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Seismologist Manslaughter Trial Begins Next Week
El Puerco Loco writes with a followup to a story we discussed in May about the manslaughter charges facing six seismologists and one government official in Italy after an earthquake there killed 309 people and destroyed 20,000 buildings. The case is going to trial next week, and an article at Nature provides an update on how things stand:
"The indictments have drawn global condemnation. The American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), both in Washington DC, issued statements in support of the Italian defendants. ... The view from L'Aquila, however, is quite different. Prosecutors and the families of victims alike say that the trial has nothing to do with the ability to predict earthquakes, and everything to do with the failure of government-appointed scientists serving on an advisory panel to adequately evaluate, and then communicate, the potential risk to the local population. ... [The charges allege that the defendants] provided 'incomplete, imprecise, and contradictory information' to a public that had been unnerved by months of persistent, low-level tremors. [Prosecutor Fabio Picuti] says that the commission was more interested in pacifying the local population than in giving clear advice about earthquake preparedness. 'I'm not crazy,' Picuti says. 'I know they can't predict earthquakes. The basis of the charges is not that they didn't predict the earthquake. As functionaries of the state, they had certain duties imposed by law: to evaluate and characterize the risks that were present in L'Aquila.'"
The crime is (apparently) that they failed to provide sufficient and consistent information for everyone to ignore.
The crime is (apparently) that they failed to provide sufficient and consistent information for everyone to ignore.
Easy solution: point out Mt. Vesuvius, and tell the populace to follow what happened in AD 79.
If you want sufficient and consistent information, don't sue the people who have devoted their entire lives to doing so, otherwise you'll be left doing it the old fashioned way, not having any information at all.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Because engineering has some very well established science behind it, and on top of that you can overbuild to get around uncertainty. Seismology is worlds away from that level of certainty, and you're suppose to give accurate predictions so there is no equivalent to overbuilding.
In America, climatologists get sued and harassed for making public statements about global warming.
Weren't they sued because they were public employees refusing to provide the public with all their data? The public paid for the data and the research. Seems reasonable the public should get to see what they bought.
Yup, agreed. I figure you probably were being sarcastic, but yeah: we do pay for DoD research and data, and we certainly should be able to see that. Too much is classified that doesn't need to be, and that which does need to be classified is classified for too long.
Yes because we all know that people "outside the ivory towers" are just "uneducated masses" who have no understanding of things like physics, chemistry and biology. With no chance of having taught themselves.
None at all. That's what we call elitism.
Om, nomnomnom...