Last year, during a visit to the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, I was interviewed by Nick Miller, health correspondent at the Melbourne Age newspaper. I had recently co-authored a book about alternative medicine entitled Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial, so we spoke for an hour, after which Nick set about writing up our discussion. Of course, before Nick could publish the interview, he passed it by the in-house lawyer, who proceeded to gut the article to such an extent that my strongest views about homeopathy were removed.

I am confident (and I think Nick agrees) that my remarks were legally defensible. Indeed, Nick was so enraged that he decided to make public the extent to which the mere potential of a libel action has a chilling effect on publishers. In addition to his usual health