War Against Drugs).1 Over the weekend, news emerged that Professor David Nutt, chair of the Home Office’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, had written in a journal that, on a strict comparison of immediate deaths and injuries that result, taking Ecstasy is no more dangerous than horse-riding.2 On the statistics he cites of annual death and disability, this is simply a fact. It is not an opinion, dangerous or otherwise: Nutt has simply counted some things up and told us the answer.

Happily, facts are rarely allowed to get in the way of the cretinous moralizing of pro-WADdists. And so came a more-than-usually moronic session in Parliament yesterday, wherein home secretary “Jacqui” Smith screeched:

I spoke to Professor Nutt about his comments this morning. I told him that I was surprised and profoundly disappointed by the article. I am sure that most people would simply not accept the link that he makes up in his article between horse riding and illegal drug-taking.

The “link that he makes up”? IANAL, but I think this manages to be both a falsehood about what Nutt says, and a slander of him for fabricating evidence (or at least it would be a slander if it weren’t for Parliamentary privilege). As far as I can tell from press coverage,3 Nutt did not assert — still less invent — any “link” between the two activities. He did not propose that horse-riding was a gateway pastime to Ecstasy use. He merely compared them in their harms. Is to compare two things now inevitably to “make up” a “link” between them? Of course it isn’t, and of course “Jacqui” Smith is either a numbskull or a liar.
...
http://unspeak.net/sends-the-wrong-message/

I think Evan Harris has got this right:

But, in questions to the House of Commons Speaker, Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris said Prof Nutt was a "distinguished scientist" and asked whether it was "right to criticise him here when he cannot answer back for what is set out in a scientific publication".

He added: "What's the future for scientific independence if she (Ms Smith) asks that scientists apologise for their views?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7879378.stm