Calman’s lack of journalistic rigour did not end there.

His narrative was that people would stop taking statins after hearing negative stories in the press, and it would lead to unnecessary heart attacks and strokes. However, Calman needed a “case study.”

Calman put out a call for people to come forward and tell their stories, but he was apparently “inundated by stories of people who have stopped taking statins and felt far healthier.”  

He also received “two quite dramatic stories” of patients who were taken off their statins by their doctors after they developed serious liver problems and died from complications. “The families themselves both naturally question whether statins caused the problems,” noted Calman.

All these case studies contradicted the narrative that stopping statins was dangerous, so Calman wrote to the Professors. “What we haven’t had is a single story which backs your thesis, and obviously I’m concerned,” he explained. “I think it makes us look rather weak.”

Calman pressed the Professors to find a case study. “Have any of you [had] a real-life example of someone who has suffered a heart attack or stroke because they declined/quit statins because they thought they didn’t really work anyway, or similar?” asked Calman.

A patient by the name of “Colin” eventually came forward, but Calman committed the cardinal sin in journalism – he misrepresented the interview.

Transcripts of the interview revealed that Colin did not stop taking his statins because he’d been influenced by negative stories in the media, but because the medication left him feeling lethargic and he also had digestion problems. 

Colin, an avid radio listener, denied that he’d been influenced by misinformation on the radio because he said, “I like to make my own mind up.”

After reading the transcripts of the interview, Justice Nicklin agreed they “provided very little (if any) support for the suggestion that Colin had given up statins because of misinformation he had seen or heard in the media.”

Justice Nicklin wrote, “The quotations, attributed to Colin [in the article] are both inaccurate. Colin did not say this in his interview. At best, these ‘quotations’ represent Mr Calman’s inaccurate synthesis of the interview. They materially misrepresented the totality of what Colin had said.”

The right-of-reply

When it came to giving Kendrick and Harcombe a right-of-reply, Calman only allowed less than 24 hours to respond to a series of complex questions. This contrasted the lengthy correspondence Calman had with the Professors who’d already seen a draft of the article.

To their credit, Kendrick and Harcombe wrote strong rebuttals with credible references, denying the accusations leveled against them. So, Calman revised his article, adding their quotes to provide more balance.

But when Calman sent the revised version to the Professors, they made their objections known.

“Oh dear, what a shame. It is extremely disappointing how the balance of the article has been completely changed at the last minute by the influence of the unbalanced inclusion of quotes from Harcombe and Kendrick,” wrote Professor Collins.

Collins then suggested “a major revision” to bring the article “back to somewhere closer to what it had been.”

Professor Sever was reticent to give Kendrick and Harcombe any leeway. He wrote, “The way the article now reads seems to give credibility to some of their assertions.”

Calman had to insist on including quotes from Kendrick and Harcombe to avoid editorial complaints, but he did redraft the article again, to accommodate the Professors’ demands.

Surrendering editorial control

Allowing the Professors to review the full article before it was published presented an obvious risk that they would seek to exercise a disproportionate influence over the editorial decision-making and final version.

In the judgment, Justice Nicklin wrote that the Professors represented one side of the debate, “there was a clear risk that they had ‘an axe to grind’” and wished “to convey their evidence and arguments, almost to the exclusion of all others.”

It was put to Calman in cross-examination that all the opportunities he gave the Professors to edit his draft articles effectively “surrendered, or fettered, his editorial judgment as a journalist.” But Calman denied it.  

Justice Nicklin wrote that Calman inevitably felt pressured to make the edits suggested to him, and that he was being “used” by the Professors to advance their agenda.

“The changes he made shifted the balance of the Article materially to the disadvantage of the Claimants [Kendrick and Harcombe] and, perhaps most importantly, added emphasis to the suggestion that the Claimants’ actions were driven by financial motives,” noted Justice Nicklin.

Overall, Justice Nicklin’s assessment found the totality of the evidence indicated that Calman’s articles were “fundamentally unbalanced, and had been from the outset.”

He said Calman treated Kendrick and Harcombe “as outsiders to the process, and, from the start, had been identified and treated as the ‘targets’ of the articles; to be exposed as proponents of ‘fake health news’ about statins.”

Further, he noted Calman gave full draft articles to the Professors and a “generous period within which to respond.”

In contrast, Kendrick and Harcombe were given no draft article “to enable them fully to understand the range and gravity of allegations they faced. They were, instead, given only a précis of some of the allegations that were to be made against them, and were given less than 24 hours to respond.”

The judge determined that Calman had “written off” the ample evidence given to him from Kendrick and Harcombe in their right-of-replies and did not accept Calman’s claim that it was due to a lack of “space” in the article.

While the Judge accepted that alleged misinformation regarding statins was one of significant interest, Calman acted to “misrepresent important facts relating to the statin debate and to deny readers important details of the material upon which the Claimants had relied in their own defence of serious charges of wrongdoing.”

Justice Nicklin pointed to the “palpable irony” that Kendrick and Harcombe had been accused of being “purveyors of misinformation” when Calman and his publishers had themselves “seriously misinformed their own readers.”

In conclusion, the judgment stated:

“Mr Calman set out to publish a “polemical” “takedown” of the Claimants. He achieved that, but, in my judgment, his belief that publication of the Articles was in the public interest was not reasonable. Therefore, my conclusion is that the public interest defence for the print publication of the Articles fails, and it will be dismissed.”

Following the judgment, Harcombe said she was delighted by the outcome, “I am grateful to the Judge for his detailed and careful analysis of all of the facts and pleased that he has recognised the enormity and unfairness of the public attack on our integrity.”

Kendrick said he was also pleased with the Judge’s ruling, “It was always our position that we had not been treated fairly by the publishers, and the Judgment sets out clearly how badly we were in fact treated.”

Kendrick and Harcombe have indicated they will move to the next phase of the lawsuit in due course.