Mr Justice Eady, at the High Curt in London recently ruled that the word "bogus" meant something akin to deceiving people with malice aforethought. The word "bullshit", however, has this marvellous definition, courtesy of Harry Frankfurt:
"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."
I cannot help but wonder (especially in light of the BCA's infamous "plethora of evidence"): if Dr Singh had described the BCA's claims as "bullshit" as opposed to "bogus"... would they have been able to sue for libel quite so easily? And what meaning would the judge have attributed to the word?
Is it legally safe to describe the BCA as "bullshitters"? I await a professional opinion on the matter, but it is certainly an interesting point to ponder.
