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Scientist Forced To Remove Earthquake Prediction
Hugh Pickens writes to mention that Italian scientist Giampaolo Giuliani, a researcher at the National Physical Laboratory of Gran Sasso, recently gave warning about an earthquake that was to happen on March 29th of this year near L'Aquilla. Based on radon gas emissions and a series of observed tremors he tried to convince residents to evacuate, drawing much criticism from the city's mayor and others. Giuliani was forced to take down warnings he had posted on the internet. The researcher had said that a 'disastrous' earthquake would strike on March 29, but when it didn't, Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's Civil Protection Agency, last week officially denounced Giuliani in court for false alarm. 'These imbeciles enjoy spreading false news,' Bertalaso was quoted as saying. 'Everyone knows that you can't predict earthquakes.' Giuliani, it turns out, was partially right. A much smaller seismic shift struck on the day he said it would, with the truly disastrous one arriving just one week later. 'Someone owes me an apology,' said Giuliani, who is also a resident of L'Aquila. 'The situation here is dramatic. I am devastated, but also angry.'"
My immediate reaction is to say, "Ha! Science, bitches: It works!" and laugh at the officials who denounced the prediction. However, the very fact that the prediction was *so* precise, saying that the devastation would strike on a certain day, seems particularly irresponsible.
My thoughts go to those hurt in this incident. As the official says, though, it's not a habit to plan for stuff like this---perhaps it should become so.
Does anyone have data on how many truly false predictions have been made? Because one out of X might not be enough to condemn the politicos and glorify the scientist. Clearly these things do need to be managed carefully.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
That seems like a pretty good improvement in earthquake prediction. If this guy can consistantly predict earthquakes with a +/- of one week, I'd say he's doing something right, and should be listened to. But he has to do it consistantly. One out of one is a good start.
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
If indeed, it is "impossible to predict earthquakes, it seems to me that getting a minor quake on-the-day of prediction, and the major quake hitting a week later is pretty much as good as could possibly have been expected.
Now if all he did was guess, it'd be a whole different ball-game, but as far as I remember, doing this "science" thingy involves recognising a problem, taking measurements, postulating a theory to fit those measurements, and (sadly, in this case) testing that theory against further predictions it made. Seems like he followed the rule-book on that one...
Part of the problem, of course, is that people (including, one might say *especially*, elected officals) aren't good at assessing risk. They consider risk to be the consequences of an event, whereas really it's the consequences of an event multiplied by the probability of that event. It's why we look out for "global killer" meteorites, even though they are incredibly unlikely. The risk inherent in such a strike makes it worthwhile to keep putting in the effort at detecting them. It's easiest to illustrate when the fate of the whole world lies in balance, but the principle remains the same even for localised disasters such as this one...
So often, it comes down to better education being the key to good decision-making. Why is it that we let people who only want to run for power take on the mantle of power over us ? I recall a Sci-Fi story where on election, all a (wo)man's worldly goods were forcibly sold, and the cash amount held in trust. Once the successor appeared, the departing official was given access to his/her trust fund again - the implication being that you had to do well by everyone else before you could do well for yourself. I'm not suggesting this is workable, but perhaps an element of personal stake might be a useful thing for a politician to have... Perhaps then they'd listen to the scientist, and not just go on gut instinct...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
this man can pretty much go to any city on the planet right now, make an excitable announcement, and cause a mass exdodus
that's a rather interesting gift
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the government force you to take down posts on the internet? I know little of the Italian legal system, but even if he was pretending to be an expert, wouldn't that fall under some form of freedom of speech? We have pseudo-experts on /. all the time, wouldn't this fall under a similar "just ignore him" sentiment?
Yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Crying earthquake in a volcanically active region.
I think the issue isn't that he posted predictions, but that he called for evactuations.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
How dare you be inaccurate in your warning about the timing of a natural disaster? You caused me to be outraged and dismissive on record in the media! Now people think I'm a douchebag, and it's all your fault!
Must be a European thing. I'm sure nothing like that could ever happen here in the good ol' US of A.
If he was legally compelled to fall silent in his warnings, whoever silenced him should be jailed for involuntary manslaughter or at least criminal negligence causing death. There should be equal consequences both for yelling "fire!" when there is none, and for yelling "no fire!" when there is.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Please. He didn't predict it with enough certainty? He was off by a week. I would gladly evacuate my home for a month if it saves my life or that of my family. You sir, have an odd definition of accuracy when attempting to predict something that has heretofor been considered impossible to predict.
Weak analogy. Getting within a few weeks of correct on an event that occurs irregularly on the scale of decades to centuries seems pretty good to me.
Now, given that the economic and logistical viability of moving a large number of people out of their homes and to somewhere else plummets after just a few days, his prediction wasn't good enough for use; but equating him with the boy who cried wolf(who, you'll remember, was deliberately dishonest, not merely wrong) is a bit much.
Unless the quality of earthquake prediction gets considerably better, the punchline is that the money is better spent on decent architects and engineers. Building structures that won't collapse and crush everybody inside isn't trivial; but it is doable now, which makes it a better investment.
You cannot evacuate cities for long periods just to find out that it was a false alarm.
Perhaps not, but tell that to people who lost loved ones in the earthquake.
my tea leaves tell me that your town is going to be destroyed by an earthquake next week. You better evacuate. If you don't, then you'll be responsible for telling the people who lost loved ones that you ignored my dire warnings.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Giuliani was off by a week. He wasn't off by a month or a year. But a week. And he was right about the location (L'Aquila). That's more than a proverbial broken watch.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The problem with calling something "not part of economic stimulus" is: All spending is stimulus.
Volcano monitoring, which is part of the money in question, gives money to consumers (workers who are paid) to place and monitor equipment which is purchased (money to sales) from a manufacturer (money to manufacturing company and workers therein).
"spending money", by definition, "stimulates spending" (as it *is* spending)
I think the problem here is saying ludicrous things like "It will happen on March 29th". That's simply trying to get one's name in the paper, so to speak. A more rational approach, if the underlying science fits (and I don't think seismology or vulcanology is at the point where you can say anything definite like this) is to say "Look, I'm getting some very troubling readings here that suggest that a major earthquake is imminent."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It appears that Jindal was right. You stated yourself that the program is working just fine without additional funding.
I believe this was exactly the sort of thinking that caused NASA to languish, and then continue to languish when the thinking became "More money? Where's the results from that standard funding we've been giving you every year? You were able to do everything just fine with less money in the 60's, so why not now?"
I'm sorry if I seem like an economic heathen for hoping that this sort of thing doesn't happen to something like volcano monitoring.
to say "Look, I'm getting some very troubling readings here that suggest that a major earthquake is imminent."
Which would have been met with, at best, polite disinterest. So, in practical terms, the result would have been the same.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
If by "tea leaves" you mean "recorded radon emissions from seismically active areas in the city" then I'm outta here...
Are you saying science and technology is nothing more than tea leaves? The computer you typed your post on...is it made of tea leaves?
Weak analogy. Getting within a few weeks of correct on an event that occurs irregularly on the scale of decades to centuries seems pretty good to me.
The funny part is, he was *immediately* labeled an imbecile when the earthquake was late.
Quite so. What if they HAD left on the predicted date. There was a small tremor. The destructive earthquake didn't happen for another week.
Presumably, it's entirely possible that even being away for a week could have helped them out. One of the bigger ways to end up dead in an earthquake is to be in a large collapsing building and schools and such might have been closed or still in the process of reopening a week later.
That said, the returning people could have been completely caught off guard after returning from what they would consider a false alarm.
I have to say that I'm entirely with the people who were saying that the best method, by far, for dealing with an earthquake like this is to make sure you are in buildings that can take an earthquake. There's really no better way available to ensure that you are never caught by surprise.
They may well owe this guy an apology, after all he did predict it. On the other hand, I'm not entirely clear on whether it would have made things better or worse if they had done what he said to do at the time that he told them to do it.
Science demands more than a single data point of "within a week". He needs to get more data points so we determine whether he was just lucky or whether his predictions have some real value.
If you throw out predictions left and right, well sooner or later you may get lucky. That doesn't mean you are actually any good at predicting. The predictive value of a model doesn't come from getting a single answer right or near right, it comes from accurately modeling reality. That means having a track record of predicting events, and not making predictions when there are no events.
As an extreme example I could make a computer program that predicts a major earthquake every single day. You input a day, it says "Major quake will happen." Well, that program would occasionally be right. Any time an earthquake happened I could claim my software predicted it. However that wouldn't me meaningful, in the face of the massive number of false positives, the thousands upon thousands of days where it was wrong.
So ya, I need to see some real data that shows that his software had a reasonable prediction rate, not just that he happened to get lucky this time.
Unless the quality of earthquake prediction gets considerably better, the punchline is that the money is better spent on decent architects and engineers. Building structures that won't collapse and crush everybody inside isn't trivial; but it is doable now, which makes it a better investment.
Add disaster recovery to that list. When you can't predict a disaster, you make sure you'll be handle it efficiently after the fact.
Also, investing in disaster recovery is great because it helps you against a lot of different threats. Mass terrorism, earthquake, etc. all involve more or less the same logistical considerations about moving lots of people/food/water/medicine quickly.
>I'm a freaking die hard democrat and even I can admit that there is a huge difference between those two things.
There isnt. Any stimulus bill is a really spending bill to keep people employed. For instance, the people doing the monitoring are buying supplies from my company that keeps me and others employed. They might use services from my friend's company. That money isnt destroyed, it goes into the economy in some fashion.
Jindal is a anti-science loon. The GOP is an anti-intellectual party and they often make jabs at spending in the sciences. Its pathetic.
While you might not be able to evacuate, you could go through drills, stock up on food, maybe move things around a bit so you wouldn't be so devastated by an earthquake.
A more scientific conclusion would have been to use error bars in his prediction; "There is a 95% chance that an earthquake on this date, and a 99% that it will occur within seven days after this date".
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If the town had evacuated on the day of his prediction, nothing would have happened, and they would have returned to get hit the week after anyway.
Well, he might of been a 'week' off, but yeah, a more in depth study of his accuracy needs to be done - damage and lives avoided if he's right, the expense if he's wrong, adjusted by his accuracy.
In order for it to be worth it, I'd say his false-positive rate needs to be less than 50%.
I don't read AC A human right
What makes one an official "scientist"?
Science is like Journalism. It can be done by anybody; there may be a distinction between professional and amateur, but science needs no particular certification, license, or accreditation.
"Dear citizens, it has come to our attention that there may be a large-scale earthquake in the near future. While no prediction mechanism is 100%, you should always be prepared. Please review your plan, make sure you have a first aid kit, bottled water, food, blankets, clothes, a radio, batteries, medicine."
His problem is that people are just smart enough to go "You can't possibly know exactly when this is going to happen." And it's the truth, he couldn't possibly know the exact date, the science just isn't that good. What one can know is, with a certain degree of probability, that an event could be about to occur. Whether it's an increase in certain gas emissions from a volcano suggesting an eruption, or an increase in smaller earthquakes suggesting pressure build-up at a fault that could lead to an earthquake, you can only speak in probabilities.
It's a tough call for any government. Even where the seismologists are saying "Hey, I think there's something big time bad gonna happen", there's always the possibility that the activity will die down. Sadly, public officials want certainty, but science usually can only deliver statistical likelihoods.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I really hate this idea that the individual overrides the social, it's a very narrow minded view that causes no end of grief. Sure, we would like to believe we're all unique and special, but it's just not true. We're part of a bigger "machine", just cogs. Sure, we can have individual ideas and attitudes, but we aren't here to merely satisfy our own individual wants. If that's the case we'd be solitary creatures.
The problem with this that has cropped up again and again throughout history is that when humans attempt to place the society's needs over the individual as an ethos of governance, individual ideas and attitudes are, and must be, suppressed.
The more emphasis placed on society's wants and needs over the individual, the more thorough and brutal the repression, indeed oppression, of individual ideas and attitudes. Especially when it comes to criticism of the society's leaders and their laws.
I really hate this idea that society outweighs the individual. It's been proven repeatedly throughout history up to the present day that it causes no end of grief including genocide, wars of aggression, and brutal oppression.
A healthy society and its' governance should impact as little as possible on individual freedoms, ideas, and attitudes.
"That government is best that governs least."-Thomas Paine
Sadly, we have forgotten Thomas Paine and are the worse for it.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Correct, but you could update your emergency kit, stock up slightly on water and food, make sure your car has a full tank of gas, and run some refresher fire/earthquake drills. On a larger scale, the government could pre-position medical supplies, communications equipment, vehicles, and staff.
In other words, depending on the perceived accuracy of the alarm, you have a range of options that cost various amounts of money. An earthquake warning with a week's error can already save lives for just minimal cost.
As to the charge of "silenced", I'll wait and see what that really means.
The first articles specifically states that he was "forced to remove warnings from the internet". He was reported to the police & dragged into court.
Personally, I would count that as having been silenced.
So it's OK if someone poisons your water by pouring toxic waste into the river (to save a few bucks), thereby forcing the entire populace to import their water / install expensive systems to clean it up (thousands of people multiplied by much more than you saved) ???
So it's OK if you hire armed gun-men and snipers (because you have the money) to dominate a good fishing river and place gill-nets across the river to catch 100% of the fish for personal profit even if it destroys that resource forever ???
So it's OK if your burn down the next 10 houses around you because you didn't want to have trash handled properly and you decided to put up a home-built incinerator that let fly-ash go uncontrolled.... too bad that they didn't leave their yard as bare dirt and chop down their trees for your convenience ???
Sorry, but the only 'repression' here is _NOT_ having (at least some) areas where society outweighs the individual. I can't believe your at +5 for that drivel.
That's how scientific progress works. The real geniuses are usually thought of as imbeciles.
Of course, the imbeciles are also thought of as imbeciles, and it's often hard to differentiate the two. :3
You forget the biggest reason: specialization. Individuals can't be experts in everything, and there are far too many subtle things to cheat on that even an expert might not notice. These things can cause disproportionate harm down the road. Rules are one way to try to avoid having people cheated on something in which they aren't expert. Look where trusting in too loosely policed financial experts got us.
It's not always The Government making these rules. One example is the Underwriter's Laboratories. The UL was started by insurance companies seeking to reduce the damages they paid thanks to products with obvious defects. Would a manufacturer knowingly choose an option that was far more dangerous, if it saved them a few pennies up front? Especially if the consequences wouldn't show up for some years, and if they do, could probably be blamed on the buyers? Some would! A gas appliance could do all kinds of nasty things if poorly designed. Might shoot flames out and ignite the house. Might leak gas or combustion byproducts and poison and suffocate everyone inside. And there are all kinds of rules concerning electrical appliances, so they don't spontaneously short out and start a fire.
And buildings? Tons of codes so that when the contractors skimp, they're in trouble. Have to have codes and professional building inspectors. Otherwise, the builders would cheat every time, and we'd all end up with housing that looks great at first but which falls right down in the first windstorm or earthquake. Or falls down all by itself in 10 years thanks to poor foundations. Or in 10 years the wiring gives out and starts a fire. And then they get to sell the victims another cheap building!
I don't want manufacturers making decisions like that. Freedom to design and manufacture product any way they want, so long as it doesn't involve hazards the public would not have knowingly chosen. (We know cars are dangerous, but that we go into with eyes open, for the most part.) Manufacturers are inherently biased towards their bottom line, as they should be, but that often doesn't correlate with my bottom line. Too many would save themselves a few pennies doing things people would not accept but will not be able to see until it is too late. If nothing reins in the cheaters, the rest would feel compelled to do the same things, to stay "competitive". The smarter manufacturers want rules and enforcement too. Look at the ridiculous irresponsibility shown by those trailer home manufacturers, in selling formaldehyde tainted trailers. They hurt customers, and ultimately themselves. They gave the entire manufactured housing industry a black eye. Very unfair to the responsible members.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"