The moral of it is this epigram from Dave Winer of Scripting News, which should be heeded by a lot of people who ignore it: "If you find yourself in competition with the Internet, you should find a way out."

There's another way to look at it. It's an illustration of the idea that the Internet is not only not killing "real reporting," as some defenders of the newspaper faith claim, it is allowing for improvements in the gathering of information and the increase in knowledge.

The BCA didn't set out to pick a fight with the Internet, though it might have known that would happen. What the group did was sue science writer Simon Singh for libel over an April 2008 piece in the Guardian critical of the claims of some in the chiropractic profession that their methods can cure a variety of diseases, not just back pain and the like. Singh labeled these claims "bogus" and said they "can be lethal."

Disclosure: On this side of the pond, I've undergone chiropractic treatment at times for back and neck pain, have never heard claims by any of my chiropractors that they could cure diseases, and have generally been a satisfied customer-patient.

As Goldacre points out in the Guardian, suing for libel is frowned upon in medicine and the sciences because it can have a chilling effect on criticism, which is vital to the process of research. Goldacre writes, "Neither the General Medical Council nor the British Medical Association have ever sued anyone for saying that their members are up to no good. I asked them. The idea is laughable."

But that aside, the BCA now finds itself in a pitched battle with the Internet, and it's getting pounded -- this despite British libel law, which, Goldacre writes, essentially considers the accused guilty until proven innocent. Singh has had to spend a fortune to defend himself, Goldacre writes.

But it's what Goldacre calls "a ragged band of science bloggers" that is landing the heavy blows against the British Chiropractic Association.

"Fifteen months after the case began," Goldacre writes, "the BCA finally released the academic evidence it was using to support specific claims. Within 24 hours this was taken apart meticulously by bloggers, referencing primary research papers, and looking in every corner ... At every turn they have taken the opportunity to explain a different principle of evidence based medicine -- the sin of cherry-picking results, the ways a clinical trial can be unfair by design -- to an engaged lay audience."

Chiropractors are getting routed so badly that one chiropractic association sent a confidential e-mail to its members with urgent instructions to kill their Web sites and take other actions clearly intended to run away from claims chiropractors routinely make about their ability to cure diseases.

Want to read that e-mail? It's available on a blog called the Quackometer.

This is one of those cases where the blogosphere kicks the traditional media in the -- well, right below the sacroiliac.

It's inconceivable that this story could have played out like this 10 or 20 years ago. Among the handful of science writers at major British newspapers, one of them would have to have become interested enough in the claims of chiropractors to investigate, and then would have needed the scientific chops to tear apart the research and claims of the BCA.

Or she would have had to report it out, checking each of the BCA's claims with scientists, reporting what the scientists said and then the BCA's response to the criticisms. It would have taken a long time to get to this point, even if, somehow, a science writer at every major paper in Britain were equally engaged by the controversy.

Unless this issue grabbed the imagination of the British public and became a cause célèbre, the newspaper writers would have needed to make a crusade of it to keep the story going. After four or five pieces over two or three weeks about whether the claims of the chiropractic association are accurate, the probability of an editor telling our science writer friends to give it a rest would approach 1.

But even if that didn't happen, the controversy would play out like a tennis match on a side court, with the science writer quoting some expert debunking a chiropractic claim -- pock! -- and then the BCA defending the claim -- pock! Then, a day or so later, another claim criticized and defended. Each of these stately back and forths would have appeared in one newspaper, rarely if ever on Page A-1, possibly repurposed for a TV report or two, discussed on talk radio.

Compare that tennis match to the tidal wave of debunkment that's hit the BCA. The scientific experts are able to take their statements directly to the public. They aren't filtered and edited for space down to one or two quotes in a 750-word piece by a lay science writer. And the social nature of the Internet spreads those statements farther -- the very idea that I, sitting in San Francisco, would have had a clue about a relatively minor controversy involving the British Chiropractic Association before the Web came along is absurd -- and faster than old media could.

Old way: The BCA is able to have its distinguished-looking, smart-sounding spokesperson calmly assure the public that the BCA's claims are factual and the debunkers are random crackpots with an ax to grind. This can go on for months, plenty long enough for the public to lose any interest it might have had in the issue.

New way: The BCA is retreating at a dead run within 24 hours of its big information offensive, abandoning its medical claims as fast as it can.

Old media defenders complain that the blogosphere is killing "real reporting," by which they mostly mean writers who report from far-flung locations, investigate important but often unsexy issues or cover vital but often unglamorous beats. That's a real concern, but it's a vast oversimplification. There are some types of reporting that non-reporters are better at than reporters.

Don't believe me? Ask a British chiropractor.