Italian scientists convicted over earthquake warning - Yahoo! News A little court in Italy has convicted scientists and one public official for not predicting an earthquake, and how big it was going to be... Now THAT'S Italian.
Earthquakes are considered acts of God. They should have convicted the churches representatives for being accessories to acts of God. Makes more sense than what they did.
This will make the next scientist who feels the need to predict something horrible to think twice, or release the information under a coworkers name!
After that farce in the Amanda Knox case, I'm not surprised. When this case started, I read one report that highlighted a statement (from the government official, not the six scientists?) that was overly dismissive of any risk, and not couched in the usual caveats and disclaimers normally used by scientists. I could imagine some liability for that, but not at the criminal level.
If I was a scientist in Italy I would leave. Now. There are countries that treat their scientists well.
Good grief. Next it'll be witch trials. Let's get this straight. The scientists should have known that an earthquake was definitely going to happen, and should have known when it would happen, and how bad it could be. But the same justice system doesn't think that Silvio Berlusconi could possibly have known about corruption at Fininvest, or tax evasion, or that some of the ladies at the Bunga Bunga parties might have been ladies of the night, or that Ruby The Heart Stealer might have been an underage illegal immigrant. OK. And I say all of this as someone with an Italian grandmother. Oh, come on. Be fair. For it to be in that condition, this photo must have been taken when the car was at least two weeks old. And there must have been a small rain shower during that period. My Dad had a Lancia Beta for a while when I was a kid. By the time it was two years old, the front wings had rusted through completely, and you could see the front wheels from above. Ah, no. That's German. But you can lift my Dad's Lancia doors out like that too, when the hinges rust off.
Some articles say that the issue was that the scientists downplayed the risk of a severe earthquake after hundreds of minor shocks. If they said thatsa no problema and and a fatal earthquake came shortly after that, then that is different than failing to predict an earthquake. Still goofy, but not as goofy.
From a Scientific American blog, here is an invited guest commentary from another viewpoint, with much detail not covered in most news reports: The l’Aquila Verdict: A Judgment Not Against Science, but Against A Failure of Science Communication
And more... Italian earthquake case is no anti-science witch-hunt - science-in-society - 23 October 2012 - New Scientist The court verdict is screwed up, but not quite as screwed up as most reports make it sound. The Italian gmnt mouthpiece was the one that that gave the wrong message. The scientists error was in not speaking up. Doesn't seem to rise to the level of manslaughter except maybe for the gmnt mouthpiece.
What law did they break? (If so, did they break it when they completed the announcement or when the earthquake occurred?)
