England’s draconian libel laws pose a danger to public health because they are interfering with the research published by medical journals, senior editors and scientists said.

Doctors are being denied access to critical medical information because academic publications have refused to accept important papers for fear of being sued, they said.

The risk of expensive libel actions is also stopping journal editors from retracting studies they suspect of being flawed or fraudulent, because such action could potentially be interpreted as defamatory.

Fiona Godlee, the editor of the British Medical Journal, will tomorrow join other senior academics to explain their concerns to MPs, after the launch of a petition urging reform of the libel laws.

The campaign follows several high-profile libel suits against scientists and science writers. The Times reported last month that Peter Wilmshurst, a cardiologist, is being sued over his criticisms of an American trial of a heart implant, and Simon Singh, the author, is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association for questioning the evidence for its medical claims.

Dr Godlee said that concerns about effects of libel on science were not confined to such cases, but also affected day-to-day decisions by the medical journals that publish peer-reviewed scientific research.

She revealed that one of the BMJ’s satellite journals, Archives of Disease in Childhood, had recently turned down, on legal advice, a series of case reports describing clinical signs associated with child abuse, which would have been useful to GPs and other doctors working in child protection. The paper was eventually published in an American journal that is less likely to be seen by British doctors.

“The editor was keen to publish, but the legal advice was that there was a possibility that cases might be identifiable and thus a risk of libel,” Dr Godlee said. “These cases were all from the UK, and the information should have been readily available to doctors in the UK.”

Scientific papers are regularly read by in-house lawyers for defamatory potential, creating extra costs for journals and sometimes affecting the contents of peer-reviewed literature.

“Science works through the publication of evidence, which can then be reproduced or rebutted,” Dr Godlee said. “The right approach to academic criticism is to challenge the evidence, not to go to law.

“Weak science sheltered from officious laws means bad medicine. Science and medical discussion must be open and critical. Rebuttal of science is a very important part of research. An atmosphere where concern over legal issues prevents important papers being published will mean patients suffer,” she said.

Dr Godlee said that a further problem was publishers’ increasing reluctance to withdraw papers when scientific doubts emerge, because authors have sometimes sued for libel in such circumstances.

She was supported by Bryony Urquhart, journal publishing manager for Wiley-Blackwell, which runs more than 1,400 scientific journals. “Something that has become increasingly problematic in recent years is the difficulty of taking down articles that have already been published,” she said.

“For example, if a paper contains plagiarism, errors or is fraudulent it can remain in the public domain because of the worry that someone could sue for libel for damaging their reputation if the article is removed. The problem is that the paper will continue to be cited and used as evidence, despite being known to be wrong.”

Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, said that the stifling effect of defamation law could deny doctors access to life-saving information. “ Libel laws have the potential to kill,” he said.

Matthew Cockerill, managing director of the science publisher BioMed Central, said: “As a scientific publisher, protecting ourselves from the risk of damages under the draconian English libel laws is an expensive business. The law as it stands acts to reduce the range of fair comment and opinion that can be freely expressed by researchers in our journals. Such comment and criticism is central to the practice of science and the advancement of scientific understanding.”

The medical editors have been joined by scientists, broadcasters and human rights activists to support the Libel Reform Coalition, launched today by the science and free speech groups Sense About Science, English PEN and Index on Censorship.

A petition calling for reforms such as a cap on legal costs and damages and stronger public interest defences to libel has been signed by celebrities such as Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry and Dara O’Briain, as well as scientists such as Jim Al-Khalili, Raymond Tallis and Richard Wiseman.