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Scientists Who Failed to Warn of Quake Found Guilty of Manslaughter
An anonymous reader notes that the BBC reports "Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila. A regional court found them guilty of multiple manslaughter. Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes. The 6.3 magnitude quake devastated the city and killed 309 people." The scientists were first charged more than two years ago.
Palm readers, Farmer's Almanac, anyone who publishes a book about Nostradamus, etc ...
This is beyond ridiculous. It's just stupid.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Well, if you live in an area which is (historically) earthquake prone, then saying it is not going to happen is not going to make much sense, especially if you are an authority on the subject. It always pays to be cautious on these things. Look at Japan. They have been telling stories about "the big one" for many years and it finally happened last year.
This still causes chilling effects.
Now scientists studying earthquakes will become like the various environuts who say the world is going to end at midnight, every night, because of X, Y, and Z. If they don't, they could end up in jail.
Considering how few listen to the environuts, we are in for a world of hurt if this decision permeates all science.
The government asked for their assessment, and they gave the best prediction they could given the data they had. Nearly every other seismologist in the world would have given the same assessment. They are being sentenced to prison because they did not predict the quake, pure and simple. The lesson here is that if the Italian government ever asks your assessment on anything, the only valid response is "fuck off and die".
For not enforcing building codes that could withstand a 6.3 quake, or for failing to make a law to prevent the collapse of the buildings in an obviously seismically active region.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They have been telling stories about "the big one" for many years and it finally happened last year.
Anecdotal evidence, confirmation bias...what other problems can you find in that sentence?
Ezekiel 23:20
I find it hard to believe a country like Italy would convict based on not having the ability to predict an earthquake.
Really? You find it hard to believe that politicians would abuse the justice system for political points in Italy? In Italy? Really? That's hard to believe?
I did some reading, and the charges have more to do with creating a perception that the earthquake risk was remote and being negligent in their duty to keep the people educated about earthquake preparation and vigilance.
If the earthquake risk was in fact remote, then how does this amount to anything other than convicting them for not predicting the quake? Just because it happened doesn't mean it was likely to happen. Long shots do occur.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
No you cannot prove a negative assertion. The burden of proof is on the original earthquake prediction. No scientific evidence came forward at the time, so the professional scientists announced their dismissal of the prediction.
The failure here is the lack of basic science education in the basic population and in the legal system's utter ignorance. Justice is not only blind, but it's spastic as well.
You're so fucking ignorant you don't know how this is a bad thing.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Oh, MY GOD. That isn't even a charge, or a crime.
Here's what the folks in L'Aquila have just earned: a rapid defection of scientists on the public payroll because they are now afraid to say, or not say, anything. Because an event that can't actually be predicted under any interpretation happened when they didn't expect it.
These IDIOTS have done a serious amount of damage to people who were trying to help them. FUCK EM ALL, seriously. Fucking MORONS.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
When you lie for your bosses, save the evidence to make sure they fall with you, because bosses have no loyalty and they LOVE to send you to face the music.
The "scientists" in question seem to have massaged the figures, they weren't lying, they just weren't telling the absolute truth, someone hinted that someone would be pleased if their report said X, they said X and then Y happened and gosh, their bosses dropped them like the flunkies they were.
Life isn't a movie, if it was, this would have been a disaster movie and the boss would have died in some horrible way just seconds after claiming that what is obviously happening isn't happening.
But in real life, the underling takes the blame and the boss gets a promotion for finding the culprit and seeing that justice is done.
r.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's not the whole story either. If you read your own link carefully, it points out that Giuliani predicted the quakes using a method that has never been proven scientifically and has had no peer reviewed papers published. In other words, he's a crackpot who just happened to get lucky; there was no actual reason to believe that there would be a risk of earthquakes greater than normal. The scientists who said that this guy is wrong were basically correct; they just got unlucky.
To use a car analogy, a guy is sitting at an intersection reading tea leaves. At one point his tea leaves tell him that if you go through the intersection you'll crash. The scientists say that this is nonsense and that you shouldn't worry about crashing. You go through the intersection and you crash into a car going 100 mph through a red light. that neither you, the scientists, nor the tea leaf reader could have seen or predicted. You die.
And then the scientists are put in jail for manslaughter for telling you to ignore the tea leaf reader.
At worst, the scientists didn't properly communicate "the chance of crashing/earthquakes isn't greater than normal" as opposed to "the chance is zero", and given how the media and politicians ignore such nuances, the scientists shouldn't be held responsible for that.
If I, as an engineer, certify that a plant is safe when it may be not, I can be jailed.
Not the same thing. This is more like having an engineer inspect an old building that has parts collapse from time to time, asking him if it's safe, and having him tell you "Well, it's no less safe than usual..."
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Well – Italy is hardly the only country where that is so.
Basically A predicted a quake would strike based on multiple measurements...
A's prediction was pseudo-science. A's prediction was based on observations of radon gas emissions. He was an amateur seismologist, i.e., his science credentials are of the same integrity as that of ghost hunters or doctors who practice homeopathy. His crock "prediction" was bad for tourism, and though I believe that he should have the freedom to say whatever he believes, his statement was pseudo-science bollocks.
And for the record, the scientists who were charged for manslaughter were charged for a very specific statement. There had been many tremors leading up to the mainshock. The Civil Protection department stated, "minor shocks did not raise the risk of a major one. ...The scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy."
The first sentence is not technically correct: "...minor shocks did not raise the risk of a major one." The simple answer is seismologists don't know when, if, or where a mainshock will occur. We can only guess. And the notion of anomalies in the background seismicity--anomalously low or high--has been tried for over a century. It doesn't work. Hindsight is 20/20, and some large events are preceeded by either more or less minor earthquakes, but we simply do not know of a reliable way to predict major earthquakes based on minor earthquakes. Some major earthquakes happen with no precursors. Some happen after minor earthquake swarms. Some happen after a period of low seismicity--i.e., the fault is "stuck" and building pressure. In other words, we cannot rule out that the increase in minor earthquakes is a precursor to a larger event, but we also cannot say with any certainty that it does foreshadow a major event. We can say very little based on earthquake swarms, and we certainly don't have time to study them in the six months that they occurred before the mainshock.
The second sentence is not correct: "The scientific community tells me there is no danger because there is an ongoing discharge of energy." Of course, the occurrence of an earthquake means that stress fault was released as energy. However, we cannot conclusively say anything about whether or not that expenditure of energy increases or decreases danger. Those minor quakes could load some section of a fault, they could indicate that a fault that was previously "stuck" is now moving, they could indicate that a dormant fault has been reactivated... they could indicate any number of things. If we are talking purely in terms of energy, though--which is what I assume that the Italian Civil Protection department was saying when he was talking about a discharge of energy--his statement is pretty silly. The moment magnitude scale is logarithmic. Every one step in magnitude is approximately 32 times the energy. Two steps is exactly 1000 times the energy. The earthquake that struck Italy was a magnitude 6.3. It would take 1000 magnitude 4.3 earthquakes to expend the energy of the magnitude 6.3. Of course, one could make the argument that the fault was right on the point of slip and just a little bit of stress release could relax it enough to not slip, but there is simply no evidence that I am aware of, anywhere, that minor earthquakes and reduce the load on a fault enough to prevent a major earthquake. In fact, Japanese scientists in the past looked into manufacturing small earthquakes by drilling holes into faults and lubricating them in the hope to release the built-up stress as many minor quakes instead of one larger one. They abandoned that idea.