The court sent homeopaths to "retake"
The parties were not ready for judicial debate
On Monday, the Arbitration Court of Moscow considered the claim of the company "AleksAnn", which produces homeopathic medicines for animals, to the Commission on Combating Pseudoscience and Falsification of Scientific Research at the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, no decision was made. The next court hearing will be held on July 25.
AleksAnn demands that the information published in Memorandum No. 2 (homeopathy) be recognized as untrue, and that the RAS publicly refute them. In addition, the company intends to recover 30 million rubles from the academy as compensation for moral damage.
"The court adjourns consideration of the dispute on the merits for July 25 at 10:30 in the same hall. The plaintiff must submit a written position to the court and the persons participating in the case, taking into account the recall of the second defendant, by July 16," Judge Yana Shudashova, who is considering the case, ruled.
The meeting was scheduled for 10:00, but it started only at 10:30, and it took only 20 minutes. The court spent half of them dealing with the incorrect paperwork of the defendant and the plaintiff. The judge was indignant and reprimanded both sides like schoolchildren.
"Where is there? On which page? How should the court assess this from the point of view of Article 152 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation? That is, such-and-such information posted there confirms the fact of invalidity, what discredits the reputation of whom, how. What should I relate? This is your job, not mine. <> The court rejects your request for the attachment of documents in the absence of grounds for articles 67, 68. In addition, the court regards the submission of documents directly to the court session, and not in advance, as an abuse of the right," Shudashova told the plaintiff (the judge's quote is given verbatim by dictaphone recording – ed.).
Representatives of the company "AleksAnn" stated the need to conduct a linguistic examination of Memorandum No. 2. As the judge clarified, this may help determine whether the information in this document is a fact or an opinion. It turned out that, despite the plaintiff's specific demand to recover 30 million rubles from the defendant as compensation for moral damage and damage to business reputation, the company did not actually evaluate them. This was stated by the representatives of the manufacturer of homeopathic remedies themselves.
Lawyer Yaroslav Cherny, representing the chairman of the RAS commission, academician Yevgeny Alexandrov, in court, told the correspondent of the portal "Attic" that the plaintiff's representatives are asking to conduct a linguistic examination of the memorandum in a company unknown to him.
"I think if the court finds it necessary to conduct a linguistic examination, then when we discuss the place of the linguistic examination, it is unlikely that we will appoint an unknown society. We will choose more authoritative experts, whose opinion will have no reason to doubt either the participants in the trial or the court," Cherny said.
The interlocutor of the "Attic" added that the case was prepared to listen to it on the merits and make an informed decision. However, this time the hearing was postponed due to the fact that the plaintiff's representatives stated that they were not familiar with Alexandrov's legal position.
The Commission on Combating Pseudoscience and Falsification of Scientific Research under the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences issued Memorandum No. 2 on February 7, 2017. It was signed by 34 scientists who stated that homeopathy is by no means harmless, since patients spend considerable money on it, lose time (in some cases, for example, with oncological diseases, it is simply fatal – ed.) and do not receive truly effective treatment because of this.
The document also states that the treatment of ultra-low doses of substances used in homeopathy has no scientific basis, and such "methods of diagnosis and treatment" are pseudoscientific. Moreover, homeopathy, scientists are sure, should meet organized state opposition. They recommend pharmaceutical manufacturers to label homeopathic remedies as having no proven effectiveness, doctors – not to prescribe homeopathy to patients, and journalists – to emphasize its anti-science on a par with magic and extrasensory perception.
Although the amount of objective evidence of the ineffectiveness and anti-scientific nature of homeopathy is huge, manufacturers of homeopathic remedies still claim that this is only the private opinion of individual hostile scientists. Interestingly, tobacco manufacturers behaved in a similar way in the middle and second half of the XX century, when it was convincingly proved that smoking causes lung cancer and other oncological diseases.
In 2016, homeopaths have already tried to sue journalists, defending their "reputation". Then the reason for filing a lawsuit in court was the article "Dissolved magic" in the magazine "Around the World", which claimed that the effectiveness of homeopathy is indistinguishable from placebo. Two years ago, the "National Council for Homeopathy" filed a lawsuit with the wording "for an article discrediting the method of homeopathy." The magazine, however, easily won the case.
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