It sounds to me like the jury felt that the harm was to third parties. Which isn't actually what the law says - the harm is supposed to be to the one defamed.

It sounds to me like the jury felt that the harm was to third parties. Which isn't actually what the law says - the harm is supposed to be to the one defamed. This is a problem because on the one hand, the jury should not have based its award on harm to third parties, because that would not have properly been argued before it. But it also means that defamation is not adequate to defend science, where most of the harm of attacking science is towards third parties. I'd quite like to see lying in public life punished more harshly, because it is in fact corrosive to both public and private life. But it's going to be hard to frame 'harm to third parties' well, since it potentially covers a lot of political speech.