US Seismologist Testifies Against Scientists In Quake-Prediction Case

ananyo writes with this snippet from Nature (for which this earlier Nature article is also background): "'The courthouse in L'Aquila, Italy, yesterday hosted a highly anticipated hearing in the trial of six seismologists and one government official indicted for manslaughter over their reassurances to the public ahead of a deadly earthquake in 2009. .... During the hearing, the former head of the Italian Department of Civil Protection turned from key witness into defendant, and a seismologist from California criticized Italy's top earthquake experts.' Lalliana Mualchin, former chief seismologist for the Department of Transportation in California, criticized the Italian analysis, which he says was based on a poor model. If the court agrees with Mualchin, the defendants could face up to 12 years in jail."

Comments

Scientists Charged For Not Being Psychic

[Anonymous Coward]

This trial is a farce.

Re:Scientists Charged For Not Being Psychic

[jdastrup]

300 people did not die because of their improper assurances. If they did "properly" assure them, they would have been called quacks, or they would have been sued for causing a hype if nothing happened and still could have faced fines or jail time. And even if people took precautions, just as many could have died. People died because of a natural disaster, which cannot be predicted or foretold. I don't care who with what authority says it can or cannot happen, no person is at fault for deaths as a result of earthquakes, hurricanes, avalanches, tornadoes, etc.

Re:Scientists Charged For Not Being Psychic

[bill_mcgonigle]

The flip side is telling everyone they're in danger and then be charged with inciting a panic!

Or being honest - "our models do not currently show a risk of significant earthquake, but our models may be wrong. You should always be prepared."

Sounds to me like they were dumbing it down for people who find science "too hard".

Re:Scientists Charged For Not Being Psychic

[Grishnakh]

I think the end result of this is that there won't be anyone willing to work as a seismologist in Italy any more, so any more earthquakes (which do happen, they're in an active seismic zone there) will simply be a big surprise.

Re:Scientists Charged For Not Being Psychic

[CanHasDIY]

Where I live (the Midwest), it's hard to take meteorologists seriously; the weather is just too damn unpredictable.

So really, I guess it all comes down to the specific situation; if the seismologists had data that, as experts, they should have known was indicating that a major event was forthcoming, but decided to withhold said data from the public (or outright lie about it), then they should be held liable. If they had no such data and were caught as unawares as the rest of the populace, then they should be exonerated. Now if only there were some sort of legal setting in which guilt and innocence could be proven through the presentation of supporting evidence... /sarc

My problem is with the folks who claim these men should remain blameless without even going over the evidence.

I surmise those are the same people who vote along party lines.

Re:Scientists Charged For Not Being Psychic

[mbkennel]

"1) You can't be put in jail for losing a civil case. Ask O.J."

In countries with English-style law. In others, not necessarily.

I have an in-law who lives in a South American country. He and his wife are facing (entirely bogus) criminal penalties from a private contract lawsuit. It's been dismissed and laughtd out of court every time it comes up before a non-crony-of-plaintiff judge but it gets revived and reallocated. The system is so corrupt that being sentenced to hard time is a possibility from a business collaboration gone bad.

Re:Scientists Charged For Not Being Psychic

[demonbug]

Where I live (the Midwest), it's hard to take meteorologists seriously; the weather is just too damn unpredictable.

So really, I guess it all comes down to the specific situation; if the seismologists had data that, as experts, they should have known was indicating that a major event was forthcoming, but decided to withhold said data from the public (or outright lie about it), then they should be held liable. If they had no such data and were caught as unawares as the rest of the populace, then they should be exonerated.

It sounds like they are accused of a third possibility; there was no way to know whether a larger event was coming or not, but they reassured the public that there was nothing to worry about. Actually from reading the article, it sounds like the former Director of Public Safety is the one that said that; the guilt or innocence of the scientists depends (or should depend, at any rate) on whether that was their advice to him.

The former Caltrans seismologist has a point, but I'm not sure it really pertains to this case. Earthquake frequency analysis is a great tool for determining something like insurance rates, where you are trying to figure out how likely it is for an earthquake of x magnitude to occur in y period of time. From a public safety standpoint, the primary concern should be the maximum expected earthquake magnitude, because this is what you need to design your infrastructure to. Frequency analysis does come into play here, as it might not make economic sense to design to the largest earthquake ever recorded (or that there is evidence for), but it offers absolutely no guarantees - just because the largest expected quake is a 6.5, you just had a 6.5 three years ago so on average another shouldn't occur for another three thousand years, doesn't mean that another 6.5 won't occur next year.

The only reassurance the scientists should have offered is that the string of minor earthquakes did not necessarily mean a larger event was on the way, which I realize isn't very reassuring. They had absolutely no way of knowing whether something larger was coming, or whether the string of minor earthquakes was it. If they actually claimed otherwise, then they are guilty.

Re:Scientists Charged For Not Being Psychic

[tragedy]

When an empirical scientist makes a statement like "there is no danger", they mean something like "the level of danger is below threshold X to within margin of error Y". No seismologist would ever seriously say that there's no chance of a serious earthquake even five minutes from now, no matter what all their gathered instrument data and statistics tell them. Statements like "there is no danger" are for public consumption because the public, on the whole, doesn't really have a clue what these people actually do.

This court case is like prosecuting sports commentators for manslaughter because they predicted a victory for the local team, but the local team lost and the crowd rioted and people were killed. Predicting earthquakes that acutely simply isn't their job. Whether they did a good job or not, this trial is a farce. It's just a mob lynching taking place in a courthouse. Some of the heavily publicized (internationally publicized anyway) court cases in Italy recently (such as the Amanda Knox case) seem to fall along those lines. All politics and little real concern for justice, the victims, or the accused.

Sounds Like Infighting

[eldavojohn]

The problem is in part a scientific one, Mualchin said. The Italian scientists based their analysis on the frequency of earthquakes in the area. This is known as the probabilistic seismic-hazard analysis (PSHA), a method that is state of the art in many countries, but that, in Mualchin’s view, systematically underestimates seismic hazard because it does not consider extreme and rare events.

"Frequency is not important, what really matters is the largest earthquake we can expect, the strongest one that has happened in the past. Risk prevention should be based on that," he said. This is the philosophy behind deterministic seismic-hazard analysis, a method that Mualchin says has been mostly abandoned by the scientific community, to the point that younger seismologists do not even learn about it.

So they were using what is commonly considered a "state of the art" model? I'm guessing the prosecutors happened to find a guy in the United States that apparently even admits to adhering to models that are less commonly accepted than the model that the scientists used. I wonder if he's got an ax to grind now that his preferred model is no longer taught? I don't know anything about these two models but this sounds like infighting and I'm sure it's really easy for Mualchin to step in after the fact and show that his "abandoned" model would have worked better in this particular case. Any seismologists here that can speak to the current research in earthquake prediction and the actual effectiveness of these two models?

I sure am glad I'm not a seismologist, this would angry up my blood.

Re:Sounds Like Infighting

[canajin56]

According to TFA, the scientists (in their defense) claim to have told the official that there was no increased or decreased risk because they cannot make a definite prediction. The official is the one who turned that into "no risk at all because little quakes release energy and prevent big ones, drink some wine and relax!" Maybe they're lying now to cover their asses. But the big news in TFA is that this official and his boss arranged this press conference to "reassure the public there is no risk" before they even consulted the accused scientists, so I'd tend to believe the scientists that this official twisted their words or outright lied.

Ob. Moe

[Rik Rohl]

Let's burn down the observatory so this can never happen again!

In totally unrelated news...

[RightSaidFred99]

Students pursuing seismology as a profession saw a sharp decline.

Why would anyone pursue a career where it's so easy to make a simple mistake and be liable for penalties like this for something that is out of your control?

What is important to realize here

[I Read Good]

is that saying "We do not have reason to believe that there will be a catastrophic earthquake" or "It is not likely that there will be a catastrophic earthquake" is NOT the same as saying "There is no danger of a catastrophic earthquake".

What happened was the scientists came to the former consensus in the meeting, then the politician interpreted it as the latter, and then the politician relayed his version to the people.

IMHO, blaming the scientists is fucking absurd. I think that of the people indicted in this mess, the only one who is at fault is the politician. The most guilty people in this are the idiots who took action concerning their own safety based on their interpretation of what a politician said and against their better instincts.

Re:Should've become business analysts

[CanHasDIY]

Nobody has even been tried for involvement in the 2008 crash.

Only because they're still in power.

Think about it; if Hitler had won WWII, would there have been Nuremberg Trials?

Scientists Charged For not being scientific.

[Bobfrankly1]

Those people broke with their regular routine of sleeping outside in their car after multiple small tremors, based on the assurances of the seismologists on trial. Those seismologist called that open session to discredit a laboratory tech who was claiming the likelihood of a larger earthquake. The seismologists basically told the people that there was no danger, go drink some wine. If they hadn't called that meeting and gave that direction, those people wouldn't have broken routine, and many of them would have had a much better chance at survival.

This has been discussed on slashdot before, catch-up on some of the details.

What truly scientific mind would say that that it is safe to ignore the tremors that had been happening in the area? Why didn't they say "we have no conclusive evidence of a forthcoming earthquake, but here are some general safety tips". Most likely, they were more interested in discrediting and shaming the laboratory tech who had been warning of a big earthquake. When those who are entrusted with public safety choose ego over public safety, and it causes changes that lead to death, I agree that they should be held accountable.

Read the Nature article. Get the perspective from both sides.

Earthquakes don't kill people

[helixcode123]

Things falling on people kill people. From the photos in TFA it looks like the're using unreinforced masonry. This is deadly in earthquake zones, but this situation has more to do with local building codes and enforcement than seismic potential.

In the current state of earthquake prediction, the actual prediction of *when* an earthquake will occur is not all that reliable. However the prediction of how much ground acceleration can be expected from potential seismic activity is reliable and building codes can be created accordingly.